Hay dos maneras de pensar sobre la Virgen de Llamas por Chris Abani. A.) es una novela típica (y exagerada) escrito por un profesor izquierdista de la Universidad de California que se trata de la identidad, la sexualidad y la etnia. B.) es una investigación perspicaz de los dos barrios más pobres de Los Angeles, escrito por un ciudadano global que es igual nativo como extranjero en Lagos, Londres y Los Angeles.

Yo prefiero considerarlo como una investigación de un espacio, de la mentalidad de la ciudad más rara de los Estados Unidos. Si has esperado horas en Union Station, si has comprado una piñata en Avenida Olympic, las descripciones de Abani suenan más clara que nuestros propios recuerdos. Es obvio que Abani caminó todo la ciudad mientras escribió la novela. Sé que detrás del cuento existe la verdadera Ugly Store, el verdadero Black, y la Sweet Girl. Son las fantasmas sagradas del city of angels.

Un extracto de pagina 99:

There was so much he wanted to say. Los Angeles for him wasn’t Beverly Hills, or the movies, or Rodeo Drive. It wasn’t the deception of movie studios that built sets with varying door sizes so that cowboys looked brawnier against the smaller doors and ladies daintier against the taller ones. It wasn’t the Mulhollands and their water, nor the people everwhere with too perfect hair and smiles as fake as the teeth they framed. Nor was it San Marino and its pretend class, or even the Hollywood sign. It was the angle of light caught in the trickle of the Los Angeles River as it curved under one of the beautiful old crumbling bridges of East LA. The way the painting of an angel wearing sandals and jeans, its once-white wings stained by exhaust soot and tag signs, smoking a cigarette on a support of the 10 East Freeway on Hoover, curved into flight if you took the corner of the on-ramp at speed. In the cacophony of colors and shapes in the huge piñata stores on Olympic, near Central; and the man pulling the purple wooden life-size donkey mounted on wheels down Cesar Chavez, wearing a nonchalant expression as though it was the most normal thing in the world; or the people who parted on each side of him as he made his way down the sidewalk, completely oblivious to the sight. In the occasional clip-clip of horses pulling a brilliant white bridal carriage that resisted the dust and dirt everywhere, and the line of cars following slowly in awe. It was in the solo or an unemployed saxophonist in Sunny’s Café down at Leimert Park playing for tips.