The Flowers : a novel / Dagoberto Gilb.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Sonny Bravo is a tender, unusually smart fifteen-year-old who is living with his vivacious mother in a large city where intense prejudice is not just white against black, but also brown. When Sonny's mother, Silvia, suddenly marries an Okie building contractor named Cloyd Longpre, they are uprooted to a small apartment building, Los Flores. As Sonny sweeps its sidewalks, he meets his neighbors and becomes ensnared in their lives: Cindy, an eighteen-year-old druggie who is married and bored; Nica, a cloistered Mexican girl who cares for her infant brother but who is never allowed to leave their unit. The other tenants range from Pink, an albino black man who sells old cars in front of the building, to Bud, a muscled-up construction worker who hates blacks and Mexicans, even while he's married to a Mexican-American woman. Dagoberto Gilb, in arguably his most powerful work yet, has written an inspiring novel about hate, pain, anger, and love that transcends age, race, and time. Gilb's novel displays the fearlessness and wit that have helped make him one of this country's most authentic and original voices.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Teenaged Sonny Bravo introduces us to some of the strange inhabitants of Los Flores ("The Flowers"), the apartment building he moves to with his mom and new stepfather. With a six-city tour; reading group guide. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Gilb's new novel is hilarious and thought provoking as it traces the bigotry and alienation among the wildly varied cast of characters living in and around the Los Flores apartment building in an unnamed city that may remind some readers of Los Angeles. When narrator Sonny Bravo's mother, Silvia, marries Cloyd Longpre, the tightfisted landlord of Los Flores, Sonny is thrust into a racially charged environment on the brink of exploding. Sonny is an isolated teen whose only friends are the tragically dorky duo, Mike and Joe, from his new high school. He finds comfort in the menial chores Cloyd assigns him, as they give him a chance to escape the stifling apartment and to interact with the other residents, including Mr. Pinkston (known as "Pink"), an African-American albino who sells vintage cars to black customers in front of the building; Cindy, a broke and married teenage dropout looking for some fun; and Nica, a teen who is locked inside her apartment all day taking care of her brother. Racial tension boils over in the world outside Los Flores as Sonny navigates Cindy's advances and falls for Nica. Gilb (Gritos; Woodcuts of Women) offers sharp commentary via his quick-witted narrator, and the reader feels Sonny's disaffection as his world dissolves into chaos. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Too young to drive but old enough to catch the eye of a dangerously bored and sexy married neighbor, Chicano Sonny Bravo has to walk a thin line to survive in the Flowers, an apartment building owned by Cloyd, his hard-drinking, evil-tempered Okie stepfather. Sonny willingly does most of the chores Cloyd assigns, but things get complicated as he is drawn into the lives of the tenants, including wheeler-dealer Pink, mean racist Bud, and pretty and indentured Nica. Sonny can't stop himself from balancing insults with theft, while riots ignite in the trash-strewn streets in the wake of a police assault on a black man. A fiery essayist, short story writer, and novelist, Gilb expresses sympathy for women under the thumb of angry, threatened men while vividly portraying a romantic, vulnerable, yet calculating and resilient young man coming of age in a storm of prejudice. With a scorching sense of humor, a keen ear for dialogue, and a gift for creating microcosms, Gilb tells a suspenseful tale of loneliness, rage, yearning, and hope.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2008 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

It's ten o'clock, mom's in her chones, and all's wrong with the world. Mexican American novelist and essayist Gilb (Gritos, 2003, etc.) sets this novel, an understated exploration of race and its discontents, in a grimy border city in the recent past; the time is never spelled out and the cars and cholo clothes are timeless, but since "some cops pulled this loco black man over and he got whipped on, [and] it went out onto all the streets," it's safe to put it around 1994. As the reader soon sees, the mood is ugly. Sonny Bravo is a smart 15-year-old kid who wants to be good and has a hurting soul, but events are conspiring against him as surely as they conspire against Johnny Cade in The Outsiders--a kindred book in many ways. Sonny's vivacious, semi-clad mother decides to improve her fortunes by marrying an Anglo building contractor, and off they go to an apartment complex called Las Flores, the flowers of the title. It's no improvement; the mean streets get no less mean for Sonny, who now has black and white neighbors to contend with. His stepfather takes to drinking with a redneck construction worker named Bud, who lets no opportunity for stereotype or slur go unexplored, while mom endures. Sonny wanders between cultures, adding high-school French ("J'aime beaucoup les hamburgers") to the mix, uncomfortable inside his own skin. It's a recipe for a bruising, and it's up to Sonny to keep that skin in one piece while steering clear of trouble and wishing for a world in which everyone would just get along. Gilb's prose sometimes requires a glossary of the nonbilingual (or -trilingual), as with sentences such as, "Los blacks aren't shorty indios como nuestra gente," and his narrative moves toward a resolution that, like the world, leaves all sorts of loose ends hanging. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.