Friday, December 13, 2024

New Books February - March

What to expect in 2025?  Here's some of the good that might come your way.  If you read.

________________________________




Cristina Rivera Garza
translated by Robin Myers and Sarah Booker
Hogarth - February 25

[from the publisher]
A professor named Cristina Rivera Garza stumbles upon the corpse of a mutilated man in a dark alley and reports it to the police. When shown a crime scene photo, she finds a stark warning written in tiny print with coral nail polish on the brick wall beside the body: “Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert.”

The professor becomes the first informant on the case, which is led by a detective newly obsessed with poetry and trailed by a long list of failures. But what has the professor really seen? As the bodies of more castrated men are found alongside lines of verse, the detective tries to decipher the meaning of the poems to put a stop to the violence spreading throughout the city.

Originally written in Spanish, where the word “victim” is always feminine, Death Takes Me is a thrilling masterpiece of literary fiction that flips the traditional crime narrative of gendered violence on its head. As sharp as the cuts on the bodies of the victims, it unfolds with the charged logic of a dream, moving from the police station to the professor’s classroom and through the slippery worlds of Latin American poetry and art in an imaginative exploration of the unstable terrains of desire and sexuality.

________________________



Brother Brontë
Fernando A. Flores

MCD - February 11

[from the publisher]
The year is 2038, and the formerly bustling town of Three Rivers, Texas, is a surreal wasteland. Under the authoritarian thumb of its tech industrialist mayor, Pablo Henry Crick, the town has outlawed reading and forced most of the town’s mothers to work as indentured laborers at the Big Tex Fish Cannery, which poisons the atmosphere and lines Crick’s pockets.

Scraping by in this godforsaken landscape are best friends Prosperina and Neftalí—the latter of whom, one of the town’s last literate citizens, hides and reads the books of the mysterious renegade author Jazzmin Monelle Rivas, whose last novel, Brother Brontë, is finally in Neftalí’s possession. But after a series of increasingly violent atrocities committed by Crick’s forces, Neftalí and Prosperina, with the help of a wounded bengal tigress, three scheming triplets, and an underground network of rebel tías, rise up to reclaim their city—and in the process, unlock Rivas’s connection to Three Rivers itself.

An adventure that only the acclaimed Fernando A. Flores could dream up, Brother Brontë is a mordant, gonzo romp through a ruined world that, in its dysfunction, tyranny, and disparity, nonetheless feels uncannily like our own. With his most ambitious book yet, Flores once again bends what fiction can do, in the process crafting a moving and unforgettable story of perseverance

_________________________



Marcie R. Rendon
Soho Crime - March 4

[from the publisher]
Minnesota, 1970s: It’s spring in the Red River Valley and Cash Blackbear is doing fieldwork for a local farmer—until she finds him dead on the kitchen floor of the property’s rented farmhouse. The tenant, a Native field laborer, and his wife are nowhere to be found, but Cash discovers their young daughter, Shawnee, cowering under a bed. The girl, a possible witness to the killing, is too terrified to speak.

In the wake of the murder, Cash can’t deny her intuitive abilities: she is suspicious of the farmer’s grieving widow, who offers to take in Shawnee temporarily. While Cash is scouring White Earth Reservation for Shawnee’s missing mother—whom Cash wants to find before the girl is put in the foster system—another body turns up. Concerned by the escalating threat, Cash races against the clock to figure out the truth of what happened in the farmhouse.

Broken Fields is a compelling, atmospheric read woven with details of American Indian life in northern Minnesota, abusive farm labor practices and women’s liberation.

____________________________



Juan Gómez-Jurado
Minotaur Books - March 11

[from the publisher]
Antonia Scott has an unusually gifted forensic mind, whose ability to reconstruct crimes and solve baffling murders is legendary. She’s the lynchpin of a top-secret project, Red Queen, created to work across borders and behind the scenes to solve the most devious and dangerous crimes, those that are beyond the skills of the regular police forces.

But the Red Queen project is under attack on all fronts. Across Europe, its agents are murdering each other and cases from the past, long believed resolved, are rearing their deadly heads again. At the center of it is the mysterious Mr. White, who has been weaving a web around Antonia for a very long time. He is as smart and capable as her but, unlike her, he's a psychotic killer who has isolated Antonia Scott. Jon Gutierrez, Antonia’s protector and the only person she trusts, has been kidnapped. Antonia’s husband has been killed and her remaining family is in hiding. With Jon’s life at stake, Mr. White gives her a seemingly innocuous challenge: solve three crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice. The only way to keep Jon alive is to play Mr. White’s game, but can even Antonia win a game when she can only see part of the board?

_______________________



Stephen Graham Jones
S&S/Saga Press - March 18

[from the publisher]
A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.

Later.

______________________________

Manuel Ramos writes crime fiction.

Thursday, December 12, 2024

Chicanonautica: Joaquin . . . Joaquin . . . Do You Read?

by Ernest Hogan



Writing while Chicano. It’s a problema. Especially if you’re writing about Chicanos. Write what you know, they say, but if you’re not part of the dominant culture, but one that’s misunderstood and goes against the corporate mythology . . .


We don’t fit into the parameters of what Western Civilization in the last century has come to call “realism.” So, we get magic and other realisms. We are too complicated. So, I make my Chicano weird shit into sci-fi, and Scott Russell Duncan’s novel is “metafiction.”

Duncan is a Chicano. So am I. Yeah, there we go being complicated again. How can such things be? As my grandmother once put it, “Sometimes the soldiers would come into the village, and take the girls away on their horses, and then they would be their wives.”


I get sick of explaining myself, but then that’s the whole point.


Then throw in history, folklore, and literature . . . 


This is why Duncan’s novel Old California Strikes Back is so complicated. There’s a lot of his personal experience that would anger racists and disturb liberals, then there's Joaquin Murrietta, who’s legend is the beginning of the Chicano identity, though some Anglo scholars want to write him off as a racist serial killer. His head floating in a jar being put on display by California Ranger Harry Love seems like something out of an over-the-top, surrealistic spaghetti western. It is our heritage. Where we come from, and the mess that is our situation as we hurtle into the year 2025.



The book goes from slices of life, to a wildly imaginative journey to the heart of the California/Chicano dream/nightmare. It’s a wild ride, and hilarious.


And there are Star Trek references.


It may scare some folks but brings a special joy to my born-in-Eastlos heart.


And it’s all an important part of United States of Norteamericano culture, tambien. Joaquin’s legend was popular. Novelist Johnston McCulley whitewashed him (a lot of Anglos can’t tell Hispanic from Latinoid from Indigenous) into Zorro, a rich, Spanish landowner to make him appealing to the readers of early pulp magazines. Later we got a further whitewashed, no longer Hispanic version in urban millionaire Batman. 


It all goes back to Joaquin.


He’s also the prototype for the bandido/bad hombre that a certain felon/president is promising to get rid of in a mass deportation/ethnic cleansing.


The world needs Old California Strikes Back. It’s funny and enlightening–Chicano reality in all its complicated glory. 


I often wonder, would a Chicano be allowed to write the Great American Novel?


Could it be about Joaquin Murrietta?


I just hope it’s not coming too late.



Ernest Hogan, the Father of Chicano Science Fiction, is planning on running amok in the year 2025. Stay tuned for details . . .

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Winter Children's Book Street Fair in San Francisco


Luna's Press & Bookstore is  excited for their first ever Book Street Fair at Luna’s Press Books! 

Sunday, Dec 15 from 11 to 3

LUNA'S PRESS & BOOKSTORE

3790 MISSION ST

SAN FRANCISCO


 

Meet local authors: Jim Cartwright, Romilda Byrd, Holly Ayala and Jamie Shepard. Plus René Colato Laínez from Los Angeles.


Luna's Press Books is a small bookstore in San Francisco that specializes in Bilingual and Multicultural Children's Books.






Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Holiday eating from The Gluten-free Chicano

Michael Sedano

Condiment Par Excellence: World's Best Cranberry Sauce, Naturally Gluten-Free

The day before preparing a roasted bird, or a simple pork loin that you want to make into an elegant banquet, or frying up a quotidian passel of pork chops à la Mammy Yokum, or a savory dish of stir-fried vegetables, make an essential condiment that is so delicious you serve it as a side-dish: fresh cranberry sauce.

Canned cranberry sauce is a time-honored feature, jellied or whole berry. That's a pale imitation of the real thing, but it's satisfactory. Really, it is; only satisfactory. 

Once you and your guests dig forks into this fresh cranberry and citrus dish, you'll abandon thoughts of picking a can when you're provisioning that meal. Pick up fresh berries and make your own. This recipe makes enough delicious cranberry sauce for numerous meals and snacks.

My granddaughter, who's graduating high school this year, has been preparing this with me for most of her life. Early in our kitchen experience, the 8- or 9-years old girl wrote down the recipe so she would never forget how to do this. 

This is how we do it:



A zester should be on your "all I want for Christmas" gift list, if you don't already own a zester. A zester's a wood rasp with a Ph.D. Keep the plastic sheath around it when you're not using it. Reaching into a drawer with a hidden naked zester will zest the skin right off your knuckles!


Rub the washed outside of your citrus with the tool, filling the zester with just the cascara's goodness.


Use your cocido/menudo pot. Pour three bags of fresh cranberries into the pot and set the fire on low-medium. Add the zests as you do each fruit. The berries begin to pop with the heat. Don't add a lot of sugar; you can always make it sweeter but you can't unsweet the too-sweet concoction. A cup is a good start.


Work diligently to get the fruit cut up and into the pot. The juice from the fruit adds essential liquid. Cut the fruit into spoon-size chunks and don't worry about membranes, but do remove seeds.


There's no rule for how many fruit to use, nor the varieties. You can use one toronja, one orange, one limon, or two of this and one of that. Every year's cranberry sauce can have its own character.


With the zest, sugar, fruit in the pot, let the popping fruit signal it's time to get the potato masher and push the fruit into the hot bottom where the low boil works magic.


Texture is up to you. With a lot of smashing you get a more jellied product. 


We enjoy whole berries mixed up with the jellied texture.


Get a gentle boil in the pot and cook on low heat fifteen minutes. More time, if you want a more jellied finish. Let the cranberry sauce cool and put into two containers; one for the meal, another for later. 

You'll enjoy this condiment slathered on a turkey sandwich, as a spread on gluten-free breakfast breads, or puffed rice cakes. Home-made cranberry sauces is naturally gluten-free, so bon apétit and buen provecho.

The Best Part of the Holiday Banquet: Turkey Soup the Day After 
If your turkey gets roasted without bread stuffing inside the cavity, likely it's a gluten-free carcass you have after the meal. That platter of bones that once held meat, and still has lot of slivers and hunks of flesh, makes a perfect beginning to the post-holiday's economical and absolutely delicious soup, a wondrous gift of the season.

Órale, here's an idea for you singletons who get invited to the holiday feast then have sobras loaded up when you leave. 

Ask for the turkey carcass. Take home the bones and make the soup. 

Celery, carrots, papas, onion, garlic, a tomato if you will. Get them all chopped up into more or less equal sized bits. 




Get a lot of water into that menudo pot, put the carcass into the water that start it boiling. Almost instantly the aroma of rich turkey broth-in-the-making starts filling the air.


Cook at as hard a boil as pleases you and when the meat begins falling off the bones, use a fork or tongs to remove what meat you can. Then pull all the bones and the cola out of the broth.

Given a pot of broth with minimal bones and fragments--nor skin if gente don't appreciate the most flavorsome tidbits of a carcass--add the chopped vegetables, a half a lemon or both halves, and cook until the carrots and papas are fork tender. Maybe that's twenty minutes, and voilà. Hay 'stas. Caldo de turkey.


An Asian flat rice noodle--gluten-free--added for five minutes or so converts this simple soup into a really elegant noodle caldo that will have friends asking for seconds. You can dilute the broth once, or twice, to make the pot of soup go a long way.

Buen gluten-free provecho.




Friday, December 06, 2024

Poem for Blanca on the 30th Anniversary of Her Heavenly Birthday

 Melinda Palacio



My mom was disappointed when she saw that all of her photographs from Hawaii were in black and white. Here she imaged reliving lush waterfalls and the fun trip the three of us took, my mom, grandmother, and myself in 1989. I have one of those photos of her being chummy with a fire dancer. How I miss our time together, especially around the holidays. She would have been 73 yesterday, December 5. When the grieving and nostalgia hit, I feel a little sideways, kind of like this photo. However, if one of my fellow bloggers can turn the photo around, please advise. Thank you. ( rotated but it acquired a watermark)


  1. Ode to the Plumeria in Her Hair

    Melinda Palacio

O sweet scent of a plumeria

affixed to the left side of her hair.

A single mom, she welcomes a local catch.

Unruly locks secure the fragile flower 

as she walks along Waikiki beach.

A Chicana in Honolulu, she becomes 

a wahine for a day, swims in Hanauma Bay, 

tries poi and banana bread offered to her 

by a woman waiting for a bus. I decline.

She never refuses an elder. 

In her short shorts, lathered in Banana Boat

tanning oil, mom teaches me how

to sway my hips hula style.

Sit next to her and the plumeria’s perfume

lands sweeter than any ripened fruit.

The flower’s center is infant seashell color,

coral born out of an explosive ocean swell.

A hint of yellow surrounding its center

and the iris of the petal is a fortune teller.

At the end of the day, white petals brown.

Tomorrow, our last day in paradise,

she will find a fresh bloom. Every day 

her hair exudes the aroma of summer.

O, how I miss those warm summer nights 

when she was still alive. A grown plumeria

cutting from a friend’s tree sways

in my backyard, a reminder of mom,

our summers together and

her unwavering love for me. 


Thursday, December 05, 2024

The Rest of Us Are Already Here

                                                                                 

El Camaguey Market, on the roof, flying the colors of all Latin America
                                                                                               

     I remember some years back, could be five, maybe even ten, seeing a cartoon someone posted on social media. It was a drawing of a large U.S. Navy vessel stopped alongside a rowboat filled with half a dozen Mexicans off the California coast. One of the American sailors called down. “Why are you out here?”

     A Mexican called back, “We’re coming to the U.S. to start a revolution.”

     The American sailors, watching, started laughing. One called down, “Just you?”

     The Mexican answered, “No. The rest of us are already here.”

     I had a good laugh. I mean, there are many ways to interpret the piece, right, depending on where you might live in the U.S.? Those in the East might see it differently from those in the Midwest, the deep South, the Dakotas, the Pacific Northwest or the Southwest. Coming from Los Angeles, home to the largest Mexican population outside of Mexico, I figured the idea of a “revolution” meant a cultural transformation, not an armed insurrection.

     If Mexicans, African Americans, Asians, Arabs, or any other ethnic group had charged towards the capital in Washington D.C., on January 6th, to start a revolution, they would have been mowed down before they reached the first steps of the building.

     Los Angeles has been my family’s home since 1917, five generations on both maternal and paternal sides, raised in roughly the same general area, Santa Monica, Culver City, Venice, and West Los Angeles. I always remembered a blend of cultures, mostly Mexican, Anglos, Japanese, and some African American, with a smattering of others throughout the years. My grandparents’ generation wasn’t the first generation of Mexicans here.

     Historically, exploration and migration from Mexico into what we know todays as the U.S. has been continuous since Cabeza de Vaca’s adventures in 1526, surviving among Indians, from Florida into Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, or what we know as the Southwest. In subsequent years, cataclysmic events, on both sides of the border, caused this migration to soar, of course, 1600 to 1700, when Spanish Mexican explorers settled New Mexico and Texas. In California, during the founding of settlements and missions from San Diego to San Francisco. 

     In later years, two major cataclysmic events brought Mexicans north, one the Mexican revolution (1910-1925), and the second, the Cristero War (1926-1929). Mexicans settled in cities and towns from Michigan to Kansas City and across the Southwest, working in mines, agriculture, manufacturing, and the railroads. Captains of industry welcomed the cheap labor with open arms. The U.S. and Mexico cooperated in bracero programs during the two world wars, which opened the doors to thousands more workers from Mexico, some who returned to Mexico, and many who didn’t.

     Then, in the 1980s, the turmoil created by U.S., CIA-supported civil wars in Central America, started the early migrant caravans from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. We can't forget the poverty created by U.S. industries in Latin America, like petroleum, mining, and agriculture, ignoring environmental laws, that displaced thousands who also came north, after the destruction of their farms and homes. Most all those folks came, found work, settled in, and have been here for years. However, if we consider our indigenous blood, our roots go back thousands of years, deep, like the redwoods in the Sierras.

     The point is, that’s a lot of Mexicans/Latinos, just in California more than 15 million, 35 percent of the population, and some estimate close to half the population in twenty years, yet the Golden State continues to be one of the more prosperous in the nation, in nearly all categories of industry. In the U.S., Latinos are almost 20 percent of the U.S. population, the largest minority group in the country. So, in the cartoon, when the Mexican in the boat said, “The rest of us are already here,” he wasn’t lying, the irony right in our faces.

     As I walk my Mar Vista neighborhood on L.A.’s, quite expensive, westside, I see the cultural revolution in full swing. In the 1950s, there were, maybe, three or four Mexican restaurants in town. Today, everywhere I look, I see Mexican, Salvadoran and Oaxacan, restaurants, bakeries, and markets, and Latino sections at, even, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. Anglos are pulling corn and flour tortillas off the shelf with the same gusto they go after bread. Then, there's the more recent migration from Southeast Asia, the Middle and Far East, a Thai noodle shop at the corner, and on busy Venice Boulevard, Brazilian, Nepalese, Ethiopian, and Cuban food to die for.

     Around the corner from my house, on Venice boulevard, El Camaguey Cuban market, today, caters to all Latin American populations, including Haitians and Dominicans. I stand at the counter, and I see Argentinian “mate” cups on a shelf, alongside, bottles of various Mexican and Latin American concoctions of – who knows what? I think my grandfather used to call them “boticas,” translation, could be a pharmacy or a bottle of medicine.

     Then there’s the old school hair tonic, Tres Flores, which comes in wax or liquid, and I can’t forget, the Mexican favorite, displayed at the counter, Corn Nuts, in the original designed package, or what my Spanish-speaking uncle would call, “Maiz como puerco.”

     The butcher is at the back of the store. One day, I watched a young Anglo converse with him, asking about the best cut of meat for carne asada. The butcher, with a heavy accent, asked, “Marinated or plain.”

     The guy said, “Which tastes better?”

     The butcher recommended the marinated, thinly cut slices of meat. “Easy to cook, and tender. Just needs salsa on it.”

     So, that’s what the guy bought, the marinated cut. I also saw a lot of meat in the case I didn’t recognize, some of it looking back at me. I didn’t even ask. At the counter, two women talked, like they were meeting for the first time, one who said she was from Argentina, the other from Costa Rica, both with light skin, dark eyes, fairly tall, and slim, more Caucasian-looking than Latinas, another dashed stereotype.

     A few stores down from Camaguey, on the other side of a video game store and a hipster bar, $14.00 for a shot of tequila, is the “crunchy” Venice bakery, which serves a fusion of Mexican-Caribbean cuisine, bolillos, pan dulce, blueberry muffins, cakes, and the finest tres leche cakes. The place is always crowded, with young college kids, workers, families, and the obvious out-of-towners. Want a table? Put your name on the list. 

     The soft sounds of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, waft through air (can music waft? Quien sabe?). Tomorrow, it might be Los Tigres del Norte, Bad Bunny, or Kendrick Lamar.

     Close to the curb, la tamalera, has set up shop, under an umbrella, a large container on a table filled with this morning’s freshly cooked steaming tamales, pork, beef, chicken, and green chile with cheese. Her husband drives by a few hours each day to resupply her cache. She sits there eight-to-ten hours a day, almost every day, in her spot for well over two years, now, and a steady stream of customers. That’s not counting the paleta guy who rings his bell at the nearby park, or the taco stands that set up shop each day in front of Vons and CVS at the busy corners of National and Sepulveda. Fruit? The multi-colored umbrella and fruit carts are everywhere.

     It all reminds me of the song "Los Illegales," by Los Tucanes de Tijuana, where they sing, “The illegal is not a terrorist/ the illegal is a laborer/ Why do they want to kill us/ Be careful, we are many and over there come millions more.” Los Tucanes don’t want to scare people, just sing about what’s real, like when they belt out, “Terrorists have passports/ They don’t come in through land but by plane/ That’s why you shouldn’t bother with us/ But recognize we are only here to work.”

     So, I guess it’s true, U.S. culture has already changed, and continues to change, and, it appears, for the better, and not just in food and music but in all aspects of our daily lives, and it doesn’t just go one way. Culture affects everyone, like the kids of immigrants, who not only listen to Mexican rock and the hip, new ranchera sound, but tap into rap, classic rock, and Metal, preferring a cheeseburger over a taco.

     So, there's no doubt, the Mexican character in the cartoon, who calls up from the boat to the American sailors, “The rest of us are already there,” knows something maybe others are missing.

Daniel Cano is the author of the award-winning novel, "Death and the American Dream," the last days of Ricardo Flores Magon and the Magonistas in the U.S.


Wednesday, December 04, 2024

Three Pockets Full



Written by Cindy L Rodriguez 

Illustrated by Begoña Fernandez Corbalán

 


Publisher: Cardinal Rule Press 

Language: English

Hardcover: 32 pages

ISBN-10: 1735345156

ISBN-13: 978-1735345154

 


A story of love, family, and tradition


 

Beto won't wear a guayabera to the wedding. Nope! Nunca! Not going to happen! Beto tries his best to rid himself of the traditional Mexican wedding shirt his Mami gave him. He even gets help from his dog Lupe, but the shirt ends up back on his bed each time with notes from Mami, who becomes increasingly frustrated with Beto. Mami insists that Beto attend the wedding, and wear the shirt, because—after all—it's her wedding! Beto has to accept the fact that Mami is getting remarried and that she wants him to wear the shirt, which is part of his heritage.

 

This book comes with a free Reader’s Guide for children. The guide is available for free download from the publisher website. Lesson plans, activities, and discussion questions to allow parents, teachers, and caregivers to explore the topic further and deepen comprehension.




EN ESPAÑOL

 




 

Review

 

 

A sweet tale about cultural traditions and the loved ones we carry with us, this title is an excellent addition to picture book collections. — School Library Journal, Selenia Paz

 

"Rodriguez's debut picture book is a wonderful story about the challenges associated with change, family, and feelings...The bold, digital illustrations incorporate both humor and tenderness into this interesting look at a cultural tradition." --Booklist

 

 

Cindy L. Rodriguez is the author of the YA novel When Reason Breaks and has contributed to the anthology Life Inside My Mind: 31 Authors Share Their Personal Struggles. She has also written the text for three Jake Maddox books: Volleyball Ace, Drill Team Determination, and Gymnastics Payback. Before becoming a teacher in 2000, she was an award-winning reporter for The Hartford Courant and researcher for The Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team. She is a founder of Latinxs in Kid Lit, a blog that celebrates children’s literature by/for/about Latinxs. Cindy is currently a middle school reading specialist in Connecticut, where she lives with her family. This is her debut picture book. You can learn more at www.cindylrodriguez.com