Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski’s first book, a collection of stories, concerns itself with life in Pilsen, where he grew up. The stories are narrated by neighborhood guys—ranging from elementary school kids to young husbands and fathers—and they touch on violence, graffiti, gang boundaries, drugs, weddings, tenement fires, and the garlic-and-onion smell of the neighborhood on Sundays, when everybody’s mom makes frijoles.
But many of the stories show how the people of Pilsen redefine their environment—and explore it in new ways. Two boys in “Freedom” build a one-room hut from scrap wood and metal on the roof of a building and talk about living there. In “Snake Dance” climbers traverse the neighborhood by rooftop and spelunkers by rail tunnel and pedway. In “Painted Cities” a graffiti artist covers the neighborhood in murals, painting an entire galaxy on the side of the corner store. And in “God’s Country” a 14-year-old boy named Chuey realizes he has the power to raise the neighborhood’s dead.
By Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski (McSweeney’s). The author joins Adam Levin (The Instructions, Hot Pink) for a talk on Wed 3/12, 7 PM, Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln,bookcellarinc.com.
