Life is a Woman by Lionel Garcia
Texas novelist Lionel Garcia’s career has been filled with honors and acclaim. DIRT is thrilled to publish Garcia’s LIFE IS A WOMAN, a comic masterpiece which shows Garcia exploding with inventive energy.
Jose Maria was born with an abundance of testicles and hair. This Rabelasian farce follows his disastrous life from his ill-omened birth to a failed opera career, a stint as an erotic performer for European elites, a failed attempt at a cure by the illustrious Sigmund Freud, his return to Texas, and his gradual ruination of the lives of all he touches until his final murder by those closest to him.
Author Lionel Garcia was born in San Diego, Texas, on August the 20th, 1935. He has been writing since the early fifties. Almost all his writings have dealt with Mexican-American life in the United States. He has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize three times, for Leaving Home, A Shroud in the Family and The Day They Took My Uncle.
In 1983 he won the Discovery Prize from PEN Southwest for his novel, Leaving Home.
“A hypnotic account of Mexican American life in the United States. The dialogue is earthy, funny and resigned. Garcia tells many tales in this sauntering, mosaic-like novel, creating an invaluable depiction of an often overlooked group of Americans at a pivotal point in history.” – BOOKLIST.
His second novel, A Shroud In The Family, was released in the spring of 1987 by Arte Publico Press.
The Los Angeles Times described A Shroud In The Family as being a novel that “accommodates the grandeur and scope of novels like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ and Isabel Allende’s ‘The House of the Spirits’. It signals the coming of age of a talented story teller. The novel transcends the restrictions of categorization, evolving as a passionate evaluation of one man’s life.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY describes A Shroud In The Family as a “rich and earthy novel having many hilarious moments as Garcia poignantly illustrates the struggle of Hispanic immigrants to adapt to American culture. It is a book full of pathos and drama.”
The New York Times called Hardscrub a “bracing new novel…full of Mr. Garcia’s sense of humor and irony.” (Hardscrub was a NYT Notable book.)
Publishers Weekly writes that Hardscrub is a novel that describes “- wrenchingly and unforgettably – several months of…a Texan family’s transient existence”.
The Houston Post has said that Hardscrub is “plainly a very good novel…a concentrated story in a lean and sometimes absurd spirit. Hardly a word is wasted.”
Austin American Statesman: “inescapably compelling. Garcia’s unflinching analysis is medicine for a sick society.”
In 1991 Hardscrub was named the novel of the year by the Dallas Times Herald and the Southwest Booksellers Association. Hardscrub was named the novel of the year by the Texas Institute of Letters and was named the recipient of the Jesse Jones Award for Fiction. The novel also received the Texas Literary Award for Best Novel.
In 1990, he was elected to PEN America, the world association of Poets, Editors, Essayists and Novelist. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America and the Authors Guild of America, The Dramatists Guild, the Texas Institute of Letters, and The Poetry Society of America. Garcia also won the Texas Review Press Poetry Prize in 2003 for Brush Country (Poetry) (Texas Review Press) and the Texas Playwright Festival play of the year 1996 for An Acorn On The Moon, Stages Repertory Theater. Also the Writer’s Garret Short Story Award (Writer’s Garret Publications).
Philip Lopate calls him “A working class Chekov.”
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