THE LATINA BOOK CLUB

The Latina Book Club welcomes Philip D. Rivera.  With an electric blue luchador mask wrapped tightly around his head, accenting his fierce eyes and flashing smile, and shrouding the rest of his face, this Suburban Luchador shares hilarious anecdotes about his wife’s pregnant cravings, the kids’ potty training, and puppy love at the local school where he teaches. We are eager for the sequel!  What lessons did the Suburban Luchador learn from 2020?  Philip : 2020 taught me what is really important in life: my Christian faith, my family, my friends and my health. Many other things vied for my attention, but the pandemic really made me reflect on what brings me true happiness. Spending so much time with my wife and kids was a blessing (sometimes in disguise), and the memories we made will last a lifetime. You are also a High School teacher. How are you surviving remote learning? How did you help your students get over not having a senior trip or prom or even graduation?...

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...

The Latina Book Club is honored to participate once again in  Multicultural Children’s Book Day January 29, 2021.  The book was a gift, but the review is our own.  We welcome author Vanessa Varela. ATTRIBUTES OF A HISPANIC GIRL: I CAN  Written and illustrated by Vanessa Varela, M.Ed., M.A. FLL.  (Bilingual Book)  The stick-figure drawings are powerful in their simplicity and femininity. The book is short, sweet, pink!, and to the point. The author has taken all the negative remarks about girls and Latinos, and turned them into positive attributes, like speaking two languages allows girls to bridge two cultures. And she does it all in English and Spanish.  All we can say is: Brava! INTERVIEW The Latina Book Club: This book started as an academic paper based on Gloria Anzaldua’s book BORDERLANDS & Jaques Lacan’s MIRROR STAGE. Share with us what you saw in their work that inspired you. Vanessa Varela: Literature is the window that has let me unders...

  We may have come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now. --        Martin Luther King, Jr.  

The Latina Book Club wishes everyone a Happy & Healthy New Year.  We wanted to start 2021 with a powerful and inspirational book,  and are well pleased with our find.  I AM THESE TRUTHS by Sunny Hostin is a timely, poignant and moving memoir. From New York, to Washington, and back again, our heroine has overcome poverty, racism and sexism through hard work, education and tremendous perseverance. Sunny’s story is a triumph and an inspiration to women everywhere. I AM THESE TRUTHS A Memoir of Identity, Justice, and  Living Between Worlds by Sunny Hostin HarperOne What are you? A simple and difficult question for a Latina woman straddling two cultures. Sunny Hostin has lived between two worlds and has learned to “bridge them together to fight for what’s right.” Asunción Cummings Hostin aka Sunny Hostin grew up half Puerto Rican and half African-American raised by teenage parents in the South Bronx. Escaping poverty and the turbulence of her early life thro...

I open the book. Word-blindness. The pages are white! Is this really a blank diary, or just an ordinary schoolbook filled with frog-slippery tricky letters that know how to leap and escape? --Fefa THE WILD BOOK By Margarita Engle HMH Books for Young Readers, 2014 BEAUTIFUL. HEARTFELT. INSPIRING. A mother’s love is a powerful thing, and Fefa’s mother refuses the edict doctors proclaim. Dyslexia will not cripple her child, and so she teaches Fefa to see the world in a different light. SUMMARY:   But her mother has an idea. She gives Fefa a blank book filled with clean white pages. "Think of it as a garden," she says. Soon Fefa starts to sprinkle words across the pages of her wild book. She lets her words sprout like seedlings, shaky at first, then growing stronger and surer with each new day. And when her family is threatened, it is what Fefa has learned from her wild book that saves them. ABOUT THE AUTHOR:    M...

Carolrhoda Lab Blanca:  Life is not a multiple-choice test.   Verdad:  Hell is now, saying it happens later is a power play.   Honest. Tragic. Realist. Truthful. This is a bold novel that deals with hard topics like death, betrayal, homelessness and sexual orientation. It’s well-written, with a great cast of characters.   It’s also very realistic, and like today’s youth, Verdad and Danny face hard choices as they learn who they truly are, who they want to be, and whom they want to love. SUMMARY:   A powerful exploration of love, identity, and self-worth through the eyes of a fierce, questioning Puerto Rican teen.   Fifteen-year-old Verdad doesn't think she has time for love. She's still struggling to process the recent death of her best friend, Blanca; dealing with the high expectations of her hardworking Puerto Rican mother and the absence of her remarried father; and keeping everyone at a distance. But ...

In honor of Father’s Day, The Latina Book Club , has put together this short list of male authors.    We selected a wide variety, from coming of age stories to political poems to dark thrillers.   G reat selections all.     Happy Reading.     LOVE by Matt de la Peňa (G.P. Putnam) Written by a Newbery Medal winning author, this novel is about the love that surrounds us. As children we can see it, feel it, even taste it.  We lose that feeling as adults, but this beautifully illustrated picture book by Loren Long, brings those loving feelings back to life. MAXIMILIAN AND THE LUCHA LIBRE CLUB: A Bilingual Lucha Libre Thriller by Xavier Garza (Cinco Puntos Press) Book 3 in the series, has Max joining the Lucha Libre Club – a club for kids related to the luchadores. His friend Paloma is in it too, but it’s Cecilia who has captured Max’s young heart, no? WHAT LANE?   by Torrey Maldonado (Nancy Paulsen...

The Latina Book Club supports our Black Brothers and Sisters   and our Afro Latinx / Black Latinx Communities during these hard times.   Black Lives Matter.    We See You. We Hear You.   We Support You. Aside from donating money to the different organizations supporting the movement and the protesters, we want to support Afro-Latinx / Black Latinx authors by purchasing and reading their books.   Below is a short list in no particular order.   We welcome additions to this list.     Happy Reading.   Take care and Stay Safe.   20 AFRO LATINX  /  BLACK LATINX WRITERS  NO ONE IS ILLEGAL: FIGHTING RACISM AND STATE VIOLENCE IN THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER   by Justin Akers Chacón and Mike Davis (Haymarket Books) AN AFRICAN AMERICAN AND LATINX HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES By Paul Ortiz (Beacon Press) 13 WAYS TO LOOK AT A BLACK BOY By Tony Medina & 13 Artists ...

The Latina Book Club is Celebrating Women’s History Month by showcasing female authors and poets all this month.    We thank these fearless women for joining the celebration and sharing their works with us.   Enjoy! JASMINNE MENDEZ is a poet, playwright, educator and award winning author.  Mendez has had poetry and essays published by or forthcoming in The New England Review, Crab Creek Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, and others. She is the author of two poetry/prose collections ISLAND OF DREAMS (Floricanto Press, 2013) which won an International Latino Book Award, and NIGHT-BLOOMING JASMIN(N)E: Personal Essays and Poetry (Arte Publico Press, 2018). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and has received fellowships from Canto Mundo and the Kenyon Review Writer's Workshop among others. She is an MFA graduate of the creative writing program at the Rainier Writer's Workshop at Pacific Lutheran...