In this exquisitely crafted novel, acclaimed author Alba Ambert (The Eighth Continent) tells the story from birth to adulthood of Blanca, a woman who struggles to overcome the poverty and oppression of her Puerto Rican-South Bronx heritage. Blanca must pay a terrible emotional price to find her release from the past, “la puerta final, la que abriría todas las puertas” (the final door, the door that would open all doors). Published in English as A Perfect Silence to national acclaim in 1995 (it received Multicultural Review’s Carey McWilliams Award), Porque hay silencio is an independent and lyrical creation in its own right. “How fortunate we are,” writes Nicholasa Mohr, to have a Latina writer “as talented and creative as Alba Ambert.”
Porque hay silencio
$11.95
by Alba Ambert
ISBN: 978-1-55885-250-1
Publication Date: September 30, 1998
Bind: Trade Paperback
Pages: 176
Realistically depicts life in the Puerto Rican barrios of the South Bronx and in the poverty-stricken favelas of Puerto Rico.
Available
Recipient, 1996 MultiCultural Review Carey McWilliams Award
“A Perfect Silence is the triumph of a voice that misery could not silence.”
—New York Newsday
“Through Ambert’s words, we feel the pain of Blanca’s rejection, the pangs of her hunger, the meaness and stench of poverty. This devastating portrayal of the hopelessness of barrio life enrages the reader. We marvel at the courage required to arise from such an environment. This is not a comfortable book and cannot be read complacently. Blanca will live on in the reader’s mind for a long time to come.”
—The Denver Post
