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by Rita Moreno,Oscar Hijuelos

Rita Moreno Oscar Hijuelos Literary English

eBook The Empress of the Splendid Season download

ISBN: 0694520349
Author: Rita Moreno,Oscar Hijuelos
Publisher: HarperAudio (January 27, 1999)
Language: English
ePub: 1175 kb
Fb2: 1558 kb
Rating: 4.6
Other formats: docx lrf lrf azw
Category: Literature
Subcategory: Literary

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Oscar Hijuelos vividly brings to life the joys, desires, and disappointment of American life witnessed through the experience of a formerly prosperous Cuban émigré . has been added to your Cart.

Oscar Hijuelos vividly brings to life the joys, desires, and disappointment of American life witnessed through the experience of a formerly prosperous Cuban émigré named Lydia Espana-now a cleaning woman in New York. In magnetic prose has been added to your Cart.

Oscar Hijuelos, Rita Moreno (Reading). Hijuelos' genius for evoking the heart and soul of his characters has never been more vivid, moving, and impassioned than in Empress of the Splendid Season. Through four novels in the last decade, Oscar Hijuelos has produced a body of work that is without rival in contemporary literature, both in the lush, incantatory rhythms of his extraordinary prose and in his profound and heartfelt vision. A master of eloquent detail, Hijuelos allows Lydia to open up, alive and vibrant on the page. No one writes better of love or the pulse of the city.

In a luminous story, Oscar Hijuelos creates the life of Lydia Espana and her family in New York City in the mid-1960's. Rita Moreno perfectly portrays the beautiful Cuban who left her pre-Castro home after conflicts with her proud father, only to replay similar family struggles with her children in their new land of opportunity. Moreno infuses the pace-really, the BEAT-of Lydia's life with a sensual rhythm that highlights all the eloquent detail of the writing. A joy to listen to, Moreno inhabits each character with deft understanding.

Empress of the Splendid Season (1999) Oscar Hijuelos's page at HarperCollins. Biography of Oscar Hijuelos from Thomson Gale.

Empress of the Splendid Season (1999). A Simple Habana Melody (from when the world was good) (2002). Oscar Hijuelos Papers at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University. Oscar Hijuelos's page at HarperCollins. 1990 Real Audio interview with Oscar Hijuelos at Wired for Books. Author Oscar Hijuelos Tackles His Toughest Subject: Himself", Ray Suarez interview with Oscar Hijuelos, PBS NewsHour, Friday, June 24, 2011.

This Study Guide consists of approximately 16 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Empress of the Splendid Season. Print Word PDF. This section contains 199 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page). Empress of the Splendid Season is Hijuelos's fifth published work. Two of his other works also focus on Cuban immigrants in postwar New York, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love and Our House in the Last World

Pulitzer-winner Hijuelos (Mr. Ives- Christmas, 1995, et. offers up a slow-moving but sometimes poignant slice-of-lifer about a Cuban-American family from the 1940s onward

Pulitzer-winner Hijuelos (Mr. offers up a slow-moving but sometimes poignant slice-of-lifer about a Cuban-American family from the 1940s onward. The beautiful Lydia Espa§a was born in pre-Castro Cuba, a privileged child with a businessman father who was a model of small-town elegance-and also of a fierce rectitude that made him turn violently against his daughter when she came into her own sexuality and slept one night with a musician

Not his best but very enjoyable. Published by Thriftbooks.

Oscar Hijuelos vividly brings to life the joys, desires, and disappointment of American life witnessed through the experience of a formerly prosperous Cuban ?migr? named Lydia Espana-now a cleaning woman in New York. In magnetic prose, he juxtaposes Lydia's tale with the stories of her clients, contrasting her experiences with the secret lives of those for whom she works. Not his best but very enjoyable. com User, 20 years ago. "Empress of the Splendid Season" is the story of Lydia Espana, who was a society girl in Cuba before the revolution and who doesn't have such a wonderful life when she emigrates to New York.

Автор: Hijuelos, Oscar Название: Empress of the Splendid Season Издательство: HarperCollins USA .

2003 Язык: ENG Размер: 2. 7 x 1. 7 x . 6 cm Рейтинг: Поставляется из: США Описание: Oscar Hijuelos vividly brings to life the joys, desires, and disappointment of American life witnessed through the experience of a formerly prosperous Cuban migr named Lydia Espana-now a cleaning woman in New York.

Empress of the Splendid Season (1999) continues the examination of immigrant life, this time revealing the discrepancy between the characters’ rich self-images and their banal lives.

Through four novels in the last decade, Oscar Hijuelos has produced a body of work that is without rival in contemporary literature, both in the lush, incantatory rhythms of his extraordinary prose and in his profound and heartfelt vision.

In this transcendent new story, Hijuelos tells the story of Lydia Espana, a beautiful and formerly prosperous emigre of pre-Castro Cuba, who becomes a cleaning lady in New York. Once the spoiled, pampered daughter of a small-town mayor and adored by men'a “queen of the Conga line” - she is forced because of a youthful sexual indiscretion to leave home and, in 1947 finds herself suddenly living the life of the working poor. In time she falls in love with Raul, a humble waiter. One night in a Manhattan ballroom, in the middle of a bolero, Raul proposes marriage, for Lydia is his “empress of the most beautiful and splendid season, which is love.”

A life of promise is disrupted when Raul falls ill and Lydia, finding employment as a domestic, becomes the head of the family. Striving to educate her two children, Rico and Alicia, in the style of the upper class, she must endure a lesson in humility, cleaning the homes of New Yorkers much better off than herself.

Among her employers is Mr. Osprey, a reserved and kindly lawyer, who eventually takes an interest in her family's well-being and, during the turmoil of the 1960s, intervenes at a critical juncture in the life of her teenage son, Rico. Throughout, Lydia remains a sensuous and powerful woman who meets the trials of a lonely life with humor and a gleam of triumph in her eye'a sense that she is someone special'an empress of fortitude, of dignity.

Hijuelos' genius for evoking the heart and soul of his characters has never been more vivid, moving, and impassioned than in Empress of the Splendid Season. A master of eloquent detail, Hijuelos allows Lydia to open up, alive and vibrant on the page. No one writes better of love or the pulse of the city. And no one has better captured the complexity of what happens to generations of people who come to America: how assimilation is at once the achievement of dreams and a loss of what has rooted us to the past.

Comments: (7)

Hǻrley Quinn

I am a huge fan of Oscar Hijuelos. I love that he somehow accomplishes a Cuban rhythm that lies underneath his writing. It is as if a Caribbean breeze softly wafts a bolero constantly as I read. His novel Empress of the Spendid Season is no different: that captivating melody pervades it. And I was once again transported to the seductive world of Oscar Hijuelos. That being said, this is my least favorite of the five books of his that I’ve read. This one has its charms and is certainly a worthwhile read, but I just didn’t fall in love with it as I did with the others. I think it is because it has very little plot, and while the episodes in the life of Cuban immigrant Lydia Espana are rich and satisfying, there is no linear development of her life and those around her. That, however, is also the charm of the book, for Hijuelos seems to be interested in showing the simple life of a Cuban immigrant and how it is not much different from those of other cultures here in America. Once again, the characters reside in that great melting pot New York City. As with so many immigrants, Lydia is thrust into a world different from the life she led in Cuba, and she must sink or swim. Early in the story, in order to support her family, she becomes a cleaning lady, a job that does not jibe with the privileged life she led in her home country. This, too, is so indicative of many immigrants’ lives. We’ve heard of doctors in Vietnam who became day laborers when they came to the states, so Lydia’s plight is quite believable. And yet, she becomes a great housekeeper, one who is proud of her work and her clients. She never lets her diminished circumstances get her down. Her husband Raul, a dreamer, is the one who dubs her the Empress of the Splendid Season, and that title is both ironic and not. Never does Lydia become anything approaching the American equivalent of an empress, but she never loses sight that she has worth and deserves respect. She also is always striving for a better life and striving to make a better life for her two children. So this is a story of perseverance, of gain, of the best choices made. Hijuelos is a master craftsman, and though I deem this one of his lesser works, it is far better than the best of many authors.

MilsoN

A pampered young Cuban girl finds herself struggling to survive in a NYC tenement. Hijuelos captures the agony, the pleasures, the battles and the successes as she marries, has children, cleans other people's houses and watches her son and daughter Americanize. This is an immigrant's experience that fully captures the dignity of people who never succeed but never concede defeat. They do it for the children. Not as good as author's The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.

Thetath

Good insights into Latino culture of the 60s. Written with a sense of humor, but more serious events of the times explained from her point of view. As a teacher of ELL, this helps me connect with parents and grandparents of my students. My kids are from Mexico, not Cuba, but family issues are the same.

cyrexoff

Not that interesting for me.

I_LOVE_228

Without sensationalism, blood and guts,or the preposterous coincidences so popular these days, we simply follow the life of Lydia, a young Cuban woman who moves to New York and spends her life as a cleaning woman. If you enjoy finely wrought slice-of-life stories of people and places you may not know,, you will like it. If you require a lot of excitement, you will not .For me the fascinating element was the weaving of dreams and reality as they play out in a lifetime. As a coach I have spent many hours exploring the "meaning of life" with disappointed clients. These characters create a universal view of that predicament that so many of us share. I am grateful for the experience and insight gained by reading this book. It will stay with me for a long time.

NI_Rak

"Empress of the Splendid Season" is the story of Lydia Espana, who was a society girl in Cuba before the revolution and who doesn't have such a wonderful life when she emigrates to New York. She is a very complex character, filled with longings and human frailities, but a positive character who is even heroic at times in a modest way. She meets and falls in love with a waiter and they have two children. When Lydia's husband, Raul, becomes ill with his heart, she has to assume the responsibility of supporting the family by her work as a "cleaning lady." She's forced to give up her dreams of romance and of a better life.
This is a wonderful book, well worth the time and effort it takes to read it. Oscar Hijuelos is one of the best writers around and fans of his work will not be disappointed by this one. However, I had the impression that this book doesn't break any new ground and doesn't quite rise to the level of his great earlier novels, "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love" and "Mr. Ives' Christmas."

Kearanny

I found myself breezing through "Empress" but finished without feeling a lot for Lydia or her family. I didn't feel Lydia's pain. I felt sorry for her position and her constant yearning for her previous life, but at some point, I found myself wanting her to 'get over it'! When I finished, I did feel reminded to never let my socio-economic status run my life, ambitions, and goals the way Lydia did. It reminded me that there is so much more to live for. For that reason, "Empress" was a worthwhile read.

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