Reader's Place: September 1, 2022
Making their way in a world often hostile to at least one if not more of their identities, these Latinos and Latinas, real and fictional, open up their worlds to us.
Woman of light, by Kali Fjardo-Anstine. (Catalog)
1935: Luz "Little Light" Lopez and her brother Diego work the carnival circuit in downtown Denver. Luz is a tea leaf reader, and Diego is a snake charmer. One day, a pale-faced woman in white fur asks Luz for a reading, calling her by a name that only her brother knows. Later that night at a party downtown, Luz sees Diego dancing with this pale-faced woman, which results in a brawl with the local white supremacist group. Diego leaves town for cover and Luz is left trying to get justice for her brother and family.
High risk homosexual: a memoir, by Edgar Gomez. (Catalog)
Gomez’ story then moves through the queer spaces where he learned the joy of being gay and Latinx, including Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, a drag queen convention in Los Angeles, and the doctor's office where he was diagnosed a "high-risk homosexual." With vulnerability, humor, and quick-witted insights into racial, sexual, familial, and professional power dynamics, Gomez shares a hard-won path to taking pride in the parts of himself that he'd kept hidden.
Chilean Poet: A novel, by Alejandro Zambra (Catalog)
Eighteen year old Vicente meets Pru, an American journalist literally and figuratively lost in Santiago, and encourages her to write about Chilean poets--not the famous, dead kind, your Nerudas or Mistrals or Bolaos, but rather the living, everyday poets like his stepfather.
The Cuban comedy, by Pablo Medina (Catalog)
Elena longs to be a poet, and after a chance encounter with Daniel Arcilla, Cuba's most important poet, Elena wins a national poetry prize and leaves her hamlet Piedra Negra behind for Havana. There she encounters a population adjusting to a new way of life, post-revolution: there are spies and secret meetings, black marketeers, and censorship. Full of outlandish humor and insights into an often contradictory and kafkaesque regime, Medina brings 1960s Cuba to life through the eyes of Elena.
The Hacienda, by Isabel Canas (Catalog)
In the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz's father is executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife's sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost. But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined.
In the shadow of the mountain: a memoir of courage, by Silvia Vasquez-Lavado (Catalog)
A Latinx hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, privately Silvia was hanging by a thread. She was deep in the throes of alcoholism, hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she'd suffered as a child. Silvia started climbing. Something about the brute force required for the ascent-the restricted oxygen at altitude, the vast expanse of emptiness around her, the risk and spirit and sheer size of the mountains, the nearness of death-woke her up. Silvia gathered a group of young female survivors and led them to Everest’s base camp, their strength and community propelling her forward.
Olga dies dreaming, by Xochitl Gonzalez (Catalog)
A status-driven wedding planner grapples with her social ambitions, absent mother, and Puerto Rican roots, all in the wake of Hurricane María. It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro "Prieto" Acevedo, are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Twenty-seven years ago, their mother, Blanca, a Young Lord-turned-radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives.
Compiled by Ina Rimpau