Happy New Year! Las Comadres & Friends National Latino Book Club begins 2021 with an unflinching memoir and a groundbreaking ghost story. Join us on Monday, January 25, for a LIVE teleconference with our two authors. Until then, Happy Reading!
BOOK OF THE MONTH
Once I Was You
A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America
By Maria Hinojosa
Atria Books
In Once I Was You, The Emmy Award–winning journalist and anchor of NPR’s Latino USA shares her intimate experience growing up Mexican American on the South Side of Chicago. She offers a personal and illuminating account of how the rhetoric around immigration has not only long informed American attitudes toward outsiders, but also sanctioned willful negligence and profiteering at the expense of our country’s most vulnerable populations—charging us with the broken system we have today. An urgent call to fellow Americans to open their eyes to the immigration crisis and understand that it affects us all, this honest and heartrending memoir paints a vivid portrait of how we got here and what it means to be a survivor, a feminist, a citizen, and a journalist who owns her voice while striving for the truth. Also available in Spanish as Una Vez Fui Tu.
BIO: Maria Hinojosa’s nearly thirty-year career as a journalist includes reporting for PBS, CBS, WGBH, WNBC, CNN, NPR, and anchoring and executive producing the Peabody Award–winning show Latino USA, distributed by NPR. She is a frequent guest on MSNBC, and has won several awards, including four Emmys, the Studs Terkel Community Media Award, two Robert F. Kennedy Awards, and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club. In 2010, she founded Futuro Media, an independent nonprofit organization with the mission of producing multimedia content from a POC perspective. Through the breadth of her work and as the founding co-anchor of the political podcast In the Thick, Hinojosa has informed millions about the changing cultural and political landscape in America and abroad. She lives with her family in Harlem in New York City.
CONVERSATIONS WITH BOOK
Cemetery Boys
By Aiden Thomas
Swoon Reads
Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can’t get rid of him. When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his true gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free. However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school’s resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He’s determined to find out what happened and tie off some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.
BIO: Aiden Thomas is a New York Times Bestselling Author with an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. Originally from Oakland, California, they now make their home in Portland, OR. As a queer, trans Latinx, Aiden advocates strongly for diverse representation in all media. Aiden’s special talents include: quoting The Office, useless trivia, Jenga, finishing sentences with “is my FAVORITE”, and killing spiders. Aiden is notorious for not being able to guess the endings of books and movies, and organizes their bookshelves by color. Visit them at www.aiden-thomas.com.
LIVE TELECONFERENCE! Monday, January 25, 5pm PT / 6pm MT/ 7pm CT/ 8pm EST.
Free Teleconference Registration here: http://lascomadres.com/latinolit/join-teleconference/
Simultaneous Twitter Chat on @ReadLatinoLit. Follow hashtag #ReadLatinoLit.
BOOK SHOP: Get your books at our Las Comadres Book Shop: https://bookshop.org/shop/lascomadresbookclub
BOOK DISCUSSIONS: Find a Comadres & Friends Book Club near you. The discussions are great. Check here: https://readlatinolit.blogspot.com/2020/11/las-comadres-friends-book-club.html
JOIN THE BOOK CLUB here:
