Sanchez Across the Street and Other Stories.

While the ten stories in this collection are set in various places, from Los Angeles and Washington D.C. to New Jersey and several unidentified cities, almost all focus on some aspect of life in the U.S. as experienced either by Hispanics or Jewish Americans. They address a number of themes common to the experience of uprooting and resettlement in the new country: the difficulties faced by immigrants in finding acceptance in their communities; the problems created by ignorance, prejudice, and superstition; the dilemma of preserving a sense of identity in the face of cultural assimilation. These are serious and compelling issues, but the author treats them with a disarmingly light touch that effectively brings out the underlying message in her stories. The style is clear and direct, and Mujica succeeds in establishing a comfortable rapport with the reader. The stories are full of humor even while sometimes shadowed by tragedy.

The opening stow, which gives its name to the collection, exemplifies such characteristics. A family of Mexican immigrants moves in "across the street" in a Jewish neighborhood of Los Angeles. The narrator's father is outraged, but not because he wants to preserve his Jewishness: The real problem was that Dad wanted to be American, really American, and to his mind, Jews were immigrants. He wanted to live in a neighborhood where people had names like Smith and Livingston and spoke in the soft tones that Dad associated with Protestants. Loud noises, as far as Dad was concerned, were the mark of those who twenty years later would be labeled "ethnics."

The Sanchez family is large and noisy and untidy, but also generous and warmhearted. Gradually, through the children, bridges are built between the two families. Although the stow ends on a sad note, it is also quietly optimistic.

"How Jose Ignacio Maria de Jesus San Juan e Yndurain Learned to Dance the Hora" is also about bridging two cultures. When a family of Chilean background learns their daughter wants to marry an orthodox Jew, they respond initially with resistance and incomprehension. However, as the mother philosophically reminds her husband: "This is America .... Here these things happen." They adapt to kosher cooking, but the real test comes when the first grandchild is born and the family is invited to attend the child's circumcision ceremony. The description of what follows is both funny and touching.

"Dear Erik Estrada, I Love You" is the delightful stow of a mother who reads about a teenage idol in a magazine and finds herself fantasizing about corresponding with and eventually meeting him. Mujica is particularly good at capturing the flavor of dialogue between parents and teenagers as well as conveying the mother's need for her own space, even if it only exists in her imagination.

There are many voices in these stories: of women, of new immigrants, of the lonely and disadvantaged, of the young and the old. Even those who lead relatively comfortable lives question their assumptions and aspire to be different. These compelling stories capture the pathos and the humor of the human struggle to adapt and survive. As one character puts it: "You'll have plenty of things to crt about during your lifetime. When you have an occasion to rejoice, do it!"

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(ALPHABETICAL BY AUTHOR)

FICTION

Jostein Gaardner, Vita Brevis (C) Rosa Montero, La hija del canibal (A,C,M) Octavio Paz, Labyrinth of Solitude (M) Marcela Serrano, El albergue de las mujeres tristes (Ch,M) Elizabeth Supercaseaux, Eva en el mundo de los Jaguares (Ch)

NONFICTION

Beltran de la Granje, Marcos, la genial impostura (M) Ian Gibson, Vida, pasion y muerte de Federico Garcia Lorca (C) Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (A,Ch) J.J. Sebreli, La era del futbol (A) Lawrence Shapiro, The Emotional Intelligence of Children (Ch,N,V)

A = Argentina; Ch = Chile; C = Colombia; M = Mexico. (Only those countries that submit before deadline are included.)