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Dagoberto Gilb
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The Magic of Blood Paperback – June 4, 1994

by Dagoberto Gilb (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 21 ratings
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Dagoberto Gilb is a powerful and important new talent in American fiction. Fresh, funny, relentless, beautifully crafted, his writing possesses that rare Chekhovian ability to perfectly capture the nuances of ordinary life–and make it resonate with unexpected meaning. The Magic of Blood is his unforgettable first book.

Previous page
  1. Print length
    304 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Grove Press
  4. Publication date
    June 4, 1994
  5. Dimensions
    5.7 x 0.82 x 9.44 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0802133991
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0802133991
  8. Lexile measure
    1030L
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Acclaimed Chicano writer Gilb's collection of short stories set in the American Southwest won the PEN Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award. $35,000 ad/promo. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grove Press; First Edition (June 4, 1994)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0802133991
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0802133991
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1030L
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 16 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.7 x 0.82 x 9.44 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 21 ratings

About the author

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Dagoberto Gilb

Dagoberto Gilb

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Dagoberto Gilb was born and raised in Los Angeles and spent as many years in El Paso. He now lives in Austin. Gilb's books have won the PEN/Hemingway Award and have been finalists for the PEN Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle Award. He edited Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas Mexican Literature, the canonical volume of Texas Mexican literature, which won the Southwest Book Award for nonfiction. Anthologized widely, recipient of awards including a Guggenheim and Whiting, his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many magazines, such as Harper's, The New Yorker, and The Threepenny Review. Gilb spent most of his adult years as a construction worker and a journeyman, high-rise carpenter with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. Writer-in-residence at the University of Houston-Victoria, he is also the executive director of CentroVictoria, a center for Mexican American Literature and Culture.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
21 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Teresa Nevarez
5.0 out of 5 stars Dagoberto Gilb book review
Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2023
Verified Purchase
Gilb creates vivid settings and realistic characters. He writes in a style I would categorize as realism, so if you like to read about characters that make you go “huh, that reminds me of someone,” then this is a great book for that. The stories within the book are short stories, so they’re great to committing to for a few hours without allocating too much time to.
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Frank Matheis
5.0 out of 5 stars Dagoberto!
Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2007
Verified Purchase
Daboberto Gilb does not dish out weak soup -- he makes you drink blood.
He sets you up like a wild prairie grass fire and as you lay on the scortched ground fried, blackened and stinking of smoke you'll be screaming to be lit up just once more.
3 people found this helpful
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George r. Johnson
3.0 out of 5 stars The stories reveal the life of Mexican Americans that often ...
Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2015
Verified Purchase
The stories reveal the life of Mexican Americans that often do not get fictional attention and for that alone he is worth the read. He is a writer of craft and short story of the title is magical but after awhile I found the same tone view point in need of more magic.
One person found this helpful
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Lynda Scheer
5.0 out of 5 stars Working men . . .
Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2006
Gilb is one of a kind. I don't remember reading stories like this before. They capture the lives and inner worlds of men who make a living as construction workers, day laborers, auto mechanics, and factory workers both on the job and during stretches of unemployment. Most are struggling to provide food and shelter for a young family; some are still single. For the most part they are Mexican-Americans living in El Paso and Los Angeles. Modest men, they take pride in themselves and their work, they drink beer, and they have women on their minds.

As a journeyman carpenter, Gilb is familiar with the work of putting up buildings, the dymanics between men on a worksite, and the way they think about themselves, their lives, and what they do for a living. Most stories are told in the first person in a stream of conscious style like someone leaning against a bar talking, with a beer in hand.

A teenager working in a laundry becomes involved with a young woman on the job while overdosing on a song by Vic Damone in "Vic Damone's Music." A tile layer becomes obsessed with another man's runaway wife in "Getting a Job in Dell City." Two city workers have too many beers and drive a new truck off the road in "The Truck." A man gives a ride to his estranged father in the middle of the night in "Something Foolish." A tyrannical construction foreman is intimidated by a laid-off worker in "Churchgoers." A filling station mechanic labors grimly into the night to fix a car in "Al, in Phoenix." Two musicians spend the night with a couple girls they pick up on the road to Austin in "I Danced With the Prettiest Girl." And my favorite story, "Nancy Flores," is about a school boy's first romance brought to an end by another boy's crude joke, while years later his job brings him together with another of her old flames.

There are 26 stories in this collection, and every one of them is a revealing glimpse into the life of an individual, with his pride and shame, desires and disappointments, fears and small triumphs. It belongs on any shelf of literature of the American Southwest. Thanks to the Grove Press for keeping it in print.
10 people found this helpful
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WordyRene
4.0 out of 5 stars Gilb writes about what's real
Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2012
Verified Purchase
Mr. Gilb writes about those stories whose characters are three dimensional. The stories are atypical in that they don't always end up as you would have liked, but nevertheless capture the essence of the environment. Sometimes we picture a story with characters that has a happy ending, but life is not always kind and Dagoberto does a masterful job in drawing you into the story. I wouldn't say I enjoyed all his stories, but nevertheless enjoyed the theme of the working man in ways I would have never experienced myself.

His Latino focused stories involve characters that transcend the Latino culture that when you strip the location, the language, or the culture, you find a person (regardless of culture) who finds himself struggling through a working life on a day to day basis.
One person found this helpful
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Frank
5.0 out of 5 stars Yes, a Classic
Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2010
I first read the Magic of Blood around ten years ago, and I liked it a lot then. As I read it again these past weeks I realized I hadn't read it very well before, because it was lots better than I remembered. What happened? Older now, I have read more and better, and a lot that I read isn't even close to how good Gilb's collection of stories is. The stories are about Chicanos, mostly what sociologists label the working class. I would say that although I don't disagree with that label, I would bet it was not what the author thought. They are about the average men with average jobs, mostly in the construction business. Which in my neighborhood was just a good job, like being a cop or border patrol agent (really) a man could get if he didn't go to college.

The stories I discovered, or re-discovered, were the ones toward the end. I really loved "Getting a Job in Dell City", "Franklin D Roosevelt", and "The Rat". Honestly though, there wasn't a story I didn't think was exceptional and important. Magic of Blood is as many describe it, a classic.
3 people found this helpful
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Jonell
3.0 out of 5 stars Just okay!
Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2012
Verified Purchase
The book was worn as expected but bit more than I wanted. A weird read also. I wouldn't recommend it.
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