Latino Visions: Contemporary Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American Artists (Book Report Biography)

Customer Reviews:

Superb Intro Survey of Latino Art.......2001-02-23

This is a superb introductory survey of Latino visual arts as practiced in the United States by artists of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban descent. It would be an excellent selection for libraries, and as a high school text or adjunctive college text. The book's exposition is guided by respect for (and a complex undersanding of) the artists' works, a strategy that avoids pigeon-holing works which often do not fit well into conventional categories. Cockcroft is respectful of the people and their struggles, as well as knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the art. It is beautifully written. (Would that more such texts were written with such clarity as well as such a comprehensive and respectful perspective). It should be especially inspiring to young adult readers, offering as it does example after example of integrity, repect for cultural roots, principled opposition to arbitrary restrictions/oppressions--all expressed creatively with a wide variety of examples, accompanied by excellent photographic illustrations. And the artists are examples of success, too, since many of them have successful careers in galleries and with museum purchases of their works. An example of how Cockcroft integrates diverse elements in discussing the examples, is when he notes the presence of doilies in a Nick Quijano work. Cockcroft says they are present in many Puerto Rican households, then parenthetically explains that this is beacuse "many women did needlework as a way to get extra income' (p.96). Thus do the works "come alive" for the reader. This is a book about the meanings of complex cultures and of individual experiences within (and apart from) them, illuminated by examinations of specific artworks. It is an impressive achievement, and a superior introduction to the artworks discussed, and also to their originating cultures and social and political and mystical beliefs. In short, it is a book aobut art, but it is really a book about respect and tolerance intoday's United States based on knowledge and human decency.

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Cortijo, the musician and friend

Cortijo's Wake / El entierro de Cortijo
Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0822332167

Book Description

A bilingual edition of a renowned work of Puerto Rican literature, Cortijo’s Wake/El entierro de Cortijo is novelist Edgardo RodrÃguez JuliÃ¡’s vivid description of the funeral of legendary Puerto Rican musician Rafael Cortijo. El entierro de Cortijo became an immediate bestseller following its original publication in Puerto Rico in 1983. An unparalleled Afro-Puerto Rican percussionist and bandleader, Cortijo (1928–1982) revolutionized the country’s musical culture. His band, Cortijo y Su Combo, captivated Caribbean and Latin American audiences as it emerged in the mid-1950s. Immensely popular across Puerto Rican social classes, the band both âmodernizedâ the traditional vernacular forms of bomba and plena and forcefully reestablished their African and working-class roots. The group’s innovations have been integral to salsa since the 1960s.

Winding through the streets of working-class San Juan with Cortijo’s funeral procession, RodrÃguez JuliÃ¡’s autobiographical chronicle provides a rare portrait of the impoverished society from which Cortijo’s music emerged. Along with detailed renderings of grief-stricken mournersâincluding Cortijo’s childhood friend and fellow musician, the celebrated singer Ismael ("Maelo") RiveraâRodrÃguez JuliÃ¡ records his feelings as he, a light-skinned, middle-class writer, confronts the world of poor black Puerto Ricans. The author’s masterful shifting of linguistic registers, his acute sensitivity to Puerto Rican social codes, his broad knowledge of popular music, and his sardonic ruminations on death and immortality make this one of the most widely read books of modern Puerto Rican literature. Well-known critic and cultural historian Juan Flores has provided a scrupulous translation of RodrÃguez JuliÃ¡’s text and an introduction situating the book in relation to Puerto Rican music and culture and the careers of Cortijo and RodrÃguez JuliÃ¡.

Customer Reviews:

Cortijo, the musician and friend.......2004-03-06

A wonderful memory of a dear friend and one of the kindest human beings I've had the pleasure to know.

Book Description

Rudolfo A. Anaya's seven novels can all be viewed in terms of the Chicano literary tradition though their rich texts have earned Anaya a place of respect in mainstream modern American literature. Fernandez Olmos guides the reader through Anaya's literary world with clear signposts, illuminating the mythical, cultural, and linguistic complexities of his astounding stories. From his coming of age masterpiece Bless Me, Ultima (1972) to his most recent work Shaman Winter (1999) Anaya's writing with its rich spiritual symbolism is brought down to earth and made accessible to the student reader by Fernandez Olmos insightful analyses. This work devotes a chapter to each novel, enabling Fernandez Olmos to guide the reader through each, showing both the patterns and variations of literary devices in Anaya's works, while offering interesting alternative interpretations of Anaya's writing. Fernandez Olmos presents a well-researched chapter on the life of Rudolfo Anaya, familiarizing readers with his Hispanic cultural background which figures so prominently in his writing. A chapter on Anaya and the Chicano literary tradition deepens the reader's understanding and appreciation of the writer's tremendous contributions. Fernandez Olmos then devotes a full chapter to each of the novels, Bless Me, Ultima, Heart of Aztlan, Tortuga, and Alberqueque; his detective novels, Zia Summer and Rio Grande Fall; and his modern-day parable Jalamanta: A Message from the Desert. Student readers and researchers will find the bibliography which includes reviews, criticisms, and other secondary sources to be very helpful.

Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey

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One of greatest literary and political disappointments
Pivotal moments
why am I suprised
A master story-teller's own story of multiple exiles
Beautiful story & insights, beautifully written

Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey
Ariel Dorfman
Manufacturer: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0374168628

Amazon.com

Ariel Dorfman is no stranger to exile. Before his 30th birthday, he had fled with his parents (Jews who had escaped from Eastern Europe) from Argentina to the U.S. and then later to Chile. Then, following a military coup, he fled Chile for a stint in Europe before returning to the U.S. For Dorfman, this was not traveling but enduring, as his forced movement between nations, cultures, and languages left him without a place to call home or a culture he could completely define as his own. Although heralded as one of Latin America's leading writers, he once renounced the Spanish language and swore to become an American in both speech and culture. Later, while a student at Berkeley, he abandoned English with the same vengeance and returned to his native Spanish. Such vacillation caused him to ponder the role of language in forming identity, and this theme runs throughout Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey. His desire to embrace his Latin roots went beyond language, however, for it was politics that ultimately thrust him into the role of a writer, thus changing his life. He had wanted to be a part of the American protest movement, but he feared the official wrath that could befall him due to his immigrant status: "This seemed to be my fate. In Chile, I had been Argentinean; here, I was Chilean; always the danger of deportation, my foreign passport weighing down on me. So I looked on while heads were broken, sit-ins were disrupted, and damsels in distress were dragged off by the 'pigs.' ... My participation was always surreptitious and oblique...." But in Chile his involvement took a more active stance. His status as official citizen emboldened him and he enthusiastically embraced Salvador Allende's socialist movement, serving for a time as the administration's communications and media advisor; a choice that eventually earned him yet another round of exile back in the U.S. (where he continues to reside) after the death of Allende and the rise of General Augusto Pinochet. A remarkable story of perseverance and the inherent power of language, Heading South, Looking North is ultimately a quest for self-identity. The fact that he wrote this book in English may answer the question of where he stands--for now. --Shawn Carkonen

Book Description

From the author of Death and the Maiden, this fascinating memoir offers an elegant meditation on language, exile, and memory.

In this remarkable memoir, Dorfman describes an extraordinary life, torn between the United States, South America, and his Jewish heritage, between English and Spanish, between revolution and repression. Interwoven with the story of how Dorfman switched languages and countries--not once, but three times--is a day-to-day account of his multiple escapes from death during Pinochet's military takeover of Chile in 1973. Combining eight vignettes of his life before 1973 with eight scenes from the coup, Dorfman filters these events through an engaging, hybrid consciousness. A beautifully written and deeply moving auto-biography by one of the "greatest living Latin American writers" (Newsweek), Heading South, Looking North is at once a vivid account of a life as complex and mysterious as the fictional characters Dorfman has created, and an enthralling search for a permanent home, a political cause, and a cultural identity.

"A fascinating memoir ... intensely personal and often moving."-- The New York Times Book Review.

"Dorfman has written the most universal of stories, a meditation on the fragility and uncertainty of life." --The Boston Globe

Customer Reviews:

One of greatest literary and political disappointments.......2006-06-26

Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden helped me learn some new Spanish words, soak in Chile, Chilito, pisco sour... it also helped me imagine with more concreteness the hell that foreign policy and the Pinochet dictatorship unleashed upon Chilean men and women. I learned pieces of the dialogues by heart and wondered about the implications of human frailty and resistance in general. Alas, I took the work to be an expression of criticism toward the weak-willed husband who was content with a foul compromise, with the so-called "dialogue". This memoir as well as Dorfman's pieces in Counterpunch opened my eyes, however. Dorfman has never advanced past the boy who forsook Spanish for English, the boy so awed by glories of Holywood that he'd rather be a whimsical, charming Ariel than a weird Vladimiro. It is hilarious that he is being criticized for Communist sympathies here, when he is a liberal in the nineteenth c. sense of the term who would fight and die for nothing but his piece of the northamerican pie. I wish I had never read any of his work, and I cannot forgive him his cowardice, his duplicity, his heading AND looking north. I'll stick to Galeano instead.

Pivotal moments.......2004-01-25

This book is the internal memoirs of a man whose defining moments were exile from his homelands and his languages. Exile was a longstanding way of life in Dorfman's family, from his grandparents who had to leave Eastern Europe, to his parents who had to flee both Argentina and the US, and now Dorfman himself, who was forced into asylum after the fall of Allende in Chile. But exile is more of a secondary or co-theme of this book. The other major theme is Dorfman's search for identity through his languages. Throughout the book, Dorfman describes how he came to know language, and the identity traits that go along with a language. He also describes how he came to choose which of his two languages, English and Spanish, to use in different contexts and to consciously construct different identities.

Rather than tell his story chronologically, Dorfman works from a repertoire of pivotal moments. He has asked himself, when and why did I first start using English? When did I begin to write? When did I embrace the philosophy of non-violence? He then describes these episodes in detail, and speculates and philosophizes on them. The story of Dorfman's political activities in Chile and what happened to him during the coup constitute about half of the book, with these political chapters alternating with chapters about the other significant events in his life. The bouncing back-and-forth between time periods moves almost smoothly, like the thought patterns of an insomniac reflecting back at the end of a busy day.

I found many aspects of this book quite interesting. The first-person account of bilingualism, and its ties to a conflicted identity were described very clearly. The inside perspective on the Allende regime and its fall was also informative. What was particularly telling was the speculation on why the regime lost popularity amongst the Chilean people- -how Dorfman himself shamed people who were celebrating the Allende victory with a right-wing singer who was trying to mend fences, and told them the singer was not welcome in the revolution, or how he didn't reach out to a neighbor whose job was jeopardized and then lost because he wasn't an Allendista. Another aspect of this story that I found intriguing was Dorfman's identity as a gringo English speaker brought to Chile against his will as a young teenager, who came to adopt the country and become active in its politics. I couldn't help but think of another young man, Michael Townley, who was also brought by his American family to Santiago in his teenage years, and also learned the language, married a local girl, and wanted to call Chile his permanent home. But Townley was on the other side of the revolution, and became a right-wing terrorist working for the Chilean intelligence forces. Did Dorfman ever encounter Townley? Of course, Dorfman wasn't actually American- -he was an Argentinean who spent a significant portion of his childhood in the US, but he looked and spoke the part. How many other young Americans adopted Chile during this period? What was their combined influence on Chilean politics?

why am I suprised.......2002-02-22

While Mr. Dorfman's experience of crossing cultures and language during a high profile time in Chilian and American history is poinent, it is not unique or objective. His self absorbtion is irritating. His self rightousness criticism covers unresolved suvivor's guilt which would be better resolved in the analysts chair. It is unfortunate Mr. Dorfman presents such idealised view of the Salvador Allende. I have lived and worked in Chile and am well aquainted with many people,peers of Mr. Dorfman, who also have parents who immigrated from Europe or Russia. Allende caused terrible harm to the Chilian economy in his repartiation of middle class businesses and land amoung other things. Middle class housewives demonstrated in the streets begging the military to oust him. No one approved of the repressive regime, the fear and the disappearances of the early Pinochet years, but in the last years Pinochet opened the Chilian markets to the world. Pinochet was voted out and democracy in with the addition of "primary" elections so that no one will be elected with 33% of the vote as was Allende. There were no monsters in Chile, no saints,but there is complex history, culture and politics. It is a shame Mr Dorfman with his high visability couldn't have addressed that.

A master story-teller's own story of multiple exiles.......2001-05-29

Both as a memorial to the democracy that was delayed for a generation in Chile (and to his friends who were casualties in the Pinochet terror) and as an account of how a major writer became the bilingual hybrid he is by rejecting first one and then the other of his linguistic selves, this is a fascinating book. . Battered from continent to continent by political events of the twentieth century, Dorfman's survival (as he knows well) depended on considerable luck and on his father's connections. Although he has accepted that his vocation is to tell stories, especially the stories of repression in Chile, there is no doubt that he harbors a considerable amount of survivor guilt.

Contrary to the misrepresentation of earlier reviewers, Dorfman does mention Borges (three times, all with respect), criticizes Castro as well as Pinochet (though Chile is a place to which he gave his heart and soul), and is not just aware, but explicit that it is ironic "I should have become a spokesperson for the poor in Latin America because I had spent so many years in the rich North" and of the recurrent ironies that the connections of his marxist father got them out of harm's way.

This is a very honest, un-narcissistic account of an interesting life of multiple exiles, observing failures of democracies, making clear the different selves that emerge in different languages. I would have liked more on the second American exile and assenting to bilingualism, and I regret that the hardback cover composition was replaced by the duller, less bicultural one on the paperback.

Beautiful story & insights, beautifully written.......2001-03-17

This book is a wonderfully woven, yet economical, description of one young man's constant self examination and exploration of his surroundings. I would like to think that I and others could be as sensitive and compassionate. Also, between the lines I understood what amazing, positive people his parents must have been. Thoughtful, provoking, and above all, beautifully crafted.

Average customer rating:

Loved It!

House of Houses
Pat Mora
Manufacturer: Beacon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0807072001

Amazon.com

Combining poetic language and the traditions of magic realism to paint a vivid portrait of her family, Pat Mora's House of Houses is an unconventional memoir that reads as if every member, death notwithstanding, is in one room talking, laughing, and crying. In a take-off on the Day of the Dead, the story begins with a visit to the cemetery in which all of her deceased relatives come alive to share stories of the family, literally bringing the food to their own funerals. From there the book covers a year in the life of her clan, revealing the personalities and events that Mora herself so desperately yearns to know and understand.

By abandoning the traditional memoir form, Mora allows the reader to meet in person each member of her extended, often eccentric family, learning of their lives firsthand. In this way, the principal actors serve to drive the narrative they helped to create. The people are as rich and elaborate as any fictional characters, including a father who can transform himself into a bird, and a grandmother who, though blind, sees visions of the Virgin Mary. Woven into the story are songs, recipes, and colloquialisms that reveal the family's Mexican heritage and signal the subtle transformations that occur upon moving north to Texas. In the end, Mora's tender touch with language creates an imaginative reunion between past and present, leaving a legacy for future generations.

Book Description

House of Houses is Pat Mora's dreamy reconception of the Day of the Dead. Rather than just a few hours, we experience a year in an imaginary home, redolent with the tastes, smells, sounds, and stories of Mora's Southwestern childhood, where the dead walk and talk among the living.

"[A] richly sensual family memoir. . . . A feast. Pat Mora is an eloquent bearer of the old truth that it is through the senses that we appreciate love."
âJanet Perry, The Washington Post Book World

Customer Reviews:

Loved It!.......1998-07-14

Some "magical realism" stories (with dead relatives interacting with the living) seem contrived; this memoir's use of the same device does not. Though I am not Hispanic nor Spanish-speaking, I am a native of Texas and loved this book. It resonated with me in part because much of it takes place in Texas (El Paso), and also because I find family histories compelling (my own family -- and other families).I disagree with the New York Times reviewer (above and on the book jacket) who says the author's use of Spanish phrases cannot be picked up from context clues. Nonsense! The author gives the English translation right in the same paragraph!A good read that can be picked up and put down as time warrants.

Contemporary American Success Stories: Famous People of Hispanic Heritage Pedro Jose Greer, Jr.; Nancy Lopez; Rafael Palmeiro, Hilda Perera (Mitchell Lane Multicultural Biography Series)

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Very educational!!

Contemporary American Success Stories: Famous People of Hispanic Heritage Pedro Jose Greer, Jr.; Nancy Lopez; Rafael Palmeiro, Hilda Perera (Mitchell Lane Multicultural Biography Series)
Barbara J. Marvis , and Barbara Tidman
Manufacturer: Mitchell Lane Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1883845335

Customer Reviews:

Very educational!!.......1999-04-14

Good for school instruction about diversity inUSA

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Contemporary Hispanic Biography

Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0787665398

Contemporary Biography of Hispanic Americans

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Contemporary Biography of Hispanic Americans

Manufacturer: Steck-Vaughn Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0811497917

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