Review: YA book of the dead

 Review: Ghost Brother by Sylvia Sánchez Garza. Piñata Books/Arte Publico, 2024.

Michael Sedano

Sylvia Sánchez Garza gives her YA readers a lot to think about in their personal lives as the reader watches Garza’s characters struggling with emotional depths familiar to numerous teenagers—an absent father—and events a kid doesn’t want to consider: the kid’s own death. There’s also young love, not to mention trouble with bullies who include a gun-toting sheriff.

The story begins with a traffic accident and what seems a kid’s out-of-body experience. It’s not. The kid, Carlos, has been killed instantly. Carlos is the dead brother of the title. Cris, the victim’s brother, was driving and has survived.

Garza uses the two brothers’ voices to spin the story of Cris falling in love with a troubled girl, Selena, and a story of children learning their father’s identity. 

None of this happens in orderly 1,2,3 fashion. For a few chapters, readers suspect the worst—that Selena and Cris are long-lost brother and sister. There’s also a hint of incipient police brutality, that big gun-toting sheriff, whose son also died in that car accident.

School is, of course, a major element in a teenager’s life. Cris is a reader but not a teacher’s pet kind of kid. Selena is a new kid in school, bringing those complications to her daily troubles, already complicated by mother-daughter strife and the presence of outsider men in the mother’s life and the daughter struggling with not knowing her father’s identity.

The author’s tactic using the dead brother narrating from the other side with the prescience of that dimension opens numerous opportunities for deeper investigations into spiritual themes. There’s a child who sees the ghost matter-of-factly. The boys’ mother responds without actually hearing her son’s wishes. Eventually, Carlos’ spirit makes itself known to this world, offering some kind of succor to the living. 

Garza chooses not to delve into the mysteries of spirits trapped in limbo, whose role is serving the concerns this world, of helping kids work through family struggles of desperate children, depressed mothers, absent fathers, and finding ways to live happily beyond the last page and a looming future. In the end, that’s enough, and if it’s not, it will have to do.

Poetry & Cookies: Altadena Laureates' Annual Spring Event

Over twenty years ago, the Altadena Library held a "poetry & cookies" (link) event sharing cookies and poets reading their stuff. That event grew into California's most active community poetry program, the Altadena Poet Laureate program that now features a pair of Co-Laureates and a two-year program of readings and publication.

Sarwar and Lennon

This Saturday, April 17, in the library's main space, the Altadena poetry community and co-Laureates Sehba Sarwar and Lester Graves Lennon, invite all to the 4 p.m. event. Rumor has it there are even gluten-free cookies to be had.