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On a recent Sunday, an intimate gaggle of fans, friends, and family gathered at the Stadium Club in Dodger Stadium to hear Héctor Tobar read excerpts from his new novel, “The Barbarian Nurseries” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), and answer some questions about his writing process and generative protocols.

In many ways, Tobar’s novel is a love letter to Los Angeles, and the several crusts of strata that constitute LA. There’s Araceli, a live-in maid from Mexico, who according to Tobar is an “intellectual trapped in the body of a servant.” Araceli works for the Torres-Thompsons, an uppity Latino family of seemingly affluent means, but is the last-maid-standing after the Torres-Thompsons have to adjust their lifestyle to their means.

According to Tobar, the novel is a “love story to family, and to people of color” who grind it out on the daily in Southern California. The novel is a far cry from the glitz and noir of Hollywood and L.A.’s polluted tabloid architecture; instead, “The Barbarian Nurseries” delves into the private lives and private thoughts of Angelinos from different social, lingual, and political realities.

If Tobar’s name sound familiar it is because he is also a professional journalist that has served as Latin America Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times. In 1992, Tobar won a Pulitzer for his work as part of a team that covered the LA Riots in The Los Angeles Times. Currently, Tobar is the sole writer the Chilean miners have agreed to work with as they tell, and eventually sell, their amazing story.

During the question-and-answer period, Tobar discussed how the epigraphs used at the beginning of each section of Barbarian Nurseries form an infrastructure of influence. Indeed, the literary triumvirate of Don DeLilo’s “White Noise,” Richard Wright’s “Native Son,” and Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” serve as aesthetic touchstones from which Tobar addresses lingual, racial, and economic narrative extrapolations.

To hear novelists read excerpts from their books is almost a thing of the past, like Victorian Lantern Talks. Tobar read excerpts from his new novel, and peppered the readings with asides and anecdotes, flourishes and foibles. For example, Tobar talked about how the genesis of “Barbarian Nurseries” was a novel he had been writing for fifteen years but failed to publish. At one point, Tobar looked out over the audience and said that “one can not be successful” unless one has a “really big failure.”

[Screenshot By HectorTobar.com]

Rudolfo Anaya’s celebrated work and seminal novel “Bless Me Última” just turned 40 this year. The book was first published  in 1972, and was groundbreaking in its portrayal of Latinos, and contribution to Chicano literature.

Not only that, it’s the best selling Chicano novel of all time. The story follows a boy named Antonio as he grows up, and his political in the sense that it describes Latino culture and struggles in New Mexico in the mid-20th century.

Aztlán Reads noted about the book:

The basic story is narrated by Antonio Márez, who is only six years old at the novel’s beginning.  He is a child torn between ways — between the Lunas –his mother’s Catholic farmer family and his father’s wild vaquero background; between Spanish, the language of home and English, the language of education; between the Catholic religion and the traditional earth religions of the curandera and his native ancestors.  Though Ultima, the curandera who comes to live with the family at the story’s beginning, Tony becomes entangled in a series of battles between good and evil, personified in the struggle between Ultima and three evil witches and their father.  He is also witness to three deaths which change him and cause him to question all he has faith in (except for Ultima) and realize he must define his own faith.

Perhaps what makes this anniversary even more notable is the struggle Anaya experienced in trying to publish it.  because the book incorporates English and Spanish words and basically created its own genre, Anaya spent years trying to find a publisher. He finally found his publisher in 1972, seven years after he started writing the book.

Anaya Basically created an entirely new genre when he wrote this book. He has said that he struggled in doing so, because he had no one to mentor him, or any other bodies of work to help guide his own. I first read this book when I was a young girl, and it was the most engaging and personal piece of literature I had read up to that point. I had never experienced literature about people like me. And while I didn’t really understand Antonio’s world — since I didn’t know any curanderas, nor did I grow up in a rural area — that being a Latino could be so normal blew my mind.

So congratulations to Anaya, if you haven’t read this book, I recommend it to you. Here’s a video of Anaya from Latinopia.

LATINOPIA WORD RUDOLFO ANAYA “BLESS ME ÚLTIMA” from Latinopia.com on Vimeo.

[Video By Latinopia]

Anna Maria Lopez De Leon’s first book, The Tortilla Children, is a powerfully evocative work that delves into her family’s history which spans centuries, continents, both old world  and new, and even more significantly explores the innermost workings of her heart, soul, memories, hopes, dreams and realizations.  Lopez De Leon writes of her experiences the way she lived them, minces no words and spares no emotion in revealing her journey from scared brown child unapologetic artist, writer, and Latino woman.  Her own personal journey takes the reader on a luminescent journey through Texas, Mexico, New York and through many rooms of her heart.  Lopez De Leon, also an artist, created the cover for this important memoir. The following is an excerpt:

There is a primal need inside each of us to belong. If we are not born into a place that we feel a part of we search it out looking for that comfort zone, that connection as to who we are. Until then we are merely fooling ourselves into believing that we are fine or just denying the ache. We need that nest.

In reading The Tortilla Flats as a youth I felt that Steinbeck showed that the road to freedom and happiness is not the most complicated but merely accepting and turning back to whom we are, to the familiar our roots. And it might take swallowing our pride to get there but for some it is necessary.

I was drawn to my greatest love and friend like a magnet. As it turned out, though oceans apart, we had more in common than anyone would ever imagine. Our skin color may be on the opposite ends of the spectrum, but our souls and history are joined. We both have ancestors that built pyramids and ate unleavened bread. We both have Latin passions that burn in our eyes. We are opposite but not opposing.

We came together in this country that fights to keep us apart. Much is asked but more is given in the realization of a dream. Those that do not dream may remain safe from pain, but lose out in life. In these times, the journey to be one with our own and equal in our worth seems to be growing longer, but it is a journey that for some must be made. And like those that came before us, we go on before others. We have a dream that spans generations. Lest we lose our way, that dream must be in our every day, our every thought, our reason.

My dearest friend opened my eyes to this dream, eyes that were sad and hopelessly surrendered to the idea of “knowing my place.” She taught me that it is against my nature to give in. She gave me hope that a day would arrive when we would not be looked upon as ‘less than.’ My friend reminded me that we have a history that is beyond Taco Bell and sarapes. She taught me that humility is a beautiful attribute and strength. And that no matter how many changes are made and how much is altered for comfort and convenience “truth is the truth.”

By Wuicho Vargas

Puro Border, edited by Bobby Byrd, John William Byrd and Luis Humberto Crosthwaite.

This book is an excellent source of all types of literary material and the theme that circumnavigates the book overall is border life, which is the central to getting the attention of our local students in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The majestic use of folklore and the exquisite venturing into the regional language accents and colorizes every passage in the book with a feeling of familiarity and amazement.

The magnificent use of pictures, graphs, poems, corridos and structure strategically placed, independently give a story of their own, and then you get to read the content and become entangled into another world aside from the visual.  Every element in the art of writing becomes engaged in this great book composed of many elements that are perfectly stirred and smoothly swirled inside this huge pot of succulent tasty literary menudo.

As if the mixture were not enough to bribe any enthusiastic reader or the not-so-enthusiastic reader, every story, shot and passage, in this book is filled with well-written stories. In the first lines of this book, the reader could easily misjudge and be misguided by the sometimes shocking information this book exposes, but then as the feeling dissipates, the real book exposes itself.  Through short stories, charts, photos, corridos we see simple moments of crossing the bridge, then, the violent harsh reality that exists in Mexico.

This book has it all.  Happy and sad, once the reader becomes really engaged with this book the pendulum of feelings swings back and forth, confusion and questioning arises from stories, along with laughter from some absurd, yet veridical, events that happen on the border.

The border, as I always picture it in my dreams and with every gasp of air I take in around this area, is a gap between two nations, neither Mexico nor America. It’s solely and purely “the border.”  Puro Border, via the use of several genres, tries and succeeds at certain points to envelop the huge and ever-changing chameleonic, challenging face of the border. This book is up to speed with so many eccentricities of our region that it cannot be forgotten and buried with time.

I, Luis Vargas, would totally recommend this book, con capa y espada (with cape and sword), to everyone that lives around the border area, and to those who would like to take a dip inside our pool during our everlasting hot summers.  So, go ahead and dip yourself in our backyard, we have plenty of food and great tasting tortillas.

Wuicho Vargas is a writer who lives in McAllen, Texas.

The first thing that happens when you begin reading Franco Mondini-Ruiz’s book “High Pink: Texas-Mex Fairy Tales,” is that you lose yourself in the stories the artist and former attorney tells you. Although I myself am obviously not a gay man, I found myself laughing and crying along with Mondini-Ruiz’s memories of identity struggles, career choices, familial vignettes and general coming-of-age tales. I met with him recently, and that’s what I told him: the book is about being human.

Of course, the particulars do matter, and going through the 126-page book — mind you every other page is a photo of one of the sculptures created by the artist/author — is a cinch. You can finish it in one sitting, but the stories in the book will stay with you long after you close the book. Some of the stories are four sentences, some longer, some written as poems. Each one, though, has something to offer.

There’s the one about falling in love with a Mexican man, that is, a Mexican national. There’s the one about not being accepted by your parents. Parents and their quarrels with each other, with themselves. About feeling in or out of place. There’s so much about culture passing you by, grasping your culture, recycling it, until you create a culture almost of your own. In short, there’s literally a story for everybody in this book.

My favorite thing about “High Pink” is that, whether you’re white or Mexican, a man or a woman, straight or gay, the stories in this book are about being human. And as a Latina constantly on the lookout for positive portrayals of Latinos and Latino live, this one stood out for it’s matter-of-fact approach to everything from sexuality to culture to family dysfunction (or what we perceive as such). In other words, Mondini-Ruiz talks honestly about things without imbuing them with drama or racism or homophobia.

Mondini-Ruiz just is, and as he tells his story, you get the feeling that you can be, too.

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD

An interesting new book has been released just in time for Black History Month: The Afro-Latin@ Reader edited by Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores. Here’s the book blurb from promotional materials:

The Afro-Latin@ Reader focuses attention on a large, vibrant, yet oddly invisible community in the United States: people of African descent from Latin America and the Caribbean. The presence of Afro-Latin@s in the United States (and throughout the Americas) belies the notion that Blacks and Latin@s are two distinct categories or cultures. In fact, Afro-Latin@s are uniquely situated to bridge the widening social divide between Latin@s and African Americans. At the same time, their experiences reveal pervasive racism among Latin@s and ethnocentrism among African Americans. Offering insight into Afro-Latin@ life and new ways to understand culture, ethnicity, nation, identity, and antiracist politics, The Afro-Latin@ Reader presents a kaleidoscopic view of Black Latin@s in the United States. It addresses history, music, gender, class, and media representations in more than sixty selections, including scholarly essays, memoirs, newspaper and magazine articles, poetry, short stories, and interviews.

Capital Wire PR tells us a little about the editors: Román is a visiting scholar in the Africana Studies Program at New York University and executive director of Afrolatin@ Forum, a research and resource center focusing on black Latinos in the United States. Flores is professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. His most recent books include The Diaspora Strikes Back: Caribeño Tales of Learning and Turning and From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity as well as the English translation of Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá’s book Cortijo’s Wake.

[Image Courtesy Capital Wire PR]