Synopses & Reviews
As the U.S. Latino population grows rapidly, and as the LGBTQ Latino community becomes more visible and a more crucial part of our literary and artistic heritage, there is an increasing demand for literature that successfully highlights these diverse lives. Edited by Lázaro Lima and Felice Picano, Ambientes is a revolutionary collection of fiction featuring stories by established authors as well as emerging voices that present a collective portrait of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender experience in America today. With a preface by Picano and an introduction by Lima that sets the stage for understanding Latino literary and cultural history, this is the first anthology to cross cultural and regional borders by offering a wide variety of urban, rural, East Coast, West Coast, and midwestern perspectives on Latina and Latino queers from different walks of life. Stories range from sensual pieces to comical romances and from inner-city dramas fueled by street language to portraits of gay domesticity, making this a much-needed collection for many different kinds of readers. The stories in this collection reflect a vibrant and creative community and redefine received notions of “gay” and “lesbian.”
Finalist, Over the Rainbow selection, American Library Association
Finalist, LGBT Anthology, Lambda Literary Awards
Best Special Interest Books, selected by the American Association of School LibrariansBest Special Interest Books, selected by the Public Library Reviewers
Review
“With this collection, queer Latina/o writers claim their place in the variegated terrain of contemporary American fiction. Ranging from the erotic to the elegiac, the fantastic to the frighteningly real, these stories entertain our senses and challenge our notions of what it means to be a queer person of color.”—Israel Reyes, Dartmouth College
Review
The stories presented in Ambientes are as varied as their authors, but the over-arching theme is one of otherness within our own communities. It’s that shared otherness, however, that promises a powerful cultural unity. By collecting these early stories, Lima and Picano have taken that first step toward transmuting our individual experiences into a larger cultural legacy, and, in turn, opening the door to a broader, more inclusive national identity.”—Lambda Literary
Review
“Ambientes is a timely contribution at this point in history during which demographic shifts are literally changing the face of America. The stories in Ambientes provide a significant model for GLBT Latinos in the U.S., giving them the tools to find their own voice by uncovering a community that has long been neglected and silenced.” —The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide
Review
"A deeply-felt work that belongs in the company of classic American memoirs such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, When I Was Puerto Rican, and Hunger of Memory. Where it differs most memorably from those books is in its uncompromising depiction of a young person's sexual orientation. Engrossing, supremely enjoyable, and beautifully written."—Jaime Manrique, author of Eminent Maricones
Review
"Rigoberto González is a writer who walks, with an elegant gait, the line between sorrow and laughter, anger and acceptance. His prose is shaped by the poetry of irony. And he is a master of it."—Richard Rodriguez, author of Brown: The Last Discovery of America
Review
"In this very personal and poignant autobiography, González narrates his coming-of-age and outing as a gay man amid the poverty, illiteracy, and abuse—but also love—of his family and community. Fast-moving and told in lucid, visually striking language, this autobiography is sure to make a place for itself."—Silvia D. Spitta, Dartmouth College
Review
“González’s elegant, wrenching, and poetic memoir recounts his childhood among poor Mexican farmworkers, losing his mother at twelve, whippings for youthful cross-dressing, being abandoned by his father, and coming out and finding peace with his identity amid a culture where machismo is prized.”—Out
Review
“Wrenching, angry, passionate, ironic, and always eloquent about conflicts of family, class, and sexuality. The son and grandson of farmworkers, constantly moving between Mexico and the U.S., then and now, González weaves together three narrative threads: his angry present journey across the border with his estranged father; childhood memories of growing up a fat, bookish ‘sissy-boy’; and his urgent longing for his sexy, abusive older lover. . . . An unforgettable story of leaving home today.”—Booklist (Starred review)
Review
“This moving memoir of a young Chicano boy’s maturing into a self-accepting gay adult is a beautifully executed portrait of the experience of being gay, Chicano and poor in the United States. . . . González writes in a poetic yet straightforward style that heightens the power of his story.”—Publishers Weekly
Review
“A poignant, heartfelt memoir of a gay Latino . . . coming-of-age, played out against a relentless backdrop of abuse and neglect.”—Kirkus Reviews
Review
“This is not a memoir written outside the box; it is a memoir written to obliterate it.”—Publishers Weekly
Review
"Susana Chávez-Silverman isn't a code-switcher but a switch-burner. Her Killer Crónicas is an astonishing example of linguistic mestizaje. It's also a prophetic statement: north and south are no longer applicable coordinates to understand the Americas. They have merged into a single gravitational order where languages are in constant mutation."—Ilan Stavans, author of Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language
Review
“A stirring memoir . . . practically a performance. Killer Crónicas is a testament to the maturing sense of global and pan-Latin citizenship being claimed by Chicanos and U.S.-born Latinos in the American West. Combine this with such innovation in language, and her book may one day be regarded as a refreshing turning point in Latino literature, maybe even the truly bilingual literary voice that the pioneering Chicana critic Gloria Anzaldúa called for.”—Daniel Hernandez, Los Angeles Times
Review
"Susana Chávez-Silverman's Killer Crónicas: Bilingual Memories is a masterfully written memoir in the form of 'chronicles' exploring issues of memory, family relationships, and language. Her philosophical excursions on writing, intertextuality, and life in general are brilliantly and humorously rendered in a bilingual format of code-switching that evidences a superb knowledge of English and Spanish. This linguistic dexterity enables the crónicas to flow effortlessly from one language to another and easily captivates the reader as he/she travels with the author in a most enjoyable and fascinating journey from California to South Africa, Argentina, Spain, and Chile."— María Herrera-Sobek, associate vice chancellor and Luis Leal Endowed Chair, University of California, Santa Barbara
Review
"These chronicles are truly hemispheric, postmodern memories written in a ludic, singular Spanglish that encapsulates the transnational, nomad vivencias of a Jewish Chicana from Califas, a citizen of the Hispanic world. Original, powerful and profound."—Frances Aparicio, University of Illinois at Chicago
Synopsis
Can a U.S. president decide to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely without charges or secretly monitor telephone conversations and e-mails without a warrant in the interest of national security? Was the George W. Bush administration justified in authorizing waterboarding? Was President Obama justified in ordering the killing, without trial or hearing, of a U.S. citizen suspected of terrorist activity? Defining the scope and limits of emergency presidential power might seem easy just turn to Article II of the Constitution. But as Chris Edelson shows, the reality is complicated. In times of crisis, presidents have frequently staked out claims to broad national security power. Ultimately it is up to the Congress, the courts, and the people to decide whether presidents are acting appropriately or have gone too far. Drawing on excerpts from the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court opinions, Department of Justice memos, and other primary documents, Edelson weighs the various arguments that presidents have used to justify the expansive use of executive power in times of crisis. Emergency Presidential Power uses the historical record to evaluate and analyze presidential actions before and after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The choices of the twenty-first century, Edelson concludes, have pushed the boundaries of emergency presidential power in ways that may provide dangerous precedents for current and future commanders-in-chief.
Winner, Crader Family Book Prize in American Values, Department of History and Crader Family Endowment for American Values, Southeast Missouri State University
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Synopsis
From sensual pieces to comical romances, from inner city dramas to portraits of gay domesticity, the stories in this collection reflect a vibrant and creative community and redefine received notions of “gay” and “lesbian.”
Synopsis
Heartbreaking, poetic, and intensely personal, Butterfly Boy is a unique coming out and coming-of-age story of a first-generation Chicano who trades one life for another, only to discover that history and memory are not exchangeable or forgettable.
Synopsis
Winner of the American Book Award
Synopsis
A woman living and communicating in multiple lands, Susana Chávez-Silverman conveys her cultural and linguistic displacement in humorous, bittersweet, and even tangible ways in this truly bilingual literary work. These meditative and lyrical pieces combine poignant personal confession, detailed daily observation, and a memorializing drive that shifts across time and among geocultural spaces. The author’s inventive and flamboyant use of Spanglish, a hybrid English-Spanish idiom, and her adaptation of the confessional "crónica" make this memoir compelling and powerful.
Killer Crónicas confirms that there is no Latina voice quite like that of Susana Chávez-Silverman.
Includes a chapter that was awarded first prize in El Andar magazine’s Chicano Literary Excellence Contest in the category of personal memoir.
About the Author
Rigoberto González is the author of many award-winning books for adults and children, among them So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water until It Breaks, a selection of the National Poetry Series; the novel Crossing Vines, named the ForeWord Fiction Book of the Year; and the teen novel The Mariposa Club, named to the American Library Association’s Rainbow List. He is a contributing editor to the magazine Poets and Writers, on the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle, and on the advisory circle of Con Tinta, a coalition of Chicano/Latino activist writers. He is associate professor of English at Rutgers University at Newark.
Table of Contents
Editors' Note: The Name of las Cosas
Lázaro Lima and Felice Picano
Preface
Felice Picano
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Genealogies of Queer Latino Writing
Lázaro Lima
Kimberle
Achy Obejas
Pandora's Box
Arturo Arias
Shorty
Daisy Hernández
Puti and the Gay Bandits of Hunts Point
Charles Rice-González
Porcupine Love
tatiana de la tierra
The Unequivocal Moon
Elías Miguel Muñoz
Dear Rodney
Emanuel Xavier
This Desire for Queer Survival
Horacio N. Roque Ramírez
La Fiesta de Los Linares
Janet Arelis Quezada
Malverde
Myriam Gurba
Aquí viene Johnny
Raquel Gutiérrez
Haunting José
Rigoberto González
Imitation of Selena
Ramón García
Currawong Crónica
Susana Chávez-Silverman
I Leave Tomorrow, I Come Back Yesterday
Uriel Quesada
Six Days in St. Paul
Steven Cordova
Arturo, Who Likes to Shave His Legs in the Snow
Lucy Marrero
Contributors