Friday, April 30, 2021

MAY BOOK SELECTIONS




Las Comadres & Friends National Latino Book Club is pleased to announced it's books of the month for May 2021.   

WIN A FREE BOOK! 
 Register early for the Teleconference, and you may win a free book. 

Register here for the FREE teleconference: http://lascomadres.com/latinolit/join-teleconference/

Check your time zone for the Teleconference: 5pm Pacific; 6pm Mountain; 7pm Central; 8pm Eastern & Puerto Rico.

Follow the simultaneous Twitter Chat at @ReadLatinoLit. Use hashtag #ReadLatinoLit.

The Book Club Bookshop can be found here: https://bookshop.org/shop/lascomadresbookclub

JOIN the Comadres & Friends Book Club here: http://lascomadres.com/latinolit/join-book-club/

There are Book Clubs in all time zones. Their discussions are always lively and fun. Find the one near you here: https://readlatinolit.blogspot.com/2020/12/las-comadres-friends-book-club-by-time.html

Visit the Book Club website for information on past and future books here: www.latinolit.com.



MAY BOOK OF THE MONTH

OF WOMEN AND SALT 
by Gabriela Garcia
Published by: Flatiron Books

SYNOPSIS: In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban immigrant, she is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent mother and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbor detained by ICE. Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt.

From 19th-century cigar factories to present-day detention centers, from Cuba to Mexico, Gabriela Garcia’s Of Women and Salt is a kaleidoscopic portrait of betrayals―personal and political, self-inflicted and those done by others―that have shaped the lives of these extraordinary women. A haunting meditation on the choices of mothers, the legacy of the memories they carry, and the tenacity of women who choose to tell their stories despite those who wish to silence them, this is more than a diaspora story; it is a story of America’s most tangled, honest, human roots.

BIO: Gabriela Garcia is the author of the novel Of Women and Salt, forthcoming from Flatiron (US), Picador (UK), and in seven other languages. Her fiction and poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Tin House, Zyzzyva, Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, a Steinbeck Fellowship, and residencies and fellowships from Breadloaf, Sarabande Books, Lighthouse Works, the Keller Estate, and the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. She has an MFA in fiction from Purdue University, where she also taught creative writing. The daughter of immigrants from Cuba and Mexico, Gabriela was raised in Miami and currently lives in the Bay Area. In her past life she worked in music, magazines, technology, and feminist and immigrant rights organizing.

Author webpage: http://www.gabrielagarciawriter.com/
Twitter (author): @GabiMGarcia
(publisher): @Flatironbooks


CONVERSATIONS WITH BOOK


IT IS WOOD, IT IS STONE 
by Gabriella Burnham
Published by: One World

SYNOPSIS: Linda, an anxious and restless American, has moved to São Paulo, with her husband, Dennis, who has accepted a yearlong professorship. As Dennis submerges himself in his work, Linda finds herself unmoored and adrift, feeling increasingly disassociated from her own body. Linda’s unwavering and skilled maid, Marta, has more claim to Linda’s home than Linda can fathom. Marta, who is struggling to make sense of complicated history and its racial tensions, is exasperated by Linda’s instability. One day, Linda leaves home with a charismatic and beguiling artist, whom she joins on a fervent adventure that causes reverberations felt by everyone, and ultimately binds Marta and Linda in a profoundly human, and tender, way.

An exquisite debut novel by young Brazilian-American author Gabriella Burnham, It Is Wood, It Is Stone is about women whose romantic and subversive entanglements reflect on class and colorism, sexuality, and complex, divisive histories.

BIO: Gabriella Burnham is a dual citizen of the United States and Brazil. Now a New York resident, she lived in São Paulo as a child and most of her family still lives there today. She holds an MFA in creative writing from The Writer’s Foundry at St. Joseph’s College and has been awarded fellowships to MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. She has worked as a reporter, a creative writing teacher, and in immigration law. It Is Wood, It Is Stone is her first novel.

Author webpage: https://gabriellaburnham.com/about/
Twitter: @OneWorldLit


READ LATINO LIT 

Books make great Mother's Day Gifts.  Hint! Hint!


Thursday, April 29, 2021

WEDNESDAY, MAY 5 --- PERINATAL HEALTH WITH DR. LOURDES J. RODRIGUEZ

 



Join us on Wednesday, May 5, at 6pm Central, (4pm Pacific, 5pm Mountain, 7pm Eastern and Puerto Rico) for a discussion on Perinatal Health with Dr. Lourdes J. Rodriguez, PhD, Senior Program Officer at St. David’s Foundation.


It has been widely publicized that Texas has the highest maternal mortality rate in the United States and, by extension, the developed world. Equally worrisome, maternal morbidity – causes of disease associated with pregnancy – have been on the rise in Texas for the past 20 years. Join us for a conversation about the contributing factors and what actions we can take to improve maternal outcomes for all women.

St. David's Foundation focuses its work in central Texas: A nationwide nonprofit doing work in Central Texas (defined as: Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Travis or Williamson Counties), that benefits residents of those counties, may apply for our funding.

As Comadres, we can harness our strengths to reverse these trends and contribute towards full term births and healthy pregnancies.



***** Zoom details:  Your MUST register in advance. *****


When: Wednesday, May 5, 2021 06:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

(4pm Pacific, 5pm Mountain, 7pm Eastern and Puerto Rico)  



Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUod-iprzspHNzMIBYi93ZMGYuwv-9tZHf7



After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Add this info to your calendar, as soon as you receive it so that you don't have to search for it on the day of!



OUR PRESENTER:  Comadre Dr. Lourdes J. Rodríguez serves as Senior Program Officer at St. David’s Foundation overseeing the Women’s Health portfolio of work. Prior to joining the Foundation in 2020, Lourdes served as Associate Professor and Director of Community-Driven Initiatives at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin. Lourdes also worked as Program Officer at the New York State Health Foundation, and from 2004–2012, she co-directed the Urbanism and the Built Environment track in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.  As a public health practitioner, and in both academic and philanthropic roles, she collaborates, develops and evaluates initiatives to improve health with people most impacted by health inequities.  Lourdes has a Doctorate in Public Health from Columbia University, a Master of Public Health from the University of Connecticut, and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Biotechnology from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez.  Dr. Rodríguez is a member of the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Roundtable on Population Health Improvement and currently holds an appointment as an Adjunct Faculty with the UTHealth School of Public Health Austin Regional Campus. 

      

 

Learn more about the St. David’s Foundation and its programs by visiting their website:  www.stdavidsfoundation.org




LAS COMADRES PARA LAS AMERICAS
Speaker Series 2021
E:   info@lascomadres.com



Sunday, April 18, 2021

WORLDWIDE COMADRAZO & 21st ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION -- MESSAGE FROM DR. NORA DE HOYOS COMSTOCK

 

From the WWC Commemorative Book...

MESSAGE FROM THE

NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL FOUNDER OF
LAS COMADRES PARA LAS AMERICAS

 

Dr. Nora de Hoyos Comstock

 

 

IN GRATITUDE,

 

Twenty-one years! Can you believe it? It feels like it was just yesterday that Las Comadres movement began building community, preserving and celebrating culture, opening doors, and supporting each other, sharing social capital, y mucho mas! The expansion of the internet via email to general audiences made it possible for me to take advantage of the new tool to build virtual connections, albeit via text only at that time. It was labor-intensive work, requiring many, many hours to build the foundation. Today, largely due to the Coronavirus-19 pandemic, we “are gaining on the future”!!! The videoconferencing platforms which were slowly getting traction have allowed us to maintain contact and build new connections in ways which were not easily accessible before. We can provide access to each other via many virtual platforms and we can service many more via the World Wide Web. But when we first started, it was basically an email network and I have been called a pioneer in this work for the Latinx/a/o community.

 

It has been a wild ride! We have done so many things, learned so much from each other, and built lasting friendships. Las Comadres is not the story of one person. We are mucho mas than the sum of our parts. You are Las Comadres and our coordinators and I have been the glue. Without your unflagging support as members of this vast social network, without your patience as we built it, we would not be here celebrating 21 years! There are so many of you that I must thank for contributing to the success of Las Comadres that it would fill pages (actually your names up to the year 2012 appear in the Acknowledgments in our book, COUNT ON ME: Tales of Sisterhoods and Fierce Friendships, published by Simon and Schuster in English in 2012/Spanish in 2013). There are many names to add to the list after publication. And with the addition of new leadership for Las Comadres, especially the energetic and vibrant, Maria Ferrer, with her new ganas, together we will change the face of Latinx/as in this nation and around the world. The stories and memories will fill books and bring us closer together and make us stronger.

 

The next twenty years are a new chapter in our journey to securing our place as indelible contributors to the US American experience. It will not be an easy chapter but it must be written and spoken by us—you, our Latinx/a/o communities, and me. Each and everyone of you has a special role to play and we are here to help, as always.

 

With heartfelt gratitude to all of you and to my husband, Jack Bell, without whose support, we would not have made to it Year 21! And to Maria Ferrer without whom there would be a questionable tomorrow for Las Comadres.

 

Con mucho carino,

Nora

 

 


SPONSORS

Platinum:  St. David’s Foundation

Silver:  MOLA Market Research; Mona’s Family Emporium, Primavera Strategic Planning; The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez 

Bronze:  The Arreaga Agency/ Farmers Insurance; Casa de la Familia Counseling; CasaQ by Darlene; DonateWay; KCasati; MUNDU Media; Pitikin Learning Projects; Positive Directions Co.; Ramos Admin.

   

GOODIES!

Commemorative Book – a gift to all Comadres & Guests.  Best to print front & back.

WWC Holding Slides with Nora Award winners and Comadres in their WWC T-shirts.

Note:  Subscribe to Las Comadres Para Las Americas’ YouTube channel today.  WWC recordings and videos coming soon!

  

Worldwide Comadrazo Committee

Thank you to the following Comadres for their outstanding work, especially Laura and Monica.  And, many thanks to Comadre Yvonne Tapia for the beautiful design of the WWC21 logo.

 

Maria C. Ferrer – Producer

Laura Esparza – Stage Manager

Monica Peňa – Technology Manager

Rosa Beato – Raffle Coordinator

Nydia Marsella – Anniversary Video

Tess Tobin – Awards Coordinator

Tania Solė – Advisor

Dr. Charley Ferrer – Website Designer

  

 

#LasComadres

#WWC21

#WorldwideComadrazo

#FierceFriendships

 


Saturday, April 17, 2021

THE NORA AWARD WINNERS 2021

  

Las Comadres Para Las Americas

 



The Nora Awards

 

Named in honor of Las Comadres

National / International Founder


DR.  NORA DE HOYOS COMSTOCK


The Nora Awards recognizes Comadres who 

exemplify the virtues of Loyalty, Generosity, 

Sisterhood and Kindness.

 


Congratulations to the Winners!

 

 

THE NORA AWARD – COMADRE OF THE YEAR

The Nora Award for Comadre of the Year is for a Comadre 

who has helped another Comadre(s).

 

Yadhira González-Taylor

 

 

THE NORA AWARD – COMADRES COMMUNITY SERVICE

The Nora Award for Comadre Community Service is for a Comadre 

who has helped her Community.

 

Dr. Charley Ferrer

 



THE NORA AWARD --  FRIEND OF LAS COMADRES

The Nora Award for a Friend of Las Comadres is for a company who continually supports our organization and the Latino community at large.

 

 Austin Community Foundation

 



#LasComadres

#WWC21

#WorldwideComadrazo

#21Anniversary

#NoraAwards