The Havana Exile
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Read the opening free
4,462 words · no email, no account
No. 003 · Music · Latin
The Days Inn Room 158
a biography of Selena Quintanilla-Pérez
What the book is
On a spring afternoon in 1995, a twenty-three-year-old woman walked into the lobby of a Corpus Christi motel and did not walk out. By then she had already crossed more borders than most performers manage in a lifetime — between Spanish and English, between the Tejano circuit and the Billboard charts, between the daughter her father had trained since childhood and the woman she was beginning, quietly, to become.
Esperanza Villalobos returns to the life of Selena Quintanilla with the patience of a reporter and the ear of someone who grew up listening. Drawing on conversations with bandmates, club owners, seamstresses, and the radio programmers who first put her voice on the air, he traces the long apprenticeship behind the overnight fame: the family van, the quinceañera gigs, the Grammy, the boutique in San Antonio, the English-language record she would not live to release.
What emerges is a portrait less of an icon than of a working musician — ambitious, funny, exhausted, in love, and acutely aware of the doors she was opening for the people behind her. Villalobos is interested in the crossings themselves: what they cost, what they require, and what is left on either side.
A study of an artist at the threshold, and of the country that met her there.
At a glance
- Subject
- Selena Quintanilla-Pérez
- Shelf
- Music · Latin
- Written by
- Esperanza Villalobos
- Chapters
- 18 across 196 pages
- Narrated by
- Imogen Vey
- Editions
- Paperback · Hardcover · EPUB · Audiobook
- Authorisation
- Unauthorised — no subject, estate or label had approval over the text.
Contents · 18 chapters
- 01Lake JacksonRead free
- 02Papa's Dream4,107 words
- 03Selena y Los Dinos4,473 words
- 04The Circuit4,243 words
- 05EMI Latin3,367 words
- 06Amor Prohibido3,307 words
- 07The Grammy3,471 words
- 08Chris and Selena3,632 words
- 09The Boutiques3,811 words
- 10The Fan Club3,026 words
- 11Yolanda3,735 words
- 12The Crossover Sessions3,196 words
- 13March 312,728 words
- 14The Trial2,672 words
- 15The Verdict2,090 words
- 16Sixty Thousand2,885 words
- 17Dreaming of You2,968 words
- 18Before the Crossover3,819 words
The opening chapter is published in full — read it here.
Editions
- Paperback · $19.99
- 6 × 9 in · 196 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback
ISBN 979-8-90470-061-4 - Hardcover · $24.99
- 6 × 9 in · 196 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · case laminate on the same text block
- EPUB · $3.99
- EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books
ISBN 979-8-90470-017-1 - Audiobook · $5.99
- Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Imogen Vey
ISBN 979-8-90623-000-3
Questions
01Who is The Days Inn Room 158 about?
Selena Quintanilla-Pérez. The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Days Inn Room 158 — and the name goes on the line underneath.
02Is this an authorised biography?
No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented.
03Can I read some of it before buying?
Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 4,462 words of the book.
04How long is it?
About 60,500 words, 18 chapters, 196 pages in the paperback.
05What is the printed book like?
6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf.
