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From Publishers Weekly ---------------------- Readers new to California-born Chávez-Silverman's unapologetic and bold back-and-forth between English and Spanish may at first be unable to classify what they are reading. It's quick, charming and utterly confusing to those who don't speak some Spanish. But the author s to wake readers up, make them think and develop a truly 21st-century notion of multiculturalism. Early on in this bittersweet, often sarcastic and meditative memoir, Chávez-Silverman tells readers, "Para explicar estos mis flights (of fancy), tendría que empezar por decir que soy, it is—my language—cual homing pigeon on ." As Chávez-Silverman, who teaches Romance languages and literatures at Pomona College, takes readers across borders and through time, she throws together a bevy of words diverse and complex enough to represent her vast variety of life experiences, from facing the challenges of being a Latina woman to dealing with loneliness, going out dancing and exploring new cultures. This is a memoir of place, as Chávez-Silverman recounts feeling isolated and alone in Johannesburg, at home in Los Angeles and as if she is searching in Buenos Aires. In his foreword, Latino culture expert Paul Allatson rightly declares, "[T]he kinds of code-sw and linguistic inventions that characterize [this book] represent a new 'American' literary and linguistic form." This is not a memoir written outside the box; it is a memoir written to obliterate it. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Read more ( javascript:void(0) ) Review ------ “This is not a memoir written outside the box; it is a memoir written to obliterate it.”—Publishers Weekly "Susana Chávez-Silverman isn't a code-switcher but a switch-burner. Her Killer Crónicas is an astonishing example of linguistic mestizaje. It's also a prophetic statement: north and south are no longer applicable coordinates to understand the Americas. They have merged into a single gravitational order where languages are in constant mutation."—Ilan Stavans, author of Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language “A stirring memoir . . . practically a performance. Killer Crónicas is a testament to the maturing sense of global and pan-Latin citizenship being cled by Chicanos and U.S.-born Latinos in the American West. Combine this with such innovation in language, and her book may one day be regarded as a refreshing turning point in Latino literature, maybe even the truly bilingual literary voice that the pioneering Chicana critic Gloria Anzaldúa called for.”—Daniel Hernandez, Los Angeles Times "Susana Chávez-Silverman's Killer Crónicas: Bilingual Memories is a masterfully written memoir in the form of 'chronicles' exploring issues of memory, family relationships, and language. Her philosophical excursions on writing, intertextuality, and life in general are brilliantly and humorously rendered in a bilingual format of code-sw that evidences a superb knowledge of English and Spanish. This linguistic dexterity enables the crónicas to flow effortlessly from one language to another and easily captivates the reader as he/she travels with the author in a most enjoyable and fascinating journey from California to South Africa, Argentina, Spain, and Chile."— María Herrera-Sobek, associate vice chancellor and Luis Leal Endowed Chair, University of California, Santa Barbara "These chronicles are truly hemispheric, postmodern memories written in a ludic, singular Spanglish that encapsulates the transnational, nomad vivencias of a Jewish Chicana from Califas, a citizen of the Hispanic world. Original, powerful and profound."—Frances Aparicio, University of Illinois at Chicago Read more ( javascript:void(0) ) See all Editorial Reviews ( /dp/product-description/0299202208/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&isInIframe=0 )