True Tales From Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle

True Tales From Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx

A cult classic of a book from Mexicoâ€™s vital margins â€“ stories of drag queens and Oaxacan Indian basketball players, popsicle makers and telenovela stars, migrants, farm workers, a slum boss, and a doomed tough guy.

Sam Quinones - one of the great contemporary reporters out of Mexico, the border, and the immigrant diaspora â€“ begins True Tales with the life and death of the godfather of the Narcocorrido, Chalino Sanchez.

The book recounts a small-town lynching of two traveling salesmen and how a village of ranchers invented one of Mexicoâ€™s greatest business models â€“ popsicle shops, which are now everywhere part of the countryâ€™s landscape.

Thereâ€™s the stunning story of Zeus Garcia, a bus boy in Santa Monica and the Michael Jordan of Oaxacan Indian basketball players. And Aristeo Prado, a renegade from a tiny rancho known for poverty and wanton violence.

Along the way, Quinones lives with a colony of drag queens in the red-light district of Mazatlan as they prepare for the countryâ€™s oldest gay beauty queen contest. He spends time in Tepito, the Hellâ€™s Kitchen neighborhood and center of pirated goods in Mexico City. And with soap opera queens, he chronicles how telenovelas reflect the countryâ€™s socio-political change.

He attends a Motherâ€™s Day party put on by La Loba, the ruling-partyâ€™s boss of the Chimalhuacan slum outside Mexico City, attended by 17,000 women, who were entertained by a troop of Chippendale dancers.

Those tales and others develop a momentum of amazing storytelling that is rich in surprise, weird turns and, above all, that bursts with the authentic vitality of Mexico.

The Economist: â€œâ€¦ a tireless reporter, fascinated by the stories that lie behind an ephemeral headline in the Mexican press.â€

Tucson Weekly: "... a hell of a storyteller."

Los Angeles Times: "...It's hard to choose a favorite tale from this collection, so improbable and delightful are they to read."

The Nation: "... a literary manner that tends toward a condensed, almost telegraphic narrative."

Amazon readers gave it a stunning 4.8 stars:

â€œYou'd hardly notice that it's all true if it weren't for the fact that these tales are simply too good to be fiction. Quinones has a knack for noticing the seemingly invisible.â€

â€œThis book will blow your mind. He has an innate ability to dig up and find the most fascinating stories in the most out-of-the-way places yet also show how they often are a microcosmic reflection of how Mexican society operates.â€

â€œIt's 13 years since I first read this book and I am still recommending it today for people who are sincerely interested in knowing the back stories of Mexico. â€¦ Disneyland has a back lot. If you only want the tourist view, great, spend your money and enjoy! If you want to try to understand a different culture, all of it, here are more parts.â€

True Tales From Another Mexico will give you a deeper view of Americaâ€™s southern neighbor.
Country USA
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2015-08-03
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2015-08-03
Format	Kindle eBook

True Tales From Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx

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