In a gripping, graphic debut novel, Mariana Romo-Carmona presents a vivid look into a young woman's life as an aid in a women's institution. Here the women are constantly sedated and monitored for unexpected incontinence, yet are always treated with respect. Here living at night appears to be the only defense for a Hispanic woman in white Connecticut, surrounded by people who give her a sense of self-worth. Here is a story worth telling, and worth reading.

Living at Night draws us into the world of Erica Garcia, a young, working-class Puerto Rican lesbian searching for her niche in the world in WASP-y Connecticut, despite the pressures of satisfying the expectations of family, lovers, and friends. Erica's unresolved anguish over her mother's illness causes her to drop out of college and work as a nurse's aide at an institution for developmentally disabled persons. In stunning, frank language, the author describes ERica's interactions with her charges, who often are kept sedated on mega-doses of drugs and whose every action and bodily function are duly monitored, but who stubbornly maintain their dignity and assert their individuality in a sterile environment. Though Erica comes to realize that she may not be able to rescue all who languish in institutions, she can take charge of her own life, and in so doing, ensure that the world is a better place for those she cares about most.

Erica García is a young, working-class, coffee-drinking Puerto Rican lesbiana who drives clunky covertibles, has a girlfriend and works the nigh shift as an aide at the Training School for the Reterded. This novel, Mariana's first, explores the protagonist's familial, economic, cultural and lesbian connections by focusing on Erica's inner world while she lives at night, cleaning, and caring for the residents in the ward. The prose is clean and fluid throughout the novel; the writing is at its best when Erica drives along the New England countryside and reflects upon her life while connecting with the seasons. It's a quiet, well-crafted novel about a young woman's seemingly simple life that opens your eyes to her inner motivations and to the situation in institutions. The author is one of the few Latina lesbians writing novels in English in this country.

I knew something important happened when my mother saw the film "The Wedding Banquet." She saw a family of color dealing with a gay family member and she saw how the Chinese mother looked silly being so devestated by her son's sexual orientation. This book works in a similar way. This was the first book I've ever read that was entirely in Spanish. The editor had an article in "Companeras", a Latina lesbian anthology, where the editor there said she reprinted whole Spanish dialogues in order to preserve the truth of people's words. Like that editor and others (such as Anzaldua and Moraga), I think Romo-Carmona wanted to be true to the contributors. This is a slim book and the essays are quite short, but as someone who learned Spanish in the classroom, it took me a while to read. It's amazing too that this family-oriented book came from the lesbian sex-positive/radical Clies Press. Like Anglo PFLAG materials, this book began and ended with the parents of famous Latino gays (authors, elected officials, ppl who have been on TV) writing. Almost every author is supportive of their gay child and every submission ends with them saying "I would never kick my child out of the house." The last contributor, noted author Jaime Manrique, even registers his shock about how supportive the parents are here. So this book is positive, rather than normative. The authors are quite diverse in terms of ethnicity/nationality. The book is somewhat scant on bisexual and transgendered issues, but they are covered at least. In many articles, the parents write and then their gay children add in: this gets very repetitive. Probably due to the author's gender, this book is heavily lesbian and woman-slanted (even more mothers write than fathers). That's cool because it fights lesbian invisibility, but we still need to recognize the burden that gay Latino MEN carry. One contributor says straight up that it's okay for her daughter to be gay, but that would not be acceptable for her son. There are many great entries from parents whose gay sons have died of AIDS. Some articles feature gay parents who discover their children are gay. Nevertheless, abuse, alcoholism, custody battles, and other family tragedies do come up often in this book. A big critique that I have of this book is that racism in the US and the US gay community is hardly brought up. For example, many of the gay Latino children seem to have non-Latino partners (including the editor) and the parents never discuss it. Still, I loved this text and want every Spanish-speaking parent of a gay child to read it. My parents never even considered going to a PFLAG meeting until they heard that a black chapter was being formed. If straight people only feel comfortable discussing gay family in race-similar environments, then we just have to deal with that reality.