Domingo Martinez - Böcker

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALISTLyrical and gritty, this authentic coming-of-age story about a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas, insightfully illuminates a little-understood corner of America. Domingo Martinez lays bare his interior and exterior worlds as he struggles to make sense of the violent and the ugly, along with the beautiful and the loving, in a Texas border town in the 1980s. Partly a reflection on the culture of machismo and partly an exploration of the author’s boyhood spent in his sister’s hand-me-down clothes, this book delves into the enduring, complex bond between Martinez and his deeply flawed but fiercely protective older brother, Daniel. It features a cast of memorable characters, including his gun-hoarding former farmhand, Gramma, and “the Mimis”— two of his older sisters who for a short, glorious time manage to transform themselves from poor Latina adolescents into upper-class white girls. Martinez provides a glimpse into a society where children are traded like commerce, physical altercations routinely solve problems, drugs are rampant, sex is often crude, and people depend on the family witch doctor for advice. Charming, painful, and enlightening, this book examines the traumas and pleasures of growing up in South Texas and the often terrible consequences when different cultures collide on the banks of a dying river.

With his trademark tragic-comical voice and arresting storytelling, Domingo Martinez once again delivers a deeply personal memoir full of wry asides and poignant, thoughtful reflections in his new book My Heart Is a Drunken Compass. His first book shockingly ended with his fiancé Stephanie plummeting off the side of an overpass in Seattle, after having a seizure while driving. He now chronicles this painful episode in his life, with flashbacks to their tenuous romantic relationship, and how her accident and subsequent coma ultimately causes him to unravel emotionally. This pivotal moment, which began with an alarming call in the middle of the night, parallels another gut-wrenching experience from the past when his youngest brother's life hangs in the balance. Martinez once again brilliantly examines the complicated connections between family, friends, and loved ones. Feeling estranged from his family in Texas over the years, isolated and alone in Seattle, he turns to writing as a therapeutic tool. The underlying themes of addiction and recovery and their powerful impact on family dynamics also emerge within the narrative, as he struggles with his inner demons. These two traumatic life events actually bring Martinez closer to the family that he has in many ways spend years trying to deny, strengthening their bonds and healing old wounds. When Martinez falls apart completely, he finds his family, his redemption, and a new beginning with the love of his life, who encourages him to write his way out of the pain in order to save his own life.