The Madonnas of Echo Park, Brando Skyhorse
The Madonnas of Echo Park, Brando Skyhorse
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The Madonnas of Echo Park

Author: Brando Skyhorse

Narrator: Robert Ramirez, Luis Moreno, Alma Cuervo, Alyssa Bresnaham, Jonathan Davis, Tony Chiroldes, Florencia Lozano, Annie Henk

Unabridged: 8 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/01/2010

Synopsis

Reminiscent of Sherman Alexie and Sandra Cisneros, acclaimed author Brando Skyhorse’s “engaging storytelling” (Vanity Fair) brings the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles to life in this poignant and propulsive novel following several generations of Mexican immigrants through their shifting cultural and physical landscapes.

The Madonnas of Echo Park is both a grand mural of a Los Angeles neighborhood and an intimate glimpse into the lives of the men and women who struggle to lose their ethnic identity in the pursuit of the American dream. Each chapter summons a different voice—poetic, fierce, comic. We meet Hector, a day laborer who trolls the streets for work and witnesses a murder that pits his morality against his illegal status; his ex-wife Felicia, who narrowly survives a shooting and lands a cleaning job in a Hollywood Hills house as desolate as its owner; and young Aurora, who journeys through her now gentrified childhood neighborhood to discover her own history and her place in the land that all Mexican-Americans dream of, “the land that belongs to us again.”

Reminiscent of Luis Alberto Urrea and Dinaw Mengestu, The Madonnas of Echo Park is a brilliant and genuinely fresh view of American life.

About Brando Skyhorse

Brando Skyhorse’s debut novel, The Madonnas of Echo Park, won the 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award and the Sue Kaufman Award for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His memoir, Take This Man, was named one of Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of 2014 and one of NBC News’s 10 Best Latino Books of 2014. A recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center fellowship, Skyhorse teaches English and creative writing at Indiana University Bloomington.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Elle

“The more you lose, the more American you can become.” Madonnas of Echo Park, set in Echo Park, Los Angeles in the 1950s, is an absolutely fabulous book about the American dream, and the experiences of Mexican Americans within said dream. It features eight overlapping sections, each following dif......more

Goodreads review by Barbara

For me, this novel is an eye-opening read of the Mexican American community. It’s author, Brando Skyhorse writes in his author’s notes (which were in the beginning of the novel, which I LOVE), that he wrote this novel as a “forgive me” note to a twelve year old girl whom he disrespected in 6th grade......more

Goodreads review by Madeline

This is one of those books that is constantly making you think, and constantly realize how ignorant Americans are. It’s about Echo Park, a Latino neighborhood in LA that is predominately Mexican. One of the chapters focuses on illegal workers, how terribly their treated and how much they are looked......more

Goodreads review by Leonard

The Madonnas of Echo Park tells the stories of Mexicans who struggle through their daily lives in Echo Park, a section of Los Angeles. The book starts with "We slipped into this country like thieves, onto the land that once was ours," and ends with "This is the land that we dream of, the land that b......more

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