Bilingual Review Press; ISBN: 9781931010795; $15.00
Due out in August 2011!
This collection of stories is long overdue. If Rice had borrowed this one from me and I was the library, he'd owe me a ton of cash in late fees. Teachers, myself included, have asked Rice to put together another collection that would include stories from his first book, Give the Pig a Chance and Other Stories, a book that didn't make it into the classroom because of certain stories. Check out the table of contents of it and you'll see what's the first clear marker that Pig would not be so much used in schools. But he selected a few pieces out of it, among them my all-time favorite of his stories, "Tina la Tinaca," a tragic piece like no other. He also includes stories previously published in separate anthologies but never in a singular collection. And a ton of new stuff, like seven or eight micro-stories. Closing the book is the play version of his story "She Flies," that appeared in another of his collections, Crazy Loco.
I'm already figuring out ways to include this book in my syllabus. It works well from a curriculum perspective, from a socio-cultural contexts of ed standpoint, and simply from a storytelling angle. We need more good stories such as those Rice tells so our students can see how connections to community and personal narrative can be made, as part of how we teach and learn. But the most important reason I've used Rice's work, and will continue to do so, is because he's alive, he's energetic, and his stories represent the vibrancy of this particular corner of the world. Really, it's about the life of the metaphorical "every corner." I look forward to the unleashing of "Heart Shaped Cookies."
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