THE LATINA BOOK CLUB

    The Latina Book Club is proud to welcome author Graciela Limón ,  who will tell us how she celebrates her Latinidad. Plus, we’ll learn about her new suspense novel,  THE INTRIGUING LIFE OF XIMENA GODOY. When I was a little girl growing up in East Los Angeles, I loved school.  You see, I went to Hammel Street School, a public grammar school that had been there since forever, and even better, it was a school where all the kids were Mexican.  Most of us were born in the barrio, but others had recently come up with their familias from Mexico.  But it was all the same; we all spoke Spanish – on the sly, of course, because the teachers scolded or punished us when they caught us talking, as they said, “funny.”  Another thing I loved was that kids took a lunch in a little brown bag, many times exchanging that delicious gordita for a burrito.  I loved school because it was hardly a change from home where I lived with my mom, dad and two brothers in a house on a street wh

    ¡Río Grande de Loíza!… Mi manantial, mi río, desde que alzome al mundo el pétalo materno; Río Grande de Loíza!… My wellspring, my river since the maternal petal lifted me to the world.                         ---Julia de Burgos, Río Grande de Loíza Illinois University Press How many of us have heard of Julia de Burgos but never read any of her poetry?  How many of us have heard of how she died and was buried in a potter’s field, but never realized the extent of her influence? Professor Vanessa Pérez-Rosario has written a new book on Julia de Burgos’ life and her place in Puerto Rican culture.   Julia de Burgos was a poet and activist.   Her influence spread in the 1930s when the nationalist movement on the island was run by men to the Nuyorican writers of the 1970s to today’s modern writers who have adopted Julia as their lost mentor, their lost sister.   SUMMARY:   Becoming Julia de Burgos   departs from the prevailing emphasis on the poet a