Parrot In the Oven: Mi Vida

Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida, by Victor Martinez, is a coming-of-age novel narrated by Manuel Hernández, known as Manny, a Mexican American teenager growing up in a housing project in California's Central Valley. Manny's father drinks and loses jobs, his mother works hard to hold the family together, and his older brother is restless and quick to anger. Over a year of picking chili peppers, trouble at school, a first dance and pressure from a local gang, Manny tries to figure out what kind of person he wants to become and what it means to be a man in his family and neighborhood. Told in a series of vivid episodes, the book draws on the author's own upbringing and is written with humor and poetic detail. It is published for teen readers.