THE LATINA BOOK CLUB

     There are so many good, memorable, inspiring memoirs that it was difficult to choose only 14.   Please feel free to add your favorites to this list.---mcf 1)       RITA MORENO: A MEMOIR by Rita Moreno 2)       HANDBOOK FOR AN UNPREDICTABLE LIFE by Rosie Perez 3)       TAKE THIS MAN: A MEMOIR  by Brando Skyhorse 4)       A CUP OF WATER UNDER MY BED by Daisy Hernandez 5)       CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK BURNER by Lucha Corpi 6)       THE CLOSER by Mariano Rivera 7)       SHATTERED PARADISE:   MEMOIRS OF A NICARAGUAN WAR CHILD by Ileana Araguti 8)       WHEN I WAS PUERTO RICAN by Esmeralda Santiago 9)       DOWN THESE MEAN STREETS by Piri Thomas 10)    ALMOST WHITE: F...

  It's Memoir Week here at The Latina Book Club .   Do let us know which memoirs/biographies you would add to our list. Happy Reading.   Simon & Schuster "At least it's never boring." --Mami's favorite saying   Brando Skyhorse's memoir is at times funny, poignant and simply outrageous. Imagine growing up thinking you are an American Indian -- Mami's good intentions aside! -- and   then learning that your whole life was a lie, that you are really a Mexican.   TAKE THIS MAN is Skyhorse's search for his true identity and his real father. BOOK SUMMARY:     When he was three years old, Brando Kelly Ulloa was abandoned by his Mexican father. His mother, Maria, dreaming of a more exciting life, saw no reason for her son to live his life as a Mexican just because he started out as one. The life of “Brando Skyhorse,” the American Indian son of an incarcerated political activist, was about to begin. Through a series of letters to...

     “We slipped into this country like thieves, unto the land that once was ours.” “People don’t understand miracles. They expect too much from them. Sometimes, a miracle is best when it is you that sees, and God that knows.” THE MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK Brando Skyhorse Free Press, 2010 THE MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK is not so much about the immigrant experience, as it’s about finding and holding onto the American Dream. Skyhorse’s characters are already in America. The old country has been left in the past; now, their only focus is to make a place, a home for themselves in this new land, a land that was “once theirs.” The story is told in vignettes – quick peeks into the lives of the people of Echo Park. A Madonna MTV video makes the L.A. neighborhood famous; a drive by shooting makes it infamous. The stories are interconnected and revolve around the Esperanza family, as they struggle to fit into the community and into society as a whole. There’s Hector, an illeg...