Trini

The sole novel of beloved Chicana author Estela Portillo Trambley is an important rediscovery. This classic Mexican American coming-of-age story was written in the 1980s during the rich burgeoning of Latino literature that also brought us such writers as Sandra Cisneros and Denise Chavez.

Trini is the captivating story one girl’s journey across borders and into womanhood. Born in the rural Tarahumaran region of Mexico, Trini loses her mother at an early age and shares her family’s struggle to squeeze a living out of her beautiful but inhospitable land.

Driven by an impossible love and by her desire for a better life, Trini travels through the Mexican borderlands, from indigenous villages to growing cities, where she encounters both exciting challenges and the harsh realities of violence and betrayal. As a young woman, she finally crosses the border into the United States to pursue her dreams of independence, land ownership and American citizenship for her children.

Trini is a novel distinguished by the richness and beauty of its language and by its rare depiction of life in the borderlands of Mexico and New Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s. Most remarkable of all is its portrait of a sensitive and courageous young Chicana woman, whose quiet heroism resonates from every page.

Trini is a vital novel of the Mexican American experience, appropriate for young adults as well as adult readers. Here restored to print with a new foreword Helena Maria Viramontes, it is bound to take its rightful place among the contemporary classics of multicultural American literature.

Estela Portillo Trambley, the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, founded the first Hispanic Theatre in El Paso, was a beloved teacher and radio show host and received a New York Shakespeare Festival award in a competition among Hispanic playwrights. Her Sor Juana and Other Plays earned her widespread acclaim.