A Writer
Protests
May
10, 1992
Letters Editor
Book Review
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, New York 10036
Attn: Letters to the Editor
To the Editor:
In her very
brief review of my novel "The Miraculous Day of Amalia
Gómez" [In Brief, May 10, 1992],
Ms. Karen Brailsford manages to make a serious factual
error. She refers to my "graphic descriptions of
the hellish underbelly of East Los Angeles." Although
my novel includes some background scenes of East Los Angeles
in years past, it's setting is, importantly, Hollywood
today, its "hellish underbelly" of poverty.
Ms. Brailsford
would have had to read only the first sentence of my novel
to ascertain that fact, reiterated throughout the book.
Perhaps she might then have understood one of the novel's
central ironies missed by relocating the setting: that
the Hollywood of movie fantasy has become the Hollywood
of all-too-real violence and racial unrest.
Indeed, in
the eight months since my novel was published, that transformation
has become harsher. Although a reader would not be able
to discern this from Ms. Brailsford's review, my novel
deals in major part with the very ingredients for tumult
that erupted in the City of Los Angeles--and Hollywood--during
recent riots.
Sincerely,
John Rechy
Back to top
Original material by John Rechy appears
frequently on these pages.
|
