Archive for the ‘Latin American’ Category

QUEEN OF AMERICA by Luis Alberto Urrea

Like its predecessor, THE HUMMINGBIRD’S DAUGHTER, Urrea’s sequel, QUEEN OF AMERICA is a panoramic, picaresque, sprawling, sweeping novel that dazzles us with epic destiny, perilous twists, and high romance, set primarily in Industrial era America (and six years in the author’s undertaking). Based on Urrea’s real ancestry, this historical fiction combines family folklore with magical realism and Western adventure at the turn of the twentieth century.

November 30, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: California, italy, Job, Latin American, Magical Realism, Mexico, NE & New York, New Orleans, New York City, Real People Fiction, Texas, Time Period Fiction, United Kingdom, US Southwest, Washington, D.C., Wild West

BEFORE THE END, AFTER THE BEGINNING by Dagoberto Gilb

Dagoberto Gilb’s latest book, BEFORE THE END, AFTER THE BEGINNING, although a slight collection, is loaded with insight and humor. It’s a book about identity, about the tension between limiting factors outside our control– our race, our class, our gender – and our complexity as individuals.

November 9, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Award Winning Author, Class - Race - Gender, Humorous, Identity, Latin American, Mexico, Short Stories, Texas

THE BARBARIAN NURSERIES by Hector Tobar

From the looks of it you could never tell that the beautiful Torres-Thompson home in fancy Laguna Rancho Estates, is on the cusp of unraveling. But look closely and you can see the edges of the tropical garden coming undone, the lawn not done just right; and these are merely the symptoms of greater troubles. For the couple Scott Torres and Maureen Thompson the country’s financial crisis has come knocking, even in their ritzy Los Angeles neighborhood.

October 17, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Award Winning Author, California, Class - Race - Gender, Contemporary, Latin American

THE PRICE OF ESCAPE by David Unger

Samuel Berkow, at thirty-eight, stands at the crossroads: In 1938, life in Germany is fast becoming dangerous for Jews. At the urging of his concerned uncle, he agrees to leave Hamburg and emigrate to Guatemala, where his cousin is expected to help him settle. In THE PRICE OF ESCAPTE, David Unger explores his hero’s self-conscious and stumbling efforts to put his German existence out of his mind as he prepares for a new one that carries promise but is also full of uncertainty.

September 29, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , , ,  Â· Posted in: Latin American, South America, World Literature

WE THE ANIMALS by Justin Torres

WE THE ANIMALS in this wonderful debut novel refers to three brothers, close in age, growing up in upstate New York. They are the Three Musketeers bound strongly together not just because of geographical isolation but because of cultural separateness too. The brothers are born to a white mother and a Puerto Rican father—they are half-breeds confused about their identity and constrained by desperate and mind-numbing poverty.

September 22, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , , , ,  Â· Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Coming-of-Age, Contemporary, Family Matters, Identity, Latin American, NE & New York

THE LIZARD CAGE by Karen Connelly

Burmese politics, including their political prison system, is harrowing and vicious. Not a lot has changed in the past fifty years or so, other than changing the name to Myanmar. Until very recently, they were under military rule and they are still one of the least developed nations in the world. Karen Connelly has not only written a striking and engaging tour de force about this area, but she has brought a country’s atrocities into focus that needs attention badly, and help from developed nations. However, she hasn’t forgotten the novelist’s rule of thumb to entertain. It doesn’t read like a diatribe or soapbox, it reads like an exquisite, dramatic story of friendship, endurance, compassion, love, and faith in the human condition.

July 23, 2011 · Judi Clark · One Comment
Tags: , , , ,  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, About, Award Winning Author, Latin American, Orange Prize, Reading Guide