A Study Guide for Oscar Hijuelos's "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Oscar Hijuelos's "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535838207

Book preview

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The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

Oscar Hijuelos

1989

Introduction

Oscar Hijuelos's novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love was published in 1989, and soon became a huge international bestseller. It tells the story of Cesar Castillo, an aged musician who once had a small amount of fame when he and his brother appeared on an episode of I Love Lucy in the 1950s. The book chronicles Cesar's last hours as he sits in a seedy hotel room, drinking and listening to recordings made by his band, the Mambo Kings. Events and characters whirl through his mind, evoking what he has lost over the years: his brother and collaborator, Nestor, who spent his adult life constantly rewriting one song about a lost love; the many lovers who gave themselves up to him as he rose triumphantly through the mambo music craze of the early fifties; and the way of life that disappeared for all Cubans after that country was over-thrown by an insurrection led by Fidel Castro in 1959. In telling Cesar's story, Hijuelos weaves in cameo appearances by several real-life mambo musicians, including Desi Arnaz, Tito Puente, Pérez Prado, Machito and Mongo Santamaría.

This novel, Hijuelos's second, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1990, marking the first time that that prize was awarded to a Hispanic author. Hijuelos has published four more novels since then, frequently touching on the theme of immigrants and how they adjust to coming to America.

Author Biography

Oscar Hijuelos (his last name is pronounced "E-way-los") was born in New York City on August 24, 1951. His parents came from the Oriente province of Cuba, emigrating in 1943 to the Spanish Harlem section of New York, which is where the author grew up. As a teenager in the 1960s, Hijuelos played guitar in Top 40 bands. He attended City College of New York, receiving a bachelor of arts degree in 1975 and a master's degree in creative writing in 1976. After college, he worked for Transportation Display, Inc., an advertising firm, for seven years. During that time, he continued writing.

In 1978, his short story Columbus Discovering America received a Pushcart Press citation for outstanding writer. Following that, he won an Oscar Cintas fiction writing grant for 1978–1979; a Bread Loaf Writers Conference scholarship in 1980; a fiction writing grant from Creative Artists Programs Service in 1982; and a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation in 1983.

His first novel, Our House in the Last World, was published in 1983. It concerns a Cuban couple, Alejo and Sorrea, who, like the author's parents, emigrate from Cuba to New York in the 1940s. It won several awards, including the American Academy in Rome Fellowship in Literature, which allowed him to live in Rome for a while. While in Italy, he developed an interest in archeology, a hobby which has affected the historical curiosity of