Latino Books

When I took my first trip to California in the 1960's, I saw fast food outlets selling a strange cuisine that I had never seen on the east coast - tacos. I hadn't a clue what this was..never even heard the word. Much has changed since then.
Latinos are a major new presence and force in the United States, whose influence on our commerce and politics will only continue to grow. For those who have more than casual interest in this phenomenon, perhaps for purposes of business or for politics, Isabel Valdes has produced a most timely and useful guide. Ms Valdes, with professional precision, takes apart this demographic and cultural Rubik's Cube, lays the pieces out before the reader, and then, taking the reader by the hand, methodically and meaningfully puts it all back together. Weaving together a tapestry of various countries of origin, age distribution, language preference, time in the US, etc, the author helps us sort through the reality behind the headlines and develops systematic approaches to formulate an effective and targeted business strategy. Data is targeted, timely, well presented, and well analyzed. Yet, the human dynamic behind the data is not lost. Highly recommended.

Marketing To American Latinos: A Guide To The In-Culture Approach, Part 2 by Hispanic marketing pioneer M. Isabel Valdes is a solidly presented, up-to-date, business oriented examination and analysis of the Hispanic-American consumer market. From studying diversity, geographic distribution, and buying power of Hispanic households to advertising strategies that target the hearts, minds, and wallets of Hispanic consumers, to digital marketing and an "integrated in-culture" strategy, Marketing to American Latinos is an extensively researched reference written especially for big and small businesses alike. Also highly recommended is Valdes' predecessor volume, Marketing to American Latinos: A Guide To The In-Culture Approach, Part I (0967143934; $[price]).

Hall's Mentoring Young Men of Color makes a true attempt to inform and arouse readers to the less understood lives of Latino and African American boys. As a teacher, mentor and father of two boys, Hall's work completely resonated with my experiences, as both a teenager and adult.
Hall discusses the frequently used metaphor of youth of color as an "endangered species", not only from a societal standpoint, but also from the perspective of these males (most being unconscious as to their own self-destruction). The point he makes throughout the book is that these young men are part of our human existence and MUST be treated with the same care and concern that we give to more privileged and less troubled youth.
While Hall carefully lays out the predicament these boys face, he also goes on to offer realistic strategies that teachers, mentors and even parents can use to help these promising young men find hope and a vision for the future--strategies that I plan to use in my own classroom and household.
As my school has tried to put together programs for students, our attempts have mostly failed. However, from reading this book, I plan to return back to the drawing table, inspired and encouraged by what is possible from Hall's own mentoring experiences.
I strongly recommend this work--it's a quick and powerfully motivating read. Don't just pick it up and read it...LIVE it!!

Mentoring Young Men of Color: Meeting the Needs of African American and Latino Students is an exceptional book. Anyone seeking enlightening on the delicacies of mentoring young men of color will learn techniques outlined by Horace Hall's empirical knowledge. Kudos for a job well done.

I am always skeptical about books written on Mexico by foreigners. However, Michael Hogan who has lived in the country for more than a decade is a careful, although often critical and sometimes humorous, observer. He also has an obvious love and affinity for the Mexican character and writes about it accurately and well. The book contains observations on the effect of globalization on the Mexican economy, a night at a Mexican concert with the Tigres del Norte, a revolution in Chiapas, a university riot,a meeting with Fidel Castro when he comes to Guadalajara, as well as more tranquil moments riding in the forests or hiking the mountains.
The book is far better than any tour guides I have read, especially of the Guadalajara area, both with its descriptions of the people and the flora and fauna. It is an expatriate equivalent to the Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz, who by the way, is an inspiring presence in several of the essays.
For someone visiting Mexico for the first time, this is a valuable handbook. For someone who has chosen Mexican as their adopted country it provides clear evidence that it was a correct choice. For all Mexicans living outside the country, and for those who have visited and not yet returned, it clearly evokes the love and the longing that so many have for this land south of the border. Hogan writes lovingly of the person and the poetry of Richard Shelton here as well. For those, like myself, who are enarmored by the Tucson poet, it is a refreshing visit to an old friend who also has strong conenctions to Mexico. All in all, a wonderful read. Hogan has an accesible style with occasional flashes of brilliance and a quiet but poignant wit.

This is Dr. Michael Hogan's latest book, a collection of essays written over the past decade while the author has lived and taught in Guadalajara, Mexico. This is quite possibly his best book, displaying a wide range of topics and an incredible maturity and intelligence that only comes when one's perspectives have been expanded. In one essay, "Letter to a Troubled Student," he deals with the Zapatista uprising of Chiapas, Mexico, telling his student that it is not scary that a group of Indians are taking on the Mexican government, but that, in any war, the truth is always the first victim. To him, and to a lot of us, that is truly scary. Through this essay, marked for its open-mindedness and its intelligence, Hogan is able to explain how his fears transcend the egocentric level, acheiving a greater understanding and universality.
This is the modus operandi for the rest of the book, which is a collection of essays written in Mexico over a period of the past ten years. They relate the expatriate experience, but they differ from other expatriate books because these essays are observations told through the eyes of a person who is committed to the lifelong quest of knowledge, a person who is committed to learning about his surroundings. All the essays are examples of a deep thought process, and one gets the realization that the author is just as much the teacher as he is the student.
One of the best examples of this, and also one of the defining elements of the book itself is the obvious influence that Mexican Poet Octavio Paz had and still has on Hogan's life. Paz's presence is everywhere in the book; the musicality of his poetry helping Hogan the young boy overcome his stuttering problem, the incisive nature of his essays helping Hogan the teacher in teaching the Odyssey to his ninth graders, the profound depth of his social critiques helping Hogan the human being understand humanity and the Mexican better.
This book is a deep, insightful study into the psychology of the expatriate. In my opinion it is a peer to that other great book about the human condition, "The Labyrinth of Solitude." It is also the only expatriate book that is fully able to document the reasons why a person chooses to leave his home country. It interacts with the reader on many levels, displaying intelligence, while appealing to the poets, the teachers, the scholars, the human beings in all of us. It also displays a deep love for a country that is not the native land for the author, nor for many expatriates. And it is this love that makes the book, and the essays within so compelling. I am reminded at this point, while searching for the place to end my review, of some lyrics from the song "Atlanta" by the Stone Temple Pilots.

"Visions of Mexico seduce me,
It goes to my head so carefully."

My daughters, 3 and 5, are pretty tough customers when it comes to new books, but all of us were enchanted by Mimi's Parranda. The book has everything you would want--a moving storyline, vivid details, and an introduction (for some of us) to a new world, that of the parranda. I hope to read more from this author, and I know my daughters agree. They ask to read this every night, and of course want their own parranda!

Qué chévere! You don't have to be Puerto Rican to read this delightful children's book and reminisce about how Christmas was celebrated in your own country, city or town of origin. The author and illustrator give us all a wonderful opportunity to share our favorite Christmas family traditions with our children. Educationally, this book would be useful in bilingual classes where children could discuss family traditions around holidays, be it parrandas or posadas, etc. Teachers could bring some of the desserts featured to class for a taste of Caribbean cooking. The children could learn how to make instruments for their own parranda, as is suggested in the book. I, for one, loved the drawing of "Mimí" with her long wavy hair dreaming of parrandas and delicious desserts. Bravo!

I brought this for my daughter after renting it from the local library! Loved the content...(we both could relate to it) and I really love the illustrations by Frank Morrison!

I purchased this book along with others for my 7 year old daughter and she loved them. I wanted her to have a larger pool of books in which to read that were outside of some of the offerings of her elementary school. It is important to me that she realizes a strong since of self, her heritage and the beauty that she possesses inside and outside as well as those who look like the people in this book.

The book is beautifully illustrated and tells a wonderful and funny story that seems to grasp my child's imagination from the very start and pulls her into the very pages that are turning before her eyes! She reads it over and over again!

This beautifully illustrated picture book which is in both Spanish and English clearly and magically enthralls both children and adults alike. It shows the warmth of family life despite five brothers and one sister living in such close quarters and the ingenuity and generosity of the whole family making one little girl very happy. I loved it.

Even though this is a picture book, it touches social issues such as immigration, poverty, "Blue chip" stamps, and a father the girl rarely sees because he works the whole day. What I like about this book is that the little girl never complained about her family. She just needed her own space, but she never hatred her relatives for steeling her privacy.

This is a beautiful book which portrays the social conditions of many families in a lot of countries, where they live in much reduced spaces and the money is not enough to build more rooms.

I also like the fact that the relatives and the family were together and had a great harmony. They helped the little girl to clean up the storage room, and to obtain donated furniture. I appreciate the author for emphasizing the girl's love for literature.

This is also a book that teaches about being happy even if the economic resources are limited.

In this story, a boy named Mijo tells about a problem his family faces: his father might lose his job at the railroad because of the change from steam locomotives to diesel locomotives. What will his family do? What can Mijo do to stop what he calls the "Beast?" In the end, does new technology hurt Mijo and his family?

The book is wonderfully illustrated and written in both English and Spanish. Don't let a youngster miss a good read they can learn from. Changes will sometimes disrupt our lives and we have to adapt to new situations.

As a children's book author, I highly recommend, "The New Engine/La Maquina Nueva" to young readers.

This bilingual children's picturebook, with its full text in both English and Spanish, teaches young children the importance of adapting to new things in a changing, sometimes frightening world. Carlos Encinas' full color, computer-based illustrations add an extra-dimensional quality to the great and powerful engine that comes to the peaceful world of the young narrator. An excellent book for multicultural children who are learning two languages.

Wendel gives a face to the many Latino players that have been a part of baseball in the US -- first in "Negro" leagues and finally in the majors where they have come to dominate. Wendel's writing is always very readable, with facts interlaced with plenty of stories by and about the Latino players. The photographs are a wonderful plus to this excellent account of the rise of Latino players in baseball. Six year olds (such as my grandson) can readily identify the pictures of current players. Another excellent read (this one fiction) by Wendel is "Castro's Curveball." I highly recommend it also.

Okay, let's start with my admission that I'm not a baseball fan. I knew the game from childhood but the big money and greed have alienated many of us who enjoyed baseball as kids. That being said, I found that The New Face of Baseball refreshing enough to evoke some of those feelings that made me appreciate baseball in the first place. The book has to do with talented Latino baseball players like Clemente, Cepeda, and Sosa. The common element is that these players played the game elsewhere before coming the United States, places where the game is more sacred and believe it or not more important than here in America.

The books consists of short stories about many of today's heroes that have quickly become baseball superstars, and those older stars who paved the way for the younger Latino players much the way Robinson and Dobry did for African American players. The author uses player interviews and past experiences of his own to give the reader a greater appreciation for what players Latin America have done for today's game.

Maybe the most interesting part is the All Century Latino team listed at the end of the book. It's a lineup that would challenge any other all-star team, past or present.

Book Review by Norman J. Eriksen
Assistant Division Manager Languages Literature and Fiction, Brooklyn Public Library
11.8.07

Carlos T Mock MD "Papi Chulo: a legend, a novel, and the Puerto Rican Identity
Floricanto Press 2007 230pgs paperback
ISBN 9780979645709

The author has chosen to explore the history of Puerto Rico and what it means to be a Puerto Rican through the story of intertwined lives of Maria Rexach and Clara Rodriquez and the Maria's daughter Ines Subira. Born of a wealthy family Maria becomes the guiding force field of women's rights, medical services and the republican movement. Clara is the illegitimate daughter of the father of Maria's future husband and becomes a key figure in the nationalist movement for independence. Ines Subira is the woman in which both of these women's lives come together and their common goals for the future of Puerto Rico merge into the creation of an independent nation.

Ines and her brother Enrico move to the United States and find themselves in a place in which they are no longer part of the upper class society. Enrico must deal with the problem of having an Anglo lover, living in three different worlds, support himself as an airline steward and as a smuggler to support the nationalist movement. Both Enrico and Ines are observers of the Stonewall Riots and wonder what this will mean for the gay Puerto Rican community in New York.

The use of historical events such as the national and republican conflicts of independence versus statehood, the legal changes in the status of the government and the massive migration to New York in the 1950-1960's help move the story along while at the same time examining the underlying question as what is it to be a Puerto Rican? Dr. Mock does not assume the person is fluent in the history of Puerto Rico and provides the background to certain events as part of the story. Spanish poems are intermingled in the text with English translations and each poem relates to the events within the chapter.

I found the book to be enjoyable, the characters to be realistic along with the settings in which they are placed. While reading the book I learned some about the history of Puerto Rico and the events that lead to the massive migration to New York in the 1950' and 1960's.

I would recommend purchase for most public libraries especially those with large Puerto Rican populations. University libraries with special collections that deal with the Puerto Rican community might consider this for their collections as well.

Book Review - Papi Chulo: A Legend, A Novel and the Puerto Rican Identity by Carlos T. Mock, MD
Review by Tracy Baim
Copyright by Windy City Times
2007-08-22

http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=15845


Floricanto Press, 248 pages, $24.95


Chicagoan Carlos T. Mock is a political voyeur. He writes frequently on blogs and in newspaper columns about a wide range of gay and mainstream topics, and he has a special interest in Latino gay issues. He has written about his Puerto Rican identity in Borrowing Time: A Latino Sexual Odyssey, and published The Mosaic Virus, a novel about an AIDS-like virus and the Catholic Church.

Mock's newest work, Papi Chulo, is similar to The Mosaic Virus in that it takes historical facts and massages them into a work of fiction, this time about the island of Puerto Rico and its fractured identity. Mock's love of his native land is evident throughout Papi Chulo. His own hopes and dreams for his people ebb and flow with the tragic tides of history. He is cynical about political leaders and passionate about the people, some who are clearly modeled after inspiring heroes in his own life.

Mock's background in medicine is also evident in Papi Chulo. One of the primary characters, María Rexach, becomes a pioneer in women's health and the right to choose abortion. Born in 1900, we follow the path of both María's own life and the life of her nation as it comes under control of the United States, and fights for its own life for more than a century.

We meet the real and imagined political leaders of the last century as they squabble and sometimes succeed in bringing rights to the island. We see how identity issues plague generations of people, as some move to the mainland and lose touch with their home, and as islanders dismiss them as not true Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans born on the mainland have an especially hard time with identity issues.

The novel is not a "gay novel" in the typical sense. However, it does include gay characters, and the sensitivities of the book are informed by an author who is both pro-choice and out.

There is a risk in creating an alternative universe, where some facts remain and others are altered to fit the vision of what the author wants to occur. The real people may be upset, but Mock clearly states at the beginning of the book that this is a work of fiction, even though some facts are real. Incidents of revolutionary violence ( to push for independence from the U.S. ) , political intrigue, funding of the Contras or even the Stonewall Riots of 1969 are used as backdrops for a multi-layered story about the potential of a people and the dreams of a nation.

Mock's own antipathy for self-interested leaders is clear throughout the novel, but he uses the stories of individuals like María, her friend Clara Rodriguez, her children, her friends and others to show the pain through the eyes of people, making the history more accessible and the imagined reality all the more desired. As Mock would attest, if novelists ran the world, it would be a whole lot better place.

This book looks at what it is like to be bilingual from the child's perspective. We hear too much about immigration issues and we sometimes forget what it is like for the child- legal or illegal. Wonderful story that I plan to usewith my students at the start of the new year.

"Los Angeles Times 1/1/98 Bookshelf for young readers by Kevin Baxter Clearly, the best side-by-side children's book I've run across is Ofelia Dumas Lachtman's Pepita Talks Twice. Beautifully illustrated, the story shows how bilingual skills allow children to move seamlessly from one culture to another, experiencing the best of both as they go