Elysian Park sits underneath Dodger Stadium, the former home of Chavez Ravine, and of Aurora Salazar, the last woman to be taken from the land that once was hers. Heading down Scott Avenue to Elysian Park Drive, Blackjack and I walk amid verdant meadows, plump trees, picnic tables, and large patches of grass rolling around the hills in sea green waves. We sidle up to a pickup baseball game and lie behind the backstop on a splintered bench. Blackjack’s itching to chase the ball each time it’s hit, but he stays by my side.
A bright yellow Frisbee sails over me, as if suspended from strings, a lost UFO from one of those old black-and-white sci-fi movies I loved watching on Saturday mornings in my pajamas. Blackjack takes off and catches the wayward satellite before it slams into a steel-drum trash can. Racing back, he leaps right past me and returns the Frisbee to my mother.
She walks over, holding the Frisbee out to me. Our fingers interlace and lock in the exchange. She lets them linger there, then pulls the Frisbee away. The whip-snatch motion sends both our hands upward, sailing the disk in a clear, uninterrupted trajectory. I watch Blackjack take off in haste as it soars high above the ground, where the ghosts of Chavez Ravine walk side by side with the souls of the bereaved, through the sun-dappled leaves of the walnut trees, across the thickets of dusty chaparral, down a plain dirt road lined with Mexican fan palms, to an amaranthine valley of orange groves that bloom from here to the ocean, a land rich with roots that grow, thrive, burn, are razed, heal, then grow again, deeper and stronger than before.
This is the land we dream of, the land that belongs to us again.
Gracias
Teachers—Howard J. Shorr, Jon Reider, John L’Heureux,
Susan Weinberg, Angela Hassall,
Judith Grossman, Wilton Barnhardt, Geoffrey Wolff, Nick Lyons, Randall Sullivan, William J. Bernstein, Margot Livesey
& every author it was my privilege to work with in publishing.
Family—Amy Hundley, Sophoat Lim, Jeff Lytle, Daniel Maurer,
John Reed, Jason Wishnow
For “yes”—Susan Golomb
For the golden opportunity—Amber Qureshi, Martha Levin,
Dominick Anfuso, & everyone at Free Press
Wherever you are—Frank Zamora
For turning over a new leaf—Alaina Sudeith
“Pattie Boyd”—Kitt Allan, who’s on every page
Thank you for spending some time in Echo Park.
About the Author
Born and raised in Echo Park, California, Brando Skyhorse is a graduate of Stanford University and the MFA Writers’ Workshop program at UC Irvine. For the past ten years he has worked in New York as a book editor. He’s currently writing a memoir about growing up with five stepfathers.
New from Brando Skyhorse!
The true story of a boy’s turbulent childhood growing up with five stepfathers and the mother who was determined to give her son everything but the truth.
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The Madonnas of Echo Park
A Novel
Brando Skyhorse
Reading Group Guide
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The following reading group guide is intended to help you find interesting and rewarding approaches to your reading of The Madonnas of Echo Park. We hope these enhance your enjoyment and appreciation of the book. For a complete listing of reading group guides from Simon & Schuster, visit
BookClubReader.com.
SUMMARY
The Madonnas of Echo Park follows the lives of Mexican Americans in the shifting landscape of Los Angeles’s Echo Park neighborhood, highlighting the intersections and collisions of American and Mexican culture. Felicia, a housekeeper, and her daughter, Aurora, weave in and out of each others’ lives, struggling to find a common ground on which to relate. Aurora’s estranged father, Hector, finds himself a witness to a murder and must choose between deportation and complicity. Aurora’s former classmates Duchess and Angie, steeped in American culture, drift apart as they choose different paths in life, each looking for a place to fit in. Felicia’s aging mother, Beatriz, who gave Felicia up as a baby, is torn between guilt and nostalgia and her own driving self-interest. As their lives tangle together and bounce apart, each is given the opportunity to decide what is truly important to them.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. The first chapter of The Madonnas of Echo Park is actually a fictional Author’s Note, telling the story of the real Aurora Esperanza and the inspiration for the novel. Did you read the Author’s Note before starting the novel? Did you realize it was fictional? Do you prefer to know an author’s thoughts about their book before you start, or formulate your own thoughts about it first?
2. The reporters that cover the drive-by shooting raise questions about the positioning that saved Aurora and placed Alma Guerrero in the path of the bullet. Felicia seems doubtful herself about what actually happened during the shooting. Was it just a mother-daughter spat, or did survival instincts kick in and shape the incident?
3. “Tall poppy syndrome” or “crab mentality” is often pointed out by observers of minority cultures, when a member of the community achieves, or has goals, outside of the average and is dragged down or derided by others. Do you see this at work in any of the characters’ lives?
4. The incident on Efren Mendoza’s bus highlights the racial tensions simmering below the surface of everyday L.A. Was the bus driver trying to manage an unmanageable situation or acting out of his own prejudices?
5. Aurora, speaking of her obsession with Morrissey, says, “You can’t help who, or what, you love.” Is she speaking solely about music, or is there a broader context for her statement? Do you agree with her?
6. Felicia works for wealthy white people cleaning their homes; Hector and Diego do construction work off the books. Are these genuine opportunities, or are they examples of immigrants being taken advantage of?
7. Beatriz (Felicia’s mother, Aurora’s grandmother) believes she has been visited by Our Lady of Guadalupe at a bus stop on Sunset Boulevard. Do you believe in religious visions, or is this simply a hallucination brought on by age and guilt?
8. Juan’s father, Manny, is an ex-gangster. What purpose do gangs serve for their neighborhoods? Are they the only option available for many teens, or are they an actual choice on the part of their members? Can people truly change after being involved in that kind of violence?
9. Felicia knows her employers as Rick and Mrs. Calhoun, despite the fact that she becomes much closer to Mrs. Calhoun than to Rick. Is the way she refers to them indicative of their relationships? Why doesn’t it change with the changing circumstances?
10. Are the Calhouns camouflaging their dysfunction with charitable acts, or are they genuinely sympathetic to Felicia? Is this an accurate portrait of their society/demographic? Are the Calhouns’ dark secrets the exception or the rule?
11. Which character was your favorite, and which was your least favorite? Which one did you identify with the most?
12. The Madonnas of Echo Park has many points of view and many connections that are often revealed slowly. Did the structure of the novel enhance or detract from the reading experience? Would you change it? If so, how?
TIPS TO ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB
1. The Madonnas of Echo Park is inspired by a childhood incident that the author can’t let go of, as told in the Author’s Note. Consider it from the real Aurora’s perspective and ask members to share a formative moment from their own childhood, in which they were refused something because of who they were or how they were perceived.
2. Several of the characters mention favorite musicians from their teen years—Aurora was obsessed with Morrissey, Angie loved Gwen Stefani and No Doubt, and Alma enjoyed Madonna. Ask members to pick an artist who was essential to their teen years and bring their favorite song by that musician to the meeting.
3. Immigration reform is a perennial topic in American politics, with many calling for
more aggressive laws while others believe that more leeway should be allowed. Have members vote anonymously on immigration reform—stricter or more relaxed—and discuss the results.
4. Have a book club movie night: watch A Day Without a Mexican, in which the entire Hispanic population of California disappears. How does the portrayal of Angelinos, both white and Hispanic, compare with The Madonnas of Echo Park?
5. Ask each member to select their own Echo Park, a real place that they would write about, to discuss with the group.
AUTHOR Q&A
1. The Madonnas of Echo Park opens with a fictional Author’s Note, recounting an invented childhood incident that is the inspiration for the novel and is a story in itself. Why did you choose to open with a fictionalized Author’s Note?
I’m fascinated by books where the author inserts himself into the narrative. Less fascinating, though, are the results, which often reduce the potential of an intriguing idea down to something that seems artificial. What’s missing in many of these attempts is a sense of urgency or actual risk. Why is the author putting themselves into their own book? What do they gain as a writer, and what do we gain as readers from the experience?
For years I lived a life in which I unknowingly—then knowingly—denied my Mexican heritage. When I was writing the book, I assumed there would be questions about why someone named Brando Skyhorse would write about Mexican Americans in East Los Angeles. They were questions I had myself and part of the reason my next book is a memoir. The risk, then, was to acknowledge that part of my life in this book in some way. The best place to do that was, it turned out, in a fictional Author’s Note. The Author’s Note is often considered the one unshakable pillar of truth in a book and has been used in recent years as a venue for full-length disclaimers for memoirs that may stray too deep into fiction. What better place, then, to create a fictionalized reality for my experiences, and what better signature to attach to such a piece than B.S.?
2. Who are your influences as an author?
During my early apprenticeship learning to write, I overdosed on William Faulkner ( Absalom, Absalom! is my favorite novel), Virginia Woolf, and George Orwell. I then wrote many poor imitations of each. Over time, I learned how to glean important writing lessons from a variety of books. On that instructional bookshelf: Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, Stephen King’s The Stand, Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, and many others. And that’s just the fiction collection!
I think writers can pull influences from everywhere. I’m a huge fan of Charles M. Schultz’s Peanuts strips. They’re probably the first thing I remember reading and savoring. When I had enough pocket money, I’d buy as many used collections of his strips at garage sales as I could find. I’m sure I pulled some subconscious writing lessons from them as well. At least I hope I did, as the strips from 1950–1970 were brilliant examples of economic yet heart-wrenching storytelling. And while we’re talking about illustrated storytelling, might I add that Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis is one of my all-time favorite books?
3. The Madonnas has an ensemble cast of characters, all connected to one another in a tangled web. Did this complicate the writing process? How did you decide on the structure of the novel and keep track of the intersecting storylines?
The idea for Madonnas came quickly in an outline form of about fifteen to twenty vignettes all connected by one word, Amexicans, which was the book’s original title. Each vignette had a character dealing with a central conflict, and as I wrote them, some grew in importance while other vignettes didn’t prove strong enough to be anything more than an idea or a few sentences in an abandoned Word file. I knew the characters all inhabited the same area, Echo Park, and were living in the same time period (from the 1980s to today), but their connections only surfaced as I wrote my way through the book. It did take some figuring out on scratch paper as to which characters were connected to whom, but no longer than it takes me to figure out a tip in a restaurant (that is to say, a very long time).
4. In some ways The Madonnas resembles a collection of short stories. Which character did you start with? Which was the most difficult to write? The easiest?
I didn’t worry too much about the form of what I was writing because I wanted to get everything down on paper first. I’d already written a long novel that had some sections that I enjoyed but was a disaster in every other way and didn’t find publication for good reason. (Of course I can laugh about it now!) An early draft of Madonnas did indeed resemble a story collection but, like mercury, the chapters kept congealing to one another and the characters kept revealing connections among themselves so I decided to pursue them.
Aurora revealed herself to be a central character early on, and I knew that the entire book would pivot around her journey, whatever it turned out to be. Her beginnings were humble—she was chasing a dog around Echo Park. That was all I knew. Yet the more time I spent with her, the more she became her own woman with her own energy, vivaciousness, and passions. At a certain point, I stopped trying to lead her and just followed along, which proved to be a wise move as she led me to a majority of the book’s other characters.
Her connection with Felicia, though, was where I had the greatest challenge, and in a sense they are related much more than just being mother and daughter. Felicia was just as headstrong as Aurora and her chapter, “The Blossoms of Los Feliz,” was an enormous challenge in that I wanted to make Felicia’s voice and experiences as honest as possible. My editor, Amber Qureshi, was crucial in helping me work my way through the several drafts of Felicia’s story and in fleshing out the various connections among the other characters.
It’s true that you remember the most difficult characters but you also remember the characters that have a lot to say and a seemingly effortless way of saying them. Efren Mendoza, the bus driver, was probably the easiest character to write because his anger and obsession with rules and regulations gave me a built-in conflict that I simply had to write toward. He represents that fierce, aggressive side each of us are capable of expressing—in an email, driving on the freeway, waiting in line at the supermarket—but says things in such a pure and true way that it’s hard not to be seduced by his voice, even though you may disagree with what he’s saying.
5. The geography of Los Angeles, specifically the Echo Park neighborhood, is intrinsic to the storyline. Was it a challenge to stay faithful to the geography, and did you worry about making mistakes? Do you think you could have told the same story in a place that resembles, but isn’t, Echo Park?
I wrote about the landscape in Madonnas from memory. I haven’t been to Echo Park in twelve years. Yet what amazes me most is that seeing the neighborhood depicted in movies, or getting reports from friends who have just visited the area, and also using Google maps, I can tell that the geography is almost unchanged. One of my former stepfathers told me in an email that when he recently visited Echo Park after being away for many years, “the people have changed but the place is still a dump.”
There were minor geographic tweaks I made to facilitate connecting the various characters but the book makes a faithful effort to render it just as I remembered it. Like my stepfather noted, some of the people have changed, and I made an effort to represent that oncoming feeling of a neighborhood that’s in the process of gentrification, but what you read is, I hope, what you get.
I couldn’t have told this story anywhere but in Echo Park, and it had to be the Echo Park I remembered from my youth to address the various things I wanted to say in the book. It wouldn’t have worked where I live now, in New Jersey, because the way a transplant looks at a place is invariably different than the way someone who was born and raised there looks at it. My memoir will likewise be set in Echo Park, but Book #3 (of which I have a vague idea for now) is telling me it’s time to explore other territory, and I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to do that when the memoir is done.
6. Music is important to your ch
aracters—from Madonna to Morrissey, many have a musician that is essential to their lives. Who is your essential musician? What did you listen to during the writing process?
Anyone taking a cursory glance through the book will see that I wear my eighties childhood on my rayon print shirt sleeves. Looking through my CD (yep, still have those) collection, it’s astonishing how many eighties artists there are and how many albums and singles (remember those?) I bought from certain bands. I tend to play songs on repeat when I’m writing because it helps me zone into the work, but much like the character Rob from High Fidelity I can’t give you one essential musician because I couldn’t limit myself to just naming one. The characters themselves, though, do a good job of explaining what I was listening to throughout the book’s writing. “Cool Kids” required a steady diet of Gwen Stefani solo/No Doubt. Aurora would only let me listen to The Smiths, Morrissey, Depeche Mode, and the occasional eighties one-hit wonder song. (Also note that her story is the book’s longest). “The Hustler” came alive when I played Los Lobos, while Felicia was a big eighties-era Madonna fan. And surprisingly, the bus driver in “Rules of the Road” thrived when I played Kanye West.
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