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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. “To Live and Die in El Valle” is Oscar Mancinas’ debut collection of fiction. It’s a group of vibrant short – and very short – stories set in and near El Valle, a fictional working-class neighborhood in Arizona. Each story has its young, down-to-earth, astutely etched protagonists and their social issues.
In “Entradas 2001,” a 28-page story, Fernanda Eusebia Díaz is the focal point of the tension between fans of rival Major League Baseball teams – the Los Angeles Dodgers, cheered by the people of her birthplace, the Mexican town of Obregón; and the Arizona Diamondbacks, the home-state favorite of the residents of El Valle, where Fernanda now lives. In Obregón an uncle had once told her she was named for the fabled Dodgers Indio pitcher Fernando Valenzuela.