Ocotillo Dreams

by Melinda Palacio

Set in Chandler, Arizona, during the city's infamous 1997 migrant sweeps, this riveting tale brings to life the social issues that arise from border policy and economic inequity. Palacio skillfully weaves a story of politics, intrigue, love, and trust in a community that is suspicious of others, an attitude she experienced firsthand after moving to Chandler in the late 1990s. "The neighbors suspected that the house I bought was a way-station for undocumented immigrants," she recalls. Thus, the seeds for Ocotillo Dreams were sown. In it, we meet Isola, a young woman who inherits a Chandler home and relocates there temporarily. There she learns that her mother had lived a secret life of helping the undocumented workers. Isola must confront her own confusion and sense of loyalty in a strange and unwelcoming environment. As she gets to know her mother from clues left behind, she grapples with issues of identity and belonging that lead her on a journey toward purpose in life and reconnection with her roots.

"Accomplished poet Palacio seamlessly transitions to fiction in her debut novel about identity, stereotypes, and prejudice in a Phoenix suburb. Isola leaves her San Francisco home and university community to claim the house in Chandler, Ariz., she inherited after her mother's death. Long estranged, Isola is unfamiliar with her mother's life, except for a monthly postcard of a blooming ocotillo cactus that proclaimed dreams came true in Chandler. Isola is startled to find a man, Cruz, asleep in the kitchen, whom she learns he knew her mother well and was one of many undocumented immigrants her mother (as a part of her work with Rescate Angeles) had helped cross the border, learn English, and find work. Additional surprises await Isola when new visitors arrive, slowly revealing the mother she never really knew. Palacio's poet's eye reveals a vibrantly painted desert culture of fragile beauty and uncompromising harshness." (Publishers Weekly)

Genres: Fiction, Latino, Novels

188 pages, Hardcover

First published July 28, 2011

About the author

Melinda Palacio is an award-winning poet and author from South-Central Los Angeles. She studied Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley and earned a graduate degree in the same field at UC Santa Cruz. She is a 2007 PEN USA Emerging Voices Rosenthal Fellow and an alum of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. In 2009, Bilingual Press accepted her novel manuscript, Ocotillo Dreams, for publication. That same year, she won Kulupi Press' Sense of Place 2009 competition for her poetry chapbook, Folsom Lockdown. Tia Chucha Press published first full-length poetry manuscript, How Fire Is A Story, Waiting Fall 2012. The title poem from that collection has been widely reprinted and represents the first poem she published in 2006. The book was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize and placed first in the International Latino Book Awards. Her poetry and fiction have been widely published and anthologized, including Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature, Southern Poetry Anthology IV: Louisiana, San Diego Poetry Annual New Poets of the American West: An Anthology of Eleven Western State, PALABRA, the Mas Tequila Review, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, Naugatuck River River, Pilgrimage Magazine, Quercus Review, ASKEW Poetry Journal, Squaw Valley Review, San Pedro River Review, El Tecolote, and Strange Cargo: An Emerging Voices Anthology.

When she lived in Chandler, Arizona, she started freelancing and writing lifestyle pieces for local newspapers and magazines. Later, when she moved to Santa Barbara, she was a staff reporter for the Goleta Valley Voice and she started writing poetry and fiction. She had the idea of working on a historical novel, based on the INS sweeps of Chandler, Arizona in 1997. However, the events of Arizona's immigration laws and SB 1070 turned her historical work, Ocotillo Dreams, into a contemporary novel. She is currently working on a new novel.

Reviews

[raafi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review in Bahasa Indonesia: http://bit.ly/OcotilloDreams.

I thank to my Literature of the Southwest professor who introduced me to this enlightening book. It tells a lot about immigration sweep in Chandler, Arizona in 1997. The review is coming.

[Judy King · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an ingenious way to address the immigration issue. Melinda Palacio's sharpened pencil put her protag in the uncomfortable position of clearing away the detritus of her mother's life. Varying degrees of estrangement have kept the women separate -- and from knowing and understanding the forces the drive each other. Not surprisingly Isola discovers as she delves into her mother's belongings, friends, and desert space that more than a single thin invisible thread have bound the daughter and her mother far more strongly than either realized -- and that those bindings and similarities are reaching far beyond the the mother's grave.

In this first novel, Melinda Palacio has created warm, rich, flawed characters that we choose to accept and love -- in the same way we continue to love best friends and relatives as we discover their imperfections and the deep holes in their souls. She also demonstrates how many shades of grey there can be in issues such as immigration that may have appeared at first glance to be simply very black and very white.

Orale Melinda! Otra! Otra! Otra!

[Frank Mundo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just posted my review of poet Melinda Palacio's debut novel Ocotillo Dreams (Bilingual Press).

Check it out on my blog -->

http://www.examiner.com/books-in-los-...

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great first novel. Looking forward to next one. Love her poetry!

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Necessary to Read Before The Election

[Steph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ocotillo Dreams does what many other fiction works do - addresses a social injustice. Operation Restoration is a police action orchestrated by INS, (Now called ICE), The Mayor of Chandler, and the Chandler City Police working in collaboration to round up Mexicans - Mexicans who are US citizens, Mexicans who are documented, and Mexicans who were undocumented. In other words, when a resident of Chandler is brown, the police stop the resident and ask the resident to prove legality. The intention is to rid the city of undocumented workers. The result was "casting a wide net" and whatever fell into that net was unapologetically fair game. (This thanks to Sheriff Joe Arpio). Ocotillo Dreams is set in 1997 when Operation Restoration occurred. Ocotillo Dreams answers and challenges this part of Arizona's history with Isola, a woman who leaves San Francisco to attend to her mother's property after her mother passes away. Isola is walking from point A to point B, does not have a purse, phone, wallet, or anything on her to validate her identify, and so she is arrested for being brown in Chandler.
The above paragraph is a small portion of the larger story. Operation Restoration is actually a small detail to tell the larger narrative of an estranged relationship between a mother and daughter. The Mother has left the comfort of San Francisco to live and work in the Arizona desert. Palacio does little to develop the mother's initial reasoning for going to Arizona. Why not Southern California? Why not New Mexico? Texas? Isola, the daughter, learns of her mother's secret life with Rescate Angeles after her death.
I love that Palacios creates a range of classes into which Mexicanos find themselves. So very often, the narrative written about Mexicans is limited to "drug dealers, rapists, murders" (Trump) or illegals, or "vatos" (I'm quoting a former colleague here), or farm workers. Palacios shows us Mexicanos who reflect the whole range of humanity: Lisa Martinez is the lawyer. Isola is the emerging Literature professor. Adele is the business owner. Pifi is the house cleaner. Zurdo is the pollero. Marina is the activist. Marcel Palan is the journalist. Cruz is the undocumented immigrant doing any and all odd jobs to make a living. Nacho is the sou chef who cuts lettuce all day long. Because Palacios offers a gamut and range of characters, I value and enjoy reading this work. Furthermore, I appreciate that Palacios shows the difference between recent immigrants, immigrants of long standing in the US, first generation Mexicanos, and second generation Mexicanos.
We are not monolithic. Our struggles are not the same. We often times don't even understand each other if some of us come from the second and third generation. When interactions between recent immigrants and 2nd generation Mexicanos talk, Palacios captures the awkward communication that comes from not really having the same common language.
In spite of loving the above elements of this short novel, I struggle to go above three stars because the work is so full of plot holes. Isola lands in Phoenix, meets Cruz, a strange man in her mother's home, and then immediately engages in a sexual relationship with a squatter. What? Cuz he helps her out with the gardening and bar-BQs some wonderful carne asada? Really? And then within a week of the sexy bits, she says "I love you" to Cruz. The pacing of the novel is fast, but for the sake of telling the big nuggets of the story, the particulars are left undeveloped.
Why would everyone want to conceal from Isola that Cruz is a lothario? Why not immediately state that Cruz hooked up with Marina, Isola's mom, and that Isola might not want to sleep with her mother's former lover. Especially if the lawyer, the friend, and Gretchen all knew these details about Cruz? The particulars struggle to hold together.
At one point, Cruz calls Isola from jail so she can bail him out, (yeah - cuz under Arpio's leadership that's what undocumented Mexicanos do-- just call someone to bail them out), and even though Isola never has a car, somehow between receiving the call from Cruz and getting to the police station, she magically purchases a car. No, the acquisition of a car is not a major plot device, and getting an automobile doesn't move the plot forward. But if Palacios can sort out getting a car for the other characters, then surely the protagonist could have this plot hole sorted out. And was bail even paid? Who paid it? Why is Cruz standing OUTSIDE of the police station rather than behind bars when Isola arrives at the station? The details don't hold. In this instance, the details of what happens to undocumented immigrants behind bars would make the reader more sympathetic to the people rounded up under Operation Restoration. Palacios abandons those details.

So why do I still love this work? I don't know. I just do. I'm going to leave this book rating with four stars rather than three.

[Caprice · Rating 1 out of 5]

An Ocotillo is not a cactus.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know what it is about this book that annoyed me. Maybe that in some parts it reminds me of a novela. The author also repeats herself a lot. I do like that it deals with the subject of immigrations sweeps. I think it's mostly the heroine of this novel that annoys me because of how wimpy she is.

[Karin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read it for book club. Disappointed it spent so much time on the main character's uninteresting personal life and little time on the crossing or raids, which could have been really good. Also found some of the actions of the characters unrealistic. I do not recommend.