¡Support “Enrique’s Journey” for One Book, One Denver!

In the national bestseller, Enrique’s Journey (Random House, 2007), award-winning journalist Sonia Nazario recounts the true story of a Honduran boy who bravely confronts peril and unimaginable hardship to reach his mother in the United States.  Enrique's Journey has been chosen as a “one city, one book read” by seven cities.  La Bloga readers now have a chance to make it eight cities.

Enrique’s Journey was selected as one of three finalists for One Book, One Denver sponsored by the city itself.  If selected, many more students and others would be exposed to this remarkable true story.  I am asking you to take a moment now to vote for Enrique’s Journey.  Simply create a user name and password, provide a valid e-mail, and vote for Enrique’s Journey.  Winners will be determined by the number of votes and how many stars each book gets—so add a lot of stars, too, if your heart moves you to do so.  Here’s the link.

And here’s a little incentive: the fifth person to vote will win an inscribed copy of my novel, The Book of Want (University of Arizona Press).  All you need to do is vote and then drop me an e-mail at olivasdan@aol.com.  I will then ask the winner for a mailing address within the United States.

IN OTHER NEWS…

◙ María de Guzmán’s Buenas Noches, American Culture: Latina/o Aesthetics of Night is coming soon from Indiana University Press.  From the publisher: “In her newest work, María DeGuzmán explores representations of night in art and literature from the Caribbean, Colombia, Central and South America, and the US, calling into question night's effect on the formation of identity for Latina/os in and outside of the US. She takes as her subject novels, short stories, poetry, essays, non-fiction, photo-fictions, photography, and film, and examines these texts through the lenses of nationhood, sexuality, human rights, exoticism, among others.”  Pre-order it now!

◙ Award-winning author, Reyna Grande, received a Starred Review from Publishers Weekly for her upcoming memoir, The Distance Between Us (Atria Books).  The review says, in part: “Tracing the complex and tattered relationships binding the family together, especially the bond she shared with her older sister, the author intimately probes her family’s history for clues to its disintegration.  Recounting her story without self-pity, she gracefully chronicles the painful results of a family shattered by repeated separations and traumas.”

◙ Rigoberto González is an award-winning writer living in New York City and a longtime book critic for the El Paso Times.  His latest review is of Diana López’s forthcoming young adult novel, Choke (Scholastic Press), which, he notes, is “a book about young women testing the bonds of trust and friendship, sometimes to their own detriment.”  You may read the entire review here.

◙ I was interviewed over at The Latino Author…check it out. Also, I recently created a Latino and Latina writers group on LinkedIn which now boasts 82 members. If you’re on LinkedIn (or plan on joining…it’s free!), look up the group and join.

◙ All done. So, until next Monday, enjoy the intervening posts from my compadres y comadres at La Bloga. And don’t forget: ¡Lea un libro!