| | |  Entertainment | Books | January 2009 
Floricanto Press New Titles
 Floricanto Press
go to original
Matadores: Latino Bullfighters en el Ruedo de Toros
By Dale Pierce. ISBN: 978-1-888205-07-7
Matadores is a unique, solid, and authoritative collective biography covering the career of various Latino and a few American toreros, who performed in the old Plaza Monumental de Toros of Ciudad Juárez over the plaza’s five decades of operation. This detailed reference book includes over 200 biographies of matadores, novilleros, rejoneadores, picadores, banderilleros and even a handful of writers who were regulars in the plaza. There is an ample selection of both famous and not-so-famous names.
Matadores is not only an authoritative reference source of toreros Latinos, but it also pays homage to the arte taurina, las faenas, to both bullfighter and bulls, to the extraordinary men who have kept and still keep alive an ancestral Hispanic cultural tradition.
Por culpa de Candela
By Teresa Dovalpage. ISBN: 978-1-888205-15-2
This is a collection of Cuban American short-stories. The island of Cuba, absent or present. That one, which some want desperately to escape from; the island that many dream to return to. Cuba is the common denominator to these fourteen shot stories of love and of love betrayed.
Esta colección de relatos tiene un hilo conductor y un común denominador que es Cuba. La isla ausente o presente; la isla de la que algunos quieren escapar; la isla a la que otros sueñan con regresar. En los catorce cuentos de Teresa Dovalpage hay desengaños amorosos —tarros pegados en vernáculo. Hay amistades traicionadas, abuelas desvirgadoras de mozos no muy tímidos y viejecitas al parecer ingenuas que se quitan, muertas de risas, sus máscaras de ovejas al final. Y no puede olvidarse una vena mexicana que se filtra en los textos, nutriendo con tequila y corridos a la corriente isleña. El fantasma legendario y rechoncho de José Lezama Lima asoma el tabaco en un cuento mientras que en otro, una chica golpeada aprende a defenderse a cucharazos limpios. Pero en todos campea por sus respetos el caimán caribeño de la obsesión.
MARIPOSAS: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry
By Emanuel Xavier, Editor. ISBN: 978-0979645-79-2 176 p.
“Whether straight, bisexual, closeted or openly gay, Latino voices have made a deep mark in the poetry scene. Despite distinction in style, dialect, and customs within the Latino mosaic, our voices have been unified by a determination to be heard. Much like poetry in general, whether academic or self-taught, the need to express ourselves cannot be restricted within borders. Whatever language transferred between pen and paper, it is imperative to share our experiences with the world at large.”
Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino is a ground-breaking poetry collection edited by Emanuel Xavier. The collection features the work of 17 poets from across the United States and Buenos Aires including: Francisco Aragon, Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano, Brandon Lacy Campos, Dino Foxx, Andres “Chulisi” Rodriguez, Urayoan Noel, Yosimar Reyes, Robert Ortiz, Walter Viegas, Joe Jimenez, Will Sierra, Rane Arroyo, Pol Ajenjo, Daniel Torres, Carlos T. Mock, M.D., Xuan Carlos Espinoza-Cuellar and Emanuel Xavier. Featured poems are published in English and Spanglish with several translated into or from Spanish. FloricantoPress.com/
Brotherhood of the Light: A novel of the Penitentes and Crypto-Jews of New Mexico
By Ray Michael Baca. 0-915745-66-6
A novel about the un-easy and often misunderstood relationships of Crypto-Jews and Hispanos in New Mexico and their deep common roots in Spanish history--conquest and colonization--and religious faith and shared values.
Brotherhood of the Light follows the lives of three men from one family who lived in different centuries but were inexorably bound by the legacy of a cross that was brought from the Old World to the New. A relic that had come to prominence at the battle for Granada, when Spain united to expel the Moors. Descendants of Sephardic Jews who fled the Inquisition in Spain, the family joined Los Hermanos Penitentes. This secretive society of lay Catholic men in Northern New Mexico, who believe in emulating Christ’s Passion, his trial, his walk, and his suffering on the cross at the end of each Lenten season, was used for a dozen generations as a shield by the family to disguise their Crypto-Jewish identity while they struggled with the legacy bestowed upon them. FloricantoPress.com/
Las Niñas: A Collection of Childhood Memories
By Sarah Rafael García ISBN: 978-1-888205-09-1
Las Niñas is a collection of autobiographical childhood memories of three Mexican-American sisters. It recounts their struggles while being raised as the first generation born in America of their Mexican family. Las Niñas portrays common situations that immigrant families can relate to through their own process of cultural assimilation. Each chapter is a different childhood memory celebrating culture, life and change through humor and self-reflection. Its creative style and unique display of a child's perception will entice many genres of readers and provide insight on the possible challenges that many recent immigrants face with their family's new generation in America. The childhood memories lightly touch on issues of immigration, learning English as a second language and assimilating into the American culture. Las Niñas reveals the most humorous, intimate and traumatic events that occurred as Sarita, Chuchen and Nini grew up in their family's new country, ultimately providing the foundation for surviving their father's death at such a young age. Andrea Alessandra, Northwestern University.
Comprende?: The Significance of Spanish in English-Only Times
By Steven W Bender, ISBN: 978-1-888205-08-4 268 pgs.
Today, the contentious issue of Latino immigration has spurred backlash efforts to anoint English as the official language in federal and state government to the exclusion of Spanish and other languages, than English. Even cities have weighed in to restrict the legitimacy of Spanish in local government affairs. Last century, European immigrant groups stood accused of failing to assimilate in the American melting pot. But while European immigration has slowed, Latino immigration has surged. This steady immigration, combined with the geographical proximity that brought Latinos into the Southwest long before Anglo immigrants, assures a different cultural dynamic for Latinos than for other groups. The centuries of continued Latino occupation and then immigration have forged a unique, shared destiny between the United States and Mexico, as well as other Latin American countries. U.S. history has hosted more than a casual sharing of Mexican recipes in the kitchen; rather, a passionate and lively mating of cultures-Latino and "American." Foremost among these cultural exchanges is the influence of the Spanish language in the United States. With a foothold of several centuries, and the recent propulsion of mass media and pop culture, Spanish has significantly entered the American mainstream through the open and receptive borders of the English language. Taking a lighter view of the current anti-immigrant frenzy, this book offers considerable and colorful examples of the historical and current cross-pollination of the English and Spanish languages in settings ranging from geography to culture and cuisine. FloricantoPress.com/
Dictatorship: The Imposition of U.S. Culture on Latin America Through Translation
By Peter A. Neissa. ISBN: 978-1-888205-10-7 304 Pgs.
This book focuses on how a dictator or a culturally dominant power can use language to impose cultural values. As an instrument of power, language is used by a dictator to educate, induce, or manipulate a nation's citizens into acting in accordance with the ruling power's cultural values and beliefs. Jorge Zalamea's El Gran Burundún-Burundá ha muerto, Gabriel García Márquez's El otoño del patriarca, and Mario Vargas Llosa's La fiesta del Chivo draw attention to how the use of the vernacular can resist cultural imposition by employing specific words in order to represent its own culture and nature of reality. The original significance of these words is then altered in the translated text creating a new meaning determined by the dictator's or translator's ideology and usage. The new words that have substituted the original ones reveal how the construction of language defines relationships of power and resistance between a dictator and his nation, or between one culture and another, such as the relations of the United States over Latin America. The analysis of this relationship will provide an understanding of how language functions as an instrument for the imposition of power to gain or maintain cultural or political supremacy. Peter A. Neissa was born in Bogota, Colombia, and received a Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies from Boston College and a Masters from Harvard University. erican Literature, Director, Latin American Studies, Boston College.
Dónde más si no en el Paraíso
By Vicente Cabrera Funes ISBN 978-1-888205-11-4 176 pages.
Vicente Cabrera Funes´s latest work of fiction, Dónde más si no en el Paraíso, consists of two novellas, "Dalia" and "Suana en el Paraíso." A major theme of the two is the clash of cultures, expertly portrayed by the author who himself was born in Latin America and has resided in the United States (el Paraíso) for many years.Cabrera's novellas will challenge his readers to discover the underlying irony and tragedy his characters encounter as they struggle to survive in a racially divided, violent and unjust "paradise." George R. McMurray Professor Emeritus Colorado State University.
El escenario de las dos novelas de que consta el nuevo libro de Vicente Cabrera Funes, Dónde más si no en el Paraíso, es un Estados Unidos que tiene poco de paradisiaco. La orfandad literal y metafórica y la cuestión de la identidad son temas principales de la primera narración, Dalia, cuyo personaje titular no sabe si identificarse como vietnamita o americana. La protagonista de la segunda narración, Suana en el Paraíso, también asiática, tiene un doctorado en psicología pero sus estudios y sus aportes a "este país de maravillas" no la protegen de la campaña de persecución lanzada contra ella. En este caso el narrador es un amigo de Suana pero no se compromete a ayudarla casándose con ella y así resolver sus problemas con el Departamento de Inmigración. La protesta contra la intolerancia, la discriminación que sufren los "intrusos" extranjeros y las muchas vejaciones de las que son víctimas es más fuerte en esta narración donde resulta que el tan cacareado sueño americano es, para muchos, pesadilla. Kathleen Glenn Wake Forest University. FloricantoPress.com/
Raw Silk Suture
By Lisa Alvarado. ISBN: 978-1-888205-06-0
Alvarado's call for "a quiet remaking of cells" is nothing short of revolutionary. Read this book, look at yourself and the world around you and know: anything is possible. Demetria Martínez author, Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana In some respects, this is stark work. "These are nightmare words," says one of Lisa Alvarado's speakers, and it seems so: "Soon the fists will come, soon the belt"-spurring one to yearn for alternative connections: "I want so much to braid myself to him." Or compel us toward acute observation where "each day, / I watched / your small suicides." And yet we sense, finally, that "world is word / word is my body"-that is: language, sculpted, can console "from a place that is tender, deeply so," as in the moving portrait, "La Perdida," that closes this collection. Simply put, Raw Silk Suture is "a scar / that has / become a flower." Francisco Aragón Editor, The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry Founding Editor, Latino Poetry Review (LPR) Lisa Alvarado is a poet, performer, and installation artist, focusing on identity, spirit, and the body. She is the recipient of grants from the Department of Cultural Affairs, The NEA, and the Ragdale Foundation. Lisa is also developing an ambitious trilogy of performance pieces, whose themes are the culture of violence, popular culture and personal redemption She's also a journalist, contributing reviews and interviews to La Bloga, and Blogcritics.org. Her website - LisaAlvarado.net
CINCO DE MAYO: An Illustrated History
By Cabello-Argandoña, Roberto. Nuestra Historia Series. 208 pgs. ISBN: 978-1-888205-05-6 Includes illus. and biblio.
It presents an illustrated narrative probing the historical, political and international factors that led to the Battle of Puebla of 1862 from pre-Independence to the War of In dependence, international conflicts, War of Reform and the subsequent political and economic crisis of Mexico. It covers the political crisis in Mexico and the United States, itself in the midst of a civil war, and the somber prospects of foreign invasion in Mexico by three major world powers, Spain, Britain and France. It examines the question of the foreign debt, the allied invasion in Mexico in 1861, the subsequent departure of the Spanish and British forces and the extent of the French Intervention. It provides a most detailed account of the forces and activities of the French and Mexican sides, during the last three days before, the day of and the day after the battle itself. Examines also the inspiring history of a triumphant Chicano general, Ignacio Zaragoza, (1829-1862), born in a period of international conflicts and forced to flee from his home as a youth because of the American settler's revolt in Texas in 1836. It includes nine patriotic poems (Spanish-English parallel text) written in California between 1864 and 1865 commemorating CINCO DE MAYO and published for the first time in monographic form. Unquestionably, this is the definitive history book on The Battle of Puebla on the Cinco de Mayo, 1862.
Esperanza: A Latina story
By Sandra C. Chávez. ISBN: 978-0-9796457-8-5. 356 pgs.
Fourteen-year old Esperanza Ignacio could only think of a few words to sum up her life: crap, man, crap! She was born into a poor Latino family living in a small crummy apartment in the barrio side of town, where the graffiti chiseled more the souls and character of the residents than it impacted the exterior looks of the buildings or anything else. Her father was a drunkard, gambler, and wife-beater who, one cold night, got arrested after a violent intrusion. Her entire circle of relatives consisted of nothing but formers—former drug-addicts, former gangsters and gang-bangers, former alcoholics, former everything. Yep, her life was nothing but a huge load of crap. And she hadn’t even started high school yet.
After surviving a scorching summer heat, Esperanza enters the unfamiliar world of high-school with a tight knot in her stomach. On the very first day, she is sucked into a blunder of catastrophic events beginning with accidentally running into the world’s BIGGEST bully. And it definitely wasn’t an understatement either. Now, she has made herself the prime target for a main course. And, to top it all off, she has to see this girl everyday in P.E! P.E.—the one class Esperanza truly despises the most. Could life be any worse for her? Well, her family could take in a relative hopped up on drugs, a probable shooting can take place right in front of her, and Esperanza could also sit and listen to the crazed ranting of her loud psychotic mother. Oh, wait, all that does happen.
To make things even easier, her best friend, Carla, won’t stop trying to marry her off to her twin brother, Carlos. And she has these two puny siblings constantly vying for her attention. God, it’s a wonder she doesn’t strap herself in a straight jacket and pretend to be Elvis.
Nonetheless, Esperanza attempts to get through it all. She is a smart and ambitious young kid struggling to survive her life while fighting to make her mark on the world. Her story is filled with pain, strength, and too much loud bickering. It carries a voice enriched with barrio slang and sarcastic humor. Esperanza illustrates what a persistent Latino youth can achieve when they get back up after a fall and keep on walking straight into college. FloricantoPress.com/ |
|
| |
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us