It is 1969, America is at war, Hollywood is a dirt-poor Chicano barrio in small-town America, and Sammy and Juliana face a world of racism, war in Vietnam, and barrio violence.Sammy and Juliana in Hollywoodis a Young Adult Library Services Association Top 10 Best Book for Young Adults and a finalist for theLos Angeles TimesBook Award for Young Adults.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz—novelist, poet, and writer of children's books—was named one of the Fifty Most Inspiring Authors in the World byPoets & Writersmagazine. He was also a finalist for PEN/USA's literary award for children's and young adult literature. Sáenz lives in El Paso, Texas.
Sammy & Juliana in Hollywoodis ourAmerican Graffiti.
No, that's not right. It's our Mexican Graffiti.—Denise Chavez
BENJAMIN ALIRE SÁENZ was born in his grandmother's house in Picacho, New Mexico--on the outskirts of Las Cruces, New Mexico where Juliana in Hollywood is set. He was the fourth of seven children and was brought up in a traditional Mexican-American Catholic family. His family spoke mostly Spanish at home, and it was only through his education in the public schools that he learned to speak and write in English. He entered the seminary in 1972, a decision that was as much political as it was religious: he was heavily influenced by such Catholic thinkers as Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, César Chavez and the Berrigan brothers. After concluding his theological studies at the University of Louvain, he was ordained a Catholic priest. Three and a half years later, he left the priesthood. At the age of 30, he entered the Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas at El Paso. He later received a fellowship at the University of Iowa, and in 1988, he received a Wallace E. Stegner Fellowship in poetry from Stanford University. In 1993 he returned to the border to teach in the Bilingual MFA program at the Univl3F
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