June BoM Outside Links: Author Publisher
June ACW Outside Links: Book Author Publisher
About the Book:
In Search of the Luminous Heart
By Victoria Rivera McKinley
Published by O Books
ISBN-13: 978-1782798996
Beginning with her family’s origins as tenant farmers in the mountains of Puerto Rico at the turn of the nineteenth century, Victoria Rivera Mckinley leads readers through dramatic and painful events, which in spite of psychological explanations, add up to experiences that are much larger.
Against a historical backdrop of Puerto Rico’s changing culture, she shows how a family of ten children survive and learn to look out for one another.
This is a success story, but not simply because the author leaves Puerto Rico and becomes a psychotherapist in America. Rivera McKinley offers an extraordinary perspective that finds truth in how each person lives experience in his or her own way. Her own journey ends in the Rocky Mountains, where Buddhist teachings offer her a spiritual and philosophical framework with which to understand her life.
In Search of the Luminous Heart is a deep and unusual look at adversity and belies terms like “dysfunctional” for family. Here, generosity of spirit is the key to survival. The family endures by using intelligence, compassion, and accepting lives that have the real taste of tears, blood, songs, and prayers.
About the Author:
Victoria Rivera McKinley
Victoria Rivera McKinley is a 73-year-old Puerto Rican mother of two married daughters. She is a practicing psychotherapist in NYC. From her early youth she was her family’s scribe and longed to one day write their story for the benefit of the future generations.
About the Book:
When Mexico Recaptures Texas
By Carmen Boullosa
Published by Arte Publico Press
ISBN-13: 978-1558858060
Residents on both sides of the Rio Grande, or the Rio Bravo as it’s known in Mexico, have suffered horrific violence as numerous peoples have sought control of the land. In 1836, in what is now Texas, a young girl named Cynthia Ann Parker was kidnapped by Comanches who behaved “like vengeful drug dealers,” spearing, scalping and castrating their victims. Spared death, she was adopted by the tribe, only to be “saved” twenty years later by the Texas Rangers. Today, kidnappings continue in Mexico.
In this wide-ranging collection of 29 essays, internationally renowned Mexican novelist and essayist Carmen Boullosa explores issues that unite and separate Americans and Mexicans, from the nineteenth century to the present. Themes of greed and barbarism abound. There’s Dimaso Salazar, a Mexican captain who in 1841 strung the ears of fallen Texans on a necklace; Susana Chavez, a poet and activist brutally murdered after protesting the killings of women in Ciudad Juarez; and Edelmiro Cavazos, the mayor of the city of Santiago, who was executed during Mexico’s ruthless drug wars. Violence is still common on both sides of the border.
These thought-provoking essays delve into a variety of subjects, including Occupy Wall Street and Arizona’s political offensive against immigrants. Long a feminist, Boullosa also shares her perspective on women’s rights, musing on the repression of women artists and the lack of recognition for their work. Similarly, women who participated in wars and rebellions have been forgotten, and the author asserts that erasing them from our memory hurts us all. Containing the author’s original Spanish and Nicolas Kanellos’ English translation, these are absorbing reflections on Texas-Mexico border history, women’s issues, art and literature.
About the Author:
Carmen Boullosa
Carmen Boullosa (born in Mexico City in 1954) is one of Mexico’s leading novelists, poets and playwrights. The prolific author, who has had literally scores of books, essays and dissertations written about her work, has been lauded by critics on several continents.