Sanchez Across the Street and Other Stories.

• Author: Smith, Dawn

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...