THE LATINA BOOK CLUB

The Latina Book Club is a big fan of Aileen Erin and her Alpha Series.   It has a strong Latina Heroine who is half witch and half wolf.   Book 9 in the series was just released, and we just had to talk to Aileen, especially when we learned she has a new series with another strong Latina Heroine! LATINA BOOK CLUB:   Hi, Aileen.  How have you coped with this pandemic and shelter in place? writing more? less? reading? other?             AILEEN:   The pandemic has been interesting, scary, and truly stressful. But I’m used to being at home. I’m a full-time author. It’s my job. So, I’m at home every day. What was weird was having my four-year-old daughter—who had just been adjusting to more days and time at school—back at home again. Balancing time with her and managing her stress with the changing situation and still getting writing done was difficult. I was on a deadline when the stay-...

  The Latina Book Club has chosen SNOW O VER UTOPIA by Rudolfo Serna  for it's Book of the Month. It's a heck of a book to start your summer reading  with.  Don't get scared now.                     Apex Book Company Apocalypse. Psychedelic Doom Metal. Mutants. Drama. Sci fi. Fantasy. Horror. Adventure. Think Mad Max meets Space Odyssey.   .  SNOW OVER UTOPIA is a dark, apocalyptic adventure. The pace is hard, fast and tight. Readers will be on the edge of their chairs, cringing at another horror scene, but too entranced to put this book down.  SUMMARY:    In an age of savage science powered by black-mass, and thrown away bio-matter leaked into an underground sea lit by the heart of the great tree, a girl named Eden loses her rare blue eyes. Escaping her fanatical and sadistic slave masters with her eyes in a jar, she ...

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...

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 ...

Al jibaro nunca se le quita la mancha de platano. A jibaro can never wash away the stain of the plantain .                         -Esmeralda Santiago Vintage, 1990 If you are Puerto Rican, you have probably heard of Esmeralda Santiago.  She is the author that gave Puerto Ricans a face and a voice.  She is every Boricua – torn between two cultures, two languages, two identities.  Which is the real Esmeralda? The answer is another question – why can’t she be both? Esmeralda’s WHEN I WAS PUERTO RICAN is the first of three memoirs that take readers from the pueblitos of the small Caribbean island to the big city in Manhattan.  Esme’s new life is full of challenges, discoveries and dualities.  In fact, the original version of the novel had two parts  –  Puerto Rico and America.  Esmeralda is both Puerto Rican ...

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...

Real revolution in language is taking the stranger’s tongue and using it better than he.— Richard Rodriguez HUNGER OF MEMORY The Education of Richard Rodriguez By Richard Rodriguez Bantam, 1982 Memoir Astounding. Superb. A Triumph. The difficult journey of an immigrant child struggling to navigate two cultures, two languages, two worlds is the same now as it was in the 1960’s and 1970's.   The struggle to learn a new language, to be accepted, to belong to the new world takes a toll on the child and can often threaten the bonds of family and culture.   Such is Richard’s story. HUNGER OF MEMORY is the story of Mexican-American Richard Rodriguez, who begins his schooling in Sacramento, California, knowing just 50 words of English, and concludes his university studies in the stately quiet of the reading room of the British Museum.   Here is the poignant journey of a “minority student” who pays the cost of his social assimilation and...