THE LATINA BOOK CLUB

When I am singing to you, on earth all evil ends: as smooth as your forehead are the gulch and the bramble. ---“Serenity” a poem by Gabriela Mistral WHEN I AM SINGING TO YOU —whose title comes from a poem by the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral—is a coming of age story about a poor Latina heroine. Carmen, is way too young at 13 to face all life throws at her – poverty, slave labor, abandonment, homelessness – but with courage, strength of character and loyalty, she navigates the tragedies of her life and comes out a winner. Carmen is a great character, and the main reason why this book won the 2012 Best Young Adult E-Book Award from the International Latino Book Awards, and was named one of the "16 Essential Latino Children's Books” by ¿Qué Más?, the blog for MamásLatinas, the leading bilingual online site for Hispanic moms. This book is well-written, heart-warming and quick to engage the Adult reader. NOTE: This novel is labeled ...

The Latina Book Club's mission is to promote Latina / Latino authors, which we do through book reviews, author interviews, publicity announcements, book of the month selections, etc.  A new feature we are adding is "Writers Wednesdays."  The first Wednesday of each month we will feature a Latina / Latino writer talking about .....writing.   Enjoy! HOW I WROTE MY SECOND NOVEL, THE HONEYEATER by Yolanda A. Reid Writing, for me, is like breathing air. I always wrote little stories and poems as a child. We had lots of books in our home. My mom was a college professor, so during the summers she'd bring home boxes of books (literally) for us to read and have our fill. So in junior high and high school I read numerous books—especially in the summertime—as I wrote in my diaries. This, not surprisingly, turned out to be extremely beneficial for me as a writer. For that way, I practiced and fine-tuned my writing. Then, when I was about 19 years old, I wrot...

Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was often referred to as "The People's Poet."  He was world reknown for his poetry and writing, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.  Neruda also always wrote in green ink, as it was his personal color of hope. To honor Pablo Neruda and in celebration of National Poetry Month, this month's book selection is his INTIMACIES: POEMS OF LOVE.  Below is one of my favorite Neruda poems.  Please share your favorite poem with us by leaving a comment below.  ---mcf ALWAYS I am not jealous of what came before me. Come with a man on your shoulders, come with a hundred men in your hair, come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet, come like a river full of drowned men which flows down to the wild sea, to the eternal surf, to Time! Bring them all to where I am waiting for you; we shall always be alone, we shall always be you and I alone on earth, to start ou...

    BEYOND THE TIES OF BLOOD By Florencia Mallon Pegasus Books June 6, 2012 In the tradition of Kiran Desai’s THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS and Julia Alvarez’s IN THE TIME OF BUTTERFLIES, BEYOND THE TIES OF BLOOD is a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit and the transcendence of family. “Sometimes, one moment, one thing said or not said, done or not done, it changes everything. And not always for the better….Truth is that way sometimes. It can hurt more than a lie.” –Tonia Mallon has written a powerful story about truth and reconciliation. The characters are memorable, the action intense and the emotional impact enormous. Readers will cringe and cry and cheer. Set amid Chile’s violent 1973 military coup, BEYOND THE TIES OF BLOOD will both move you and frighten you. It’s about family, loyalty, politics, community, violence, despair, hope, but most of all, it’s about survival – and not just survival of the victim, but of the victims’ loved ones as well. ...

Adults will love this young adult book too. It’s a fictionalized account of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s childhood. Munoz Ryan has a beautiful, whimsical, lyrical style that enchants and entrances the reader immediately. And, the illustrations by Peter Sis are brilliant and magical and happily make Munoz Ryan’s words dance and spin off the page into reader’s hearts. A LITTLE BACKGROUND : Munoz Ryan went on vacation to Chile and happened to visit Pablo Neruda’s house. She was back in the states at a book signing when a fellow author told her a story about how Neruda always carried a little sheep, which was given to him by a secret friend across his backyard fence. Neruda had that sheep for a long time until he lost it in a fire, and thereafter, wherever he went, he would look in shops and toy stores for another little sheep just like it. That story so intrigued Munoz Ryan that she began researching Neruda’s childhood and soon the idea for THE DREAMER took hold. Observant readers...