"Chicano writers from El Paso are the most progressive, open-minded, far-reaching, and inclusive writers of them all."

Octavio Romano

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

New Chicanoa(o) Titles in Nov. 2010 and Chicano(a) and Latino(a) Writer News



New Chicanoa(o) Titles Nov. 2010 and 
Chicano(a) and Latino(a) Writer News

For today, a little writer news before we get to the new books.

Share

Check out Daniel A. Olivas piece on Jewishness and more in Valley Chicano writer explores the Holocaust.



I nice article was written by Ramon Renteria of the El Paso Times on the 25th Anniversary of the Founding of Cinco Puntos Press, complete with a timeline. Check it out: All the right moves: 'Lucky' Cinco Puntos Press turns 25.

 I caught that Naomi Ayala, Valerie Martinez, and J. Michael Martinez will be reading Feb. 28, 2011 as part of teh O.B. Hardison Poetry Series at the Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 E. Capitol Street, SE, Washington, D.C. For more info. or to purchase tickets, visit www.folger.edu/poetry or call the box office at 207-544-7077.

Luis Alberto Urrea


Luis Alberto Urrea will be part of the faculty and guest for the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, Aug. 10-20, 2011. www.middlebury.edu/blwc.

Palabra: A Magazine of Chicano and Latino Literary Art presents an eclectic array of fresh and engaged Latino and Chicano writing in English, Spanish, and Spanglish. Published annually, the current issue includes work by Blas Falconer, Carmen Gimenez Smith, Manuel Paul Lopez, bonafide rojas, and Lorraine Healy. http://www.palabralitmag.com/.

Congrads go out to Stephen D. Gutierrez who received an American book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for books published in 2009. Of the Castro Valley in Califas, he received the prize for his collection Live From Fresno y Los (Bear Star Press). This collection containes one of my favorite stories, "The Barbershop."

Congrads go out to Cecilia Martinez-Gil of Santa Monica, Califas. She won the 11th Annual Poetry Award from Gival Press for Pseltery and Serpentines. Her book will be published by Gival Press.
John Phillip Santos

John Phillip Santos will be in the faculty of the 10th Annual Poetry at Round Top, April 15-17, 2011. Also included is Martin Espada. For more info, email info@festivalhill.org. http://www.festivalhill.org/.

David Hernandez of Long Beach, Califas won the 16th Annual Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry for his collection Hoodwinked. The collection will be published by Sarabande Books. http://www.sarabandebooks.org/.


Bookmark and Share


Latino Writers News

Share

Cristina Garcia has been hired by Texas Tech University in Lubbock. She is the author of The Lady Matador's Hotel (Scribner 2010).

Luis Jaramillo won Dzanc Book's 2009 Short Story Collection Contest for The Doctor's Wife. The book will be published in October 2012. The next contest deadline is Dec. 31, 2010. http://www.dzancbooks.org/.

Rafael Yglesias
Rafael Yglesias won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his novel A Happy Marriage (Scribner). Yglesias is the son of novelists Jose and Helen Yglesias. He was recently featured on NPR's Fresh Air: Thirty Years Of Love And Loss In 'A Happy Marriage'.

Bookmark and Share



New Titles in Chicano(a) Literature for November 2010
Paperback Arte Publico Pr November 30, 2010
ISBN-10: 1558855483
Ricardo Ampudia

"They stole 15 years of my life." A native of Monterrey, Mexico, Ricardo Aldape Guerra was sentenced to death in 1982 for the first-degree murder of a Houston Police Officer that took place three months earlier. He spent 15 years in a maximum security prison in Huntsville, Texas, before his death sentence was overturned and he was set free.

Ricardo Ampudia, former Consul General of Mexico in Houston, Texas, explores the history and ethics of the death penalty in this fascinating look at its impact on Mexicans sentenced to death in the United States. A fervent opponent of capital punishment, Ampudia came to his beliefs because of his involvement in defending Aldape.

The author offers a brief introduction about the death penalty, both in the U.S. and around the world, and notes that in 2001, 90% of all known executions occurred in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Most of the countries that apply the death penalty have dictatorial regimes or repressive governments, with the U.S. being the notable exception. Subsequent chapters focus on the phenomenon of the death penalty in the U.S. and the work done by the Mexican government to protect its citizens abroad.

The final chapters focus on the Ricardo Aldape Guerra case. In this section written by Scott Atlas the attorney who handled his defense and Michael Mucchetti, both from the Vinson & Elkins law firm, it's revealed that the reopened investigation of the crime uncovered evidence that the jury never heard when Aldape was convicted. And in fact, a shocking pattern of police and prosecutorial intimidation, misconduct, and abuse came to light.

Originally published in Mexico as Mexicanos al grito de muerte, this absorbing account of the history, use, and flaws of the death penalty is a must-read for anyone interested in the criminal justice system in the United States.



(Hispanic Civil Rights) Paperback Arte Publico Press
November 30, 2010 ISBN-10: 1558856080
Bob Ybarra

Even as a teenager, Joseph Albert Calamia understood the need to live by the rule of law. In high school, a class bully's continual harassment of a skinny Hispanic kid led Joseph to confront him. But he wisely did so with the coach's permission, challenging the boy to a boxing match. 

The tormentor went down quickly and Calamia settled the score under the jurisdiction of the high school coach.

Calamia began his career as a criminal defense attorney in El Paso, Texas, in 1949. He was a crusader for justice, considered by many to be akin to Don Quixote, tilting at windmills. But he disagreed, "The big difference is that my demons were real." His demons were the institutionalized practices that favored expediency over the rights of individuals; he spent his lifetime fighting to ensure peoples' rights were not trampled by law makers and enforcers.

A World War II veteran, Calamia grew up in El Paso's Segundo Barrio, a few blocks from the Rio Grande River that separated Mexico from the United States. He grew up in a world that expected those of Mexican descent to maintain their inferior status. But he couldn t stand by and let injustice occur without a fight.

Over the course of his long career, Calamia successfully challenged a host of attacks against civil liberties, including police undercover tactics and the constitutionality of searches and seizures in drug, immigration, and other cases.
Published as part of Hispanic Civil Rights Series, this enlightening book documents the efforts of one man who devoted his life to protecting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.


(Spanish Edition) 
Paperback - Bilingual Press/Editorial Biling-Ue November 2010
Language: Spanish ISBN-10: 1931010722
Alurista

Two new books from Alurista in 2010. This would be great, however, we still have no description yet, but the info we have is that it come out in November 2010.


Good Bandits, Warrior Women, and Revolutionaries in Hispanic Culture
Paperback Bilingual Press/Editorial Biling-Ue November 2010
ISBN-10: 1931010714
Gary Francisco Keller (Editor) 

Description currently unavailable.



(Spanish Edition) (Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series) 
Hardcover University of New Mexico Press; Bilingual edition July 16, 2010 ISBN-10: 0826347916
Language: English and Spanish ISBN-13: 978-0826347916
Nasario Garcia

The author of "Tiempos Lejanos: Poetic Images from the Past" returns to his roots in a new and exciting book of poetry about his childhood in Guadalupe, New Mexcio, originally called Ojo del Padre, presumably in honor of a priest who discovered a still-bubbling spring in the area. The village of Guadalupe is no more, but Garcia's vibrant word pictures transport us to a time and place of true community and existence. 

Written first in Spanish, then translated to English, these poems paint his young life and the lives of his family members and neighbors in west central New Mexico in the mid-twentieth century. Garcia's perceptions of a wider world and all it includes, but still anchored in the routines of home and play and work, were imparted by his mother who never attended a day of school in her life.



Hardcover University of Texas Press November 1, 2010
ISBN-10: 029272277X
Alicia Gaspar de Alba (Editor), Georgina Guzmán (Editor)

Since 1993, more than five hundred women and girls have been murdered in Ciudad Juárez across the border from El Paso, Texas. At least a third have been sexually violated and mutilated as well. Thousands more have been reported missing and remain unaccounted for. The crimes have been poorly investigated and have gone unpunished and unresolved by Mexican authorities, thus creating an epidemic of misogynist violence on an increasingly globalized U.S.-Mexico border.

This book, the first anthology to focus exclusively on the Juárez femicides, as the crimes have come to be known, compiles several different scholarly "interventions" from diverse perspectives, including feminism, Marxism, critical race theory, semiotics, and textual analysis. Editor Alicia Gaspar de Alba shapes a multidisciplinary analytical framework for considering the interconnections between gender, violence, and the U.S.-Mexico border. 

The essays examine the social and cultural conditions that have led to the heinous victimization of women on the border--from globalization, free trade agreements, exploitative maquiladora working conditions, and border politics, to the sexist attitudes that pervade the social discourse about the victims. 

The book also explores the evolving social movement that has been created by NGOs, mothers' organizing efforts, and other grassroots forms of activism related to the crimes. Contributors include U.S. and Mexican scholars and activists, as well as personal testimonies of two mothers of femicide victims.




Arte Publico Press October 30, 2010
ISBN-10: 1558856072
Rene Saldana (Author)

"Stop it. The two of you, stop it! You're father and son; you should love each other." Roelito howls at his father and older brother as their heated argument turns into a pushing, shoving match. Beto has again come home way past curfew, and worse, smelling like a cantina.

When Beto Sr. tells his son that he either needs to follow the rules or leave, the boy--a senior in high school and a man as far as he's concerned--decides to leave, right then, in the middle of the night. Once he has walked away, though, he realizes he has nowhere to go. Maybe his best friend Jessy--a hard-as-nails girl who has run away before can help him.

The story of Beto's decision to run away and drop out of school is told from shifting perspectives in which the conflicted lives of Roel, Beto, and Jessy are revealed in short, poignant scenes that reflect teen-age life along the Texas-Mexico border.

Each one has a good long way to go in growing up. Roel fights against the teachers' assumptions that he's like Beto. Unlike his big brother, Roel is book smart and actually enjoys school. Jessy is smart too, but most of her teachers can't see beyond her tough-girl fasade. 


Her parents are so busy fighting with each other that they don t notice her, even if she s packing a suitcase to leave. And Beto . . . somewhere along the way he quit caring about school. And his teachers have noticed and given up too.

Author and educator Rene Saldana, Jr. once again writes a fast-paced, thought-provoking novel that will engage young adults in questions about their own lives and responsibilities to family, friends, and most of all, to themselves.


 ...14 Abriles: Poems
March/Abrazo Press 2010
ISBN 1877636231
Carlos Cumpian

Chapbooks of 14 poems by veteran Chicano poet Carlos Cumpian. Review to come by Pluma Fronteriza.


 


[Kindle Edition] Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 314 KB
Print Length: 228 pages
HMH Children's Paperback September 13, 2010
Gary Soto

With real wit and heart, Gary Soto takes readers into the lives of young people in ten funny, heartbreaking tales.

Meet Carolina, who writes to Miss Manners for help not just with etiquette but with bigger messes in her life; Javier, who knows the stories his friend Veronica tells him are lies, but can't find a way to prove it -- and many other kids, each caught up in the difficulties of figuring out what it means to be alive.

No comments: