THE LATINA BOOK CLUB

The Latina Book Club is pleased to welcome back Stephanie Elizondo Griest . She has been around “the bloc” a few times and always returns with a great story.  However, her new book ALL THE AGENTS AND SAINTS hits closer to home.  Below is an excerpt from the book, followed by an interview with Stephanie.  And, Mark Your Calendars! Stephanie will be in New York for a book signing on Tuesday, October 3, at 7pm at Bluestockings in the Lower East Side. We’ll see you there.--mcf I straddle two cultures,  I also inhabit the space between faith and doubt.              – Stephanie Elizondo Griest ALL THE AGENTS AND SAINTS Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands by Stephanie Elizondo Griest University of North Carolina Press Note: This excerpt, snipped from the final chapter, takes places at the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne, which straddles the New York/Canada borderline. The author arrives at her friend...

    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...

           " Maybe it was necessary, this shedding of the old ways with each generation. He had abandoned so much of what defined his mother...But lately, he'd begun to wonder if he'd abandoned too much.  He felt like there was a box inside of him that had been locked away for so long, he'd forgotten where he'd put the key.  There were things he treasured in that box: the sultry music of his childhood, the playfulness and sensuality of his culture.  He longed to open himself up to these things again ." --Jimmy Vega The Latina Book Club is happy to promote books by non-Latinos with great Latino characters.  LAND OF CAREFUL SHADOWS by Suzanne Chazin is such a book.   The premise for this book could have been “ripped from today’s headlines.”  It’s riveting, suspenseful, tragic, hopeful, with realistic settings, authentic voices, continuous action and enough twists and turns to keep readers up all night....

    "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...

  This month’s selection, MEXIZONA, is set in the midst of the current Arizona-Mexico border crisis. Larson has given us a modern-day Romeo and Juliet love story. Our young lovers are from different sides of the border, literally. Unfortunately, prejudice and politics are against them from all fronts. Their forbidden romance leads to betrayal, revenge and murder.   Click here for the full book review.   Happy Reading. --mcf      

Winner of The Mariposa Award for Best First Book at the 2012 International Latino Book Awards OCOTILLO DREAMS by Melinda Palacio Bilingual Review Press, 2011 Set in Chandler, Arizona, during the city's infamous 1997 migrant sweeps, OCOTILLO DREAMS resonates with today's immigration policies.   But this book is not only about politics and immigration.  This book is about mothers and daughters, love and hate, trust and betrayal, life and death.   ABOUT THE AUTHOR:   M elinda Palacio is an award-winning poet and author from South-Central Los Angeles.   She is a former journalist turned writer -- fiction and poetry.   Melinda studied Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley and earned a graduate degree in the same field at UC Santa Cruz. She is a 2007 PEN USA Emerging Voices Rosenthal Fellow and an alum of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. In 2009, she won Kulupi Press' Sense of Place 2009 competition for her poetry chapbook, Folsom Lo...

by Maria C. Ferrer Founder, The Latina Book Club Today begins Hispanic Heritage Month . For one month out of the year, the US celebrates Hispanics, aka Latinos. This year the celebration seems ironic given the current tensions over the immigration bills being considered and laws enacted, but let’s not talk politics or we’ll be foaming at the mouth. Instead, let’s celebrate that Hispanics are an integral part of this great nation of ours. Let’s celebrate Hispanic leaders in our community, in our government, in our schools, in our lives.  For this one month, let’s celebrate what makes Hispanics unique and beautiful – our culture, our music, our letters, our passions, our people. I’m starting my month-long—and life-long—celebration with Familia . My family is the root of my Hispanidad. It is with them and from them that I get my pride in my heritage.  And, so I celebrate that I am Hispanic. I celebrate that I am Puerto Rican. I celebrate that I love my island, Borin...