Painted Cities

(Hardback)

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Description

To those outside it, Pilsen is a vast barrio on the south side of Chicago. To Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski, it is a world of violence and decay and beauty, of nuance and pure chance. It is a place where the smell of cooking frijoles is washed away by that of dead fish in the river, where vendettas are a daily routine, and where a fourteen-year-old i

Reviews

"What attracts me to Alexai's writing is its humanity and its authenticity. I know the neighborhood and he gets it right, but I don't mean authentic merely in terms of streets, slang, and folkways; I mean authentic in terms of the literary tradition that he's writing in--one senses the great Chicago writers of neighborhood behind this--Algren and James Farrell... [Here is] a young writer with a genuine voice." --Stuart Dybek "The 70s and 80s of Galaviz-Budziszewski's childhood spring up like a diorama, and eventually Painted Cities begins to feel ... like a journey through a living, breathing (and dying) universe." --Chicago Reader "In his nuanced and moving short story collection Painted Cities Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski brings a south Chicago neighborhood to life." --Largehearted Boy "Galaviz-Budziszewski creates and re-creates place, defines and re-defines its boundaries. ... Galaviz-Budziszewski's strong ear for language and careful craft make an assured debut from an author worth watching." --Publishers Weekly "Like Stuart Dybek and Peter Orner, whose endorsements unsurprisingly adorn the back of this collection of short stories, Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski plants his fiction deep in Chicago soil." --The New York Times "It's Galaviz-Budziszewski's distaste for nostalgia, in fact, that makes 'Painted Cities,' his debut collection of short stories about his youth in Pilsen, so remarkable." --Chicago Tribune "Ruminative, clever and soulful" --The New York Times Book Review

Author Bio

Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski grew up in the Pilsen neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. He has taught in the Chicago public school system and is currently a high school counselor for students with disabilities. In his spare time he builds and repairs motorcycles.