Dark Dude (Spanish Edition)

Gr 9 Up—This is the Spanish-language version of Hijuelos's award-winning novel (S & S, 2009). Rico Fuentes, 15, escapes from his Harlem home, and, like his favorite character Huck Finn, embarks on a road adventure with his friend Jimmy. They end up "thousand miles away," cleaning the outhouse toilet on a remote farm in Wisconsin. Although the novel is set in the '70s, Rico's compelling story will speak to teenagers who face the same contradictions in today's public schools and in homes where parents and kids live between two cultural worlds. Rico was born in New York, to Cuban parents who migrated to the U.S. before the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Besides the violence in his high school, his father's tiredness after long and exhausting working days, his mother's anguish counting every single penny, and Jimmy's heroine addiction, Rico is constantly harassed by his schoolmates and neighbors because he is white and mistakenly taken for an Anglo-Saxon. In Wisconsin, surrounded by white people, he discovers the true meanings of race and cultural identity that go beyond skin color. This is a great novel and an important addition to collections in libraries serving communities with significant Cuban-American populations.—Freda Mosquera, Broward County Library, Fort Lauderdale, FL