Mambo Kings Play Essays - Gulf Of Mexico, Havana, Sex,

Mambo Kings Play The book that I read was rather pornographic. It was a story about 2 brothers and 6 other people who put together a band and played in clubs almost every night. After playing their gigs, they'd go off and get drunk and then go sleep with about 4 different girls every night. None of them were settled down because they always were going places and meeting new people. They started their band in a place called Havana, Cuba. They were very unknown until they met a guy at a bar one night named Desi Arnaz. He offered them a contract and signed them with jobs in the United States. So being young and free, they left with almost nothing to start their new life in the states. The first place they went to, which was later their favorite place, was Miami, Florida. They played in clubs late at night still bringing girls back to their hotel rooms. They started to get noticed. Oscar Hijuelos was the author of the book The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love and also the book called Our House in the Last World. Oscar was born in 1951 in the city of Havana, Cuba and was born to both Cuban parents. He now currently lives in New York. I do like how the author wrote this book basically because it was easy reading. It was very long in some parts, but you could understand it easily. It never left you feeling as if you didn't understand a part. He wrote in sections and not chapters. There were only 3 sections in the book and so it was easier to follow because he didn't have to keep starting a new chapter. I read this book by dividing it into how many pages I'd read each day. I had to read about 28 pages in it a day and I kept that promise to myself. I read every day and I got the book done on time. In each section of the book, the author started off in a new club. He started it off at a different time every time. He had it start off one time at 11:23pm in a nightclub in Miami, and the other ones at 11:57pm and 12:02am. The brothers always seemed to be at a nightclub whether or not they were playing that night. The always got drunk and I liked how the author would show you just how drunk they were by their actions. I believe that there are actually two stories going on in this book. And they are about the same group of people. Because one of the stories is being told to you as the lives of musicians who go about their daily lives in the daytime, but then become drunk and sleazy at night when they go off and play in clubs. They always talk about wanting to settle down with a woman and have a family, but then at night, they go off and stay out until about 4am with a bunch of girls after playing in a smoke-filled room with a bunch of drunken men. "Like his music, the Mambo King was very direct in those days. He and Vanna Vane had just been out to dinner at the club Babalu and Cesar said to her, as she chewed on a piece of plantain fritter, "Vanna, I'm in love with you, and I want a chance to show you what it's like to be with a man like me."" Just on that quote, it initiates the fact that even the Mambo King wanted to get settled down. But right after that quote, she said no to him and so he went and slept with some stripper he met in a bar that night. Another quote that describes how they are at night is this one, "I saw her. A woman with a broken leg in a cast, standing up in a phone booth during a rainstorm in Atlantic City, the gales whipping against the glass, things so dark around them nobody could see, so that in the ferocity of the winds they started to kiss, his knee pressing between her legs, and this woman saying to hell with it and pulling up her sun skirt and down with her panties, down over her legs and down over the thick plaster cast, so that he lifted her up onto him and she leaned back against the wall, laughing and thinking, This man