Book of the Month
THE VOLCANO DAUGHTERS
Author: Gina Maria Balibrera
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN-10: 0593317238 / ISBN-13: 978-0593317235
SUMMARY:
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • A searingly original debut about two sisters and their flight from genocide—which takes them from Hollywood to Paris to San Francisco’s Cannery Row—each haunted along the way by the ghosts of their murdered friends, who are not yet done telling their stories
“Gripping and spellbinding…Unforgettable.”—Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half • “Stunning…A sweeping yet intimate look at love, sisterhood, and resistance in the face of devastation.” —Charmaine Wilkerson, author of Black Cake • “A bilingual, mythological, and original debut about resistance and survival.” —Vulture
El Salvador, 1923. Graciela, a young girl growing up on a volcano in a community of Indigenous women, is summoned to the capital, where she is claimed as an oracle for a rising dictator. There she meets Consuelo, the sister she has never known, who was stolen from their home before Graciela was born. The two spend years under the cruel El Gran Pendejo’s regime, unwillingly helping his reign of terror, until genocide strikes the community from which they hail. Each believing the other to be dead, they escape, fleeing across the globe, reinventing themselves until fate ultimately brings them back together in.
About the Author:
GINA MARÍA BALIBRERA earned an MFA in Prose from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. She’s been awarded grants from Aspen Words, Tin House, the Rackham Foundation, and the Periplus Collective, as well as a Tyson Award, the Aura Estrada Prize, and the Under the Volcano Sandra Cisneros Fellowship.
Website: https://ginabalibrera.com/
Conversations Book
THERE IS A RIO GRANDE IN HEAVEN
Author: Ruben Reyes Jr.
Publisher: Mariner Books
ISBN-10: 0063336278 \ ISBN-13: 978-0063336278
SUMMARY:
An ordinary man wakes one morning to discover he’s a famous reggaetón star. An aging abuela slowly morphs into a marionette puppet. A struggling academic discovers the horrifying cost of becoming a Self-Made Man.
In There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, Ruben Reyes Jr. conjures strange dreamlike worlds to explore what we would do if we woke up one morning and our lives were unrecognizable. Boundaries between the past, present, and future are blurred. Menacing technology and unchecked bureaucracy cut through everyday life with uncanny dread. The characters, from mango farmers to popstars to ex-guerilla fighters to cyborgs, are forced to make uncomfortable choices—choices that not only mean life or death, but might also allow them to be heard in a world set on silencing the voices of Central Americans.
Blazing with heart, humor, and inimitable style, There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven subverts everything we think we know about migration and its consequences, capturing what it means to take up a new life—whether willfully or forced—with piercing and brilliant clarity. A gifted new storyteller and trailblazing stylist, Reyes not only transports to other worlds but alerts us to the heartache and injustice of our own.
About the Author:
Ruben Reyes Jr. is the son of two Salvadoran immigrants and the author of There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Harvard College, his writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Lightspeed Magazine, and other publications. Originally from Southern California, he now lives in Brooklyn.
Website: https://www.rubenreyesjr.com/
IG: @rubenreyes_jr
Conversations Children’s Book
JOSE FEEDS THE WORLD: HOW A FAMOUS CHEF FEEDS MILLIONS OF PEOPLE IN NEED AROUND THE WORLD
Author: David Unger
Publisher: duopress
ISBN-10: 1728279526 ISBN-13: 978-1728279527
SUMMARY:
The true story of José Andrés, an award-winning chef, food activist, and founder of World Central Kitchen, a disaster-relief organization that uses the power of food to nourish communities after catastrophe strikes.
When a terrible earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, chef José Andrés knew he needed to help. Within a few hours of the disaster, he had gathered friends, they flew to the island, and they began cooking rice and beans for the hungry locals. This trip changed the life of the successful chef and led him to found World Central Kitchen, a disaster-relief organization that has fed more than 200 million people affected by natural disasters, the COVID pandemic, and war.
This beautifully illustrated book tells the story of a passionate chef who uses the power of food to nurture people in need, one plate at a time.
About the Author:
David Unger received Guatemala’s Miguel Angel Asturias National Literature Prize for lifetime achievement in 2014, though he writes in English and lives abroad. Novels include In My Eyes, You Are Beautiful (Mosaic Press, 2023), The Mastermind, (Akashic Books, 2016) [translated into ten languages including Spanish, Arabic, Italian, Turkish and Polish], The Price of Escape (Akashic Books: 2011; into German, Romanian and Spanish), Ni chicha, ni limonada (F y G Editores, 2019, 2009) and Life in the Damn Tropics (Wisconsin University Press, 2004).
He has translated 18 titles including his celebrated re-translation of Guatemalan Nobelist Miguel Angel Asturias’s Mr. President (Penguin Classics, 2022), Folktales for Fearless Girls (Penguin, 2019), The Popol Vuh, (Guatemala’s pre-Columbian creation myth) and books by Rigoberta Menchú (Guatemala), Enrique Lihn (Chile), Silvia Molina (Mexico), Nicanor Parra (Chile), Ana Maria Machado (Brazil), Elena Garro (Mexico) and Teresa Cárdenas (Cuba). He has also translated many stories by Mario Benedetti (Uruguay), Denise Phe-Funchal (Guatemala), Sergio Ramirez Mercado (Nicaragua), among others.
His children’s books are José Feeds the World (Duopress, 2024), Moley Mole/Topo Pecoso (Green Seeds Publishing, 2021). Sleeping With the Light On (Groundwood Books, 2020), and La Casita (2011, CIDCLI).
His short stories and essays have appeared in the Paris Review, Medium, Puertos Abiertos (FCE, 2011), Guernica Magazine (February 2016, April 2011, November 2007 and August 2006) and Playboy Mexico (October 2005).
Marta Álvarez Miguéns is a self-taught children’s illustrator. She was born in a small town in Galicia, Spain, and currently lives in La Coruña, Spain. She is the illustrator of Shark Lady (written by Jess Keating), which was named a 2018 Best STEM Book by the Children’s Book Council as well as a Best STEM Book by the National Science Teachers Association.
Websites: indentagency.com/david-unger
Instagram:@ungerguategringo
UPCOMING BOOKS
**JANUARY 2025** Teleconference date: January 25
TBD
**FEBRUARY 2025** Teleconference date: February 24
TBD