From Klail City to Korea with Love

Containing two volumes from Rolando Hinojosa's acclaimed Klail City Death Trip Series-Rites and Witnesses and Korean Love Songs-From Klail City to Korea with Love continues the examination of life along the border, including the discrimination faced by Texas Mexicans and locals' involvement in war.In brief, brilliant chapters composed of conversational fragments, each one a tile in a vivid mosaic of narrative, Rites and Witnesses captures the complex relationships and unsettling power struggles in both civilian and military life. Alternating chapters reveal the unfolding plans and schemes of the local elite-bankers, ranchers, and real-estate moguls-while on the other side of the globe, Klail City native Corporal Rafe Buenrostro engages in skirmishes with the North Koreans, the Communist Chinese and the power brokers of the U.S. Army.Korean Love Songs, Hinojosa's only poetry book, captures the horror of war through Rafe Buenrostro's recollections. 'I'm sick. They didn't stop coming, / And we wouldn't stop firing. / But we stopped them. / Brutally.' Passing on his beer ration, he says: 'Drink? I don't even want to eat...'. Originally published in 1978 by Editorial Justa Publications, this installment in the Klail City Death Trip Series has long been out of print.