Category Archives: Latino/a

February 24, 2013 · 9:47 am

Irises by Francisco X. Stork

IrisesFirst things first: choose the page, not the headset. Carrington MacDuffie’s voice is just too old to narrate the inner lives of two teenage sisters – no lilting resonance, no youthful lightness. Might I suggest that the better options for aurally appreciating the extraordinary Francisco X. Stork would be Marcelo in the Real World and The Last Summer of the Death Warriors. The ears don’t lie.

Kate is 18, determined and independent, with secret dreams of going to Stanford – instead of the expected, local University of Texas at El Paso – and becoming a doctor one day. Mary is 16, sensitive and thoughtful, an artist gifted beyond her years, with an other-world ability to recognize light in the subjects she paints. Their beloved mother never leaves her bed  … trapped in a vegetative state, kept alive only because of a feeding tube. One afternoon, their father lies down for a rest and never wakes again. Life suddenly shifts to fast-forward …

Mama needs her expensive medical care, the girls must finish school. Kate, as the elder, is faced with serious financial challenges. Aunt Julia arrives from California, but she isn’t exactly the helpful adult the sisters need, too busy criticizing their late father, avoiding her silent sister, and insisting to Kate that marrying her boyfriend Simon now is the sisters’ only secure choice for a future. Then the deacons of the church where Papa ministered for 20 years of his life announce that the family has two months to find a new home to make room for their father’s fiery young successor – who has inappropriate plans of his own.

While Papa was a loving provider, he was also a severe disciplinarian: “The only decision [the sisters] needed to make when he was alive was whether to obey willingly or unwillingly.” Without his restrictions, both girls grow in new ways: Mary finds a comforting new friendship; Kate reexamines many of hers. Both manage to find the strength to make impossible decisions with surprising wisdom – and always love.

Although Stork has a penchant for creating narratives populated by characters facing difficult challenges, he never resorts to easy feel-good answers or deus ex machina-solutions. His can’t-turn-the-page-fast-enough stories are ultimately reminders of the resilience of our youth, with a ringing endorsement that whatever they face, they can – and will – do so with tenacity and courage.

Readers: Young Adult

Published: 2012

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Filed under ..Young Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, Latino/a

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February 10, 2013 · 10:20 am

The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork

Last Summer of the Death WarriorsWhen Pancho Sanchez arrives at St. Anthony’s Home, his 17-year-old self has already survived too much death, and yet he’s planning on more. The last of his family – his mentally challenged 20-year-old sister – was found dead in a motel room. While the police insist what happened was an accident, Pancho knows his sweet sister was murdered … and with no one left (their father died just three months ago, their mother years before when they were still young children), he has nothing more to lose.

And then he meets D.Q.

Daniel Quentin – “but everyone calls me D.Q.” – is on an impossible quest (Don Quixote, anyone?), mainly because he’s dying … of cancer. He’s been writing his “Death Warrior Manifesto” – “‘I’m not crazy about the name … because it has all sorts of negative implications. ‘Life Warrior’ is probably more accurate because the manifesto is about life, but ‘Death Warrior’ is more mysterious-sounding.’ And he inexplicably chooses Pancho (wasn’t Don Quixote’s sidekick Sancho Panza?) to be his fellow warrior. “‘The first rule is: No whining,’” he insists.

When an experimental treatment becomes available in Albuquerque, D.Q insists Pancho accompany him. Pancho readily agrees, as he’s managed to track down his sister’s killer to an Albuquerque address. Waiting there for D.Q. will be lovely Marisol, who works at the aptly named Casa Esperanza, a care facility for young cancer patients. Waiting, too, is D.Q.’s mother – surprise! he’s not an orphan, after all – who abandoned her son once before but is desperate to redeem herself by saving him this time.

As memorable as this novel is, you can’t believe how much heavier its imprint becomes on your heart, long after you finish it. If you choose to stick the story in your ears, D.Q. and Pancho’s voices won’t stop ringing: narrator Ryan Gesell is both sensitive and controlled, even as the punches (literally) fly.

Author extraordinaire Francisco X. Stork (oh, Marcelo in the Real World, be still my heart!) deals with Big Themes – life, death, love! – with patience and even humor, but he also seamlessly weaves in matters of race, ethnicity, haves vs. have-nots, parenthood, mental illness, and more. Before you close the book, turn to the title once more: that word “Last” keeps resonating, not only for what you’ve just read, but for what gets left unsaid.

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2010

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December 15, 2012 · 10:30 am

Count Me In! A Parade of Mexican Folk Art Numbers in English and Spanish by Cynthia Weill, illustrated with ceramics by the Aguilar Sisters: Guillermina, Josefina, Irene, and Concepción

Come one, come all: the Guelaguetza festival is about to begin. Guelaguetza means ‘to share’ in the Zapotec language, and every July, the people of Oaxaca, Mexico gather to ‘guelaguetza’ their dancing, singing, and music. One man with a balloon announces the welcoming parade has begun. Three musicians pass by playing their instruments. Four colorful, intricately decorated giants follow. Six women with baskets dance, while eight more musicians delight. The happy onlookers are thrilled to join in.

Far more than a simple counting book (bilingual, too!), Count Me In is celebration of the Oaxacan culture as captured by “Great Masters of Oaxacan Folk Art,” the Aguilar sisters – Guillermina, Josefina, Irene, and Concepcíon, ceramic artists recognized worldwide. Each number is represented by the corresponding number of unique, parading ceramic figures created by the renowned sisters – which have recently been acquired by Chicago’s Field Museum.

The literary/artistic collaboration is the result of peripatetic author and educator Cynthia Weill. Her first title, Ten Mice for Tet, co-authored with Pegi Deitz Shea, featured 16th-century traditional embroidery from Vietnam. A Fulbright Teacher Exchange for Mexico led her to discover Oaxacan crafts which inspired her to write ABeCedarios: Mexican Folk Art ABCs in Spanish & English, (2007), Opuestos: Mexican Folk Art Opposites in English and Spanish (2009), and Colores de la Vida: Mexican Folk Art Colors in Spanish and English (2011), all published by the fabulously indie Cinco Puntos Press.

Count makes a perfect bilingual quartet of Oaxacan art-infused titles, especially appropriate for the classroom. As Weill explains, each of her titles target three audiences: kiddie readers, folk art enthusiasts, and teachers. In addition to entertaining children, the indigenous arts and crafts which make the books so vibrant also provide all sorts of cultural learning opportunities. What’s not to love? Count me in, too!

Readers: Children

Published: 2012

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Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Fiction, Latin American, Latino/a, Nonethnic-specific

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November 21, 2012 · 12:20 pm

Little White Duck: A Childhood in China by Na Liu and Andrés Vera Martínez

Little White Duck is a visual feast that showcases the childhood memories of author Na Liu, and vibrantly enhanced by her artist husband Andrés Vera Martínez. Liu introduces herself with an adorably grinning “Ni Hao!,” explaining that she was born in Zhifang, a suburb of Wuhan, China in 1973. Her family name is Liu, her given name Na, but as Chinese children are usually called by nicknames (so that “bad luck and spirits couldn’t find you if your true name was never spoken out loud”), she is called Qin, which means ‘piano.’ When her little sister comes along a year later, she becomes Da Qin (Big Piano), and her little sister Xiao Qin (Little Piano).

Eight short segments detail Da Qin’s youthful experiences, from her role as big sister to accompanying her mother to school, to joining her mother in tears over the death of ‘Grandpa’ Mao, to learning to never waste food, to performing good deeds, to celebrating the holidays with extended family, to visiting estranged relatives whose lives are drastically different from her own.

At first reading, especially for younger readers, Da Qin’s childhood about growing up in a faraway place decades ago is not unlike a vaguely familiar fable. Older audiences, however, will recognize the story as an important, even unsettling historical record of a pivotal time. Liu briefly mentions the one-child policy as “a new law” which her parents were able to avoid because her “little sister was already on the way.” When only one child is officially allowed to enroll in school, Liu’s sister becomes the sole student while Liu was lucky enough “to get a good start on my education” by joining her mother’s classroom in the elementary school in which her mother teaches. Liu’s mother explains how Mao’s policies allowed her the surgeries she needed to walk again after being paralyzed by polio, but also recalls how the Great Famine destroyed so many lives.  The inequities Liu experiences in her father’s remote village – her “flat-out mean” grandmother, her dirt-stained aggressive cousins who know nothing of books – brings new insight to a world beyond the comfortable life she shares with her immediate family.

Liu and her sister represent China’s “transitional generation – a generation caught in between one way of life and another, between the old and the new.” As children, they bear witness to the emergence of a new China on the international stage, from the deprivations of the Cultural Revolution toward gradual economic and technological modernization.

“I read in the writing of Confucius that there are three ways to learn,” Liu concludes. “First: by studying history, which is the best. Second: By imitating someone or something which is easiest. And third: Through your own experience, which can be heartbreaking.” Liu’s childhood in China “was a special time,” which she wisely chooses (after “some convincing” from hubby Martínez) to “preserve … through pictures and stories.” Their joint production is spectacular.

Tidbit: Duck is one of the most complete books ever. The already memorable story is significantly strengthened with back-of-the-book supplementary materials which includes a “Glossary of Mandarin Chinese Words and Other Words and Names,” a timeline from 551 BCE to Mao’s death in 1976, a more detailed biography of Liu, country and province maps, and – most impressive of all, something I can’t remember seeing in any other book, regardless of target audience! – a page of “Translations of Chinese Characters” of the signs, posters, plaques, and other calligraphy throughout the book. WOW! Talk about feeling utterly grateful to be able to enjoy every detail!

Readers: Children, Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2012

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Filed under ...Absolute Favorites, ..Middle Grade Readers, .Graphic Novel/Manga/Manwha, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, Chinese, Chinese American, Latino/a

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September 29, 2012 · 10:24 am

Conquistadora by Esmeralda Santiago

I think I must have been a Boricua in a former life. I can’t seem to stay away too long from La Isla del Encanto (especially my favorite Isla Culebrita), and I get the fiercest cravings for Bebo’s and mofongo (it’s all about a full belly). So how thrilled was I to get an invitation to visit a friend’s book club to discuss Conquistadora, an epic historical novel set in Puerto Rico. Alas, alas, if I tell her fellow Boricuas what I really think, it’s likely they will never invite me back … so the truth might just have to stay here.

As a girl growing up in 18th-century Spain, Ana Larragoity Cubillas – a señorita de buena familia (you’ll hear that moniker often!) – discovers the journals of an ancestor who was one of the first visitors two centuries prior to Puerto Rico when it was still called Borínquen. Ana’s adventurous aspirations come to fruition when she marries into a family that has inherited considerable holdings in Puerto Rico. Ana, her husband Rámon, his twin brother Inocente, plan to tame the sugar plantation that they name Hacienda los Gamelos (yes, House of the Twins). Ana’s romantic notions of wild island life are hardly what her reality turns out to be, and yet nothing will make her give up the challenge to achieve her Hacienda dreams – not murder, not motherhood, not widowhood, not epidemic deaths, not betrayal after betrayal.

Slavery, colonialism, the evolving role of women, gender power plays – such important storytelling potential quickly sinks into messy, missed opportunity. The narrative, with its telenovela twists and turns, relies heavily on eye-rolling moments to sustain a sort of train-wreck momentum: Ana’s furtive premarital couplings with her convent schoolfriend (a distant relative of the twins) who gets relegated to saintly spinsterhood most of her life, the ménage-à-trois-marriage Ana endures with both twins, too many white male characters’ forcible production of a shocking supply of hapa slave offspring.

Beyond the narrative, most characters prove to be predictable one-note caricatures: driven Ana, weakling twins, wallflower Elena, wannabe Severo, hysterical Lenore, doting Eugenio, spoiled Miguel. The few moments of grace belong to the long-suffering – dare I say – noble slaves: Olivia who dreams of telling her future children her whole life story because she never even learned her own mother’s name, José who lovingly immortalizes the cholera-dead into a piece of beautiful mahogany because all that is left of his loved ones are scattered ashes. As the book ends with Ana barely in middle-age, I fear a sequel must be in the works.

Conquistadora is not my first Esmeralda Santiago title: her debut, a resonating memoir, When I Was Puerto Rican, was definitely my favorite; its sequel, Almost a Woman, proved disappointing, which was my excuse for not picking up the next sequel, The Turkish Lover; her predictable novel America’s Dream remains unfinished; and now her latest might have to be my last. I confess the only reason I made it to the end had to do with my belly (did I not mention cravings?). Yes, really – the friend who so graciously invited me to meet her Boricuas, promised to reward me with Pastelon de Amarillos. I admit it: I will read (almost anything) for amazing food! After alternating between the 432-page book and the almost 18-hour audible version narrated by a subdued Santiago herself, I can only hope I’ve earned tomorrow night’s dinner.

Readers: Adults

Published: 2012

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, Carribbean American, Latino/a, Puerto Rican

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September 25, 2012 · 9:33 am

We the Animals by Justin Torres

As this debut novel is all of 125 pages (in hardcover), you have little excuse not to read it in a single sitting … not that you’ll want to be interrupted anyway. When it’s finished, you’ll be wishing for more.

That greed subliminally kicks in on page 1, with the first chapter, “We Wanted More.” Three young brothers – the youngest being the unnamed ‘I’-narrator – “… were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more.” Their parents are not much older – their white mother, eight months pregnant, was just 14 when she convinced their 16-year-old Puerto Rican father “to do the right thing, which was to take her on a bus to Texas [from Brooklyn] and marry her.” Both are ninth-grade drop-outs, and while Ma was still in her “teenage years,” the couple settled somewhere upstate from Brooklyn, had three sons but rarely enough food, money, work, sleep, patience, even love. Ma and Paps, too, must have wanted more.

Ma works the graveyard shift at the local brewery and gets night and day confused. Paps works less predictably, cooks meals from his childhood, and tries to teach his hapa boys (“‘Mutts … You ain’t white and you ain’t Puerto Rican’”) to mamba – their “heritage” – just as he learned growing up in Spanish Harlem. Their relationship is volatile, with Paps disappearing, Ma mourning, Paps beating, Ma escaping. And yet, in between are lulls of humor and tenderness, smashing tomatoes in the kitchen, playing hide-and-seek in the close-curtained bathtub.

For years, the boys – a single three-headed entity called ‘we’ – explore, watch, tiptoe, laugh, avoid, imitate, learn. Their paths toward adulthood eventually causes shifts, and too soon ‘we’ splits into ‘they’ and ‘I/my’: “They smelled my difference … They believed I would know a world larger than their own. They hated me for my good grades, for my white ways. All at once they were disgusted, and jealous, and deeply protective, and deeply proud.”

Even as Justin Torres‘ coming-of-age narration ends with wrenching revelations and consequences, the final blow is buried in the acknowledgements (spoiler alert!): “Extra special thanks to Laura Iodice, my high school English teacher, who brought me books when I was hospitalized …” In the midst of trying to reclaim some calm at story’s end, you realize that some (most? how much?) of this searing, blinding title must be autobiographical in spite of its ‘novel’-label, and the heart can’t help but splinter for the young man whose desperate mother begged him to always stay her baby boy.

Reading Animals is reminiscent of discovering Julie Otsuka‘s When the Emperor Was Divine: both are powerful debut novels with a brevity that belies the dense intensity captured within the elliptical, careful, just-enough prose; both have breath-snatching endings. Interestingly enough, when you pull up Animals on Amazon, it’s paired with Otsuka’s 2011 National Book Award Finalist, 2012 PEN/Faulkner-winning The Buddha in the Attic, another spare gem. Sure, I’m probably reaching, but that strikes me as a sign of amazing things to come for Torres’s sophomore effort. Humor me, and mark my words …

Tidbit: Serendipity! Justin Torres is one of the National Book Foundation‘s oh so prestigious “5 Under 35” for 2012 (announced September 27, 2012 – yipppeee and whoo hoooo!). His book was chosen by the inimitable Jessica Hagedorn. Another of the 2012 judges was actually Julie Otsuka (!), who chose Claire Vaye Watkins’ Battleborn. Might have to read that, too!

Readers: Adult

Published: 2011

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June 22, 2012 · 4:12 pm

Sylvia & Aki by Winifred Conkling

Sylvia Mendez and Aki Munemitsu shared the same yellow bedroom as young children, just not at the same time. While Aki and her family were imprisoned in Poston, Arizona during World War II for no other reason than their Japanese heritage, Sylvia and her family leased the Munemitsus’ asparagus farm in Westminster, California and lived in their home.

Winifred Conkling debuts her first novel for children (after 30+ adult nonfiction titles) based on real events: Sylvia and Aki are not only real people, but they’re also everyday heroes, too.

Sylvia and her brothers, the children of a Mexican immigrant father and a Puerto Rican American mother, were barred from attending their all-white neighborhood school. They were sent to the “Mexican” school further away from their home, for an education that was definitely separate but hardly equal. Sylvia’s father Gonzalo eventually sued the Westminster School District in what would become a landmark case that became known as the “‘Brown v. Board of Education for Mexicans’” and ended segregation in California in 1947. [Small irony: Brown v. Board didn't get decided until seven years later in 1954 which means Brown v. Board should really be known as the "Mendez v. Westminster School District for everyone else"!!]

While Sylvia and her family fought for equal rights on the outside, Aki, her brother, and their mother spent World War II in the Sonoran Desert with hardly any rights at all. They lived for two years without Aki’s father, who was arrested without cause and separately incarcerated. When the family was finally reunited and released after war’s end, they were some of the lucky few who were able to return to their pre-War homes intact, thanks to the Mendez family who took good care of their farm.

Sylvia and Aki became friends exchanging letters (they met briefly at Poston when Sylvia’s father hand-delivered the lease payment, rightfully not trusting the postal service into the prison camp); Conkling adds in her edifying  ”Afterword” (filled with Mendez and Munemitsu family updates, historical overview, and an extensive appendix for further reading) that Sylvia and Aki “remain friends to this day.”

Presented in chapters that alternate between the two girls’ voices, Conkling deftly uses small details to emphasize the parallel trajectory of their wartime lives – from the special ethnic-specific dolls both girls cherish, to the wire fences that surround both the run-down “Mexican” school and the Poston prison, to their civil rights that were unjustly compromised, to the resilience that pulls both girls and their families through difficult, challenging times. While Sylvia and Aki’s stories might separately seem familiar (civil rights and internment titles are easily found in most libraries), Conkling overlaps and intertwines their narratives to create a uniquely resonating testimony of committed triumph.

Readers: Middle Grade

Published: 2011

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April 30, 2012 · 1:12 pm

Birdie Flies Away | Pararillo se va volando by Kat Aragon, illustrated by Andrea Yomtob

Billed as “the nation’s only bilingual children’s book publisher dedicated to Parent Involvement,” Lectura Books is actively working to change some startling statistics: One in four children under age 5 is Hispanic/Latino, but according to the Department of Education, whose who identify as Hispanic or Latino have the lowest educational attainment in the United States.

Literacy, of course, is paramount to easing the path to achievement, and the folks at Lectura Books are well aware that both parents and children need to be working together. To encourage generational involvement, Lectura presents five new titles in May (tomorrow, already!), that offer easy-to-read stories in both English and Spanish on the same page. “Reading bilingual books is one of the most effective ways to acquire transferable literacy skills,” explains Lectura publisher Katherine Del Monte on the company’s website. “Bilingual books are a win-win situation for parents, children and schools.”

Of the upcoming new titles, Birdie Flies Away, is a personal favorite for its adorable story of can-do independence, regardless of size, but even more so because of its enchanting illustrations by Andrea Yomtob. A little girl keeps a regular watch on a family of birds from her window – Mama, Papa, and their four babies. As each of the little birds grow, one by one, they set out to test their wings … but always come back to the nest. Only baby Birdie stays nest-bound, perfectly happy to remain warm and coddled. But even he eventually will make the great leap …

Yomtob distinguishes each of the birds with unique little details – from feather-bows to tiny little spectacles, to a ladybug buddy who never goes far. Mama and Papa are delightfully comical, perched on the branch together, ready with maps and binoculars literally searching high and low for their avian offspring. Kudos indeed to Yomtob for creating such birdie personalities that jump off the page, making the reading adventure that much more entertaining.

One tiny detail that needs correcting: page 22 has a typo in ‘binoculars,’ but hopefully many editions are in the publisher’s future, so an easy fix should be forthcoming.

Readers: Children

Published: 2012

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April 26, 2012 · 3:15 pm

A Wedding in Haiti by Julia Alvarez

Neither Julia Alvarez nor her husband Bill can remember exactly when she fell in love with a Haitian boy named Piti. But both distinctly recall the first meeting, which happened in 2001 on one of their many trips to Alvarez’s native Dominican Republic. “[S]hort and slender with the round face of a boy,” Piti – whose Kreyòl name means “little one,” was 17, 19, possibly even 20. “Somewhere in Haiti,” Alvarez realizes, “a mother had sent her young son to the wealthier neighbor country to help the impoverished family.” Never having experienced childbirth herself, something about Piti nonetheless releases “unaccountably maternal” feelings in Alvarez: “Who knows why we fall in love with people who are nothing to us?” she muses.

Piti becomes ingrained in the hearts and lives of both Alvarez and Bill as they travel frequently from their Vermont home to their organic coffee farm in the Dominican mountains, where eventually Piti comes to work. One night, Alvarez promises she will be at his wedding, “[o]ne of those big-hearted promises … you never think you’ll be called on to deliver someday.” Eight years later, ‘someday’ arrives … and so begins Alvarez’s latest – her 22nd! – title, A Wedding in Haiti.

A week before the Aug. 20, 2009, nuptials, Piti announces his intention to marry Eseline, the mother of his infant daughter, and wants to know: Are Julia and Bill coming?

After arguing with her conscience (she was supposed to attend a conference at the same time), Alvarez and hubby arrive in Santiago, DR, two days before the wedding. They assemble their motley crew of attendees, pack the truck, and head toward Haiti, which Alvarez describes “like a sister I’ve never gotten to know.” In spite of the shared border, Alvarez has been next-door only once before, a quarter century ago. Piti’s family’s remote home doesn’t have an actual address or even appear on any map, but the adventure – long, uncertain, occasionally illegal – will end just in time for Alvarez and Bill to preside as the revered godparents as Piti and Eseline exchange vows.

The truck must depart immediately after the ceremony, this time with the newly-wedded threesome, as Piti doesn’t want to subject his new family to public transportation. That neither wife nor baby has any immigration documentation is an obstacle they must face at the border. In spite of her fear and frustration with the situation, Alvarez “will not abandon them.… There is a bottom line below which you cannot go and still call yourself a human being.” Over just three days, Alvarez’s familial constellation changes remarkably.

Five months later, the horrific 2010 earthquake hits Haiti: its government reports “316,000 dead, 300,000 injured, 1.3 million displaced, 97,300 houses destroyed.” Piti and Eseline finally learn their immediate families have survived, but Eseline is not well; a trip home is deemed necessary. In July, Alvarez and Bill, Piti, Eseline, baby Ludy, and three more extended near-family, overload the truck and head over the border into devastated Haiti, bearing witness to indescribable tragedies.

“The one thing we cannot do is turn away,” Alvarez insists. “When we have seen a thing, we have an obligation. To see and to allow ourselves to be transformed by what we have seen.” Her bond with Piti allows Alvarez to experience Haiti through Piti’s shocked eyes, and witness his transformation “[f]rom laborer to capataz [supervisor] to president of CJM [Young People of Moustique Cooperative],” as he “work[s] toward the future of Haiti.”

Alvarez, internationally renowned for her novels, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies, says of her latest book (in an essay included with the advance copy), “[r]ather than a ‘me-moir,’ I prefer to call this book an ‘us-moir.’” While Piti’s story takes center page, Alvarez also weaves in her own marriage to her beloved Bill, her parents’ decades-long love story still unbroken in spite of the mutual dementia that has stolen most of their memories, as well as the complicated relationship of two less-than-sisterly nations.

Although Wedding occasionally reads too much like an unedited personal journal – especially the first half (which, Alvarez reveals, is how the book began) – Alvarez’s devotion, her admiration and hope, and most clearly, the love for her extended family, is palpable throughout. The small black-and-white-pictures scattered on the pages help emphasize the individual humanity throughout. Indeed, as Alvarez explains, Wedding proves to be “a love story that is many love stories; a story of how history can be reimagined when people from two countries, traditional enemies and strangers, become friends.”

Review: Christian Science Monitor, April 26, 2012

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, Caribbean, Carribbean American, Latino/a

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April 8, 2012 · 11:47 am

Return to Sender by Julia Alvarez

Here’s a rather unique literary coincidence: Julia Alvarez‘s Finding Miracles ends with an uncle missing the grandmother’s wedding because of hemorrhoid surgery. Return to Sender begins with the mention of another uncle (in a totally unrelated story) suffering through a hemorrhoid operation. Try and find two books to repeat that experience!

Oh, but I digress …

In Return to Sender, two different families meld into each other, initially from circumstance, and then with heartfelt connections. Tyler Paquette, 11, is shocked to learn that because of his father’s debilitating accident, the family is hiring three Mexican migrant workers (who are brothers) to help run the family farm in Vermont. With them arrive three young daughters; the oldest, Mari, is Tyler’s age, and will soon enough be in his sixth-grade class. Tyler is even more troubled to realize that the Cruz brothers – as competent, reliable, and farm-saving as they will prove to be – are also illegal immigrants. Interwoven with Tyler’s story, are Mari’s letters to her missing mother. Many months ago, Mari’s mother left the family when they were still living in North Carolina to visit her ailing mother in Mexico, and seemingly disappeared somewhere between there and here.

Over the months, the Paquette and Cruz families blend: Tyler and Mari become especially supportive friends; the girls help alleviate Tyler’s grandmother’s paralyzing loneliness after losing Tyler’s grandfather; and Tyler’s parents are gratefully relieved that the Cruz brothers have returned the family farm to full function. Of course, challenges are plenty, too: Mari is targeted at school as an outsider; enough disgruntled townspeople speak out loudly against the illegal workers; immigration raids are not uncommon; and the Cruz family finally learns the fate of the mother.

Alvarez is certainly working with a difficult, timely topic and, while readers will have no doubt as to her own views, her characters openly express battling opinions. The children are certainly the most effected: Tyler’s love of his country and the need to respect his country’s laws are painfully questioned; Mari, as the only sister not born in the U.S., faces a precarious future as she worries about the possible deportation of her parents and uncles, and the challenges her sisters will face if they are forced to live a very different life in the family’s Mexican village. Alvarez thoughtfully offers no easy solutions.

Alvarez won the 2010 Pura Belpré Medal winner for narrative with this title; the prestigious Pura Belpré Awards from the American Library Association ”is presented to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.” The strength of Alvarez’s story is clearly in the individual relationships created and cemented by people with vastly disparate backgrounds. Beyond the official rules and regulations, beyond borders, beyond the headlines, are two friends who share a love of the stars, whose families and lives converge long enough to establish a lasting, human bond.

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2009

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