Having left her much-loved San Diego barrio, Yolanda Sahagun is now living in the university dorms when a series of events - her mother dies and her father sells their home - forces her to re-examine her life. Yolanda visits her parents' hometown of El Grullo, Mexico, struggling to understand the ghosts in her life - her mother, her father, and her seemingly idyllic childhood. She fears losing herself in the disintegration of the family. For Yolanda, her father is her enemy (or so she thinks), and in the course of the novel we see him at his best and worst, and we see Yolanda at her best and worst.This is a story of Yolanda's initiation into womanhood and about her fierce struggle to make sure her family does not dissolve. Family and sexual politics; love, death, and abandonment; the struggle to resolve a personal identity in the context of a shattered, first-generation immigrant American family - these are the hugely painful obstructions Yolanda must surmount or incorporate into her own being as she makes her life's journey.""Ghosts of El Grullo"" is a sequel to Santana's critically acclaimed and prize-winning ""Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility"".

 

This book was recognised in the Fiction category by the San Diego Book Award.

There are 296 pages in this book. This book was published 2008 by University of New Mexico Press .

Patricia Santana is chair of the foreign languages department and professor of Spanish at Cuyamaca College, El Cajon, California. Her earlier book, Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility (UNM Press), received the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize and was selected by the American Library Association as a Best Book for Young Adults.