Book of the Month
CENIZAS: POEMS
Author: Cynthia Guardado
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN-10: 0816546177 / ISBN-13: 978-0816546176
SUMMARY:
Cenizas offers an arresting portrait of a Salvadoran family whose lives have been shaped by the upheavals of global politics. The speaker of these poems—the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants—questions the meaning of homeland as she navigates life in the United States while remaining tethered to El Salvador by the long shadows cast by personal and public history. Cynthia Guardado’s poems give voice to the grief of family trauma, while capturing moments of beauty and tenderness. Maternal figures preside over the verses, guiding the speaker as she searches the ashes of history to tell her family’s story. The spare, narrative style of the poems are filled with depth as the family’s layers come to light.
Guardado crafted the poems in Cenizas over a ten-year period, often traveling to El Salvador for research and to conduct interviews. The Salvadoran Civil War haunts the pages of this collection as it unflinchingly explores war, its aftermath, and the bittersweet legacies that are passed down from one generation to the next. The poems mourn those who were lost and honor the strength of the speaker’s ancestors. “All my people have been born from the ashes of volcanoes,” she writes, invoking a family lineage that has endured the atrocities committed against them. Even so, El Salvador keeps pulling the speaker back—and despite warnings of danger, she still manages to find beauty among the ruins.
About the Author:
Cynthia Guardado is a Salvadorian-American poet from Inglewood, CA. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from California State University, Fresno in 2012. Guardado is currently a Professor of English at Fullerton College, as well as the managing editor of LiveWire: A Literary Arts Journal. Her debut poetry collection, Endeavor, was published in 2017 by World Stage Press, and her work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, Huizache, The Acentos Review,and Bozalta Journal,and was featured in the anthology, Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States (Tia Chucha Press, 2017). Guardado’s manuscript Cenizas was the winner of the 2016 Pellicer-Frost Binational Poetry Prize and a finalist for the 2019 National Poetry Series.
Website: https://linktr.ee/theguardedpoet
Facebook: @julissaarce
Twitter: @theguardedpoet
Instagram: @theguardedpoet
Conversations With Book
VALLEY OF THE SHADOWS
Author: Rudy Ruiz
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
ISBN: 1982604646 / ISBN-13: 978-1982604646
SUMMARY:
Winner of the Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Book of Fiction
A visionary neo-Western blend of magical realism, mystery, and horror, Valley of Shadows sheds light on the dark past of injustice, isolation, and suffering along the US-Mexico border.
Solitario Cisneros thought his life was over long ago. He lost his wife, his family, even his country in the late 1870s when the Rio Grande shifted course, stranding the Mexican town of Olvido on the Texas side of the border. He’d made his brooding peace with retiring his gun and badge, hiding out on his ranch, and communing with horses and ghosts. But when a gruesome string of murders and kidnappings ravages the town, pushing its volatile mix of Anglo, Mexican, and Apache settlers to the brink of self-destruction, he feels reluctantly compelled to confront both life, and the much more likely possibility of death, yet again.
As Solitario struggles to overcome not only the evil forces that threaten the town but also his own inner demons, he finds an unlikely source of inspiration and support in Onawa, a gifted and enchanting Apache-Mexican seer who champions his cause, daring him to open his heart and question his destiny.
As we follow Solitario and Onawa into the desert, we join them in facing haunting questions about the human condition that are as relevant today as they were back then: Can we rewrite our own history and shape our own future? What does it mean to belong to a place, or for a place to belong to a people? And, as lonely and defeated as we might feel, are we ever truly alone?
Through luminous prose and soul-searching reflections, Rudy Ruiz transports readers to a distant time and a remote place where the immortal forces of good and evil dance amidst the shadows of magic and mountains.
About the Author:
Rudy Ruiz is an award-winning author. His novel, The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez, received two Gold Medals at the 2021 International Latino Book Awards. It was also a finalist for the Western Writers of America Silver Spur Award for Best Contemporary Novel. His short-story collection Seven for the Revolution captured four International Latino Book Awards, including the Mariposa Prize for Best First Book. In 2017, he garnered the Gulf Coast Prize in Fiction. Just recently, he has been named a recipient of the Texas Institute of Letters 2023 Literary Award. A bilingual native of the US-Mexico border, he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Harvard and now resides in San Antonio, Texas, with his wife and children.
Website at RudyRuiz.com
Twitter: @Rudy_Ruiz_7
Children’s Book
GOD IS JUST LIKE ME
Author: Karen Valentin
Publisher: Beaming Books
ISBN: 1506482422 / ISBN-13: 978-1506482422
SUMMARY:
About the Author:
Karen Valentin is an award-winning American writer who is proud of her Puerto Rican heritage. She is the author of several books for children, including What Did Abuela Say? and Block Party. She is also the author of a young adult novel, The Summer She Changed Her Name. Karen has also published several books for adults, including a memoir, The Mother God Made Me to Be, awarded Best Parenting/Family Book in 2016 by The International Latino Book Awards. An avid traveler who speaks three languages—English, Spanish, and French—she taught English as a second language in France after earning a bachelor of arts in English literature from Fordham University.
Website: https://www.karenvalentinauthor.com/
Twitter: @kvalentinauthor
Instagram: @karinaval1
Facebook: @authorkarenvalentin
