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Reviews of Dancing with
butterflies
 *Dancing
with Butterflies Reyna Grande Washington Square, $16 paper
(416p) ISBN 978-1-4391-0906-9
Grande's lyrical and sensual follow-up to her stunning Across a
Hundred Mountains (2006) is well worth the wait. This time out,
there is still the poignant intimacy of the Mexican immigrant
experience, but it's richly layered into the lives of four women
who discover that their passion for the vibrant tradition of
Folklórico dancing binds them to their pasts, futures and one
another as each faces her own test of love and loyalty. There's
Yesenia, the founder of Grupo Folklórico Alegria, who, at 42, is
struggling through a midlife crisis that threatens to wreck
everything she's loved; Elena, a young dancer and teacher whose
stillborn daughter pushes her into a forbidden love; Soledad, a
gifted seamstress for the Folklórico group whose dreams of her
own dress shop get derailed by a return to Mexico to visit her
dying grandmother; and Adriana, Elena's impetuous younger
sister, who's involved in an abusive relationship. Nothing is
simple for these complex women, but the art and culture of a
Mexican dance tradition is what finally saves their lives, and
we're lucky to be in the audience. (Oct.)
From Booklist
Reviews
"Mexican-born Grande focuses on
a subculture in the Latino community to explore universal themes
in this worthy follow-up to her award-winning debut novel,
Across a Hundred Mountains (2006). Folklórico, a dance that
emphasizes the local culture of different regions of Mexico, is
the focus around which the stories of four L.A. women and their
losses are intertwined. Yesería, who founded Grupo Folklorico
Alegría, takes desperate measures to regain her ability and
appearance after arthritis curtails her performing. Elena, an
Alegría member who codirects a folklórico group at the high
school where she teaches, is so immobilized by grief after her
baby is stillborn that she ends both her marriage and her
dancing. Her younger sister and fellow dancer, Adriana, still
angry over childhood events, increasingly allows her lesser self
to lapse into destructive behavior. Soledad, a skilled
seamstress who makes the group's costumes, has her hopes for the
future dashed by the man she loves. Yet the strength of
folklórico prevails, as the novel celebrates the sheer
exhilaration and physicality of dance and the sustenance of
female bonding." Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.
FROM KIRKUS REVIEW
(9/15/09)
Four Los Angelenas connected to the vibrant world of Mexican
Folklórico dance tell their stories.
Their troupe, Alegría, dances to mariachi music, performing
indigenous forms ranging from Aztec tribal steps to
German-influenced polkas. After an arthritic knee ends her
performing career, Alegría’s founder and star Yesenia undergoes
a midlife crisis that threatens her marriage. Husband Eduardo
begins to unravel when Yesenia radically alters her plump form
with cut-rate plastic surgery in Tijuana (not so cut-rate that
she doesn’t have to embezzle from Alegría to pay for it).
Soledad, Alegría’s talented costume designer, is troubled by her
lack of citizenship, her disfiguring birthmark and her younger
half sister Stephanie, who receives a large malpractice
settlement. Elena, 36 weeks pregnant, learns that her fetus’s
heart has stopped beating; after delivering her dead baby, she
no longer has the spirit to dance with Alegría or to preserve
her one-year marriage. Adriana, Elena’s younger sister, has
always resented her for causing their abusive father’s arrest
and conviction, then going away to school and leaving Adriana
with their vindictive paternal grandparents. Also a performer
with Alegría, party-girl Adriana takes up with bad-boy Emilio,
the company’s newest virtuoso, who beats her just as her father
used to. Elena, who teaches high school in addition to dancing,
is fighting her growing attraction to an earnest—and
underage—student. When her grandmother’s death requires Soledad
to return to Michoacán, winter home to the mass-migrating
Monarch butterflies who provide the novel’s central motif (and
title), all the story lines interact pleasingly and
suspensefully as her friends plot Soledad’s reentry into
California.
Absorbing arcana about butterflies and Folklórico traditions,
descriptions of food way beyond burritos, not to mention an
unflinching depiction of the immigration debacle’s personal
toll, underscore the fierce humanity of these
wise-Latinas-in-training.
resources for Dancing with
butterflies
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