Don’t know what to do with those secret films starring or about the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca hidden away in your closets?  Well this may be your chance to finally do something culturally beneficial with them! In attempt to keep the memory of the great Spanish poet alive through the big screen, El Pais ran a story yesterday announcing that there would be a international search for audiovisual productions having to do with the life and work of the Granada born poet for the purposes of "archiving them for the cultural universe."
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For all the bearded heartthrobs that Hollywood has given us to interpret Jesus Christ, we may just be beginning a lost list of Che Guevara interpreters to compete. I can count four. First we had Omar Sharif in the controversial 1969 version Che! The movie was seen as so offensive in Chile and Argentina that Molotov cocktails were reportedly thrown at screens in movie theaters. Then we had Gael Garcia Bernal as boy Che in Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries to whet our appetites for a more grown up comandan...Read More

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My role as blogger of the Latino arts demands that I delve into book subjects I feel you should know about whether kosher or non-kosher. So I wanted to let you know that there’s a book about teaching young children about marijuana available in several languages including Spanish and English. Meet Ricardo Cortés, the 34-year-old founder and director of the Magic Propaganda Mill (MPM), a NY-based visual design agency that combines art with progressive political education. He is also the man behind a controversial and much talked about book entitled It’s Just a Plant first published in 2005 . Dr. Andrew Weil called it "A delightful book….a glimpse of what enlightened drug education could be" and it was labeled "an outrage" by ...Read More

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I want to recommended four books out there on the Quinceañera, that coming of age ritual that celebrates a Latin girl’s fifteenth birthday. If you're trying to fill out your collection, here are four very different takes on the this Latino ritual. The first, Once upon a Quinceañera: Coming of Age in the USA is a sociologically informative non-fiction look at the cultural tradition written by Julia Alvarez (that's also available in Spanish). The second is Estrella’s Quinceañera, a charming and zany young adult novel by Malina Alegria. The third, Quinceañera:The Essential Guide to Planning the Perfect Sweet Fifteen Celebration, i...Read More

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In 1972 the legendary Puerto Rican baseball player Roberto Clemente died in a plane crash while taking supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. He was only 38-years-old  and his body was never found in the Atlantic Ocean where his plane crashed. If you missed out on the premiere of the PBS documentary “Roberto Clemente,” an “American Experience” this week, which has a handy Spanish-language version as well, you can now view it by visiting the PBS American Experience site. They’ve also got a page dedicated to books about Latinos in baseball.

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Barcelona’s springtime literary love fest, Diada de Sant Jordi is Catalunya’s take on St. Valentine’s Day. The holiday takes place on April 23rd, the anniversary of Cervantes’s and Shakespeare’s deaths and international book day. It spotlights love’s finer accompaniments: books, roses, and playing hooky from work. I love this take on the holiday; it’s a welcome switch from America’s garish pink Hallmark cards, helium balloons, or the obligatory heart-shaped boxes of chocolates perfunctorily sent to one’s cubicle for Valentine’s Day. Way back in the dark Middle Ages, the legendary and valiant Saint George (Sant Jordi) was said to have rescued ...Read More

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The Miami based author Antonio Orlando Rodríguez and winner of the 2008 Premio Alfaguara for his novel Chiquita (Little One), was finally awarded his prize in Madrid this past Friday, the 18^th of April. He was given his tiny Martín Chirino statuette and a grand sum $175 by Ignacio Polanco, president of Grupo PRISA and brother of the late Isabel Polanco. A bittersweet moment since his sister was the force behind created the Alfaguara prize and giving its cache. In his acceptance speech, Or...Read More

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Pardon me but I have a bone to pick. I guess that Lonely Planet collaborator from Hell, Thomas Kohnstamm, who confessed this week to inventing sections in the Colombia guide took the idea of magic realism too seriously. And he sure missed out on one hell of a country to write about. Sure Lonely Planet is infamous for paying their writers too little, but why do it then? Go write somewhere else, no? Fabrication isn’t cool especially when what’s invented depicts outdated and cliched situations that might occur to a North American tourist that could have been plucked out of scenes from Clear and Present Danger, Collateral Damage, or Romancing the Stone (fyi: films supposedly filmed in Colombia but filmed in Me...Read More

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I recently interviewed Isabel Allende about her latest memoir for Latina magazine. It was by done by phone and it was 8am her time, 11am mine. What most struck me was the energy and friendliness Allende projected even through the telephone holes at that hour.  She talked fast, like the pace she writes and publishers at. Like three espressos in a row fast, though she revealed later that she doesn’t drink caffeine. (Enviable natural energy). Her manner of speaking is open and relaxed-- just like she sounds in Paula and its sequel out this month in English, The Sum of Our Days...Read More

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2008 Pulitzer Prize for Letters:
Fiction: Junot Diaz,
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The news left me sort of dumbfounded. Like I’ve been on this earth long enough to meet a great writer when he was on the rise. Really? Junot? That skinny Dominican guy with the glasses I met in the mid 90’s because he dated a friend of mine and we were all into politics and writing (and the politics of writing) and supporting writers of color? Yes, it was him. That guy who managed to put Spanglish into The New Yorker, publish words in Spanish without italicizing them. They ...Read More

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I like to make lists. And every month I like to make a list of books I hear about by authors with Latino sounding surnames. I know I may miss some along the way. So when I do, please be so kind as to let me know. Gracias.

Here's April....

The Sum of Our Days by Isabel Allende. (Memoir) HarperCollins.
The original Spanish-language version of this book was published by Editorial Sudamericana in and is already a best-seller abroad. Allende narrates to her daughter, Paula, events surrounding their family since her daughter's untimely death.
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