June 2019 Book of the Month
Bang: A Novel
by Daniel Peña
Published by: Arte Publico
ISBN-10: 1558858563
ISBN-13: 978-1558858565
SYNOPSIS:
Uli’s first flight, a late-night joy ride with his brother, changes their lives forever when the engine stops and the boys crash land, with “Texas to the right and Mexico to the left.” Before the accident, Uli juggled his status as both an undocumented immigrant and a high school track star in Harlingen, Texas, desperately hoping to avoid being deported like his father. His mother Araceli spent her time waiting for her husband. His older brother Cuauhtemoc, a former high-school track star turned drop-out, learned to fly a crop duster, spraying pesticide over their home in the citrus grove.
After the crash, Cuauhtemoc wakes up bound and gagged, wondering where he is. Uli comes to in a hospital, praying that it’s on the American side of the border. And their mother finds herself waiting for her sons as well as her missing husband. Araceli knows that she has to go back to the country she left behind in order to find her family.
In Mexico, each is forced to navigate the complexities of their past and an unknown world of deprivation and violence. Ruthless drug cartels force Cuauhtemoc to fly drugs. “If a brick goes missing, Cuauhtemoc dies. If a plane goes missing, Cuauhtemoc dies. If Cuauhtemoc goes missing, they find Cuauhtemoc (wherever he’s at) and Cuauhtemoc dies.” If they can’t find him, they will kill his mother. They have photos of her in Matamoros to prove they can enforce the threat. Meanwhile, Uli returns to his family’s home in San Miguel and finds a city virtually abandoned, devastated by battles between soldiers, cartels and militias that vie for control.
Vividly portraying the impact of international drug smuggling on the innocent, Pena’s debut novel also probes the loss of talented individuals and the black market machines fed with the people removed and shut out of America. Ultimately, Bang is a riveting tale about ordinary people forced to do dangerous, unimaginable things.
BIO:
DANIEL PEÑA, a Pushcart Prize-winning writer, is an assistant professor at the University of Houston-Downtown, where he teaches in the Department of English. Previously he was at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, where he worked as a writer, blogger, book reviewer and journalist. A Cornell University graduate and Fulbright-Garcia Robles scholar, his fiction has been widely published, appearing in such journals as Ploughshares, The Rumpus, Callaloo and the Kenyon Review Online. Bang is his debut novel.
Author webpage: https://artepublicopress.com/blog/daniel-pena/
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June 2019 Conversations Book
Encounters After The Sunset: Rescuing Ancestral Memories
by Ricardo Suárez-Gärtner
Published by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
ISBN-10: 1981472894
ISBN-13:
SYNOPSIS:
Oftentimes while sitting before a bonfire, I become mesmerized by the flames with their never-ending dance. Soon my eyes focus on them to the exclusion of anything else. After some time I sense that nondescript presences start lurking quietly on the fringes of the fire. These friendly spirits are preterit beings who in their moment made considerable contributions to my genome: my long gone ancestors.
The quest to rescue their memories from “among rocks and papers” has been a long journey. The fire has burnt hot and bright, and a few distinct individuals have emerged from among those faded ghosts in my distant past: Saxon and Cornish miners, illiterate peasants and cultured professionals, freed slaves, dispossessed Indians, and Spanish conquistadors and colonists, inter alios. I have collected their stories in this book titled “Encounters after the Sunset” as a bridge for future generations.
With the flames now subsided into quiet embers, I will dare claim to have done my duty. It is my hope that other folks will take on the worthy cause of un-forgetting their predecessors and the teachings they might have left behind.
In years to come, I may well be patiently awaiting to hear their stories from the blurry edges of a charmed woodfire.
BIO:
Ricardo Suárez-Gärtner was born in Venezuela and studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where he obtained master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering. His book “Entre Piedras y Papeles” (Among Rocks and Papers) collected the fruits of a 20-year search for ancestral roots in South America and Europe. It was selected as the “Best First Non-fiction Book in Spanish” at the 2016 International Latino Book Awards (ILBA).
His new book “Encounters after the Sunset” received the ILBA2018 First Place award for best non-fiction eBook.
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