What Night Brings

What Night Brings by Carla Trujillo © 2003 Curbstone Press, ISBN 1-8806-8494-2 What Night Brings focuses on a 1960s pre-adolescent girl, Marci, whose Chicano family is working-class in California. Marci is feisty and self-aware enough to get through all that is thrown at her: an abusive father, dysfunctional household, and her own sexual wonderment. She continually feels out of step with her family, her church and community. As her realization grows that she's attracted to other girls, she constantly prays for God to make her a boy; even that is done with touches of wit and insight.
This is an excellent novel. Trujillo has chosen to tell it in first person and maintains the voice and tone throughout, as Marci and her sister struggle for emotional survival. The novel is punctuated with humor and a lot of Spanglish, which I didn’t find troublesome. Those elements made the story all the more realistic of California Latino communities.
Winner of the 2003 Mármol Prize for a first work of fiction in English by a Latina/o.
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