Sirena Selena: A Novel

by Mayra Santos-Febres, Stephen A. Lytle (Translator)

Overview

From the author of Urban Oracles comes Mayra Santos-Febres's Sirena Selena: somewhere between "The Blue Angel" and "Kiss of the Spider Woman" rises the legend of Sirena Selena, the diva-siren of the Caribbean whose boleros seduce and torment whoever dares listen.

Discovered by Martha Divine in the backstreets of San Juan, picking over garbage, drugged out of his mind and singing boleros that transfix the listener, a fifteen year old hustler is transformed into Sirena Selena, a diva whose uncanny beauty and irrisistable voice will be their ticket to fame and fortune. Auditioning for one of the luxury hotels in the Dominican Republic, Selena casts her spell over Hugo Graubel, one of the hotel's rich investors. Graubel is a powerful man in the Republic, married with children. Silena, determined to escape the poverty and abuse s/he suffered as a child, engages Graubel in a long seduction in this mordant, intensely lyrical tragi-comedy - part masque, part cabaret - about identity (class, race, gender) and "the hunger and desire to be other things."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312263928
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	08/01/2001
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	283,073
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.51(d)

About the Author

Mayra Santos-Febres is Associate Professor of Literature at the University of Puerto Rico. She has published two books of poetry, and her short stories have won many prizes, including the 1994 Letras de Oro Prize from the University of Miami and the 1997 Juan Rulfo Prize, awarded by Radio Sarandi in Paris. In 1997 her two collections of short fiction were translated into English under the title Urban Oracles.

Stephen Lyttle has translated Laura Restrepo's Leopard in the Sun, Javier Gonzales Rubio's Loving You Was My Undoing, and Laura Esquivel's Intimate Succulencies, among others. He lives in Los Angeles.

What People are Saying About This

Laura Esquivel

The Grammys will have to invent a new category--Best Album of the Year in Fiction.
—(Laura Esquivel, author of Like Water for Chocolate and The Law of Love)

Ernesto Mestre

The erotically charged language that fuels the narrative voice is a feat, a wonder, and Santos-Febres uses it to read, in the curves and hollows of the human body, the torment, joy and plain old mess it is to be alive.
—(Ernesto Mestre, author of The Lazarus Rumba)

Paul Russell

A secret, honeyed pleasure you will dream your way through. It's brisk, funny, mordantly theatrical, sexy as hell, and utterly memorable. Its long, steamy seduction will leave you sweating with desire.
—(Paul Russell, author of The Coming Storm)

Editorial Reviews

Santos-Febres examines questions of sexuality and power . . . blend[ing] lyrical hyperbole with social observation . . . in her lush and tragicomic first novel.” —The New York Times Book Review

“This impishly sensual novel is an often hilarious anatomy of gender confusion and reminiscent of the classic silent film The Blue Angel . . . The boy-girl Selena is as sweetly bedazzled as any hero-heroine out of a Shakespearean comedy.” —Kirkus Review

“What Puig did to transform the way we think of American film, Santos-Febres has managed for Latin music. Sirena is fantastic! Like Cesaria Evora she'll come to haunt you, like Marc Anthony she'll steal your heart. The Grammys will have to invent a new category — Best Album of the Year in Fiction.” —Laura Esquivel, author of Like Water for Chocolate and The Law of Love

From the Publisher

What Puig did to transform the way we think of American film, Santos-Febres has managed for Latin music. Sirena is fantastic! Like Cesaria Evora she'll come to haunt you, like Marc Anthony she'll steal your heart. The Grammys will have to invent a new category — Best Album of the Year in Fiction.

author of Like Water for Chocolate and The Law of Laura Esquivel

The erotically charged language that fuels the narrative voice is a feat, a wonder, and Santos-Febres uses it to read, in the curves and hollows of the human body, the torment, joy and plain old mess it is to be alive." (Ernesto Mestre, author of The Lazarus Rumba)

Boston Globe

...a lush and tragicomic first novel.

New York Times Book Review

In this titillating debut novel, a follow-up to her well-received short fiction collection, Urban Oracles, Santos-Febres evokes the sometimes dreamy, always seamy world of Caribbean drag queens, hustlers, transsexuals and two remarkable divas. Strung out and singing his dead abuela's boleros, a 15-year-old street urchin/hustler named Leocadio rummages through the garbage in a shabby San Juan alley looking for food. His crystalline singing voice is "as old and as fresh as the perennial pain of love" and his beautiful face and honey-colored mane enchant Martha Divine, a respected, worldly transsexual and owner of the Blue Danube, a seedy but chic drag club. A consummate businesswoman, Martha immediately sees Leocadio's star potential, plucks the androgynous teen off the streets, helps him kick the cocaine habit that's ravaging his nasal passages ("that's not where a young lady is supposed to have her first period"), and transforms Leocadio into Sirena Selena, a spellbinding bolero-singing diva. After successful shows in Puerto Rico, Martha decides it's time for Sirena to take on the Dominican Republic. While auditioning at a posh Santo Domingo hotel, Sirena is bidden to entertain Hugo Graubel III, a rich businessman who recognizes her as "the woman of his dreams." Sirena ditches Martha to stay with Hugo (who nonchalantly sends his wife packing) and performs, with smashing success, at the dinner party Hugo gives for the Dominican elite. Meanwhile, enterprising Martha finds another gig providing live entertainment at an upscale, underground gay club. Flashbacks throughout this lushly lyrical novel reveal decades in the lives of Martha and Sirena, while an array of vibrant narrators animate the plot twists. Deep purple prose strikes just the right campy, melancholy note as Santos-Febres illuminates the essence of these unforgettable, fiery femmes with moving pathos. (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In her first novel, Santos-Febres, a theorist, poet, and award-winning short story writer from Puerto Rico, explores the world of drag queens and, in particular, the young boy Sirenito, who is rescued from the streets by cabaret owner Martha Divine. Divine transforms the boy into Sirena Selena, the mesmerizing transvestite singer-entertainer, expecting that they will both make their fortunes and escape from the dangers and uncertainties of their not-quite-legal way of life. Unfortunately, neither the omniscient narrator nor the stream-of-consciousness monologs provide interesting insight into Divine, Sirena, or the novel's many other characters. Their thoughts rarely go deeper than the details of forks and table cloths, wardrobe, wigs, makeup, nail polish, and petty rivalries. Conflicts are so cursorily and superficially dealt with that they inspire little concern for their resolution. Perhaps this illustrates self-denial and suffocation of the spirit? It is possible that the translation does not do justice to Santos-Febres's writing--lacking subtlety and complexity, providing few evocative images and no sense of place. Portions of this novel might have contributed to several good short stories, but this work does not succeed as a novel.--Rebecca Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., IA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Library Journal

[A] lush and tragicomic first novel...
—The New York Times Book Review

James Richard Giles

This impishly sensual novel is an often hilarious anatomy of gender confusion, set in the Dominican Republic, and reminiscent of the classic silent film The Blue Angel. Santos-Febres's Lola-Lola is Leocadio, an adolescent male hustler who's "remade" into the eponymous cabaret singer, a gorgeous siren who seduces wealthy businessman Hugo Graubel-aided by "Selena's" "mistress," Martha Divine, herself a drag queen desirous of financing a sex-change operation. The boy-girl Selena is as sweetly bedazzled as any hero-heroine out of a Shakespearean comedy, and this blackly comic tale of a most unconventional enchantment unwinds irresistibly, as the strains of the bolero thrum away humidly in the background. Beautifully conceived and structured, and very entertaining.. . .

Kirkus Reviews