Caribbean Books

Dr. Popovic has gathered many fine essays about Monterrey writer Alfonso Reyes. Borges described Reyes as the finest prose writer in Spanish. Popovic's book fills a much needed gap in this area.

Alisados: Vivencias de una Mujer Dominicana

As a brown skinned Hispanic I could relate to the author. I find her anecdotes similar to mines and it shows the intricate details of ones culture. I encourage others to get this book and pass it along as a form of knot to tie each others past and cultures together--to share friendship.

This is a fine book on the history of the FAT -- Mexico's oldest independent union federation. The book is well researched with interesting insights into how a truly movement-oriented unionism functions on the ground, definitely worth reading.

This is a hilarious story, smart, well written and very Jamaican. I laughed until I cried. The author captures the fine line between comedy and tragedy in a riveting story. The dialogue is real, there's a riveting plot and you can't help but cheer for Alonso. He's a loveable underdog.

Agosin creates yet another beautiful piece of literature in "Always from Somewhere Else." Her emotional and thought-provoking style provides the reader with an incredible inside view of Jewish life in Chile. A duet of pain and beauty, Agosin's memoir of her father's life is vivid and alive. This story, one of lost and newfound identity has the strong possibility of being close to us all. This book is a definite candidate for everyone's personal library of favorites.

Battered and broken, the bodies, the beings in Oswaldo Guayasamin's paintings don't rest on walls or canvas. They cry and scream out to you in shrieking voices that only physical torture can bring about. Or they weep quietly on the bloody ground. Too exhaused to cry out. They disappear inside themselves in the sorts of emotional trauma that all too many have known, and all too many others have ignored.

That's what happens when I open this book. I'd never heard of Oswaldo two years ago but I stumbled across this book in the library and ended up checking it out a bunch of times until I finally gave in and bought it. I'm tempted to say his paintings have a texture all their own, but I don't know that for sure. Maybe someone else out there gets this sort of texture, too. Some of these paintings seem to be somewhere between sand painting and ancient cave painting. Others look like they were painted out of wood and blood and bone, but with a topical concern that crushes you in the weight of the horrors these people have witnessed, suffered, or inflicted upon others. They oftentimes don't even seem to be people. It's as if we're seeing emaciated, bipedal, spectral cousins. Not apes, but not human. The way their captors and killers must have seen them.

This book entwines poems from Pablo Neruda's Canto General, 50th Anniversary Edition (Latin American Literature and Culture, 7) with paintings from throughout Oswaldo's career. Oswaldo has some of the most viscerally emotional paintings I've ever seen. As much as the poems add to the feel of the book, you wouldn't need any words to know that wherever these paintings came from, there was suffering, brutality and desperation behind them. I'd spent over an hour looking at it before I ever read any of the poems, and even now it's the paintings first and foremost that draw me back to america, my brother, my blood. Still, there's no denying the symbiosis. It's as if you hold a Neruda poem in front of a mirror but the reflection is a Guayasamin painting.

I'm a little miffed at society because nowhere along the way before 2006 or early 2007 did I stumble upon anyone who pointed Oswaldo out to me as someone I shouldn't overlook. It's very similar to the way I felt after first reading Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan. Hopefully my review will lead someone else to this giant teller of the human story.

All the best pictures are inside. Don't disregard this book because of a 3-inch picture of the cover on a website. Art/books like this are why "better late than never" is a much-loved cliche.

Filipino Heroes during the American Occupation of the Philippines

La historia de Ana por Jenna Bush.

Todo el mundo puede penetrar en los sentimientos de esta historia. Antes de leer la, no se necesita tener mucha información sobre el síndrome de inmunodeficiencia adquirida, es decir, Sida, así como conocer a un amigo o alguien conocido que tenga el virus. Al leer de este libro se entenderá también cómo UNICEF trabaja para asistir a los niños, como Ana, quienes han nacido con este virus. El tema de esta novela verídica se amplía al leer cada página. La protagonista de la historia revela a los lectores sus experiencias de vivir con el VIH. Esta hace énfasis en la gente enferma, durante su infancia y juventud. Al seguir leyendo sobre el camino en el cual Ana atravesaba, se es invitado a ir adentro del corazón de una niña hasta su adolescencia.
Ella tenía que ajustarse a su destino desafortunado. ¿Dónde encuentra Ana su esperanza? Pues, desde muy temprana edad Ana tenía que aprender a vivir con pérdidas: las de sus padres quieres murieron como consecuencia de esta enfermedad. Y la de sobrellevar su vida junto a su abuela, con quien no era feliz. Además tenía que vivir con un secreto: el VIH virus.
Como una niña Ana podía encontrar dentro de ella un poder espiritual y podía expresarle a Díos buenos y malos sentimientos. Pese a comprometerse a nunca contar su secreto, se hizo de buenos amigos y más tarde durante su juventud pudo confiar su secreto a algunos adultos.
Todo el mundo ha sufrido algo y ha conocido a un amigo o pariente que ha sufrido mucho con una enfermedad. Por esta razón se podrá seguir leyendo esta historia sobre Ana y tal vez le ayudará a usted a pensar sobre esta persona de su conocimiento. De una forma muy significativa, creo que La historia de Ana a la mayoría de los lectores.

If you like adventure,suspense and heart warming stories this book is just right for you.It is a classic written by L. Frank Baulm. If you haven't heard of the Wizard of oz I am sure your first encounters you will think you are in the book and you wont stop reading it until you are finished.

Ancestors is a "must' read for scholars and critics of Caribbean literature and poetry. Brathwaite (re)invents an invention - a technique that must be recognized as his signature. He is clearly "the" unique voice in the Anglophone Caribbean Literary Canon. My book, The Critical Response to Kamau Brathwaite, which will be published by Greenwood Press in 2003, will further demonstrate his artistry from the 1960s to the present.