January 2022 – María Garcia Esperon & Maceo Montoya

Book of the Month

THE SEA-RINGED WORLD: SACRED STORIES OF THE AMERICAS
Author: María Garcia Esperon
Publisher: Levine Querido
ISBN-10:  164614015X / ISBN-13:  978-1646140152

SUMMARY: 

A collection of stories from nations and cultures across our two continents—the Sea-Ringed World, as the Aztecs called it—from the Andes all the way up to Alaska.

Fifteen thousand years before Europeans stepped foot in the Americas, people had already spread from tip to tip and coast to coast. Like all humans, these Native Americans sought to understand their place in the universe, the nature of their relationship with the divine, and the origin of the world into which their ancestors had emerged. The answers lay in their sacred stories.

Author María García Esperón, illustrator Amanda Mijangos, and translator David Bowles have gifted us a treasure. Their talents have woven this collection of stories from nations and cultures across our two continents—the Sea-Ringed World, as the Aztecs called it—from the edge of Argentina all the way up to Alaska

María Garcia Esperon 

María García Esperón was born in Mexico City and has won many awards including the Hispanic American Poetry Award for Children. Her novel Dido for Aeneas was selected in 2016 on the IBBY Honour List.

Follow María on Twitter at @MGarciaEsperon.
https://www.mariagarciaesperon.com/

 

Amanda Mijangos was born in Mexico City and is the founder of the illustration studio Cuarto para las 3. Her work has been recognized with awards several times and in 2017 she was the winner of the VIII Iberoamerica Illustra Catalog.


David Bowles is a Mexican American author and translator from South Texas. Among his multiple award-winning books are Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico, and They Call Me Güero. In 2017, David was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.
 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maria.garciaesperon.5
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MGarciaEsperon
Publisher Website: https://www.levinequerido.com/maria-garcia-esperon 

 

 

 

 


Conversations With Book

PREPARATORY NOTES FOR FUTURE MASTERPIECES
Author: Maceo Montoya
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
ISBN-10: 164779000X / ISBN-13: 978-1647790004

SUMMARY:  Ernie Lobato has just inherited his deceased uncle’s manuscript and drawings. At the urging of his colleague, an activist and history buff (Lorraine Rios), Ernie sends the materials to a professor of Chicanx literature (Dr. Samuel Pizarro). Throughout the novel, Dr. Pizarro shares his insights and comments on the uncle’s legacy in a series of annotations to his text and illustrations.

As Ernie’s uncle battles a world that is unkind to “starving artists,” he runs into other tormented twentieth-century artists, writers, and activists with ambitions to match his own: a young itinerant preacher (Reies López Tijerina); the “greatest insane artist” (Martín Ramirez); and Oscar Zeta Acosta who is hellbent on self-destruction. Will the fortuitous encounters with these prophetic figures result in his own genius being recognized? Or will his uncompromising nature consign him to what he fears most?

Told through a combination of words and images in the tradition of classic works such as Don Quixote and Alice in Wonderland, Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces features fifty-one vivid black-and-white pen drawings. This complex and engaging story also doubles as literary criticism, commenting on how outsiders’ stories fit into the larger context of the Chicanx literary canon. A unique and multilayered story that embraces both contradiction and possibility, it also sheds new light on the current state of Chicanx literature while, at the same time, contributing to it.

 

Maceo Montoya is an award-winning author, artist, and educator who has published books in a variety of genres. His books include The Scoundrel and The Optimist (awarded the 2011 International Latino Book Award for “Best First Book”). Montoya’s paintings, drawings, and prints have been featured in exhibitions and publications throughout the country as well as internationally. His first novel, The Scoundrel and the Optimist (Bilingual Review, 2010), was awarded the 2011 International Latino Book Award for “Best First Book” and Latino Stories named him one of its “Top Ten New Latino Writers to Watch.” In 2014, University of New Mexico Press published his second novel, The Deportation of Wopper Barraza, and Copilot Press published Letters to the Poet from His Brother, a hybrid book combining images, prose poems, and essays. Montoya’s third work of fiction, You Must Fight Them: A Novella and Stories (University of New Mexico Press, 2015) was a finalist for Foreword Review’s INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award. Montoya is also the author and illustrator of Chicano Movement for Beginners, a work of graphic nonfiction. His most recent novel is Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces (University of Nevada Press, 2021).

In the visual arts, Montoya’s paintings, drawings, and prints have been featured in exhibitions and publications throughout the country as well as internationally. He has collaborated with other writers on visual-textual projects, including David Montejano’s Sancho’s Journal (University of Texas Press, 2012), an ethnography of the Brown Berets in San Antonio, Laurie Ann Guerrero’s A Crown for Gumecindo (Aztlán Libre Press, 2015), and Arturo Mantecon’s translation of Mexican poet Mario Santiago Papasquiaro’s Poetry Comes Out of My Mouth (Dialogos Books, 2018). In 2021, Red Hen Press published American Quasar, a collaboration with Fresno poet David Campos featuring 19 of Montoya’s monoprints.

Montoya grew up in Elmira, California. He comes from a family of artists, including his father Malaquias Montoya, a renowned artist, activist, and educator, and his late brother, the poet Andrés Montoya. Maceo graduated from Yale University in 2002 and received his Master of Fine Arts in visual art from Columbia University in 2006. He is currently an associate professor in the Chicana/o Studies Department at UC Davis where he teaches courses on Chicanx culture and literature.

Author Website: http://maceomontoya.com
Publisher Website: https://unpress.nevada.edu/