Loosing My Espanish - by H G Carrillo (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A heartbreaking, funny, and brilliantly inventive novel with "a narrator who erupts and disrupts the pavements of the Cuban-American experience by showing us that the most accurate, if not truthful, fact comes from the memory of the impassioned heart." --Helena María Viramontes, author of Under the Feet of Jesus

"A novel that exists in a realm where beauty and memory and longing are one." --Junot Díaz, bestselling, Pulitzer Prize- winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Oscar Delossantos is about to lose his job as a teacher at a Jesuit high school in Chicago. Rather than go quietly, he embarks on a valiant last history lesson that chronicles the flight from Cuba of his makeshift extended family. Evoking the struggle between nostalgia and the realities of the Cuban Revolution with both grit and lyricism, he inspires his students with an altogether dazzling reinterpretation of the Cuban-American experience.

Review Quotes

"Loosing My Espanish is a novel that exists in a realm where beauty and memory and longing are one. Mr. Carrillo's talents are formidable, his lyricism pitch-perfect, and his compassion limitless."
-Junot Díaz, bestselling, Pulitzer Prize- winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

"His literary ancestors are the fabulous Latins with their reverence for myth and for memory, their penchant for surrealism: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Isabel Allende."
-The Washington Post Book World

"Evocative. . . . The interplay of two languages offers many beautiful effects." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Did you know that language can be read and heard and seen and touched? That you can smell it, taste it? Try Loosing My Espanish."
-Eduardo Galeano, author of the Memory of Fire trilogy

"H. G. Carrillo's remarkable prose captures memory, loss, and desire like a net made of language. In its trappings we find all sorts of gifts, from history to puns to love songs. Loosing My Espanish is enchantingly brilliant. What we are witnessing is the evolution of a great American writer."
-Ernesto Quiñonez, author of Chango's Fire

"In Loosing My Espanish, paradoxically, the great winner is Spanish, not only for the way in which the text is subverted by that language, but also for the splendid way in which it has given blood, spirit, and conviction to a moving novel that breathes Cuba in a major key."
-Mayra Montero, author of Deep Purple

"An incisive look into the lives of a Cuban American family. . . . Lyrical, skillfully descriptive, bold, colorful, magical and vibrant with cultural rhythm and resonance."
--Black Issues Book Review

"Will be of interest to everyone who has inherited a history and a language they could not fully connect with but still tried to preserve."
-- The Miami Herald

"What is a historical fact if not a personal history, a country's history, a political history? In his stunning first novel, Carrillo delivers a narrator who erupts and disrupts the pavements of the Cuban-American experience by showing us that the most accurate, if not truthful, fact comes from the memory of the impassioned heart. The rhythmic beauty of Carrillo's commanding storytelling leaves you with the urgency of trying to catch your breath. I can't imagine another American history course being taught without Loosing My Espanish as required reading."
-Helena María Viramontes, author of Under the Feet of Jesus

About the Author

H. G. CARRILLOS's work appeared in The Kenyon Review and Glimmer Train, among other journals and magazines. He was an associate professor at George Washington University. He died in 2020.