THE LATINA BOOK CLUB

by Maria C. Ferrer The Latina Book Club reserves Fridays for Book Covers.  Yes, we do judge books by their covers.  They are so much fun, and often give clues as to what the book is truly about.  Today we are looking at the book cover of Adriana Fuentes Diaz’  WHEN STRONG WOMEN SPEAK, STRONG WOMEN LISTEN.  The book cover looks like a marriage between expressionism and surrealism. There are distortions, exaggerations, elements of fantasy. It’s all very vivid, very jarring, but dynamic. Our heroine is naked at the river. Nakedness could represent that she is every woman, that she is free from the chaos reflected in the colorful, imposing bits and pieces hovering above her. The pieces are suspended and hopefully, at her control. What about the water? is she stirring it or calming it? Is she blessing the water or purifying it with blood? The title mentions Strong Women twice. We speak. We listen. This gives the Reader impression of mentors, of inspiring w...

   Vibrant. Sexy. Fun.      Alexis Daria reminds us that telenovelas are pleasurable and sexy.   This is NOT your Abuela’s telenovela.    YOU HAD ME A HOLA is an amusing romp with memorable characters set in the Big Apple, in the middle of soap opera central.   (Published by HarperCollins.) BOOK SUMMARY:   Leading Ladies do not end up on tabloid covers.  After a messy public breakup, soap opera darling Jasmine Lin Rodriguez finds her face splashed across the tabloids. When she returns to her hometown of New York City to film the starring role in a bilingual romantic comedy for the number one streaming service in the country, Jasmine figures her new “Leading Lady Plan” should be easy enough to follow—until a casting shake-up pairs her with telenovela hunk Ashton Suárez.  Leading Ladies don’t need a man to be happy .  After his last telenovela character was killed off, Ashton is worri...

The Latina Book Club ’s PICK FIVE for this week are all young adult novels  about family, friendship, romance, and being true to yourself no matter what.    Happy Reading. And as always, #ReadLatinoLit. RUNNING By Natalia Sylvester Clarion Books When fifteen-year-old Cuban American Mariana Ruiz’s father runs for president, Mari starts to see him with new eyes. A novel about waking up and standing up, and what happens when you stop seeing your dad as your hero—while the whole country is watching. BECAUSE OF THE SUN By Jenny Torres Sanchez Delacorte Press From the backyards of suburban Florida to the parched desert of New Mexico,  Because of the Sun  explores the complexity of family, the saving grace of friendship, and the healing that can begin when the truth is brought to light. THE LIBRARY OF LOST THINGS By Laura Taylor Namey Inkyard Press From the moment she first learned to read, liter...

University of New Mexico Press, 1988 The city usually swallows up the people who move . -- Neighbor Immigration. Racism.   Socialism.   All challenges we face today, and the main and universal themes in Rudolfo A. Anaya’s HEART OF AZTLAN published almost 40 years ago.   The story follows a small family who move from the country to the big city for a better life. All they get is poverty, gang wars, violence, loss of culture, values and family.   But, there is hope at the end and determination to survive, to be stronger and to unite the family -- that’s every family’s dream. SUMMARY:    T he Albuquerque barrio portrayed in this vivid novel of postwar New Mexico is a place where urban and rural, political and religious realities coexist, collide, and combine. The magic realism for which Anaya is well known combines with an emphatic portrayal of the plight of workers dispossessed of their heritage and struggling to survive in an a...

The taste of you remains Clinging to paradise But as the distance from you grows All that my heart ever knows Hunger for your kiss Longing for your touch Beautiful Maria of my soul --Lyrics, Beautiful Maria of My Soul Song by Los Lobos THE MAMBO KINGS PLAY SONGS OF LOVE By Oscar Hijuelos (1989) Farrar Straus Giroux Winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in Literature We loved the book, the movie and the sequel !!! SUMMARY:   It's 1949 and two young Cuban musicians make their way from Havana to the grand stage of New York City. It is the era of mambo, and the Castillo brothers, workers by day, become stars of the dance halls by night, where their orchestra plays the lush, sensuous, pulsing music that earns them the title of the Mambo Kings. This is their moment of youth, exuberance, love, and freedom―a golden time that decades later is remembered with nostalgia and deep affection. Hijuelos's marvelous portrait of the Castillo brothers, their families,...

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 thanks Boroughs Publishing for pointing out this quote from the legendary writer. Isabel Allende on the Craft of Writing “Show up. Show up in front of the computer or the typewriter. And if I show up long enough – it happens.” “When I started writing, I always had the feeling that the book was like a gift–that it would just fall in my lap like an apple or something. So I almost had the feeling that it wasn’t going to happen again. That I had written The House of the Spirits, and that was it. Or I had written the second or third book, and that was it. But what I have learned in time, in thirty-two years of writing, is that it’s a lot of work, and if I just show up, and I work and work, there is a moment, a magical moment, at some point, when it gives. And then you don’t need the effort anymore. It’s like dancing. When you’re dancing and counting the steps, you’re not dancing. When your body just goes—then you’re dancing, and then there’s a ...

The Latina Book Club has become an affiliate of Bookshop to help support local and independent bookstores.  Visit us at   https://bookshop.org/shop/latinabookclub . Bookshop is an online bookstore that believes bookstores are essential to a healthy culture. They’re where authors can connect with readers, where we discover new writers, where children get hooked on the thrill of reading that can last a lifetime.   By design, Bookshop gives away over 75% of its profit margin to stores, publications, authors and others who make up the thriving, inspirational culture around books! To date, Bookshop has raised $1.5 million dollars. Bookshop hopes to help strengthen the fragile ecosystem and margins around bookselling and keep local bookstores an integral part of our culture and communities.   They are a B-Corp - a corporation dedicated to the public good.  The Latina Book Club is proud affiliate. Please check out The Latina Bo...

Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2001 “There’s nothing a Mejicano or Mejicana loves more than the burning, stinging pain of thwarted, frustrated, hopeless, soulful, take-it-to-the-grave love. Nothing gets us going more than what I call rabia/love of the te-juro-you’re-going-to-pay-for-all-the-suffering-you-caused-me variety.”   --Tere Teresina “Tere” Vila is looking for love in all the wrong places.   She’s divorced, 30-something Chicana working “in the hinterlands of life” in New Mexico, a small dusty town near El Paso, Texas. The love of her life is Lucio, a smooth-talking ne'er-do-well who will never leave his wife and ties Tere's heart in knots with a string of empty promises. Her diversions are few but intense, and center around her best friend, Irma, and her membership in the Pedro Infante Fan Club.   For those of you who don’t recognize the name, Pedro Infante was the Mexican Elvis Presley. His movies from the 1940s and 1950s were viewed ...

    Stories can’t be featured unless they are available to read.   We all need to share our stories…. – Lisa Guerrero, Journalist, Latina, Leader. We can’t believe how quickly this year has gone by.  We were happy to discover new authors and new stories – stories that made us laugh, cry, cringe, scream and fall in love.  We’ve put together an easy reference list of our books of 2017 for readers everywhere. Remember that books make great gifts all year around, and the best way to support an author is by buying their books, reading their stories and telling your friends and their friends and so on. We wish you the very best for the New Year, and we look forward to discovering new stories and new authors.  Happy Reading. Happy 2018! --- mcf BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying by Laurie Ann Guerrero (University of Notre Dame Press) – poetry All that Glitters by Liza Treviño (Koehler Books) ...