Announcements for 2021 books are starting to come across La Bloga's desk. This issue features a trio that look like they belong in your library. Special note: a new novel from R. Ch. Garcia, one of the founders of La Bloga. Congrats to Rudy.
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R.Ch.Garcia
Somos En Escrito Literary Press - March 1, 2021
[from the publisher]
A coming-of-age story of college-bound Miguel Reilly who takes a summer sabbatical in New Mexico that leads to his future intertwining with an Aztec legendary monster.
It is a classic Young Adult tale of a middle-class American with tenuous ties to his Irish-American roots who finds kinship in the worlds of the Chicano, Mexican, and Native American peoples. Where young and older women play pivotal roles in his mission.
Death Song of the Dragón Chicxulub is an epic high-adventure of the outrageous bon vivant shaman Tomás who trains apprentice Miguel to defeat the ancient dragon-like nemesis of the Aztecs. A cross-genre YA novel steeped in lives, cultures, environment, and history that few mainstream readers know of or ever entered. A real-world narrative where the background conflict of English/Spanish language worlds mirrors Miguel's search for what his heritage really is and means about his destiny.
It is a classic Young Adult tale of a middle-class American with tenuous ties to his Irish-American roots who finds kinship in the worlds of the Chicano, Mexican, and Native American peoples. Where young and older women play pivotal roles in his mission.
Death Song of the Dragón Chicxulub is an epic high-adventure of the outrageous bon vivant shaman Tomás who trains apprentice Miguel to defeat the ancient dragon-like nemesis of the Aztecs. A cross-genre YA novel steeped in lives, cultures, environment, and history that few mainstream readers know of or ever entered. A real-world narrative where the background conflict of English/Spanish language worlds mirrors Miguel's search for what his heritage really is and means about his destiny.
Artist's interpretation of battle in Mexico City's sewers.
Artist: Artemis Rose
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
Artist: Artemis Rose
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Mariana Enriquez
Hogarth - January 12, 2021
[from the publisher]
Following the “propulsive and mesmerizing” (New York Times Book Review) Things We Lost in the Fire comes a new collection of singularly unsettling stories, by an Argentine author who has earned comparisons to Shirley Jackson and Jorge Luis Borges.
Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre. Populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her new collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken—fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history—with bracing urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can’t let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond correctly to a moral dilemma.
Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, and with a resounding tenderness toward those in pain, in fear, and in limbo, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is Mariana Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling.
Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature on Families in between Worlds
Edited by Sergio Troncoso
Texas A&M University Press - March 18, 2021
[from the publisher]
Nepantla Familias brings together Mexican American narratives that explore and negotiate the many permutations of living in between different worlds—how the authors or their characters create, or fail to create, a cohesive identity amid the contradictions in their lives. Nepantla—or living in the in-between space of the borderland—is the focus of this anthology. The essays, poems, and short stories explore the in-between moments in Mexican American life—the family dynamics of living between traditional and contemporary worlds, between Spanish and English, between cultures with traditional and shifting identities. In times of change, family values are either adapted or discarded in the quest for self-discovery, part of the process of selecting and composing elements of a changing identity.
Edited by award-winning writer and scholar Sergio Troncoso, this anthology includes works from familiar and acclaimed voices such as David Dorado Romo, Sandra Cisneros, Alex Espinoza, Reyna Grande, and Francisco Cantú, as well as from important new voices, such as Stephanie Li, David Dominguez, and ire’ne lara silva. These are writers who open and expose the in-between places: through or at borders; among the past, present, and future; from tradition to innovation; between languages; in gender; about the wounds of the past and the victories of the present; of life and death.
Nepantla Familias shows the quintessential American experience that revives important foundational values through immigrants and the children of immigrants. Here readers will find a glimpse of contemporary Mexican American experience; here, also, readers will experience complexities of the geographic, linguistic, and cultural borders common to us all.
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Edited by Sergio Troncoso
Texas A&M University Press - March 18, 2021
[from the publisher]
Nepantla Familias brings together Mexican American narratives that explore and negotiate the many permutations of living in between different worlds—how the authors or their characters create, or fail to create, a cohesive identity amid the contradictions in their lives. Nepantla—or living in the in-between space of the borderland—is the focus of this anthology. The essays, poems, and short stories explore the in-between moments in Mexican American life—the family dynamics of living between traditional and contemporary worlds, between Spanish and English, between cultures with traditional and shifting identities. In times of change, family values are either adapted or discarded in the quest for self-discovery, part of the process of selecting and composing elements of a changing identity.
Edited by award-winning writer and scholar Sergio Troncoso, this anthology includes works from familiar and acclaimed voices such as David Dorado Romo, Sandra Cisneros, Alex Espinoza, Reyna Grande, and Francisco Cantú, as well as from important new voices, such as Stephanie Li, David Dominguez, and ire’ne lara silva. These are writers who open and expose the in-between places: through or at borders; among the past, present, and future; from tradition to innovation; between languages; in gender; about the wounds of the past and the victories of the present; of life and death.
Nepantla Familias shows the quintessential American experience that revives important foundational values through immigrants and the children of immigrants. Here readers will find a glimpse of contemporary Mexican American experience; here, also, readers will experience complexities of the geographic, linguistic, and cultural borders common to us all.
Later.
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Manuel Ramos writes crime fiction. He is working on a story for an anthology and patiently waiting for the publication of his novel Angels in the Wind.
Thanks, Ramos, for the shout out. Sergio Troncoso, more talented than me, really deserved top billing. Still miss the good ole days with LaBloga. En amistad, R. Ch. Garcia
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