THE LATINA BOOK CLUB

    "La vida le pone situaciones por delante a las personas y no queda más que afrontarlas con entereza por debíl que uno crea que es."   //   "Life places people in difficult situations and the only recourse is to face them head-on no matter how weak one feels." --Ramona   ¡El que persevera triumfa! // He who perseveres triumphs!       ¡A ESTUDIAR, CARAJO! may be a short book -- 56 pages! -- put it packs a wallop.   Ana Maria Gonzalez' novel is about female empowerment; about perseverance; about overcoming all obstacles with determination and hard work.   It's about the immigrant experience; about racism; about tolerance; about survival. It's about being a woman, a mother, a student, a worker.   This novel is in Spanish.   It's written in the third person and is mostly narrative, but it contains a lot of action, a lot of living.   ¡A ESTUDIAR, CARAJO! is inspiring, empowering, and makes you want to cheer the protagonist and

    The Latina Book Club welcomes authors Luigi A. Juarez and Jonathan Marcantoni.   We want to congratulate Luigi on the debut of his first book, COVERED PACES, from Editorial Trance, last month; and, many thanks to Jonathan for sharing this interview. Luigi A. Juarez Jonathan Marcantoni: How would you describe your style? What is the story behind this book?       Luigi A. Juarez: My writing style leans literary (that is, away from the style of most genre fiction). I teach and study canonical works of literature as a career so I think that makes me subconsciously prefer the freshness of language (phrases and descriptions) over making sure I hit all the watchwords that plot the perfect action scene.  It’s funny, I was at a point where I was writing three short stories at once. The first was a Hollywood satire, the second was a fantastical tale, and the third, a domestic dispute, visceral and ultra-realistic. There was a woman in each of those, and I quickly re

What I didn’t understand—what I suddenly realized now—was that if I stopped moving backwards, trying to recapture the past, there might be a future waiting for me, waiting for us, a future that would reveal itself if only I turned around and looked, and that once I did, I could start to move toward it. –ALMA Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher THE BOOK OF UNKNOWN AMERICANS by Cristina Henriquez sounded like a scholarly tome full of statistics and pie charts.  It is anything but.  This is a masterfully written story about family, about love at first sight, about helping thy neighbor, about living in a new world, about survival.  What’s most intriguing is the format used by Henriquez to tell her story.   Every chapter is from a different character’s point of view.   Each chapter is its own story.   One would think that all the different points of view, all the different stories would clash, but instead Henriquez has cleverly and skillfully woven these stories to give us one