Synopses & Reviews
In this moving and funny memoir, award-winning playwright Guillermo Reyes untangles his life as the secretly illegitimate son of a Chilean immigrant to the United States and as a young man struggling with sexual repression, body image, and gay identity. But this is a double-decker memoir that also tells the poignant, bittersweet, and adventurous story of Guillermo’s mother, María, who supports herself and her son cleaning houses and then working as a nanny in Washington, D.C. and eventually in Hollywood.
In one memorable scene, after realizing that her friend Carmen is cleaning the house of one of the producers of Annie Hall, María recruits her to take her picture as she poses dramatically with Mr. Joffe’s Oscar in hand. It is María’s defiant yet determined attitude amidst her sacrifices that allows for Guillermo’s spirited coming of age and coming out.
Their common ground is the drama of their encounters with discovery, heartbreak, and passion—the explosive emotions that light up the stage of their two-actor theater. Honorable Mention, Best Auto/Biography in English, International Latino Book Awards
Review
“Candor, great wit, and humor.”—Horacio N. Roque Ramirez, University of California, Santa Barbara
Review
“Weaving the demoralizing circumstances of their previous life in Chile under the repressive Pinochet regime with their optimism for better conditions in the U.S., Reyes buoyantly captures the dichotomous essence of their roller-coaster experience . . .A bittersweet homage to the courage passed from mother to son.”—Booklist
Review
“Reyes introduces readers to Chilean culture and history, the power of anxiety disorder, and the feelings of marginalization that accompany status as an immigrant and a gay man. . . .Madre and I is more than a coming-of-age story; it is a testament to coming to terms with the myriad labels placed on Reyes and moving beyond them to define who he is as a singular individual.”—ForeWord
Review
“Guillermo Reyes’ smart, gentle memoir, Madre and I, deftly braids together the story of the author’s mother, who emigrates from Chile to the U.S., with his own story of growing up in both countries. . . .This touching memoir is an important edition to the canon of gay memoirs and brings Reyes’ queer Latino experience front and center as simply an American story.”—Charles Rice-Gonzalez, Lambda Literary
Review
“Guillermo Reyes’ memoir is an endearing story of ‘one mother and one son’—a pair of Chilean outsiders navigating the world together but looking at the landscape through diverging lenses.”—Rigoberto Gonzalez, author of Butterfly Boy
Review
"Reyes had an atypical Latino immigrant experience that provides ample material for this entertaining and stirring memoir. He bares his soul—readers may occasionally feel they are Reyes's psychiatrist—as he tells his story of growing up in Chile, fatherless but with his father's name, and of his journey to Los Angeles, all the while coping with sexuality and body issues. But more than his own coming-of-age, this is the story of his mother, Maria, and her struggles, at times unconventionally approached, to provide a better life for her son. Reyes's recountings of his mother's and her family's adventures are the glue that holds this story together while he writes of shaping his own identity and finding his voice as a writer."—Library Journal
Review
“Reyes, an accomplished playwright and theater professor, bares his soul with searing candor in this graceful memoir about growing up as a Chilean immigrant in America. . . .The author's honesty about coming to terms with his fears is expressed with a compelling combination of poignant honesty and rueful wit, a tone that infuses this spirited life story.”—Richard Labonte, Book Marks
Synopsis
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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.” \n
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Synopsis
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Lázaro Lima is associate professor of Latino studies at Bryn Mawr College and author of The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural Memory. Felice Picano is an accomplished author, editor, publisher, journalist, screenwriter, and playwright, and is one of the founders of the Violet Quill. \n
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Synopsis
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.”
About the Author
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“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 '
Table of Contents
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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 \n
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