Join the Celebration! Las Comadres & Friends Book Club is celebrating its Quinceañero all year long.15-years of supporting Latino authors and encouraging the world to #ReadLatinoLit. We look forward to another 15!
AND....we are happy to announce our book selections for April 2022.
BOOK OF THE MONTH
THE NEW YORK CITY SUBWAY POEMS /
POEMAS DEL METRO DE NUEVA YORK
by Carlos Aguasaco
Ashland Poetry Press
Summary: THE NEW YORK CITY SUBWAY POEMS is a bilingual collection of poems about difficult crossroads, chilling situations, and nomads of the world riding the subway and reshaping the metropolis. Critics say that Carlos Aguasaco’s poetry “reveals him as a wounded, yet defiant poet, master of a layered tongue, far from conventional or traditional styles.”
About the Author: Carlos Aguasaco, PhD, is one of the central figures of the new Hispanic American Poetry in the US. He is an Associate Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies and Acting Chair in the Department of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences of City College of the City University of New York (CUNY). Carlos received his PhD from Stony Brook University and was awarded the prestigious W. Burghardt Turner Doctoral Fellowship by the State University of New York. He also holds an MA in Spanish from CCNY and a BA in Literature from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. He has edited eleven literary anthologies and published six books of poems. Carlos is the founder and director of Artepoetica Press, a publishing house specializing in Hispanic American themes and authors. He is also director of The Americas Poetry Festival of New York and coordinator of The Americas Film Festival of New York. His poems have been translated into English, French, Portuguese, Romanian, Galician, and Arabic.
CONVERSATIONS WITH BOOKS (2)
THE FIVE WOUNDS
by Kirstin Valdez Quade
W.W. Norton & Company
Summary: It’s Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mother’s house, setting her life on a startling new path. Vivid, tender, funny, and beautifully rendered, THE FIVE WOUNDS spans the baby’s first year as five generations of the Padilla family converge: Amadeo’s mother, Yolanda, reeling from a recent discovery; Angel’s mother, Marissa, whom Angel isn’t speaking to; and disapproving Tíve, Yolanda’s uncle and keeper of the family’s history. Each brings expectations that Amadeo, who often solves his problems with a beer in his hand, doesn’t think he can live up to.
About the Author: Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of THE FIVE WOUNDS, which won the 2021 Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and won the 2022 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award. Her story collection, NIGHT AT THE FIESTAS, won the John Leonard Prize from the National Book Critics Circle, the Sue Kaufma Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a “5 Under 35” award from the National Book Foundation, and was a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, The New York Times and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor at Princeton.
MY LITTLE GOLDEN BOOK ABOUT FRIDA KAHLO
by Silvia Lopez
Golden Books / Random House
Summary: This Little Golden Book captures the essence of Frida Kahlo for the youngest readers. From overcoming illness, to being one of only a handful of girls at her school in Mexico, to having her paintings hanging in museums, this is an inspiring read for future trailblazers and their parents! Features informative text and colorful illustrations inspired by Frida's own artwork.
About the Author: A Cuba native, Silvia Lopez arrived in Miami in 1960 with one suitcase and no English. She became a National Board Certified media specialist with degrees in English and Educational Technology and a Masters in Library Science. For nearly four decades, Silvia served hundreds of children as librarian in schools and public libraries in Miami-Dade County. Silvia became a published author in March 2018 with the release of her first hard-cover picture book JUST RIGHT FAMILY: AN ADOPTION STORY by Albert Whitman Co., which went on to receive the 2019 Florida Book Award. Silvia’s work also includes an award-winning children's bilingual biography as well as six bilingual eBooks. One of these, ZUNZUNCITO: UN CUENTO DEL PÁJARO ABEJA CUBANO received the International Latino Book Award as Best Children’s Picture eBook of 2017. All her eBooks are free and accessible on her website.
SAVE THE DATE! Our next Book Club Zoom Teleconference will be Monday, April 25, 5pm PT/ 6pm MT/ 7pm CT/ 8pm ET and Puerto Rico.
Sign up today and you may win a FREE BOOK. Register here: https://latinolit.com/join-
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VISIT OUR BOOK SHOP HERE: https://bookshop.org/shop/
Happy Reading! and, always Read Latino Lit!
