Book of the Month
LITANY OF SAINTS
Author: Diana Rojas
Publisher: Arte Público Press
ISBN: 978-1558859944 / 1558859942
SUMMARY:
In the opening piece, “The Lives of Saints,” an immigrant family from Costa Rica regularly prays to a litany of saints to help deal with all that life throws their way—including alcoholism, marital discord, illness and death—all while adjusting to their new circumstances as “Americans.” The narrator, a woman trapped in a subservient role supporting her husband, suffers in silence as the men completely disregard her in life-changing decisions. Recounting her family’s attempts to balance a traditional, more conservative culture with the new and exciting one in their adopted homeland, she is forced to reconsider gender roles, assimilation and religion. Costa Ricans, or Ticos, living in the United States return to their native country in two of the three novellas in this thought-provoking collection.
They discover it’s not the “Switzerland of Central America,” the perfect country with good healthcare, education and no standing army. In “Las Tres MarÃas,” three sisters raised in the comparative freedom of Massachusetts who return to live in their parents’ home country are barely teenagers when they’re labeled gringas and “doomed to become sluts.” In “La Familia,” Juan Manuel has made a life for himself in Chicago, but when his mother calls him home because his brother has been arrested as a terrorist, he faces an uncomfortable reckoning with his country’s involvement in regional violence as the Cold War spreads to Latin America. Revealing the cultural dissonance experienced by immigrants, Diana Rojas’ characters grapple with their self-perception as they consider what they’re supposed to be and who they want to be. Issues of individualism versus community, loyalty to a distant homeland and a divided sense of identity pepper this intriguing debut.
About the Author:
DIANA ROJAS grew up in Connecticut and New Jersey. A journalist with a degree from New York University, she has worked for The Record, USA Today, Reuters Events and other publications. She lives in Washington, DC. Litany of Saints is her first book.
Website: https://artepublicopress.com/product/litany-of-saints-a-triptych/
Conversations Book
THE THINGS WE DIDN’T KNOW
Author: Elba Iris Pérez
Publisher: Gallery Books
ISBN 13: 978-1668012062 / ISBN-10: 1668012065
SUMMARY:
The USA TODAY bestselling inaugural winner of Simon & Schuster’s Books Like Us contest, Elba Iris Pérez’s lyrical and “wonderfully compelling” (Judith Simon Prager, author of What the Dolphin Said) cross-cultural coming-of-age debut novel explores a young girl’s childhood between 1950s Puerto Rico and a small Massachusetts factory town.
Andrea Rodríguez is nine years old when her mother whisks her and her brother, Pablo, away from Woronoco, the tiny Massachusetts factory town that is the only home they’ve known. With no plan and no money, she leaves them with family in the mountainside villages of Puerto Rico and promises to return.
Months later, when Andrea and Pablo are brought back to Massachusetts, they find their hometown significantly changed. As they navigate the rifts between their family’s values and all-American culture and face the harsh realities of growing up, they must embrace both the triumphs and heartache that mark the journey to adulthood.
A heartfelt, evocative portrait that “breathes with narrative magic” (Harry Youtt, poet and author of I’m Never Not Thinking of You), The Things We Didn’t Know establishes Elba Iris Pérez as a sensational new literary voice.
About the Author:
Elba Iris Pérez is from Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, spent her early childhood in Woronoco, Massachusetts, taught theater and history at the University of Puerto Rico in Arecibo, and now lives in Houston. She is also the author of El teatro como bandera, a history of street theater in Puerto Rico.
Website: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Things-We-Didnt-Know/Elba-Iris-Perez/9781668012062
