Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories

by Lorraine López

Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories, is a stunning debut collection of short stories that explore identity issues in the Latino community. The cast of characters in her stories include a young boy-impelled by his guilt over failing to prevent his parents' divorce-who seeks to save an abandoned baby, an elderly man attempting to invoke his dead wife by regularly donning her clothing and make-up, a former National Guardsman whose failed attempts to connect with his family do not prevent him from trying, and a young woman determined to give birth to her murdered lover's child. In the title story, an aging Avon representative, who is often mistaken for a transvestite, has become so estranged from the Spanish language she spoke as a child that she no longer remembers that she spoke it or what happened in her childhood. Many of the characters in these stories must negotiate differences in race, culture, language, class, and gender in attempts to discover who they are and where they are going.  López's vivid characters struggle both to find a place of belonging and companions who can accept them, as well as self-forgiveness for the compromises they made in living necessarily bifurcated lives as they attempt to breech the gap between cultures.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

238 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2002

Reviews

[Vtlozano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flannery O'Connor meets New Mexico,with the same kind of mordant eye for familia eccentricity. Laugh till you cry kind of a book. But with some unexpected hearbreak. Outrageously described, tempered with tenderness. The last few stories range beyond family comedy and into the more complicated terrain of coupledom.

[Rudy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loprraine Lopez writes wonderfully complex stories with down-to-earth characters. I learned a lot from her endings that are atypical and caused this reader to reflect upon the plot and his own life.

[F Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what I had to say about Lopez's Homicide Survivors Picnic: I can recommend highly Lorraine Lopez’s short story collection. There is a "freshness" (for want of a better term) to her spare, precise prose, a gritty warmth in her characters, and a contemporary appeal to the stories that make them engaging, at least for me. Those who like an emotional connection will really appreciate them, I suspect.

I find the prose in Soy la Avon Lady not only spare and precise, but also somehow serene. I would not apply the adjective "gritty" to most of the characters Avon Lady, but resilient seems apt.

In any case, I highly recommend both collections.

[Sarah Key · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this book years ago at a writers' convention. All of my friends laughed at the first story in the collection when the girl, who has a deformity, mocks sexuality by playfully swinging a towel over her head. It always bothered me how they laughed at a character who was only trying to feel pretty for just a moment.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fave story is "Sophia."