Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
I first learned about and began to read Chilean author Roberto Bolaño after his death in 2003. Since his death, a number of previously unpublished works by the author have been released and translated into English. The latest of these is El Tercer Reich, written in 1989 and originally published in Spanish last year. Found among Bolano’s papers posthumously, it is set to be released as an English translation on November 22. MacMillian was gracious enough to provide me with an advanced copy of the audiobook version.
The novel is a travelogue, the vacation diary of German war games champion Udo Berger, who has returned with his girlfriend, Ingeborg, to a small town on the Costa Brava where he spent the summers of his childhood. Soon they meet another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hanna, who introduce them to a band of locals—the Wolf, the Lamb, and El Quemado—and to the darker side of life in a resort town.
I found it interesting the way the South American obsession with the European, specifically the Southern Cone identification with the German, comes out in Bolaño’s novel. The theme of German supremacy, alluded to in the title, appears throughout. Udo comes off as arrogant, thinking himself smarter than all of those around him, including his girlfriend who prefers mystery novels to war game articles. Only the German characters in the book actually have proper names, Udo, his girlfriend, the couple they become friends with, and the wife of the owner of the hotel, whom Udo is infatuated with. The Spanish locals, all portrayed as crass and damaged, only have nicknames : el Quemado, the Wolf, and the Lamb.
Late one night, Charly disappears without a trace, and Udo’s well-ordered life is thrown into upheaval; while Ingeborg and Hanna return to their lives in Germany, he refuses to leave the hotel. Soon he and El Quemado are enmeshed in a round of Third Reich, Udo’s favorite World War II strategy game, and Udo discovers that the game’s consequences may be all too real.
The twists and turns in this story make one wonder if Bolaño is playing a game with us, the reader/listener. Are we being manipulated as we are placed in the middle of complex relationships and mysteries?
The novel in audiobook form is read by Simon Vance and is ten hours long on eight compact discs. The story is rich with sensory details, and listening to it on cd made me think that this must be what it was like to listen to radio serials. I think it would be more accessible as an MP3 as opposed to cds. I myself had to struggle to find a cd player. However, I could see someone enjoying the tale on a long flight or series of drives.
Yesterday, It was with great sadness that I read about the death of Puerto Rican author, poet, and inspiration to many – Piri Thomas. According to a release that I received via the National Institute for Latino Policy, Thomas, 83 years old, passed away on Monday, surrounded by his family after struggling with pneumonia.
I, like many, first became aware of Thomas via his book Down These Mean Streets, which looks at life in el barrio (Spanish Harlem, NYC) for a young Afro-Cuban Rican, and how the complex intersections of race, poverty, and urban policies guided him through a struggle that included drugs, prison, activism and art.
I was a teenager when I first read Down these Mean Streets, struggling with my own NYRican identity and what it meant. His words were part of my learning to navigate identity and what to do with my definition of self. I was 18 when I was lucky enough to meet Thomas. I was in college and he was giving a presentation open to the whole school, but those of us in the Latino organization, Solidaridad Latina, were able to have a small intimate lunch with him. At this point I already considered myself a writer and and an activist – although an infant in both of these roles. It was during these meetings that I became exposed to Thomas’s poetry. If Down These Mean Streets is a brutally honest look at gritty realities and painful realities, his poetry is words on bright alas de mariposas offering a new vision for growth and evolution. I was struck by how hopeful and joyful Thomas was. The light he exuded was not in spite of his struggles – it was a direct result of it and he encouraged us all to work through our lives unapologetically and like the title of a poem of his that I always remember – he invited us to be born anew at each a.m.
So gracias Piri – no te digo adios because you live on through your words and your actions that have touched the hearts, minds, and souls of so many – including this NY Rican from Queens.
Charlie Vázquez’s bilingual (English/Spanish) poetry collection, Meditations/Meditaciones – Bronx/Salsa is an impressive one for its varied subject matter rooted in three basic themes: place, identity and the senses that tie us there.
The place is the Bronx but also places left behind and returned to as outsider like Puerto Rico. The identity Vázquez invokes in his poems is that of a son – not just to a father he is estranged from but also the son of multiple islands from which he is also estranged. The senses are physical ones. with poems like The Dance of Life, invoking Taino ancestry and spelling – we hear the origins and evolution of history through Rican/Cuban music and those who made it and move to it. Some of the characters are real living beings. Others are spirits.
The theme of sound and motion permeates the vast collection.
I was really struck by the number of pieces in the collection and the accompanying album list that included classics of salsa. Before I began delving into the poems I wondered if I should use the album list as a sort of soundtrack by which to read the collection. I opted not to after finding it difficult to sense the rhythm of each individual poem when it was competing with Celia Cruz or another salsa great.
Lunes Libro : The Revolution Starts at Home
9:46 am By Maegan La Mala · Activism|Books|Family|Health|Justice|qtpoc|Violence · 2 Comments
18 Jul 2011
The Revolution Starts at Home, edited by Ching-In Cheng, Jai Dulani, & Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha and published by South End Press, is an anthology/handbook/reference based on a zine that breaks the dangerous silence surrounding the “open secret” of intimate violence—by and toward caretakers, in romantic partnerships, and in friendships—within social justice movements.
As an activist, a member of multiple communities, a survivor of violence, and as a mami, I was excited to sit and read this book after hearing and nodding along to excerpts at the packed NYC release at Bluestockings. My pareja and I also wanted to read it as a shared exercise in working through how some of the violence in our previous relationships (movement-wise and personal) impacted how we treated each other. Divided into four sections, the stories, strategies, interviews and poetry seek to confront what usually is spoken about in whispers – how we as people in social justice movements, especially women, transgender, genderqueer people of color deal and are dealt with when there is an issue of violence within our circles. There has been so much talk about safety, accountability and justice when we struggle against institutions and individuals outside of our movement(s) but not enough talk/action about what those same concepts look like, feel like, and how they play out inside. The Revolution Starts at Home seeks to change that.
Lunes Libro : Mi Barrio by Robert Renteria
10:21 am By Maegan La Mala · Books|literature|youth · 7 Comments
4 Jul 2011
Note : This review will be translated into Spanish in a separate post and my hija, 13 year old Mapu, will also be posting her own review since she is the target audience for this comic.
This review was supposed to come out last week and I didn’t want to write it. I struggled with it, holding the following dicho/saying in my head, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”. That dicho goes just as well with the graphic novel, Mi Barrio, by Robert Rentería, published by Smarter Comics.
Renteria’s story is a common meme : boy grows up in the barrio/hood surrounded by unsavory people, does some unsavory things himself, and escapes through the military and good old fashioned capitalist hard work, becoming rich and successful and even buying his mami a car so she doesn’t have to take the awful Los Angeles bus.
This Weekend in NYC : East Harlem Children’s Book Festival
7:59 am By Maegan La Mala · Books|New York City|youth · Comments Off
22 Jun 2011
Saturday, June 25th, 2011
11 am – 3 pm
PS 72/Lexington Academy
131 East 104th Street
New York, NY 10029
See books come alive!
Meet your favorite authors, listen to book readings, participate in art making activities and shop for your favorite titles. Parents, children, teachers and anyone else with a love of children’s books can celebrate diverse cultures with authors, illustrators and artists.
Admission is free and open to the public.
Ve como los libros cobran vida!
Conoce a tus autores favoritos, escucha lecturas de libros, participa en actividades de arte y compra tus libros favoritos! Padres, ninos, maestros y cualquier otra persona enamorada de los libros para ninos estan invitados a celebrar las culturas diversas con autores, ilustradores y artistas.
La entrada es gratuita y abierta al publico.
This Weekend in NYC
8:18 am By Maegan La Mala · Arts|Books|Events|New York City · Comments Off
27 May 2011It’s the first unofficial Summer in NYC weekend and that means plenty to do. Check out some ways to kick off warm weather season that will also feed your head/heart.
Sunday
Lunes Libro : Hey, Shorty!
7:55 am By Maegan La Mala · Books|GLBT|New York City|Violence|Women · 2 Comments
16 May 2011
As a mother with a teenage daughter about to enter the NYC Public High School system, as a woman of color with daughters of color living in New York City sexual harassment and violence is always somewhere on my mind. Sometimes these thoughts determine how I dress, what time I go out, where I go out to, and what streets to walk through or not. As a radical tutor who works with young women of color who are learning inside the NYC public school system and as a daughter who clearly remembers walking home from school in my neighborhood feeling a gauntlet of eyes and words against my body and the shame I felt when receiving my first piropo/catcall while walking with my mom, I was excited and feeling grateful for the release of Hey, Shorty! A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment ad Violence in Schools and on the Streets by Joanna N. Smith. Mandy Van Deven, And Maegan Huppuch of Girls for Gender Equity.
The book follows two paths. One is a narrative path that looks at the process of organizing young woman, primarily of color, first in a public school in Brooklyn and later NYC wide around the issues of sexual harassment and violence experiences daily from the moment they leave their homes to go to school until they return home. The second path, which crosses and overlaps with the first, contains concrete strategies for understanding, confronting, and preventing sexual harassment and violence.
Read more…
Tonight in NYC, Tomorrow in Amherst : The Revolution Starts at Home
9:04 am By Maegan La Mala · Amherst|Books|Canada|Events|Lo Que Hay|New York City|Philly|qtpoc|Violence · Comments Off
14 May 2011
A book that should probably be used as a reference and jump off for critical conversations and growth, The Revolution Starts at Home : Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities, edited by Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is out and on tour.
The anthology took 7 years to pull together and even 7 years ago was long overdue as there are so many struggles within so-called activist spaces about how we treat each other.
“Was/is your abusive partner a high-profile activist? Does your abusive girlfriend’s best friend staff the domestic violence hotline? Have you successfully kicked an abuser out of your group? Did your anti-police brutality group fear retaliation if you went to the cops about another organizer’s assault? Have you found solutions where accountability didn’t mean isolation for either of you? Was the ‘healing circle’ a bunch of bullshit? Is the local trans community so small that you don’t want you or your partner to lose it?
“We wanted to hear about what worked and what didn’t, what survivors and their supporters learned, what they wish folks had done, what they never want to have happen again. We wanted to hear about folks’ experiences confronting abusers, both with cops and courts and with methods outside the criminal justice system.”
— The Revolution Starts at Home collective
Long demanded and urgently needed, The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities finally breaks the dangerous silence surrounding the secret of intimate violence within social justice circles. This watershed collection of stories and strategies tackles the multiple forms of violence encountered right where we live, love, and work for social change — and delves into the nitty-gritty on how we might create safety from abuse without relying on the state. Drawing on over a decade of community accountability work, along with its many hard lessons and unanswered questions, The Revolution Starts at Home offers potentially life-saving alternatives for creating survivor safety while building a movement where no one is left behind.
For more information:
http://southendpress.org/2010/items/87941
http://revolutionathome.tumblr.com/
revathome@gmail.com
For all of you Northeast Coasters, there are opportunities to meet some of the editors, hear from the book, and engage in conversation about why this book and where from here. Mala will be at the NYC release tonight so please stay tuned to our twitter account for live-tweets (as permitted). Read more…
It’s National Poetry Month! In the past we have posted poems by Latino and Latin American Poets. This year, besides writing my own poetry, I am also going to highlight a few notable poetry collections I have on my bookshelf and have not yet reviewed.
Are there rainbows in New York after the storm?
This is the question Cuban poet Orlando Ferrand leaves of with at the end of the first poem sharing the name of his first published collection, Citywalker. Reading through the 49 poem collection is to accompany the citywalker, perhaps Ferrand himself, perhaps urban migrants like you or your friends and neighbors, on a journey to find the answer to the question first proposed.
Ferrand’s poems take us walking on water, both lyrically and in terms of setting between two islands. Cuba is wrapped in memory and longing as exemplified by Family Landscapes. Water surrounds islands and surround Citywalker through setting and metaphor. New York City is an encrypted map where the citywalker searches for love but first finds lust and loneliness.
From No Man’s Land:
Narcissus, homeboy
drowning into my eyes
I’ve been looking for the tempest
haunting Harlem’s brown stone palaces.
Citywalker can also be seen as a poetic narrative of Latino gay life in NYC. For example there is a poem which references the life and death of Andre Melendez aka the club kid Angel Melendez and other references to imagined and real gay life in the 80′s and 90′s.
Support independent Latino writer’s.
You can purchase Citywalker here and read the rainbows for yourself.
Hola!
VivirLatino is a daily publication published by Mamita Mala Media, dedicated to featuring all the latest politics, culture, entertainment of interest to the diverse Latin@ diaspora.
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