Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories , is a stunning debut collection of short stories that explore identity issues in the Latino community. The cast of characters in these stories include a young boy who seeks to save an abandoned baby, an elderly man attempting to invoke his dead wife by regularly donning her clothing and make-up, a former National Guardsman whose failed attempts to connect with his family do not prevent him from trying, and a young woman determined to give birth to her murdered lover's child. In the title story, an aging Avon representative, who is often mistaken for a transvestite, has become so estranged from the Spanish language she spoke as a child that she no longer remembers that she spoke it or what happened in her childhood. Many of the characters in these stories must negotiate differences in race, culture, language, class, and gender in attempts to discover who they are and where they are going.  López's vivid characters struggle both to find a place of belonging and companions who can accept them, as well as self-forgiveness for the compromises they make in living necessarily bifurcated lives, as they attempt to bridge the gap between cultures. Lopez shows us the spectrum of the Latino community in this collection of 11 short stories. Her characters young, old, black, white, female, male, alcoholic, and even wannabe alcoholic all explore the permutations of their identities in contemporary America. In the title story, we meet an aging alcoholic, always "between jobs," who is rejected by her more successful family. Yet only in an alcoholic stupor can she conjure up the lost Spanish and the lost grandmother of her childhood. In the delightful "After Dad Shot Jesus," a fourth-grade teacher finally realizes that her close-knit family has smothered and manipulated her all her life. Lo pez (English, Brenau Univ.) is brilliant in her depiction of extended families, as when she writes of "old aunts nested in lawn chairs, fingering their bluish tresses and bickering noisily." This superb collection has deservedly won Curbstone Press's Miguel M rmol Prize for debut fiction in 2002. Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., McMinnville, OR Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. Lopez's debut collection of short stories questions what it means to be different--in class, race, and culture especially--and how identities can be lost in the struggle to fit in. The title character in the wonderful story "Sophia" is an unpopular, overweight high-school student who prays to la virgen every night to help her shed her extra pounds and fix her lazy eye. Her peers are cruel to her on a daily basis, but it's her yearning to belong that brings her the most pain--the last few paragraphs are chilling. The title story also examines identities in the Latino community by focusing on Molly, who has become so alienated from her roots that she forgets large chunks of her childhood, including that she once spoke Spanish. When she gets lost in a Latino neighborhood, each step she takes makes her feel more and more like a stranger in a foreign country. A vibrant and memorable collection. Carlos Orellana Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "i was impressed with the mastery of the story-telling, the swiftness of movement, the voices, the characters—really wonderful. The characters were zingers, the dialogue sharp, the movement quick."  —Sandra Cisneros "What sets apart these often beautifully written stories, always scintillating with biting wit and humor, is the way Lopez subtly and skillfully twists and turns their seemingly simple plots on their heads, showing that the the line that separates the "normal" from the "bizarre" is neither as clear nor as objective as it is often assumed to be."  —Ranjana Varghese  "López is an original, and this fine collection, which won its publisher's inaugural Miguel Marmol Prize for fiction, is a thoroughgoing delight."  — Kirkus Reviews Lorraine López is a writer and educator. She is the author of six books of fiction and the editor of two essay collections. An associate editor for The Afro-Hispanic Review , López is the co-founder and associate director of the Latino and Latina Studies Program at Vanderbilt University. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she also teaches Creative Writing in the M.F.A. program at Vanderbilt.  Used Book in Good Condition