THE LATINA BOOK CLUB

  The Latina Book Club is doing something different for Valentine’s Day .  We bring you an interview with Juana Velasco  the Heroine of MELT WITH YOU by S.E. Lewinski. We wanted some friendly romance advice.     Juana is a tough, sassy, street-smart, food truck loving, proud Mexican woman. She has a great sense of humor and doesn’t let anything get her down, not being poor, not being fired again!, and not finding Mr. Right. It takes work and “huge fricking cojones,” but Juana makes her dreams come true and opens her own nail salon. Her success brings prosperity to her family, gives her brothers new purpose, and makes Taco, her furry partner, an overnight sensation. The search for Mr. Right might be over if Antoine gives her a second chance.  Our fingers are crossed for Juana!  Read Chapter 1 by clicking here .     Q&A WITH JUANA Latina Book Club: Have you heard from Antoine? How is the long distance romance with your undercov...

by Maria Ferrer The Latina Book Club reserves Fridays for Book Covers. YES, we do judge books by their cover. Covers are so much fun, and often give clues as to what the book is truly about.  Today we are looking at the book covers from Lee E. Cart ’s The Mayan Chronicles.        Clearly the author is experimenting with covers given the radically different styles. One is a very sharply focused photograph, the second a colorful drawing. We prefer the photo on Book 1, because it’s a crisp image that grabs the attention, especially with those sharp teeth. Cover 1 (BORN IN THE WAYEB) says jungle, mystery, ruthlessness, ancient prophecies, and shouts danger. We’re getting images of that old Mel Gibson movie, Apocalypto , and the foreign film Embrace of the Serpent . Our hero is in for dark and perilous times. Cover 2 (RISE OF THE JAGUAR WOMAN) is more of an amateurish cover, but it conveys an image of female power in tune with the elements, with nature. We lo...

Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz is incontestably Latin America's foremost beloved poet.  THE COLLECTED POEMS OF OCTAVIO PAZ (New Directions) is a landmark bilingual gathering of all the poetry he has published in book form since 1952, the year of his premier long poem,  Sunstone  ( Piedra de Sol )―here translated anew by Eliot Weinberger―made its appearance.  Here’s an excerpt: a sudden presence like a burst of song, like the wind singing in a burning building, a glance that holds the world and all its seas and mountains dangling in the air, body of light filtered through an agate, thighs of light, belly of light, the bays, the solar rock, cloud-colored body, color of a brisk and leaping day, the hour sparkles and has a body, the world is visible through your body, transparent through your transparency. -- Sunstone , Octavio Paz ABOUT THE AUTHOR:    Octavio Paz  (1914-1998) was born in Mexico City...

Agora / Polis Everything changes here and  everything stays the same.  --Viridiana Desire. Glamour. Dreams. Deceit.   One hot summer. One bored teenager. Three enigmatic tourists. Viridiana is bored and tired of watching the local fishermen bring in their catch. Anything is better than staring at dead sharks so when three tourists show up in town, Viridiana welcomes being their guide.   She is enthralled at their glamorous lives, clothes, manners. But then one of them dies and Viridiana is soon caught up in shark infested waters of her own.   We loved this book. It’s suspenseful, compelling and a fast read.  We couldn’t stop until we knew the ending. SUMMARY:   Baja California, 1979. Viridiana spends her days watching the dead sharks piled beside the seashore, as the fishermen pull their nets. There is nothing else to do, nothing else to watch, under the harsh sun. She’s bored. Terribly bored. Yet her head is filled...

ABRAMS PRESS The brotherhood of Beast Riders is lifting me in a huge hum of instructions, with great ferocity of purpose, with a kind of love new to me.    Love that says , Stranger, we are in this together. --Manuel The Latina Book Club is proud to be a blogger reviewer for Multicultural Children’s Book Day – January 31, 2020.   This year’s book review is of the BEAST RIDER by Tony Johnston and Maria Elena Fontanot de Rhoads (Abrams Press).   Views expressed are our own.  Haunting. Inspiring. Genuine.    BEAST RIDER is a harrowing, thrilling, and emotional ride fraught with danger and hope.   It’s one boy’s journey across the border to reconnect with his long lost brother. This very realistic tale is about love, courage, family and growing up fast. It’s also frightening because it can – and does! -- happen.   Young boys – girls, adults, elders – do ride “The Beast,” the fast moving train from Mexico tow...

The virgins are here to prove a point.                                                   Do You Speak Virgin? The Latina Book Club is pleased to announce its Book of the Month – VIRGIN: POEMS by Analicia Sotelo.   And, since April is Poetry Month, our selection is very apropos. Milkweed Editions Dynamic. Sensuous. Mythic. Authentic. VIRGIN celebrates the power of women, and will resonate with many.   Little girls start as virgins and grow into women, brides, mothers.   This book, these poems are all about that growth; about all the things important to women --- feminism, sex, womanhood, family, culture, religion.   There’s love and loss, happiness and betrayal, reflection and self-discovery.   In her poem, Do You Speak Virgin?, with which Analicia opens her book, the narrator thinks of herself as a ...

    The Latina Book Club congratulates Linda LaRoche on her first book.   DUST UNTO SHADOW is the story of immigrants returning to their homeland and not being as welcomed as they thought they’d be.   Linda has gracious shared an excerpt with us via video.  Enjoy! EXCERPT!   To hear an excerpt read by the author, click here . Q: Congratulations on your first book. We understand your grandmother and mom inspired the book. Tell us how? What is the book about? LINDA LAROCHE:  My mother inspired the book and her immediate family. From the time I was a child I had an interest in genealogy and would ask my parents and grandmothers questions about their growing up years. In the early 1990's while living in Berlin, I had the opportunity to explore my creativity- I trained as a method actor and made a living from having a small part on a television series and commercials, A friend suggested that we do our genealogy throu...

   Every Wednesday The Latina Book Club features excerpts from exciting novels by Latino authors.   Happy Reading and Happy Holidays! Take a break from your holiday shopping! Find a comfy chair, grab a mojito and lose yourself in this thrilling and hair-raising novel about Acapulco’s first female detective, Emilia Cruz, who’s taking on Mexico’s drug cartels and the culture of machismo. Good thing she can take the heat.  Can you?!  KING PESO: AN EMILIA CRUZ NOVEL By Carmen Amato CreateSpace EXCERPT The reunion in the squad room was less than overwhelming. Loyola was gone, retired on disability. Ibarra was acting lieutenant but had already filed his papers for a transfer to Vice. Macias and Sandor weren’t there but at a conference on criminal network analysis. Castro and Gomez were subdued, unsure of what all the changes meant for them. Emilia went to her old desk. The Las Perdidas binder went back into the big file dra...