On The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

If I could always read, I should never feel the want of company.
Lord Byron

I read, therefore I'm interested in writers.
Philip Kaufman


After completing the doctorate, I was at a loss regarding where to devote my scholarly energies. For a brief period I considered continuing along the path of Cervantine studies—the result of several years of work on Don Quijote de la Mancha, the subject of my dissertation. However, after my contacts with Spanish Golden Age scholars, I found them, to be honest, all living on the highly rarified clouds of literary theory.

I then looked back toward Latin America, but that literature, although beautiful, seemed too distant from where my interests lay at the moment, which was sorting out my own identity as a Nicaraguan-American. Then, one day, as I entered a used bookstore in Boone, North Carolina, (I was teaching at Appalachian State University at the time), I ran across a copy of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. I knew that the novel had won a Pulitzer Prize, and I also knew that the author, Oscar Hijuelos, was a Cuban-American born and raised in New York. Those reasons were good enough for me to give The Mambo Kings a try.

Hijuelos’s work had a similar impact on me as did Cien años de soledad. I perfectly understood Hijuelos’s characters, their situation, and their frustrated dreams of succeeding in the United States. I had personally witnessed how several relatives, friends, and acquaintances, just as talented as the Mambo Kings, had come close to grabbing hold of the American Dream only to fall painfully short in the end.

The Mambo Kings hooked me forever on U.S. Latino and Latina literature. From that point on, my all-consuming passion became the literature produced by those who, like me, are of Latin American heritage yet express themselves, creatively, in English.