Been working too hard to
even think about planning a summer vacation? When you do get around to it,
don't forget to bring along some wonderful books. Here are but three titles to
consider as you draw up your reading list.
With ¡Arriba
Baseball!: A Collection of Latino/a Baseball Fiction (VAO Publishing,
$11.99 paper), editor Robert Paul Moreira gathers short stories by an eclectic
group of 15 writers.
In Dagoberto Gilb's
"Uncle Rock" we're introduced to 11-year-old Erick whose life is
complicated by his single mother's beauty: men wanting to know her too often
attempt to get on Erick's good side but he is not fooled by such subterfuge.
One of these suitors, Roque, knowing that Erick loves baseball, takes the boy
and his mother to watch the Dodgers play the Phillies: "Roque, of course,
didn't know who the Phillies were. He knew nothing about the strikeouts by
Steve Carlton or the home runs by Mike Schmidt. He'd never heard of Pete
Rose." But what happens after the game puts both Roque and baseball in a
different light for Erick in an unanticipated way.
In "Los
Tecolotes" by Norma Elia Cantú, the narrator tells us of the doomed
romance between her mother's best friend, known as La Betty, and Pablo Soler, a
handsome player in the Mexican baseball league during a game in Laredo, Texas,
of the 1950s. Reality pierces the romance of baseball once Pablo can no longer
play the game. The narrator is a bit of a philosopher: "We are supposed to
learn from our elders. Supposed to benefit from their mistakes. Or at least
Betty always said it was a mistake, but I don't think so. How can a love story
be a mistake?" These 15 stories are a treat, and this anthology is long
overdue.
If you enjoy a little
poetry while on vacation, then check out Luivette Resto's provocative collection,
Ascension (Tía
Chucha Press, $14.95 paper). Resto explores many things: love, bigotry,
language.
Here is one of her shorter
poems titled "Surrender": "You were sexier / than / a trumpet
solo / in a salsa song. / Why would anyone / say no."
An actual incident of
campus bigotry inspires "A Poem for the Students of UCSD" which
begins: "With the click of a mouse, / viral invitations honoring Black
History Month / titled The Compton Cookout / spread like locusts on cultivated
crops."
The computer age has
allowed hate to spread in biblical proportions, yet another plague visited upon
our society by neighbors or even ourselves. Resto is an exhilarating poet, one
who does not shy away from themes that alternately make us smile or cringe with
the turn of a page.
Finally, Mario Alberto
Zambrano's novel, Lotería
(HarperCollins, $21.99 hardcover), is a riveting debut. At the novel's center
is 11-year-old Luz María Castillo, who is in state custody while her father
sits in jail for reasons that are slowly revealed with each turn of a Lotería
card, an image of which begins each chapter. Her keepers not only allow the
silent and frightened Luz to have the Lotería deck, but they also give her a
journal in the hope that she will eventually explain how her older sister ended
up in the hospital.
In seemingly simple
language that is fraught with a child's anger and confusion, Luz tells us about
her world that includes a father who drinks himself into violence: "When
he wasn't looking, I used to look at the label and see if there was a face on
it like Papi's. There were those nights when his eyes would get bloodshot and
I'd want to drink with him. Not a lot, just a sip, so I could see what it was
like to become him."
This is a gripping,
heartbreaking novel by a new writer who already understands the power of
understatement and controlled revelation.
You now have the
beginnings of an end of summer reading list. Go forth and plan your vacation.
[This review first
appeared in the El Paso
Times.]
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