‘La Quinta Soledad’ is a delightful Chicana tale
Aztlán Libre is alive and well in San Antonio.
The publishing venture, founded in 2009 by Anisa Onofre and Juan Tejeda, is doing brisk business, publishing 15 books dealing with Chicanx themes. The moniker Aztlan Libre is a reference to the mythic Aztec homeland.
The 617-page debut novel, “La Quinta Soledad,” by author Silviana Wood, published by Aztlan Libre Press in November 2022, is reminiscent of big tomes like John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” and James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Books that are engaging and exhausting to read.
“La Quinta Soledad” tells a whirlwind narrative of Chicana working-class history wrapped in recipes, cataloged in freewheeling hybrid caló, and balanced with beloved reprimands from her dearest Nana Conchita.
Wood, 83, writes in a linear, cascading monologue with large chunks of dialogue in Spanish (most of which is translated or explained, easily accessible to non-spanishspeakers), dipping and curving with film references and literary influences and enough Southwestern recipes to rival a cookbook.
Chapters free flow with salacious humor and light sarcasm with an endearing voice.
Even the narrator sprightly tells us, “My name is la Quinta Soledad del Valle, and doesn’t it sound poetic or like a wondrous place to live in, like Shangri La or Xanadu?”
The delirious narrator sets up exactly what the novel will become in the end: a nostalgic recollection of bygone eras documenting a passing generation.
Stylistically, the novel is also a linguistic treasure trove of English-spanish neologisms transforming into caló, or Spanish slang, complete with playful double entendres.
She even adds Yiddish phrases like “meshuga” to describe her crazy sister Orky, who is “as obese as Shelly Winters in ‘The Poseidon Adventure’ who could’ve sunk the boat herself without a tidal wave.”
Reading the zigzagging adventures of Quinta Soledad is like eavesdropping into family drama and the lives of four illegitimate daughters.
Quinta’s tale is a delightful allegory of a Chicana adventure story long denied and restricted in early patriarchal Chicano literature. But Wood’s novel “La Quinta Soledad” is also libre (free) to reclaim and celebrate Chicanx literature, as Walt Whitman celebrated his own sexuality.
And Quinta is neither ashamed nor shy about her exploits, even if her Nana Conchita shouts “Quinta sinverguenza” (shameless) with a flying chancla (slipper) grazing her head.
In short, Quinta is a delightful duende, an impish trickster who gives readers a history of her plight, capturing every nuance, historical etching and minutiae of suffering working-class Chicanos endured the last 50 years; even if tapered by the voice of her Nana, the ubiquitous archetypal abuelita trying her magisterial best to tame Quinta’s libido, to say her Padre Nuestro, and to behave like a good Catholic.
No matter what happens, golden memories are never lost because even Quinta says, “I will name this place: ‘La Quinta Soledad del Valle,’ the Fifth Solitude of the Valley; and it’s here that my beloved Nana Conchita will supremely rule.”
Aligned to the character’s name, Quinto Sol is a symbolic allusion to that mythic re-creation of cultural synthesis of music, arts and literature long sought in Aztlán — Aztlán Libre!