sherrytsing206d

One of several anthologies of short fiction by this author that I have read. Dybek blurs the line between fantasy and fact in his quasi-memoirs about growing up in Chicago in the Pilsen / Little Village area of the South Side in the 1960s. This time period was when white flight and deindustrialization were beginning to afflict Chicago and this part of town was in the middle of its transition from a predominantly Polish Catholic neighborhood to a predominantly Mexican Catholic neighborhood. Some of the stories seem like hokey nostalgia bits but most of them I found interesting, well-written and compelling. Dybek really makes his characters come alive; his old neighborhood is also very vivid and is in a sense a major character itself. I think that maybe I got more from this book since I spent my college years in Chicago, although I was not particularly familiar with this part of town when I read the books.

2022-11-14 13:57