THE LATINA BOOK CLUB

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.—Amelia Earhart FLYING FREE is Inspiring. Empowering. Rewarding. Cecilia Rodriguez Aragon is the daughter of a Chilean father and a Filipina mother. She grew up a shy, timid child often bullied by her white classmates. The teachers ignored her intelligence and tried to steer her away from science. “Girls can’t do science.” Cecilia showed them. Cecilia may have been painfully shy but she stuck to her guns and earned her PhD in computer science. She worked with astronomers to solve some of the greatest mysteries of the universe; worked with Nobel Prize winners; taught astronauts to fly; worked with NASA designing software for Mars missions; and created musical simulations of the universe with rock stars. Today, she’s semi-retired from flying but holds her dream job – Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Washington. It only took her six years to overcome her shyness. FLYING FREE recalls those years. It all ...

Timing--everything always came down to timing. It seemed to her that her timing had always been off. Not crazy off, just that extra millisecond that pushed everything  either too early or too late. And now, she understood that it was too late....she couldn't even bear to go through with the whole charade of her life any longer. ----Alex Moreno Koehler Books Captivating and Original. ALL THAT GLITTERS is a well-written rags-to-riches tale, with a quick pace and engaging characters. The novel was inspired by Jackie Collins’ Hollywood sagas and Treviño’s five-year stint as a script girl in L.A. Alexandria Moreno is a powerful, complex heroine, who is any and every woman. She represents woman’s thirst to excel and determination to shape her own destiny.  We love that Alex is flawed but courageous; selfish but loyal; scarred but free.  We love the sexy cover; it’s so Audrey Hepburn-ish. And, best of all we love that this is book 1 of a forthcoming Hollywoo...

    If the DREAM ACT is passed in the next few months, I have a future.   If it's not, I'm going to have to fight for my future . --Elioenai Santos   I talked with some people on the senator's staff, and I realized how disconnected politics are from our lives. I understood that the change that we need has to come from the people most affected by an immigration system that is broken.   Our voices and our stories have to become our tools to combat this oppressive system. --Carlos Amador, Dreamer and co-president of United We Dream         Beacon Press Eileen Truax has taken one of the most important and hottest themes of this generation -- immigration reform -- and given it a face, actually faces.   Like Nancy who worked for the government in California and one day on her way to work got pulled over and deported to Mexico, where she knew no one and only had $40 to her name. Daniella with "Dream" written on her sn...

    Vintage International “For men it is just a ‘stupid mistake.’ For women, it feels like a spiritual crime against all those who surround her with affection and support her as a mother and wife.” —Linda "Today I am a woman torn between the terror that everything might change and the equal terror that everything might carry on exactly the same for the rest of my days.” – Linda Paulo Coelho’s new book, ADULTERY (or ADULTERIA in Spanish) is out now.  The title seems to tell the whole story – a bored housewife who has an affair  –  but does it really?   Look at the two quotes above.  They are at the very heart of our protagonist's angst. Linda has a grand life that many would envy.  She has money, a good husband, two kids, an exciting job as a journalist, servants and lives in beautiful Switzerland. She has it all, don’t you think? That’s what Coelho wants the reader to do—Think.  He wants us to see behind the trap...

         Forgive me, Father, if such forgiveness is still an option for my salvation.   Tomorrow will be another day.   Maybe this time the better me will learn to fight back and the demon within will be gone.    –Your humble son… Your fallen angel       WOW!   From the first page – the first murder! – I was hooked.   I almost missed by train stop because I couldn’t stop reading.     Manuel Meléndez has written an engrossing, fast-paced, suspenseful, pulse-quickening, goose-bump raising thriller, which would certainly gain the approval of the author’s literary heroes – Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King and Alfred Hitchcock!   WHEN ANGELS FALL ( Aignos Publishing ) is about the eternal battle between good and evil.   It’s about the duality of man’s soul, about the atonement of sins.   It’s about isolation, obsession, revenge and justice.   It’s about friends and l...

    "In the United States immigration is at the heart of the nation's narrative and sense of identity.   Yet we continue to the conflicted by it: armed vigilantes patrol the Rio Grande while undocumented workers find jobs every day watching over our children or delivering food to our door."--Mirta Ojito   "Hate is always looking for another place."   --Joselo Lucero, brother of the murder victim     Journalist and Columbia University Professor Mirta Ojito has written a powerful and compassionate account of the 2008 murder of Marcelo Lucero, an undocumented Ecuadorian immigrant, at the hands of seven teenagers in the All-American town of Patchogue, Long Island, about 60 miles outside New York City.     HUNTING SEASON holds up a mirror to the face of America and what we see is not pretty.    We, a nation of immigrants, are still intolerant of "other" immigrants.   We're racist, prejudiced, hateful, uncaring. (N...

  Sometimes when you are the only Latino in the office, you start feeling like the “token Latino.”   At moments like those, you need to straighten your spine, take a deep breath, and show the powers-that-be what you are made of.    You don’t want them to see you as the Latino and be predisposed to dismissing your work as only satisfactory.   You put your best work forward and if you have to act “Almost White,” then that is what you do to get ahead.   Because you want that foot in the door, and once you are in, then you change the “system” from within.   That is pretty much what award-winning writer, actor, director, comedian, playwright, producer and author Rick Najera has done in Hollywood.   And, notice that these confessions were "forced" out of him.   In his new book, Almost White: Forced Confessions of a Latino in Hollywood , Najera shines the spotlight on his life.   For over 20 years, he has written for some of the top si...

   “The only thing I knew for sure was that I had issues.   Lots of issues.   No wonder my mood ring kept changing!   It went from black for tense to pink for uncertain to white for frustrated. I kept waiting to see blue, the color for calmness and peace, but no such luck.   With all the craziness in my life, I couldn’t see blue, if I looked at the sky.”   --- Erica “Chia” Montenegro, age 14 If I had a mood ring, it would be blue for Happy!   I wish Erica was real so I could give her and the Robins hugs!   Author Diana Lopez has done an excellent job in capturing the spirit of the average American teen.   ASK MY MOOD RING HOW I FEEL is about teenagers, cancer, promesas , family, friendship and miracles.   When cancer invades the home, it changes everything and everyone.   Sometimes parents need to be taken care of, and sometimes children must become more responsible.   Family and friends are affected as well for n...

    I have always been a daydreamer. But I will not rest until one dream is made real: that we might reimagine what it is to be a man, that we reimagine what it means to say, 'man up.'   --- Carlos Andrés Gómez     MAN UP is a powerful book that challenges the traditional image of the Latino “macho man.”   Heck, it challenges the traditional images of “every man”, especially the American male.     It’s raw, honest and hopeful.   Gómez opens up to readers and exposes his greatest fears and vulnerabilities.   Nothing is off-limits.   He talks about his family, heritage, sexuality, and relationships.   This book is about growth and transformation, about courage and strength, about redefining the concept of masculinity.   Gómez is the son of a white mother and a Colombian father.   He is fair with green eyes, but with his last name and his heritage, people assumed his father was a drug dealer.   ...

Race is in the eye of the beholder .—Raquel Cepeda It’s exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness, it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful .—Adrienne Rich Raw and honest, brilliant and brutal. BIRD OF PARADISE is one woman’s daring journey to self discovery and family peace. The book is broken into two parts. The first part is the story of Raquel’s birth and upbringing by an abusive father and an indifferent stepmother. The abuse is excessive and cruel so readers beware. The second part of the book is heavy on DNA codes, but it is also full of new discoveries, new relatives, new connections. Part two is Raquel’s quest, her time traveling back in time through the DNA testing, to find the ancestral roots of her Latinidad. BOOK SUMMARY: Raquel’s obsession over her racial ambiguity begins at a young age. Abandoned by her birth mother, she comes to belief that there is a fukku (a curse) on the women of her family who could never have a good...

Delightful, intriguing, passionate.   FIVE ACTS OF DIEGO LEON is beautifully written with wonderful narrative and a great hero.   Sweeping from the villages of Mexico to California’s gold coast, this is a story about love, ambition, betrayal, and loyalty.   It’s about fame and fortune and Hollywood.   It’s about going after your dreams; about growing up and finding yourself.   Readers will cheer for this hero on his quest to self-discovery and self-love.      Book Summary:   Espinoza transports readers from war-torn Mexico to the glamour of Hollywood in 1927.   Our Hero, Diego, grows up a poor boy amid the P’urhépacha Indians.   His father sends him to his mother’s aristocratic family in the city so he can become someone better.   His grandparents invent a new identity and background for him and groom him to take over the family business.   Diego is torn between his past and his present.   The only thing that h...