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Daniel A. Olivas
University of Nevada Press - August 6
[from the publisher]
My Chicano Heart is a collection of author Daniel A. Olivas’s favorite previously published tales about love, along with five new stories, that explore the complex, mysterious, and occasionally absurd machinations of people who simply want to be appreciated and treasured. Readers will encounter characters who scheme, search, and flail in settings that are sometimes fantastical and other times mundane: a man who literally gives his heart to his wife who keeps it beating safely in a wooden box; a woman who takes a long-planned trip through New Mexico but, mysteriously, without the company of her true love; a lonely man who gains a remarkably compatible roommate who may or may not be real—just to name a few of the memorable and often haunting characters who fill these pages. Olivas’s richly realized stories are frequently infused with his trademark humor, and readers will delight in—and commiserate with—his lovestruck characters.
Each story is drawn from Olivas’s nearly twenty-five years of experience writing fiction deeply steeped in Chicano and Mexican culture. Some of the stories are fanciful and full of magic, while others are more realistic, and still others border on noir. All touch upon that most ephemeral and confounding of human emotions: love in all its wondrous forms.
[from the publisher]
My Chicano Heart is a collection of author Daniel A. Olivas’s favorite previously published tales about love, along with five new stories, that explore the complex, mysterious, and occasionally absurd machinations of people who simply want to be appreciated and treasured. Readers will encounter characters who scheme, search, and flail in settings that are sometimes fantastical and other times mundane: a man who literally gives his heart to his wife who keeps it beating safely in a wooden box; a woman who takes a long-planned trip through New Mexico but, mysteriously, without the company of her true love; a lonely man who gains a remarkably compatible roommate who may or may not be real—just to name a few of the memorable and often haunting characters who fill these pages. Olivas’s richly realized stories are frequently infused with his trademark humor, and readers will delight in—and commiserate with—his lovestruck characters.
Each story is drawn from Olivas’s nearly twenty-five years of experience writing fiction deeply steeped in Chicano and Mexican culture. Some of the stories are fanciful and full of magic, while others are more realistic, and still others border on noir. All touch upon that most ephemeral and confounding of human emotions: love in all its wondrous forms.
_____________________
Tomás González
Translated from Spanish by Andrea Rosenberg
Archipelago Books - Sept. 3
[from the publisher]
What happens when a person goes missing? Told from alternating perspectives, Fog at Noon offers readers the chance to methodically decipher the story of Julia. A conceited “ninny,” somewhat-gifted poet, ravishing temptress, and thorny friend, Julia shapeshifts and sparkles in the blinding light of conflicting narrative. Her raconteurs? A frequently fishy chorus of acquaintances, lovers, sisters-in-law, and friends. And from behind the veil, Julia speaks for herself.
Tomás González writes of the passionate origins of an affair and its precipitous conclusion, of untraceable debts and the liminal realms between the living and the dead, of New York in a blizzard and the Colombian mountain chains cloaked in fog. Readers will be reminded of the propulsive mysteries of Big Little Lies, as much as the incisive literary works of Domenico Starnone, Michael Ondaatje, and Juan Gabriel Vásquez. Andrea Rosenberg’s translation gleams in every line, as we are lured deeper into the elusive world of Fog at Noon.
From Here to There and Back
What happens when a person goes missing? Told from alternating perspectives, Fog at Noon offers readers the chance to methodically decipher the story of Julia. A conceited “ninny,” somewhat-gifted poet, ravishing temptress, and thorny friend, Julia shapeshifts and sparkles in the blinding light of conflicting narrative. Her raconteurs? A frequently fishy chorus of acquaintances, lovers, sisters-in-law, and friends. And from behind the veil, Julia speaks for herself.
Tomás González writes of the passionate origins of an affair and its precipitous conclusion, of untraceable debts and the liminal realms between the living and the dead, of New York in a blizzard and the Colombian mountain chains cloaked in fog. Readers will be reminded of the propulsive mysteries of Big Little Lies, as much as the incisive literary works of Domenico Starnone, Michael Ondaatje, and Juan Gabriel Vásquez. Andrea Rosenberg’s translation gleams in every line, as we are lured deeper into the elusive world of Fog at Noon.
___________________
From Here to There and Back
Jesse Mancíaz/Xam’le Kuiz
Yanaguana Press - August
[from the publisher]
Jesse Mancíaz/Xam’le Kuiz (Red Feather) is an Esto’k Gna/Carrizo Comecrudo Indian from the Texas Panhandle city of Plainview. As a young child raised by his grandparents (his grandfather was a vaquero and his grandmother was a revered medicine woman and midwife), he learned the value of hard work by toiling in the cotton fields of North Texas. He dropped out of high school and joined a caravan of migrant workers that followed crops across the country. In 1966, when he was 18 years old, he joined the Marine Corps at the height of the Vietnam War and was a fire-team leader responsible for the battlefield performance of a six-man unit in Vietnam. Wounded in combat on two separate occasions, each time he was patched up, pinned with a Purple Heart medal, and returned to the carnage that war is known for.
The inaugural publication of Yanaguana Press, an imprint of Aztlan Libre Press, From Here To There And Back/Three Short Stories & A Poem by Jesse Mancíaz/Xam’le Kuiz is powerful, political and poignant. As an Esto’k Gna, American Indian/Native of Texas writer, Jesse might be Native American Indian Literature’s best kept secret. He’s a gifted and crafted wordsmith that puts you in the middle of the scene and sublimely shocks you into viscerally feeling what you are reading. While he is considered a respected elder and has been writing for many years, this is his first book publication.
You might call the general genre of Jesse’s writings in this collection (besides short story and poetry), Fictional Memoir, because Jesse draws from his own personal life experiences and recollections as a young cotton-picker and migrant field worker, and an 18-year-old Indio Tejano Marine in Vietnam, to fuel his writings that have been fictionalized to a certain extent.
While these stories confront you with some of the horrors of war, and the post-traumatic-stress-disorder that will continue to plague the service men and women and their families for the rest of their lives; as well as the racism, discrimination, exploitation, and other injustices that the Indigenous, Mexican, Central and South American people have to face here in Texas and the U.S., there’s a ray of hope in these writings. They are a cry against war. A cry for a true justicia y libertad for all. A cry for healing. Un grito de amor y paz.
Yanaguana Press - August
[from the publisher]
Jesse Mancíaz/Xam’le Kuiz (Red Feather) is an Esto’k Gna/Carrizo Comecrudo Indian from the Texas Panhandle city of Plainview. As a young child raised by his grandparents (his grandfather was a vaquero and his grandmother was a revered medicine woman and midwife), he learned the value of hard work by toiling in the cotton fields of North Texas. He dropped out of high school and joined a caravan of migrant workers that followed crops across the country. In 1966, when he was 18 years old, he joined the Marine Corps at the height of the Vietnam War and was a fire-team leader responsible for the battlefield performance of a six-man unit in Vietnam. Wounded in combat on two separate occasions, each time he was patched up, pinned with a Purple Heart medal, and returned to the carnage that war is known for.
The inaugural publication of Yanaguana Press, an imprint of Aztlan Libre Press, From Here To There And Back/Three Short Stories & A Poem by Jesse Mancíaz/Xam’le Kuiz is powerful, political and poignant. As an Esto’k Gna, American Indian/Native of Texas writer, Jesse might be Native American Indian Literature’s best kept secret. He’s a gifted and crafted wordsmith that puts you in the middle of the scene and sublimely shocks you into viscerally feeling what you are reading. While he is considered a respected elder and has been writing for many years, this is his first book publication.
You might call the general genre of Jesse’s writings in this collection (besides short story and poetry), Fictional Memoir, because Jesse draws from his own personal life experiences and recollections as a young cotton-picker and migrant field worker, and an 18-year-old Indio Tejano Marine in Vietnam, to fuel his writings that have been fictionalized to a certain extent.
While these stories confront you with some of the horrors of war, and the post-traumatic-stress-disorder that will continue to plague the service men and women and their families for the rest of their lives; as well as the racism, discrimination, exploitation, and other injustices that the Indigenous, Mexican, Central and South American people have to face here in Texas and the U.S., there’s a ray of hope in these writings. They are a cry against war. A cry for a true justicia y libertad for all. A cry for healing. Un grito de amor y paz.
Later.
______________________
Manuel Ramos writes crime fiction. Read his latest story, Northside Nocturne, in the award-winning anthology Denver Noir, edited by Cynthia Swanson, published by Akashic Books.
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