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Descanso for My Father: Fragments of a Life
Author(s): Harrison Candelaria Fletcher (Author)
- Publisher: Bison Books
- Publication Date: 1 Mar. 2012
- Edition: Illustrated
- Language: English
- Print length: 168 pages
- ISBN-10: 0803238398
- ISBN-13: 9780803238398
Book Description
This book is Fletcher’s literary descanso, a piecing together―from moments and objects and words―of a father’s life, of the life lived without that father, and of his own mixed-race identity. Fletcher’s reflections unfold like a collage, offering a rich array of images and stories of life with his single mother, organizing weekend family car trips to explore graveyards and adobe ruins; of growing up on the fault lines of class and culture; of being a father who never had one of his own to learn from. From incidents and observations, Fletcher assembles a beautifully crafted portrait of his family’s unspoken affliction with loss over the decades, a portrait that finally evokes the father at its heart.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“An homage not only to his dad but to Harrison’s own boyhood joys, sorrows and searching, the book makes clear the author’s expansive literary sensibilities.”―
Kirkus Reviews“Fletcher’s prose is simply gorgeous, and Albuquerque’s cultural heritage is richly depicted in this book of essays, which adds to our understanding of family, landscape and their role in the formation of identity. An exquisite literary debut.”―Rigoberto Gonzalez,
El Paso Times“Ultimately it is language and a sharp eye for detail, not suspense, that pulls the reader along. . . . In a memoir-drenched era of publishing,
Descanso is refreshing.”―Jana Fornario, Southwestern American Literature“Descanso for My Father is laced with stories about people encountering ghosts. Candelaria Fletcher may not be clairvoyant, but he conjures up the spirits of his ancestors in this unusual and moving book.”―Jenny Shank, High Country News
“Like the dreamlike shadowboxes of Joseph Cornell, Fletcher assembles scraps of imagery and inherited keepsakes into an enchanting quest to understand his family’s stories. . . . In the same way a painter applies the principles of negative space to a composition, Fletcher, who understands the endless possibilities of the essay form, relies on memory and observation, while safeguarding the sense of absence, the space of silence in his prose.”—Jericho Parms, Rumpus
