12:36 pm By Maegan La Mala · Books|GLBT|literature|New York City · Comments Off
13 Dec 2010
Regular readers of VivirLatino will know that not only am I Editor here but I am also a poet. For two years now, I have proudly participated in the Hispanic PANIC! Reading series, housed at Nowhere here in NYC and and curated by author and friend to VL, Charlie Vázquez.
Charlie has done such an amazing job at bringing together talented, diverse word artists of and for the queer community that he decided to put some of their work, as heard during the literary series, in a book!
Released just in time for the holidays, the anthology features over thirty new voices and yes, mine is included.
You can get your own copy and one for someone you love here.
9:06 am By BiancaLaureano · Books|Women · 2 Comments
23 Apr 2010Ivy League Homegirl Sofia Quintero has published her first Young Adult (YA) novel and it is in stores now! Sofia is also my homegirl and I’ve read all her books including this one (excerpts from an interview we had forthcoming). EFRAIN’S SECRET is the story of Efrain, a Puerto Rican-Dominican high school senior living in the South Bronx and preparing for graduation from the Pedro Albizu Campos HS and seeking and Ivy League education. Here’s the book synopsis from the publisher’s website:
Ambitious high school senior Efrain Rodriguez dreams of escaping the South Bronx for an Ivy League college like Harvard or Yale. But how is his family going to afford to pay for a prestigious university when Moms has to work insane hours to put food on the table as it is? And Efrain wouldn’t dare ask that good-for-nothing father of his who has traded his family in for younger models. Left with few options, Efrain chooses to do something he never thought he would. He embarks on a double life—honor student by day, drug peddler at night—convinced that by temporarily capitulating to society’s negative expectations of a boy like him, he can eventually defy them.
Sofia Quintero makes a stunning debut writing for young adults with this gritty, complex, and real exploration of the life of an urban teen whose attempt to leave one world behind for a better one could cost him everything.
10:08 am By BiancaLaureano · Books|children|Education|Haiti|history|Media · 1 Comment
20 Jan 2010Have you considered how you are talking with the children and youth around you about Haiti? Are you looking to read books written by Haitian authors*? Then this information is for you! My homegirl Aiesha, media maker and creator behind Super Hussy Media, sent this link to amazing age-appropriate resources (for all ages) for those people who are instructors/educators or parents/mentors who seek to learn how to teach about Haiti. There are also great resources for self-education regarding Haiti.
If you are a professor I encourage you, and echo Prof. Susurro, to consider doing a Teach In regarding Haiti. Here’s an example of one going on in NYC at the Brecht Forum.
*Shameless plug for my NYC Caribbean book club called Date With A Book. If you are seeking authors I encourage you to check out the books we have read and are going to read or contact the creator Marcia directly. Tell her you found out about the book club from me!
Belinda Acosta’s Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz could be labeled a chica lit book for it’s focus on the life of one woman as a mother, wife, and worker. Pero given all the Spanglish (more than I ever use) and the centering of the story as a Latino one, let’s call it chica lit.
The story centers around Ana Ruiz, named in the title, a mujer who is a high level administrator at a university struggling to balance her life raising her two teenage children, Diego and Carmen, after separating from her husband, Esteban. Diego is dealing with the separation better than his sister Carmen, escaping into his music and into his role as “man of the house” in his father’s absence. Carmen, on the other hand, a “daddy’s girl”, isn’t as accepting, and taker out her anger at her mother. Ana, desperate to make peace with her only daughter decides that a quinceñera, or “sweet fifteen” if you will, will help to bring them all closer.
Claro, it wouldn’t have drama in the title if it all worked out. I won’t spoil the book for you, but there is mental illness, love children, miscarriages, and a sexy artist manchild.
10:00 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Books|children · Comments Off
16 Nov 2009
This is Poroto’s (my toddler) new favorite book, the recently released by Workman Spanish translation, Al Galope! by Rufus Butler Seder.
Warning : blatant use of my kid ahead
Poroto Peeps Al Galope from VivirLatino on Vimeo.
What makes Al Galope! so much fun for the pre-school set (the ideal age for this book, in my opinion) is it features animals and what they do, adding a touch of a self-esteem in it’s final pages. But what sets this book apart and even had my 12 year old saying “that’s cool” is its use of “scanimation”, a mix of optical illusion and animation that makes the animals “move”. The author explains it best.
9:24 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Books|Culture|Latin America|Obama|Politics|Venezuela · 1 Comment
19 Apr 2009The Eduardo Galeano book that Hugo Chavez gave President Obama yesterday, “The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent”, has gone from an Amazon rank of 54,295 to number 2 today. Hey, not bad in just over 24 hours, and if this gets Americans to understand the history of the U.S. and Europe in Latin America, all the better.
Check out the interview with Chavez above where he talks about giving the book to Obama and how apparently awesome his meeting with the U.S. president was.
Via / AP
2:29 pm By Maegan La Mala · Bizarro|Books|Brazil|Colombia|Controversia · 3 Comments
14 Apr 2008
Next time you’re about to take a trip, you might want to think twice before you pick up a Lonely Planet guidebook. Apparently at least one guidebook author thought it was OK to write about countries he’d never visited, among them Colombia:
A former Lonely Planet travel writer who provoked controversy after he admitted he did not always visit the places he reviewed today played down the “hyperbole” surrounding his revelations.Thomas Kohnstamm’s book Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? contains tales of living with a prostitute, dealing drugs and in one case, writing about Colombia, without actually visiting the country.
“They didn’t pay me enough to go to Colombia,” he told Australia’s Sunday Herald Sun newspaper.
“I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating who was in an intern in the Colombian consulate.”
Kohnstamm told the paper he had worked on more than a dozen books for Lonely Planet, including their titles on Brazil, Colombia, the Caribbean, South America, Venezuela and Chile.
The author claims that as a writer, it just isn’t possible to visit all the places you are asked to write about because you aren’t paid enough. Lonely Planet is denying that similar white lies are being told in any of their other guidebooks.
Via / Guardian
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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