Return to Oaxaca
a novel by Donna Gold
“What you feel at sixteen you wander through life trying to feel again . . .”
After twenty-six years, award-winning photographer Lena Mendel returns to Oaxaca, Mexico, where at the age of sixteen she spent a transformational school year with six other girls. Now she’s back with Marta and Carmen, classmates from that magical time. With them is Lena’s adolescent son Gabriel, bent on establishing his independence from his mother’s single parenthood.
As the travelers savor the giant puppets, daring fireworks and romantic serenades of Oaxaca’s streets, an unexpected encounter unearths a long-buried secret that exposes the shadowy politics of this dazzling city, challenges Lena’s own autonomy, and changes the lives of mother and son forever. Then Gabriel seeks to remain in Oaxaca.
Within the crucible of Oaxaca’s massive 2006 teachers’ strike and the brutal repression of those organizing for their rights, Lena and Gabe realize a new relation to themselves, each other, and to this troubled land.
“Lucious. Brilliant. A perfect weaving of motherhood, precolonial history, and the politics of education in Mexico. It transported me to Oaxaca and the Mexican world I have come to know and love. I didn’t want it to end.”
—Etta Kralovec, Ed.D, Founding Director of the Borderlands Education Center
“This beautiful novel reads like a love letter to Oaxaca, immersing me in the vibrant sounds, smells, tastes, and other details that make Oaxaca so magical. Framed by dramatic sociopolitical upheaval, this captivating story of family and friendship is brimming with heartache, secrets, and most of all, love.”
—Laura Resau, author of What the Moon Saw, set in Oaxaca, and numerous other books for adults and younger
available from the publisher:
Culicidae Press
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Photo thanks to Francisco José Ruiz Cervantes