Tortured Barrio Songs

By Reyes Cardenas

Tortured Barrio Songs is really not one book, but a Trinity of three books, each tied to and adding to the understanding of the others. C rdenas brings to bear, once again, his signature no-holds-barred humor, crossed with a stinging criticism of the injustices of being poor in America, something reflected sharply in all three of the works. Andr s Sobaco, El Numbnuts, a flowing and painfully beautiful novel-in-verse set in the West Side barrios of San Antonio; El Ocho Patas, a darker, more philosophical and metaphorical tale of the man with eight legs; and Canciones Desesperadas, a collection of poems unveiling the formative root experiences of the poet and other real people in his Vonnegut-style karass of a barrio, together make a book both irreverent and yet somehow filled with respeto for life and the universe. The tender sacrileges with which he addresses God, or Christ, or La Llorona, remind us of a man whose tragedies have been so crushing that the hope within him has become even more persistent, and even more resilient.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1733809236
• ISBN13: 9781733809238
• Release Date: May 2019
• Publisher: Flowersong Books
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"