Additional information
by Donna Miscolta (Author)
Stories chronicle the journey of a Mexican-American immigrant family in Southern California, from the 1920s to modern day.
Front Jacket
In 1920s Southern California, Lupita Camacho leaves Mexico and settles not far from the border--and so begins the journey of an American family told by a chain of tales stretching across three generations. Early stories track Lupita's concessions to the demands of her new country and her new fish cannery job overseen by a lecherous boss who makes sure Lupita, her friend Rosa, and their Chinese coworkers work long, hard, and, for the most part, in silence, since speaking any language but English is forbidden. The family's first-generation Americans populate later stories as they work toward assimilation, complete with kidney-shaped inground pools, even though their homes and children never quite match those in the pages of Ladies Home Journal. Finally, distanced from the culture of their ancestors and freed from the stigma of accented English, Lupita's grandchildren live lives that are as wide-open as America: hosting karaoke nights, becoming female wrestlers, arriving at high school reunions utterly transformed. However, these modern-day family members discover that despite their freedom, they somehow remain set apart. In a time when the word "immigrant" has become politically charged and sometimes stripped of its earlier sense of dignity, these exquisitely human stories provide welcome restoration. In Hola and Goodbye, Donna Miscolta's altogether fascinating and flawed characters face progress and failure against the backdrop of each new generation--bound together, and to us all, by the search for a place in this world.
Author Biography
Donna Miscolta is a Mexican/Filipina author who grew up in National City, CA, and now lives in Seattle. She is the author of the novel When the de la Cruz Family Danced (2011). Her story "Ana's Dance" won the 2013 Lascaux Prize for Short Fiction. Recent work has appeared in Bluestem, Hawaii Pacific Review, Waxwing, and Spartan. Her story "Strong Girls" will appear in Calyx's 40th-anniversary issue, due out in March 2016. A 2014 recipient of an Artist Trust Fellowship, she has also received awards from 4Culture, the Bread Loaf/Rona Jaffe Foundation, and the City of Seattle.
