"Times, I believe I have only room for Soledad, and I have carried it with me all these years.... Perhaps it is better than carrying ashes or memories, better than lugging around the certainties of lineage that splay through other lives like the hungry hard branches of a spreading tree. Perhaps it is far better to carry just one word when one drives great distances in the desert, easier to sound just one word in blues and reds and blacks that far from the crowded world, from the cities of competing sounds. Perhaps it is more practical to hear oneself utter a single word, easier for the vast desert skies to hear it, the rocks to send it back, the solitary mind to contemplate the intonation and stress of each isolated vowel and consonant. Soledad... perhaps such a single word is more suited to a living soul - or a dead one - and as easily suited to the single spark from my campfire that spirals up and dies in the night sky near Piedras Negras, where I often dream of my ancestors, see them in the tongue of flame, in the faces among the black rocks, and call their names in the impossible song of my impossible race."
Centaur of the North is the winner of the Aztlán Prize, and Finalist
in the Associated Writing Programs Award Series in Short Fiction. Centaur of the North marks the debut of a gifted storyteller, a lyric and transcendent voice. In nine resonant
stories, Wendell Mayo presents us with characters who long to remove the shadows occluding
elusive, almost magical mothers and to explore prescribed, yet not fully understood, destinies. His stories reverberate with a soul-aching need to fit the puzzle pieces
together. Family histories, family mysteries emerging from legends - Wendell Mayo reveals the power
of family storytelling, both real and imagined. Centaur of the North has been widely and favorably reviewed, for example, in the
New York Times Book Review("a powerful first collection" - 12/15/96) and Choice ("highly recommended"). It is a beautiful book, with original cover art by
San Antonio Artist Nivia Gonzalez.
"[T]he first duty of the writer is to entertain his reader... These are wonderful, entertaining stories."
"[A]n ambitiously lyrical story collection about the power of place and the foibles of memory. It is a wonderful book, full of beautiful voices."
"This collection of stories exemplifies craft, prose that is measured, honed, polished to a flawless surface that compels the reader from end to end."
Passage
from "Conquistador"
RealAudio
Format (3 min. 26 sec.)
*.WAV
Format (45 sec.)
See Full Review in NY TIMES BOOK REVIEW
See the Relevant Scholarship: Delgadillo,
Theresa. "EXILES, MIGRANTS, SETTLERS, AND NATIVES: LITERARY
REPRESENTATIONS OF CHICANOS/AS AND MEXICANS IN THE MIDWEST."
JSRI Occasional Paper #64. The Julian Samora Research Institute,
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, 1999.
- Ernest J. Gaines, recipient of the 1994 National Book Award
for A Gathering of Old Men
- Lorrie Moore, author of Like Life
- Gordon Weaver, author of The Way We Know in Dreams
