January 12, 2012 · 7:57 pm

New year, new books: What’s ahead for 2012

A new year brings a new batch of books to look forward to reading. Here’s a round-up of some upcoming titles by Latino authors coming in the first half of this year. Special thanks to The Millions website, where I got some of the tips.

• In February, Argentine writer César Aira will release Varamo, about a bureaucrat in Panama who unexpectedly writes an epic poem. The New Yorker ran an interesting interview with Aira’s translator, Chris Andrews, last year.

• Also in February, Benjamin Alire Saenz will release his young adult novel, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe about two teens who form an unlikely friendship.

• In April, Orange County Weekly editor Gustavo Arellano – known for his “Ask a Mexican!” column – will release Taco Nation, about America’s obsession with Mexican food. Sounds tasty.

• Roberto Bolaño must be the Tupac Shakur of Latino writers. He continues to publish books even after his death in 2003. His collection of stories, The Secret of Evil, will come out in April.

• Border Town: Crossing the Line is a Sweet Valley High-like series by Malín Alegría, author of the popular Estrella’s Quinceañera, about two teenage girls who live in fictional Dos Rios, Texas.

• Also in May, Sergio De La Pava’s A Naked Singularity will come out by the University of Chicago Press after a run as a self-published book. The comic novel focuses on a Brooklyn attorney who commits a crime.

• Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa will publish The Dream of the Celt, about Irish human rights activist Roger Casement, in June.

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January 10, 2012 · 7:00 am

Book review: Manuel Gonzales’ “The Miniature Wife and Other Stories”

Miniature WifeManuel Gonzales can make a skeptic believe vampires and werewolves are real, even human.

In his book, The Miniature Wife and Other Stories (Riverhead), Gonzales conjures up all sorts of wild scenarios – and he uses those situations as metaphors for larger issues about the world we live in.

The book starts off with two strong stories – “Pilot, Copilot, Writer” – in which the narrator sits on a plane that is stuck in the air for 20 years, and the title story, about a man who shrinks his wife to the size of a coffee cup. Crazy stuff, but they speak about the stagnation of life and the world’s treatment of women.

A few stores – “The Artist’s Voice,” about a composer who speaks with his ears, and “Harold Withy Keith: A Meritorious Life,” about the inventor of a vascular system made out of plants – get so bogged down in technical detail that I felt like I was reading a science textbook.

But the book roars back with great, inventive stories – “All of Me,” about a zombie who crushes on a co-worker; “One-Horned and Wild-Eyed,” about a man whose friend finds a unicorn; and “Wolf,” a graphic but fascinating account about a father who turns into a werewolf.

How good are these stories? I’m not into paranormal books because I can’t take them seriously, but Gonzales makes them believable with clear, matter-of-fact writing and relatable characters who are forced to make heartbreaking decisions.

Take the zombie in “All of Me”:

 “I don’t understand how hard it can be to keep our baser selves in check or how much easier it is, ultimately, to go back to the evil we knew and understand, the evil we have lived with for so long that it feels an inherent and important part of ourselves, to go back to this evil and tell ourselves that we had no other choice, that we didn’t opt for this decision, but that really there were never any other options for us to take. I know about choices and about not having choices and how it feels when it seems you have no other choice.”

So you get crazy scenarios mixed in fine writing and profound thoughts about the human condition and the state of the world. Manuel Gonzales can make you believe anything.

Manuel_GonzalesMore about Manuel Gonzales:

Texas-based Gonzales runs the Austin Bat Cave creative writing center for children and bakes pies on the side. His work has been published in The Believer, Esquire and the Dear Teen Me website. Read “The Animal House” from The Miniature Wife on the FiveChapters.com website.

Source: I received a review copy from the publisher.

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January 9, 2012 · 7:43 pm

In the news: Stork, writer’s contests, Cisneros, Urrea

New releases:

• Irises, the newest book by Mexican-American writer Francisco X. Stork, was released earlier this month. The young adult book focuses on two young sisters grappling with their father’s death and their mother’s illness.

Contests:

• Speaking of Stork, writers can have their middle school or young adult book critiqued by the author if they win the Book Wish Foundation contest. Contestants must submit a 500-word essay by Feb. 1 based on Stork’s essay in the book, What You Wish For, a series of short stories and poems by prominent authors. The book, whose proceeds benefit refugee camps in Chad, also includes works by Sofia Quintero and Gary Soto, as well as Alexander McCall Smith, Meg Cabot and Joyce Carol Oates.

• Here’s a great opportunity for Latino writers who live in San Antonio: the city is looking for a poet laureate. Submissions must be turned in by Jan. 18.

Library News:

• Congratulations to San Francisco Public Library’s city librarian Luis Herrera, who was named Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year.

Writer’s workshops:

• Jan. 15 is the deadline to apply for a scholarship to the Las Dos Brujas Writers’ Workshop. The workshop takes place June 3-9 in Taos, New Mexico, and will feature Cristina García, Martín Espada and Denise Chávez.

• The Texas Observer published a terrific article about Sandra Cisneros’ Macondo Foundation, visiting Mexico.

New column:

• Luis Alberto Urrea, left, has a new column for Orion magazine. In a podcast of the column, he talks about an old job cleaning toilets.

 

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December 31, 2011 · 7:06 am

Resolutions for the New Year

Hey, happy new year! Today is the day set aside to recover from last night, watch football and make resolutions. I’ve got a few of my own for my blog. 2011 was a great year for Latino literature but, with just a few exceptions, most of the books I reviewed were by male authors. So I’m declaring 2012 year of the Latina writer. Each month, I’ll review a classic book from a woman author. Here’s my schedule:

• January – Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

• February – Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

• March – Ana Castillo, So Far From God

• April – Denise Chavez, Loving Pedro Infante

• May – Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate

• June – Cristina García, Dreaming in Cuban

• July – Lorraine López, The Realm of Hungry Spirits

• August – Pam Muñoz Ryan, Esperanza Rising

• September – Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican

• October – Michele Serros, Chicana Falsa

• November – Alisa Valdes, The Dirty Girls Social Club

• December – Helena Maria Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus

As you’ve probably noticed, I didn’t include some prominent writers. I’ve read most of Sandra Cisneros’s books, and I hope she will have a new book out soon that I can review. I also decided not to include academic Gloria Anzaldúa or poet Gabriela Minstral because I wanted to focus on novels or memoirs. I do plan to profile them on their birthdays, as I did for Cisneros.

Besides reading these books, I also hope to attend more plays for my “At the Theater” feature (which I kicked off last month with 26 Miles) and cover lectures by authors (I have tickets to a Luis Alberto Urrea talk in January). Of course, with all resolutions, things don’t always they turn out as planned, so all items are subject to change. I’ve also decided to scale back on my postings from three times a week to twice a week to make things a little easier on myself (and get to work on my own novel). I’m also in the midst of moving the headquarters of The Hispanic Reader, so I’m giving myself a break for a couple of weeks. See you in 2012!

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December 30, 2011 · 8:02 am

Best of 2011

At the end of the year, critics, bloggers and anyone else who wants to makes their own “best of” list, so I decided to make my own Latino literature favorites for 2011. Keep in mind that I started my blog in August, so I missed out on some books, such as Lorraine López’s The Realm of Hungry Spirits and Jon Michaud’s When Tito Loved Clara, and I’m keeping the list to just five books instead of the usual ten. Here are the books I loved the most from 2011:

• Francisco Goldman’s Say Her Name was a riveting love story – loosely based on his own marriage to writer Aura Estrada – that covered the beginning of their relationship to her death in a swimming accident. This book will break your heart.

• Héctor Tobar’s The Barbarian Nurseries was a fast-paced, unputdownable novel about an undocumented maid who is thrust in the middle of an immigration debate when she is left alone with her boss’s children. The book has great description, strong characters and terrific observations about politics. It’s a shame this book didn’t receive more attention.

• Although I consider myself an avid reader, how did I not discover the awesomeness that is Luis Alberto Urrea until this year? I absolutely loved his 2005 book The Hummingbird’s Daughter, a funny, beautiful novel about a woman who discovers her healing powers in revolutionary Mexico. Her father, Don Tomas, just may be one of the best literary characters ever. The 2011 sequel, Queen of America, shows Teresita coping with her success. The tone is more somber than Daughter and there’s not enough Don Tomas, but the book is still pretty terrific.

• Sergio Troncoso wrote two books this year – a book of essays, Crossing Borders, and a novel, From This Wicked Patch of Dust – both of which draw on his experiences of living on the Texas-Mexico border. I liked Borders for its riveting essays on family dynamics and relationships – and it’s unusual to see a male author talk about work-life balance. His works deserve a larger audience.

• Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa’s Becoming Dr. Q is a fascinating look at one man’s journey from an undocumented immigrant from Mexico to one of the top brain surgeons in the United States.

I also liked Justin Torres’s We the Animals, Dagoberto Gilb’s Before the End, After the Beginning and Lyn Di Iorio’s Outside the Bones. For my non-Latino books, I loved Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, The Paris Wife by Paula McLain and State of Wonder by Ann Patchett.

What were your favorite 2011 books? Post in the comments.

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December 29, 2011 · 7:54 am

Book review: Maria Dueñas’s “The Time in Between”

In Maria Dueñas’s novel, The Time in Between, Sira Quiroga goes from humble dressmaker to World War II spy in just a few years. The transformation is a mostly fascinating and sometimes frustrating tale.

The book begins in 1935 in Madrid, where Sira is, as one character describes her, a “young dressmaker filled with tenderness and innocence,” and engaged to a civil servant. But, she says, “a typewriter shattered my destiny.” While visiting an office supply store, she meets and eventually falls in love with another man. She moves with him to Morocco with the promise that they will start their own business. But, through a series of rather unpleasant surprises, Sira has to return to her sewing skills as a means of survival. She makes friends with several people on the social scene, and she returns to Madrid to design clothes for the wives of German Nazis – and tries to find out about their husbands’ plans as World War II begins to brew.

Sira’s means of spying is one of several clever twists in the book – and Sira goes through plenty of life-changing events that will elicit a few gasps. Like any spy novel, the book has its share of intrigue and coincidences. But I wish the 600-page book, which was translated by Daniel Hahn, had more dialogue and shorter paragraphs. Although Dueñas writes beautifully, the book dragged at times and needed a faster pace. I also wished two of the more colorful characters – her feisty landlord, Candelaria, and a fun next-door-neighbor, Félix – had stuck around longer.

Still, Sira makes a strong feminist character and, although the ending doesn’t suggest a sequel, I’d read a series of her spy adventures. And if we can’t get that, can we get a movie starring Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem?

More about María Dueñas:

• Dueñas, a professor in Spain, based some of the characters on real life people involved in World War II. She talked about the book to Publishers Weekly when it came out earlier this fall.

Source: I checked the book out from my local library.

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December 28, 2011 · 6:52 am

Happy birthday, Manuel Puig!

The Argentine author was born on this day in 1932 and died in Mexico in 1990. His 1976 novel, Kiss of the Spider Woman, may be one of the most famous pieces of Latino literature of the last 50 years.

The book – about a gay man and a revolutionary who are trapped in prison together – was not well read when it was first released. But it won some major awards, and Puig adapted it into a stage play. Spider Woman was made into a 1985 movie starring Sonia Braga, Raul Julia and William Hurt, who won an Academy Award for his role. It was also made into a Broadway musical that won numerous Tony Awards in 1993, including Best Musical and Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for Chita Rivera.

His other books include 1968’s Betrayed by Rita Hayworth and 1973’s The Buenos Aires Affair.

Here’s a collection of New York Times articles about Puig.

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December 24, 2011 · 8:27 am

Happy Birthday, Juan Ramón Jiménez!

The Spanish poet was born Christmas Eve in 1881 and died in 1958. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956, one of only a dozen Latinos to earn that honor. He was born in Moguer i Andalusia, Spain, but he went on to live in the United States, Cuba and Puerto Rico after the Spanish Civil War.

His best known book of poetry, Platero y Yo, describes his native Moguer i Andalusia through the eyes of a villager and his burro.

Here’s a great biography from The Poetry Foundation, which also includes some of his poems. Or check out these You Tube videos devoted to his work.

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December 22, 2011 · 5:29 am

In the news: Best of 2011, La Casa Azul bookstore, World Book Night

Best of 2011

• Here’s some more Best of 2011 lists: Entertainment Weekly put Francisco Goldman’s Say Her Name on its Top 10 Fiction list. Barnes and Noble picked When Tito Loved Clara, by Jon Michaud, about a Dominican Republican woman trying to settle in New Jersey when her old lover returns.

• Sergio Troncoso’s From This Wicked Patch of Dust and Richard Yanez’s Cross Over Water both earned spots on the Southwest Books of the Year by the Pima County Library in Tucson, Arizona. Two books by Rudolfo Anaya made the list – La Llorona: The Crying Woman and Randy Lopez Goes Home: A Novel, as did the children’s book, Juan Verdades: The Man Who Couldn’t Tell a Lie / El hombre que no sabia mentir by Joe Hayes.

• Rigoberto Gonzalez made his list of the best Small Press books, including Chulito by Charles Rice-González.

Body art by Mia Roman. Photographed by Johnny Ramos.

Bookstores

• Congratulations to Aurora Anaya-Cerda, left, who plans to open La Casa Azul bookstore in East Harlem in the spring. Publisher’s Weekly and the New York Daily News wrote articles about the bookstore, which was funded through a donation drive.

World Book Night

• Junot Diaz’s awesome The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was chosen as one of 30 novels that will given out for World Book Night April 23. You can apply to be a book giver here.

New releases:

• All Yours, a paperback crime novel by Argentine Claudia Piñeiro, came out last week.

Interesting:

• In this article in The Guardian, Spanish novelist Lucía Etxebarria announced this week she would stop writing because she opposes the downloading of books. Brazilian Paulo Coehlo has taken a different view, allowing readers to download his books in some countries, according to this New York Times story published in the fall.

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December 20, 2011 · 5:34 am

Happy Birthday, Sandra Cisneros!

Sandra Cisneros, arguably the most popular Hispanic writer in the United States, turns 57 years old today. Cisneros has won acclaim for her stories and poems that depict the Latina experience in America.

The House on Mango Street, which follows a year in the life of young Esperanza Cordero, was published in 1984. The book is now required reading in many classrooms and was featured in PBS’s 2007 series The American Novel – the only book by a Latino author to earn that distinction. Women Hollering Creek and Other Stories, published in 1991, is a collection of stories following the lives of Latinas (including one called Rosario “Chayo” De Leon – great last name!). Her 2002 book, Carmelo, follows one family’s summer trip from Chicago to Mexico. She’s also published books of poetry and children’s books.

Cisneros has founded The Macondo Foundation, an organization for writers. But, as this Texas Observer article notes, she has found it challenging to write and run the foundation at the same time, and she plans to move from San Antonio to New Mexico.

Cisneros is working on book called Writing in My Pajamas, but no release date has been set. Until then, check out some of her clips on YouTube, where she talks about writing and her books.

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