libros
mary castillo is
spicing things up
Hot Tamara
Mary Castillo
(Avon Trade) $12.95
February 2005
If you have three or four hours to spend — and feel like enjoying a nice, easy read — you might want to slip into Mary Castillo’s latest confection, Hot Tamara. It’s a simple and mildly entertaining love story that will hold your attention for the duration of a plane ride, with no surprises, turbulence, or bumps along the way. Something like an after-school-special-with-sex, the tale follows the exploits of Tamara Contreras, a fully modern and assimilated Latina who yearns to live beyond the traditional path expected by her familia. At best, this story is about a woman’s struggle to pursue her own happiness while being forced to choose between career and family. But don’t expect a feminist manifesto within these pages; even though our heroine makes a difficult choice or two, Hot Tamara is harmless fun in which no one gets seriously hurt, feathers don’t stay ruffled for very long, and everyone falls back in love. Tamara ventures slightly beyond her comfort zone (or rather, the comfort zone of her parents), and instantly finds success and sex in the big city. Even her parents end up happy. Latin women of all walks of life will identify with the story’s characters and the theme of strong familial ties, but they will certainly find this novel less challenging than, say, Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’ Diary or Julia Alvarez’s ¡Yo! Lissette calderÓn
You might enjoy Hot Tamara if you loved Friday Night Chicas and Faith in You by Caridad P. Scordato, The Woman I Kept to Myself by Julia Alvarez, The Dirty Girls Social Club: A Novel by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, or Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel.
To the Last Man I Slept with and All the Jerks Just Like Him
Gwendolyn Zepeda
(Villard) $12.95
October 2004
Reading To the Last Man I Slept with and All the Jerks Just Like Him, is kind of like channel surfing. Except this time whenever you click the remote, you actually find something worth your time. From the childhood memories of a Chicana who looks Anglo, to a slightly disturbing explanation of why ants love dirty chones, Gwendolyn Zepeda’s first book goes exactly where you don’t expect it. The Houston writer wryly recalls one of the hardest parts of a girl’s adolescence — the burning desire to become what men want — and dissects the pain of losing yourself when you want a man too badly. Zepeda pokes fun at historical romance novels with the hilarious tale of Miss Chastity Fairbody, and then takes an intergalactic journey of sex, bugs and self-empowerment. Far from making the book seem scattershot, this approach is a thrill ride in Zepeda’s competent hands. The best part of this funny, angry, razor-sharp book is not knowing where the next chapter will dare to go. Bianca Escarcega
Recommended reads: Loverboys by Ana Castillo; The Aguero Sisters by Cristina Garcia; Good Girl Wants It Bad by Scott Bradfield.
The Border Patrol Ate My Dust
Alicia AlarcÓn
(Arte Publico Press) $14.95
December 2004
The Border Patrol Ate My Dust is a compilation of real-life stories of men and women who risked it all for a new life in the United States. These compelling firsthand accounts illustrate the reasons that drive many to leave their countries and loved ones to begin a new life in a strange and, many times, inhospitable country. Radio personality Alicia Alarcón asked her listeners who had migrated to the United States to share their stories, and this gripping, enlightening book is the result. Alarcón has collected their life’s triumphs in these pages, always seasoned with struggle, disappointment, and hardship. And these are the ones who were successful in crossing over. The stories are written in gritty, realistic prose that shakes the reader and debunks the myths of why people immigrate. What emerges is the individuality of each heart-wrenching experience of those who made the border patrol eat their dust, only to face unexpected new hurdles at every turn in their adopted land. SUSANNE RAMIREZ DE ARELLANO
Other titles dealing with immigration and border issues include: Ambos Nogales by Lawrence J. Taylor and Maeve Hickey, and Batos, Bolillos, Pochos & Pelados by Chad Richardson.
The Good Body
Eve Ensler
(Villard) $19.95
November 2004
Eve Ensler has been a public feminist for 30 years, but in her new play, The Good Body, she confesses something painfully private: Ensler is afraid to eat bread. The carbohydrates scare her and threaten to expand her stomach. To get through meals, Ensler regularly shares a plate with her male partner.
A mixture of confession and interviews with women all over the world, The Good Body is a less explosive play than Ensler’s Obie-winning The Vagina Monologues, but it portrays the quiet poignancy of how many women navigate eating. Ensler’s subjects include high-profile women such as Helen Gurley Brown and Isabella Rosellini but also regular folks such as an African-American teenager at an obesity camp and a middle-aged Indian woman.
Carmen, a Puerto Rican woman from Brooklyn, whom Ensler meets at Weight Watchers, adds an important voice to the play but at times tends toward cultural stereotypes. Carmen insightfully discusses her longtime struggle with “the spread,” a thick midriff and thighs, a condition that she says is worse than an STD, because “you can take drugs for that before it gets to your head.” But she also fears that the spread will remind men of “rice and beans and a pissed-off wife with screaming kids in front of a loud half-paid-for TV set.”
The Vagina Monologues prompted the “V-Day” movement to raise awareness of violence toward females. The Good Body may not have such sweeping results, but many of its moments will remain with women in the supermarket, or as they step onto their scales. Carolyn Alessio
Several other powerful books that explore women’s body issues include: The Woman I Kept to Myself: Poems by Julia Alvarez; The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Natalie Angier, and The Hungry Self: Women, Eating and Identity by Kim Chernin.
Finding Miracles
Julia Alvarez
(Knopf Books for Young Readers) $15.95
October 2004
Finding Miracles is Julia Alvarez’s third novel for young people and the one that will most clearly appeal to teens. While When Tia Lola Came to Stay can be enjoyed by readers as young as eight, and Before We Were Free, set in the Dominican Republic during the turbulent 1960’s, is for ten-to-fourteen-year-olds, this new novel is for twelve-to-sixteen-year-olds. Alvarez is clearly imagining her readers staying with her as they grow up. I hope they are, because she has so much to offer.
Her most important offering is her skill as a storyteller. As she also demonstrates in her adult fiction, she knows how to keep her readers turning pages. Finding Miracles concerns Milly, a typical Vermont teenager in an Anglo family, coming to terms with the facts surrounding her adoption from a (deliberately) unnamed Central American country. When a new classmate, Pablo, and his family find refuge from that same -country in Milly’s town, she is finally ready to ask the questions she has always suppressed about her birth family. As Milly’s family and Pablo’s become friends, readers learn basic information about Central American politics. In the suspenseful second half of the novel, Milly travels with Pablo’s family back to her birth country, getting closer and closer to the facts surrounding her birth and placement in an orphanage.
Alvarez also excercises her other great gift in this novel: creating memorable, lovable, believable characters who, regardless of age, learn to embrace change. She writes with such humanity and generosity that young readers will easily identify. For our sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, Julia Alvarez is creating an impressive body of work that we can be proud to share. Linda Bubon
Other books for young people to help understand the complex issues of growing up Latino-American: Becoming Naomi Leon and Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan; Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez; The First Part Last by Angela Johnson.
Loosing My Espanish
H. G. Carillo
(Pantheon) $23.00
October 2004
Loosing My Espanish is at once a joyous and maddening experience. In this debut novel, H.G. Carrillo blends vibrant language, vivid imagery, and complex personalities into a bilingual, stream-of-consciousness narrative that weaves its way through time, space, and the Cuban diaspora. Tragedy and loss mix with longing and hope as an apartment is accidentally set on fire, a parent descends into Alzheimer’s, a teaching career is cut short by scandal, a love is found and lost. Lives upturned by the Cuban revolution are recreated in a small Cuban-American community in Chicago. If you prefer a book with a linear narrative and clearly defined plot points neatly tied up at the end, look elsewhere. If, however, you can let yourself be carried into the wafting swirls of Carrillo’s prose, you will be enchanted. Ruth Kunstadter
Readers who fall under the spell of Loosing My Espanish may also enjoy: Dreaming in Cuban, by Cristina Garcia; Chango’s Fire, by Ernesto Quiñonez, or Caramba!: A Tale Told in Turns of the Card, by Nina Marie Martinez.