In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, Watzek displayed a selection of titles near the library service desk, chosen in collaboration with the Office of Inclusion and Multicultural Engagement. Click on any title to check real-time availability.
Borderlands / La Frontera by Gloria AnzaldúaLiterary Nonfiction. Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. LGBT Studies. Fourth Edition. Rooted in Gloria Anzaldúa's experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist, and a writer, the essays and poems in this volume profoundly challenged, and continue to challenge, how we think about identity. BORDERLANDS/LA FRONTERA remaps our understanding of what a "border" is, presenting it not as a simple divide between here and there, us and them, but as a psychic, social, and cultural terrain that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition features a new introduction by scholars Norma Cantú (University of Texas at San Antonio) and Aída Hurtado (University of California at Santa Cruz) as well as a revised critical bibliography. "The emotional and intellectual impact of the book is disorienting and powerful...all languages are spoken, and survival depends on understanding all modes of thought. In the borderlands new creatures come into being. Anzaldúa celebrates this 'new mestiza' in bold, experimental writing."--The Village Voice "Anzaldúa's pulsating weaving of innovative poetry with sparse informative prose brings us deep into the insider/outsider consciousness of the borderlands; that ancient and contemporary, crashing and blending world that divides and unites America."--Women's Review of Books
Call Number: PS3551.N95 B6 2012
Publication Date: 2012
La Ciencia Ficción en América Latina by Silvia G. Kurlat Ares (Editor); Ezequiel De Rosso (Editor)La ciencia ficción en América Latina. Crítica. Teoría. Historia. ofrece un enfoque integral sobre la ciencia ficción en América Latina al abordar la historia y la crítica del género en la región. No solo mapea la producción fundacional del campo (revistas, películas, libros y cómics), sino que también estudia las preocupaciones específicas (políticas, sociales, culturales) que dieron origen a sus patrones e ideas distintivos. Este volumen organiza y sistematiza el estado del campo. En este sentido, su objetivo es analizar la cf de América Latina en el contexto de la producción literaria y cultural de la región, proporcionando un horizonte preciso para sus temas históricos, culturales y políticos. Teniendo en cuenta la complejidad de los debates contemporáneos, el libro se compone de colaboraciones hechas por especialistas provenientes de más de diez países, que estudian la cf en la región, con una amplia variedad de enfoques, lo que proporciona el conjunto más diverso posible de perspectivas sobre el desarrollo de la cf en América Latina. El volumen satisface las necesidades de los lectores interesados ​​en cf en general, de los estudiantes que intentan comprender el tema, así como de los profesores que buscan abordar los problemas principales en el desarrollo de la cf en la región al incluir los enfoques actuales en sus análisis. La ciencia ficción en América Latina es tanto una herramienta de enseñanza y aprendizaje indispensable, como un libro de referencia para críticos y lectores interesados.
Call Number: PQ7082.S34 C54 2020
Publication Date: 2021
Cosmos Latinos by Andrea L. Bell (Editor, Notes by, Translator); Yolanda Molina-Gavilán (Editor, Notes by, Translator)Opening a window onto a new world for English-speaking readers, this anthology offers science fiction stories from over ten Latin American countries and Spain, chronologically ranging from 1862 to the early 21st century. Latin American and Spanish science fiction shares many thematic and stylistic elements with anglophone science fiction, but there are important differences: many downplay scientific plausibility, and others show the influence of the region's celebrated literary fantastic. In the 27 stories included here, a 16th-century conquistador is re-envisioned as a cosmonaut, Mexican factory workers receive pleasure-giving bio-implants, and warring bands of terrorists travel through time attempting to reverse the outcome of historical events.
Call Number: PQ7087.E5 C67 2003
Publication Date: 2003
El Hombre, la Hembra y el Hambre by Daina Chaviano"En la Cuba de hoy, dos amigos conversan sobre sus problemas. Ruben, profesor expulsado de la Escuela de Arte, se gana la vida vendiendo objetos de artesania a los turistas, y Gilberto, economista, trabaja de carnicero. Ambos rememoran los momentos pasados junto a dos mujeres a quienes han perdido de vista, pero cuyo misterioso atractivo dejo en ellos una huella profunda (Premio ""Azorin"" 1998)."
Trans/Feminisms by Susan Stryker (Editor); Talia M. Bettcher (Editor)This special double issue of TSQ goes beyond the simplistic dichotomy between an exclusionary transphobic feminism and an inclusive trans-affirming feminism. Exploring the ways in which trans issues are addressed within feminist and women's organizations and social movements around the world, contributors ask how trans, genderqueer, and nonbinary issues are related to feminist movements today, what kind of work is currently undertaken in the name of trans/feminism, what new paradigms and visions are emerging, and what questions still need to be taken up. Central to this special issue is the recognition that trans/feminist politics cannot restrict itself to the domain of gender alone. This issue features numerous shorter works that represent the diversity of trans/feminist practices and problematics and, in addition to original research articles, includes theory, reports, manifestos, opinion pieces, reviews, and creative/artistic productions, as well as republished key documents of trans/feminist history and international scholarship. Contributors: Miriam Abelson, Sara Ahmed, Aitzole Araneta, Alexandre Baril, Marie-Hélène/Sam Bourcier, micha cárdenas, Daniel Chávez, Jeanne Córdova, Pedro J. DiPietro, Lucía Egaña, A. Finn Enke, Karine Espineira, Sandra Fernández, Simon D. Fisher, Tania Hammidi, Christoph Hanssmann, Emma Louise Heaney, Hailey Kaas, Cael Keegan, Faris Khan, Yana Kirey-Sitnikova, Terence Kumpf, Riki Lane, Helen Hok-Sze Leung, Claudia Sofia Garriga López, Tommi Avicolli Mecca, L. Leigh Ann van der Merwe, Scott Morgensen, Marcio Jose Ornat, Ruin S. M. Pae, José Quiroga, Naomi Scheman, Joseli Maria Silva, reese simpkins, Miriam Solá, Sandy Stone, Stefania Voli, Rinaldo Walcott, Lori Watson, Cristan Williams, Shana Ye, Asli Zengin
Call Number: HQ77.9.T732 2016
Publication Date: 2016
A Planet for Rent by Yoss; David Frye (Translator)"A Planet for Rent is the English-language debut of Yoss, one of Cuba's most lauded writers of science fiction. Translated by David Frye, these linked stories craft a picture of a dystopian future: Aliens called xenoids have invaded planet Earth, and people are looking to flee the economically and socially bankrupt remains of human civilization. Yoss' smart and entertaining novel tackles themes like prostitution, immigration and political corruption. Ultimately, it serves as an empathetic yet impassioned metaphor for modern-day Cuba, where the struggle for power has complicated every facet of society" --NPR, Best Books of 2015 Out of the modern-day dystopia of Cuba comes an instant classic from the island's most celebrated science fiction author: a raucous tale of a future in which a failing Earth is at the mercy of powerful capitalist alien colonizers. In A Planet for Rent, Yoss critiques life under Castro in the '90s by drawing parallels with a possible Earth of the not-so-distant future. Wracked by economic and environmental problems, the desperate planet is rescued, for better or worse, by alien colonizers, who remake the planet as a tourist destination. Ruled over by a brutal interstellar bureaucracy, dispossessed humans seek better lives via the few routes available--working for the colonial police; eking out a living as black marketeers, drug dealers, or artists; prostituting themselves to exploitative extraterrestrial visitors--or they face the cold void of space in rickety illegal ships. This inventive book marks the English-language debut of an astonishingly brave and imaginative Latin American voice.
Call Number: PQ7390.S256 S413 2014
Publication Date: 2015
Forever Prisoners by Elliott YoungStories of non-US citizens caught in the jaws of the immigration bureaucracy and subject to indefinite detention are in the headlines daily. These men, women, and children remain almost completely without rights, unprotected by law and the Constitution, and their status as outsiders, eventhough many of have lived and worked in this country for years, has left them vulnerable to the most extreme forms of state power. Although the rhetoric surrounding these individuals is extreme, the US government has been locking up immigrants since the late nineteenth century, often for indefiniteperiods and with limited ability to challenge their confinement.Forever Prisoners offers the first broad history of immigrant detention in the United States. Elliott Young focuses on five stories, including Chinese detained off the coast of Washington in the late 1880s, an "insane" Russian-Brazilian Jew caught on a ship shuttling between New York and SouthAmerica during World War I, Japanese Peruvians kidnapped and locked up in a Texas jail during World War II, a prison uprising by Mariel Cuban refugees in 1987, and a Salvadoran mother who grew up in the United States and has spent years incarcerated while fighting deportation. Young shows howforeigners have been caged not just for immigration violations, but also held in state and federal prisons for criminal offenses, in insane asylums for mental illness, as enemy aliens in INS facilities, and in refugee camps. Since the 1980s, the conflation of criminality with undocumented migrantshas given rise to the most extensive system of immigrant incarceration in the nation's history. Today over half a million immigrants are caged each year, some serving indefinite terms in what has become the world's most extensive immigrant detention system. And yet, Young finds, the rate of allforms of incarceration for immigrants was as high in the early twentieth century as it is today, demonstrating a return to past carceral practices.Providing critical historical context for today's news cycle, Forever Prisoners focuses on the sites of limbo where America's immigration population have been and continue to be held.
Call Number: JV6483 .Y68 2021
Publication Date: 2021
The House on Mango Street by Sandra CisnerosIn hardcover for the first time--on the tenth anniversary of its initial publication--the greatly admired and bestselling book about a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, this novel depicts a new American landscape through its multiple characters.
Call Number: PS3553.I78 H6 1994
Publication Date: 1994
The Borders of Dominicanidad by Lorgia García PeñaIn The Borders of Dominicanidad Lorgia García-Peña explores the ways official narratives and histories have been projected onto racialized Dominican bodies as a means of sustaining the nation's borders. García-Peña constructs a genealogy of dominicanidad that highlights how Afro-Dominicans, ethnic Haitians, and Dominicans living abroad have contested these dominant narratives and their violent, silencing, and exclusionary effects. Centering the role of U.S. imperialism in drawing racial borders between Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the United States, she analyzes musical, visual, artistic, and literary representations of foundational moments in the history of the Dominican Republic: the murder of three girls and their father in 1822; the criminalization of Afro-religious practice during the U.S. occupation between 1916 and 1924; the massacre of more than 20,000 people on the Dominican-Haitian border in 1937; and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. García-Peña also considers the contemporary emergence of a broader Dominican consciousness among artists and intellectuals that offers alternative perspectives to questions of identity as well as the means to make audible the voices of long-silenced Dominicans.
Call Number: E184.D6 G36 2016
Publication Date: 2016
Donde Se Acaba el Norte by Hugo MorenoUna novela de sueños y descubrimiento donde el misticismo y la sabiduría indígena chocan con el poder y la autoridad de la Iglesia y la Inquisición. Uriel, un aspirante a escritor bloqueado, está misteriosamente atrapado en el cuerpo de Diego, un novicio franciscano del siglo diecisiete. Uriel cree haber tenido un grave accidente y no sabe si se encuentra en estado catatónico, de ensoñación, o de transición hacia otra vida o dimensión. Diego ha sido acusado de herejía en la Cd. de México y, para expiar sus pecados y evitar ser quemado en la hoguera de la Inquisición, sus superiores lo envían a Nuevo México con la misión de catequizar a los apaches. Allí Uriel/Diego se encuentra y convive con personajes memorables: un fraile franciscano milenarista que dice ser su padre y quien recuerda al legendario Antônio Conselheiro de Canudos, el protagonista de la magistral Guerra del fin del mundo de Mario Vargas Llosa; a Refugio, un chamán apache inspirado en el Don Juan de Carlos Castañeda, quien se convierte en el maestro y guía de Diego/Uriel en su viaje por el ámbito astral de los sueños y el Más Allá; a Lucio, un mulo que añora llegar a la Tierra Prometida y quien tiene la facultad de hablar como el famoso Asno de Oro de Apuleyo; y a Alma, su amor eterno, quien recientemente se suicidó y a quien Uriel plagió sus diarios íntimos mientras intentaba escribir una novela negra sobre los feminicidios de Ciudad Juárez. Durante el transcurso del relato, Uriel/Diego confronta un sinnúmero de situaciones angustiantes que lo hacen cuestionarlo todo, incluyendo su existencia y su razón de ser. Con hábil fuerza narrativa y lírico lenguaje descriptivo, el autor entrelaza las historias de Uriel y Diego a modo de La noche boca arriba de Julio Cortázar, manteniendo al lector en suspenso hasta la última página.
Call Number: PQ7079.3.M67 D66 2021
Publication Date: 2020
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. SánchezNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST * A "stunning" (America Ferrera) YA novel about a teenager coming to terms with losing her sister and finding herself amid the pressures, expectations, and stereotypes of growing up in a Mexican American home--from the author of Crying in the Bathroom "Alive and crackling--a gritty tale wrapped in a page-turner. "--The New York Times Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college. And they do not move out of their parents' house after high school graduation. Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family. But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was Olga's role. Then a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family. And no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken, too. Instead, her mother seems to channel her grief into pointing out every possible way Julia has failed. But it's not long before Julia discovers that Olga might not have been as perfect as everyone thought. With the help of her best friend Lorena, and her first love, first everything boyfriend Connor, Julia is determined to find out. Was Olga really what she seemed? Or was there more to her sister's story? And either way, how can Julia even attempt to live up to a seemingly impossible ideal?
Call Number: Juvenile Lit 813 S2625i
Publication Date: 2017
Native Country of the Heart by Cherríe Moraga; Cherríe MoragaNative Country of the Heart: A MexicanAmerican Geography is, at its core, a mother-daughter story. The mother, Elvira, was hired out as a child by her own father to pick cotton in California's Imperial Valley. The daughter, Cherríe L. Moraga, is a brilliant, pioneering, queer Latina feminist. The story of these two women, and of their people, is woven together in an intimate memoir of critical reflection and deep personal revelation. As a young woman, Elvira left California to work as a cigarette girl in glamorous late-1920s Tijuana, where an ambiguous relationship with a wealthy white man taught her life lessons about power, sex, and opportunity. As Moraga charts her mother's journey--from impressionable young girl to battle-tested matriarch to, later on, an old woman suffering under the yoke of Alzheimer's--she traces her own self-discovery of her gender-queer body and Lesbian identity, as well as her passion for activism and the history of her pueblo. As her mother's memory fails, Moraga is driven to unearth remnants of the MexicanAmerican diaspora and an American story of cultural loss.Poetically wrought and filled with insight into intergenerational trauma, Native Country of the Heart is a reckoning with white American history and a piercing love letter from a fearless daughter to the mother she will never lose.
Call Number: PS3563.O753 Z46 2019
Publication Date: 2019
The Young Lords by Johanna FernándezAgainst the backdrop of America's escalating urban rebellions in the 1960s, an unexpected cohort of New York radicals unleashed a series of urban guerrilla actions against the city's racist policies and contempt for the poor. Their dramatic flair, uncompromising socialist vision for a new society, skillful ability to link local problems to international crises, and uncompromising vision for a new society riveted the media, alarmed New York's political class, and challenged nationwide perceptions of civil rights and black power protest. The group called itself the Young Lords. Utilizing oral histories, archival records, and an enormous cache of police surveillance files released only after a decade-long Freedom of Information Law request and subsequent court battle, Johanna Fernandez has written the definitive account of the Young Lords, from their roots as a Chicago street gang to their rise and fall as a political organization in New York. Led by poor and working-class Puerto Rican youth, and consciously fashioned after the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords occupied a hospital, blocked traffic with uncollected garbage, took over a church, tested children for lead poisoning, defended prisoners, fought the military police, and fed breakfast to poor children. Their imaginative, irreverent protests and media conscious tactics won reforms, popularized socialism in the United States and exposed U.S. mainland audiences to the country's quiet imperial project in Puerto Rico. Fernandez challenges what we think we know about the sixties. She shows that movement organizers were concerned with finding solutions to problems as pedestrian as garbage collection and the removal of lead paint from tenement walls; gentrification; lack of access to medical care; childcare for working mothers; and the warehousing of people who could not be employed in deindustrialized cities. The Young Lords' politics and preoccupations, especially those concerning the rise of permanent unemployment foretold the end of the American Dream. In riveting style, Fernandez demonstrates how the Young Lords redefined the character of protest, the color of politics, and the cadence of popular urban culture in the age of great dreams.
Call Number: F128.9.P85 F47 2020
Publication Date: 2020
The Poet X by Elizabeth AcevedoWinner of the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, and the Pura Belpré Award! Fans of Jacqueline Woodson, Meg Medina, and Jason Reynolds will fall hard for this astonishing New York Times-bestselling novel-in-verse by an award-winning slam poet, about an Afro-Latina heroine who tells her story with blazing words and powerful truth. Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers--especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. With Mami's determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school's slam poetry club, she doesn't know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can't stop thinking about performing her poems. Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent. "Crackles with energy and snaps with authenticity and voice." --Justina Ireland, author of Dread Nation "An incredibly potent debut." --Jason Reynolds, author of the National Book Award Finalist Ghost "Acevedo has amplified the voices of girls en el barrio who are equal parts goddess, saint, warrior, and hero." --Ibi Zoboi, author of American Street
Catarino Garza's Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border by Elliott YoungCatarino Garza's Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border rescues an understudied episode from the footnotes of history. On September 15, 1891, Garza, a Mexican journalist and political activist, led a band of Mexican rebels out of South Texas and across the Rio Grande, declaring a revolution against Mexico's dictator, Porfirio Díaz. Made up of a broad cross-border alliance of ranchers, merchants, peasants, and disgruntled military men, Garza's revolution was the largest and longest lasting threat to the Díaz regime up to that point. After two years of sporadic fighting, the combined efforts of the U.S. and Mexican armies, Texas Rangers, and local police finally succeeded in crushing the rebellion. Garza went into exile and was killed in Panama in 1895. Elliott Young provides the first full-length analysis of the revolt and its significance, arguing that Garza's rebellion is an important and telling chapter in the formation of the border between Mexico and the United States and in the histories of both countries. Throughout the nineteenth century, the borderlands were a relatively coherent region. Young analyzes archival materials, newspapers, travel accounts, and autobiographies from both countries to show that Garza's revolution was more than just an effort to overthrow Díaz. It was part of the long struggle of borderlands people to maintain their autonomy in the face of two powerful and encroaching nation-states and of Mexicans in particular to protect themselves from being economically and socially displaced by Anglo Americans. By critically examining the different perspectives of military officers, journalists, diplomats, and the Garzistas themselves, Young exposes how nationalism and its preeminent symbol, the border, were manufactured and resisted along the Rio Grande.
Call Number: F786 .Y565 2004
Publication Date: 2004-07-26
City of Inmates by Kelly Lytle HernándezLos Angeles incarcerates more people than any other city in the United States, which imprisons more people than any other nation on Earth. This book explains how the City of Angels became the capital city of the world's leading incarcerator. Marshaling more than two centuries of evidence, historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez unmasks how histories of native elimination, immigrant exclusion, and black disappearance drove the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles. In this telling, which spans from the Spanish colonial era to the outbreak of the 1965 Watts Rebellion, Hernandez documents the persistent historical bond between the racial fantasies of conquest, namely its settler colonial form, and the eliminatory capacities of incarceration. But City of Inmates is also a chronicle of resilience and rebellion, documenting how targeted peoples and communities have always fought back. They busted out of jail, forced Supreme Court rulings, advanced revolution across bars and borders, and, as in the summer of 1965, set fire to the belly of the city. With these acts those who fought the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles altered the course of history in the city, the borderlands, and beyond. This book recounts how the dynamics of conquest met deep reservoirs of rebellion as Los Angeles became the City of Inmates, the nation's carceral core. It is a story that is far from over.
Call Number: HV9956.L67 H47 2017
Publication Date: 2017
The Hispanic Republican by Geraldo CadavaAn illuminating and thought-provoking history of the growth of Hispanic American Republican voters in the past half century and their surprising impact on US politics, updated with new material reflecting on the 2020 election In the lead-up to every election cycle, pundits predict that Latino Americans will overwhelmingly vote in favor of the Democratic candidate. And it's true--Latino voters do tilt Democratic. Hillary Clinton won the Latino vote in a "landslide," Barack Obama "crushed" Mitt Romney among Latino voters in his reelection, and, four years earlier, the Democratic ticket beat the McCain-Palin ticket by a margin of more than two to one. But those numbers belie a more complicated picture. Because of decades of investment and political courtship, as well as a nuanced and varied cultural identity, the Republican party has had a much longer and stronger bond with Hispanics. How is this possible for a party so associated with draconian immigration and racial policies? In The Hispanic Republican, historian and political commentator Geraldo Cadava illuminates the history of the millions of Hispanic Republicans who, since the 1960s, have had a significant impact on national politics. Intertwining the little understood history of Hispanic Americans with a cultural study of how post-World War II Republican politicians actively courted the Hispanic vote during the Cold War (especially Cuban émigrés) and during periods of major strife in Central America (especially during Iran-Contra), Cadava offers insight into the complicated dynamic between Latino liberalism and conservatism, which, when studied together, shine a crucial light on a rapidly changing demographic that will impact American elections for years to come.
Call Number: E184.S75 C33 2020
Publication Date: 2020
Lingua Cosmica by Dale Knickerbocker (Editor)Anthologies, awards, journals, and works in translation have sprung up to reflect science fiction's increasingly international scope. Yet scholars and students alike face a problem. Where does one begin to explore global SF in the absence of an established canon? Lingua Cosmica opens the door to some of the creators in the vanguard of international science fiction. Eleven experts offer innovative English-language scholarship on figures ranging from Cuban pioneer Daína Chaviano to Nigerian filmmaker Olatunde Osunsanmi to the Hugo Award-winning Chinese writer Liu Cixin. These essays invite readers to ponder the themes, formal elements, and unique cultural characteristics within the works of these irreplaceable--if too-little-known--artists. Dale Knickerbocker includes fantasists and genre-benders pushing SF along new evolutionary paths even as they draw on the traditions of their own literary cultures. Includes essays on Daína Chaviano (Cuba), Jacek Dukaj (Poland), Jean-Claude Dunyac (France), Andreas Eschbach (Germany), Angélica Gorodischer (Argentina), Sakyo Komatsu (Japan), Liu Cixin (China), Laurent McAllister (Yves Meynard and Jean-Louis Trudel, Francophone Canada), Olatunde Osunsanmi (Nigeria), Johanna Sinisalo (Finland), and Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (Russia). Contributors: Alexis Brooks de Vita, Pawel Frelik, Yvonne Howell, Yolanda Molina-Gavilán, Vibeke Rützou Petersen, Amy J. Ransom, Hanna-Riikka Roine, Hanna Samola, Mingwei Song, Tatsumi Takayuki, Juan Carlos Toledano Redondo, and Natacha Vas-Deyres.
Call Number: PN3433.5 .L56 2018
Publication Date: 2018
Queen for a Day by Marcia OchoaQueen for a Day connects the logic of Venezuelan modernity with the production of a national femininity. In this ethnography, Marcia Ochoa considers how femininities are produced, performed, and consumed in the mass-media spectacles of international beauty pageants, on the runways of the Miss Venezuela contest, on the well-traveled Caracas avenue where transgender women (transformistas) project themselves into the urban imaginary, and on the bodies of both transformistas and beauty pageant contestants (misses). Placing transformistas and misses in the same analytic frame enables Ochoa to delve deeply into complex questions of media and spectacle, gender and sexuality, race and class, and self-fashioning and identity in Venezuela. Beauty pageants play an outsized role in Venezuela. The country has won more international beauty contests than any other. The femininity performed by Venezuelan women in high-profile, widely viewed pageants defines a kind of national femininity. Ochoa argues that as transformistas and misses work to achieve the bodies, clothing and makeup styles, and postures and gestures of this national femininity, they come to embody Venezuelan modernity.
Call Number: HQ77.95.V4 O24 2014
Publication Date: 2014
A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel AllendeNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the author of The House of the Spirits, this epic novel spanning decades and crossing continents follows two young people as they flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in search of a place to call home. "One of the most richly imagined portrayals of the Spanish Civil War to date, and one of the strongest and most affecting works in [Isabel Allende's] long career."--The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY GOOD HOUSEKEEPING In the late 1930s, civil war grips Spain. When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border. Among them is Roser, a pregnant young widow, who finds her life intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love. In order to survive, the two must unite in a marriage neither of them desires. Together with two thousand other refugees, Roser and Victor embark for Chile on the SS Winnipeg, a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda: "the long petal of sea and wine and snow." As unlikely partners, the couple embraces exile as the rest of Europe erupts in world war. Starting over on a new continent, they face trial after trial, but they will also find joy as they patiently await the day when they might go home. Through it all, their hope of returning to Spain keeps them going. Destined to witness the battle between freedom and repression as it plays out across the world, Roser and Victor will find that home might have been closer than they thought all along. A masterful work of historical fiction about hope, exile, and belonging, A Long Petal of the Sea shows Isabel Allende at the height of her powers. Praise for A Long Petal of the Sea "Both an intimate look at the relationship between one man and one woman and an epic story of love, war, family, and the search for home, this gorgeous novel, like all the best novels, transports the reader to another time and place, and also sheds light on the way we live now."--J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Saints for All Occasions "This is a novel not just for those of us who have been Allende fans for decades, but also for those who are brand-new to her work: What a joy it must be to come upon Allende for the first time. She knows that all stories are love stories, and the greatest love stories are told by time."--Colum McCann, National Book Award-winning author of Let the Great World Spin