As a Chicano boy living in the unglamorous town of Hollywood, New Mexico, and a member of the graduating class of 1969, Sammy Santos faces the challenges of “gringo” racism, unpopular dress codes, the Vietnam War, barrio violence, and poverty.
- ISBN: 9780938317814
- Author: Saenz, Benjamin Alire
- Published: 2004 , Cinco Puntos Press
- Themes: challenges, Poverty, Racism, School, violence
- Descriptors: Historical Fiction, Latinx in US, United States, Young Adult (ages 14-18)
- No. of pages: 240
Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood is poignant, hilarious, thought-provoking, sobering, bleak, and ultimately uplifting, often in the same chapter. Told in Sammy’s vibrant voice, it is at once innocent and street-tough, touching and harsh. Sammy is growing up in Hollywood, a depressed barrio in Albuquerque, during the late 1960’s; throughout the book, he experiences love and loss, struggles with being undervalued by the adults around him, but also exults in spearheading a protest at his high school that brings about real change. Everpresent is his relationship with Juliana, a girl whose tough exterior hides a frightening home life.
Saenz captures perfectly what it must be like growing up in a time and a place, and his scenes shimmer with great dialogue and realistic situations. Some scenes had me laughing out loud, like the one where Sammy is walking to confession and gets in a fist-fight with a friend on the way; their dilemma becomes whether they confess to the fight but, more importantly, to the discussion that led to it. But then there is the scene when Sammy and his friends have to defend a friend who has been found with another boy in a car; Sammy struggles with how to maintain a friendship with someone whose life choices he doesn’t understand. There are the touching scenes of how Sammy learns to appreciate his neighbor, the mean lady in the neighborhood, when he discovers that her husband is terminally ill. By the end of the book, I was bawling, particularly when Sammy the son has to be strong for his father who has lost a leg in a car accident.
The characters are vibrant as well; there’s Pifas, who escapes the barrio by going to Vietnam, and Charlie and Gigi, who help Sammy coordinate a strike in their school, and Rene, who gets so angry at his situation he wants to kill someone. There’s Mrs. Apodaca, the neighbor, and Gabriela, Sammy’s sweet and innocent kid sister. And there’s Sammy’s dad, who tries to be a good dad even when his work takes him away from the family.
Most of all, it’s Sammy’s voice that makes this book so endearing. He struggles with being a good, smart boy when he is surrounded by so much pain and people making poor choices, but in the end he is the kind of kid anyone would want as a friend, a brother, a son, or a mate.
I think this book would appeal to all kinds of children, but particularly to boys who are struggling with how to succeed in a world that seems determined to put you in your place.