Awards
Winner of the 2003 Miguel Mármol Prize
Synopses & Reviews
Marci Cruz wants God to do two things: change her into a boy, and get rid of her father.
What Night Brings is the unforgettable story of Marcis struggle to find and maintain her identity against all odds a perilous home life, an incomprehensible Church, and a largely indifferent world.
Winner of the 2003 Miguel Mármol Prize and runner-up for the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award, as well as Honorable Mention for the Writers at Work competition, What Night Brings is a story with unforgettable characters. Sandra Cisneros calls it heartbreaking yet hilarious. Margaret Randall maintains,What Night Brings puts one more wonderful Latina novelist on the must-read list right up there beside Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, and Cristina Garcia. Smart, feisty, and funny, eleven-year-old Marcis voice draws the reader in from the very first scene as she tells her story with the wisdom of someone twice her age.
Carla Trujillo sets her first novel in the Bay Area of the 1960s. She captures the intricacies of life in a working-class Chicano family dominated by a volatile father and a mother whose main concern is to please her husband. Negotiating fear on a daily basis, Marci and her sister Corin use all the ingenuity they can muster to out-maneuver the hazards that crop up around them. At the same time, Marci prays to become a boy so that she can capture the attention of Raquel, the teenage beauty next door. Supported by a cast of characters that includes the sissified neighbor boy, the town librarian, a compassionate nun, a spell-casting aunt, and a chain-smoking, bingo-playing, knife-wielding grandmother, the novel builds to a suspenseful climax that leaves Marci with the feeling that she cant trust anyone, even or perhaps especially God.
Marci's voice is authentic, determined, unique. Her fighting spirit, her sense of justice, and her power of observation call to mind the heroines of books such as To Kill a Mockingbird and Bastard Out of Carolina. The outcome is uplifting: Marci defies her family and her religion and, in return, finds her identity and her freedom.
Review
"I have been waiting for this one, and it was worth the wait." Dorothy Allison
Review
"A story that is at once heartbreaking and hilarious, beautifully told by a wise and wise-cracking young girl." Sandra Cisneros
Review
"What Night Brings is a robust addition to the growing body of Latino/a writing....Trujillo is definitely a writer to watch." Ellen Loughran, Booklist
Review
"Carla Trujillo writes with such a light touch, that you will be surprised at the thoroughness and solid construction of her characters. Ms. Trujillo, resembling a violin maker, knows how to turn the common wood of people's lives into a violin, and how to play her characters as if they were parts of a tough concerto. Bravo for What Night Brings." Jack Agüeros
Review
"Carla Trujillo's What Night Brings puts one more wonderful Chicana novelist on the must-read list right up there beside Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, and Cristina Garcia. This moving story, told in the completely convincing voice of its young protagonist, explores living with domestic abuse and longing for the maternal protection that always fails to materialize. We touch the mysteries of religion in a child's life, and are completely captivated by a young girl's budding lesbian identity. Character and situation building are exemplary, yet we are hit hard when the book takes its final turn. What Night Brings is a page-turner that lingers long after the last page has been turned." Margaret Randall
Review
"This first novel by a Chicana writer who has been active as a lesbian anthologist and editor is a pleasant surprise: a lively, picaresque tale, told in the world-weary but ever-hopeful voice of 12-year-old Marci Cruz." Publishers Weekly
Review
"This novel could be a tragedy, but it isn't. The protagonist is wise, loving, feisty, funny, and completely authentic in her quest for love and self-knowledge." Library Journal
Synopsis
What Night Brings focuses on a Chicano working-class family living in California during the 1960s. Marci-smart, feisty and funny-tells the story with the wisdom of someone twice her age as she determines to defy her family and God in order to find her identity, sexuality and freedom.
"Carla Trujillo's What Night Brings puts one more wonderful Latina novelist on the must-read list right up there beside Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez and Cristina Garcia. This moving story, told in the completely convincing voice of its young protagonist, explores living with domestic abuse and longing for the maternal protection that always fails to materialize. We touch the mysteries of religion in a child's life, and are completely captivated by a young girl's budding lesbian identity. Character and situation building are exemplary, yet we are hit hard when the book takes its final turn. What Night Brings is a page-turner that lingers long after the last page has been turned."-Margaret Randall
"A story that is at once heartbreaking and hilarious, beautifully told by a wise and wise-cracking young girl."-Sandra Cisneros
Carla Trujillowas born to a working-class family in Las Vegas, Nevada, and grew up in northern California. She has lived in the San Francisco Bay area for the past 15 years. Her extended family and roots are New Mexican (Chicana). She works as an administrator in diversity -education and advocacy at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the editor of the anthology, Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About, which won a Lambda Book Award and the Out/Write Vanguard Award in 1992 and is now in its third printing. Her critical study, Living Chicana Theory, is in its second printing and widely used in college classrooms. What Night Brings is her first novel; excerpts from What Night Brings have already won awards from the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund and Writers at Work.
About the Author
Carla Trujillo is the winner of the Lambda Literary Award, the Out/Write Vanguard Award, and editor of the groundbreaking Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About and Living Chicana Theory.
Reading Group Guide
What Night Brings captures the intricacies of life in a working-class Chicano family dominated by a volatile father and a mother whose main concern is to please her husband. Negotiating fear on a daily basis, Marci Cruz and her sister Corin use all the ingenuity they can muster to outmaneuver the hazards that crop up around them. At the same time, Marci prays to become a boy so that she can capture the attention of Raquel, the teenage beauty next door. Supported by a cast of characters that includes a sissified neighbor-boy, the town librarian, a compassionate nun, a spell-casting aunt, and a chain-smoking, bingo-playing, knife-wielding grandmother, the novel builds to a suspenseful climax that leaves Marci with the feeling that she cant trust anyone, even--or perhaps especially--God. The outcome is uplifting: Marci defies her family and her religion and, in return, finds her identity and her freedom.
TOPICS TO CONSIDER
Identity
1. Marci prays every single day for Eddie to disappear and for herself to be changed into a boy. At the end of the novel, when Marci is finally happy and safe, neither of these things has happened.
a) How would Marci be different if they had?
b) Is Marcis new happiness based on reconciling herself to her family and her femininity, or on living in spite of those things?
2. What role does shame play in Marcis identity (and conduct)? In Delias? In Eddies?
3. Marci is being raised Catholic, but her relationship with God is more through herself than the Church. How are Marcis spiritual beliefs affected by her familys beliefs and expectations, and how are they affected by her own sexuality? Conversely, how are her feelings about her family and sexuality affected by her spiritual beliefs?
4. Why are reading books and going to the library important to Marci?
5. How do Marci and Corin confront their fear?
Family
1. How does Marcis extended family affect her relationship to her parents?
2. What Night Brings presents or alludes to a number of marriages and a number of extramarital sexual relationships. Which of these marriages and relationships make the people in them happy? Which make other people unhappy? Whose happiness seems most important in each case?
3. How is food a barometer for relationships in What Night Brings?
4. Why cant Delia confront the reality of what is happening to her children?
Society
1. Which elements of Marcis story make it uniquely Chicana?
2. How is Dannys experience during and after the Vietnam War similar to Marcis experience at home? To which other characters is it also similar?
3. How does television figure in the life and imagination of different characters?
4. How is Marcis story affected by its taking place in the 1960s? By its small-town setting?
Narrative, Storytelling, and Translation
1. How is the ending of Marcis story appropriate? What does it resolve, and what does it not resolve?
2. How does the final page of the novel contribute to an overall sense of what it is about? If it had ended fifteen pages earlier, would your conception of what Marcis story is about be the same?
3. How do Marcis vision of reality and point of view affect how truth is conveyed?
4. How is humor used in What Night Brings?
5. Trujillo typically does not translate the Spanish words in the novel. Do you think this is purposeful? If so, why do you think she chooses to do this?