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In Speak of It, Marcos McPeek Villatoro explores how he channeled his Latino roots to come to terms with the childhood sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of a relative in his home in Appalachia, and he recounts his ensuing struggle with trauma and mental illness. The son of a Salvadoran mother and Scotch Irish mechanic father, Marcos spent much of his life trying to break away from his Southern Appalachian past and the trauma experienced there and striving to get closer to his Salvadoran heritage. His journey includes steeping himself in the Spanish language and Latin American literature, especially the work of Gabriel García Marquez; a stint in Nicaragua with Witness for Peace, followed by missionary work in Guatemala; and social-justice work with Mexican migrant farmworkers in Alabama. Each experience brought him closer to understanding where he came from and to forging an identity as a whole self in the wake of trauma. Riveting, horrifying, moving, and inspiring, Speak of It is a testament to the healing power of language, books, and identity.
From 1985 to 1996, Marcos McPeek Villatoro lived in various Latino worlds, both in the United States and in Central America. A richly hued-tapestry of his life and the lives of the people around him during that decade emerges in They Say that I Am Two. Villatoro writes about witnessing friends disappear in raids by immigration agents and making love in a Guatemalan jungle where death squads wait silently outside the door. As a man of two distinct ethnic backgrounds, his poetry invites us to explore the deeper, sometimes disturbing questions regarding race and culture. His verse, both in English and Spanish, draws us into the personal and the political, from the vision of a beautiful, young Nicaraguan woman guarding the Honduran border during wartime to the raucous, heretical reflections upon organized religion. Poignant, comic and planted deep in the rich soil of many languages and voices, They Say that I Am Two introduces the unique and singular voice of a man whose poetry resists the entrapment of borders.
Features a Latina detective unraveling a mystery tinted by the revolution in Central America
A devastating earthquake gives birth to the tumultuous saga that follows an Indian patriarch as he leads his clan to claim the moist, fertile soil that rises out of the tremors and destruction. Amid chaos and catastrophe, the human spirit is challenged to discover its true strength in Marcos McPeek VillatoroÍs spellbinding novel, A Fire in the Earth. The birth of a child at the exact moment of simultaneous death and rebirth in the aftermath of the tremors is an omen of joy and prosperity for the ColÑnez family and the settlers of El Comienzo, The Beginning, as the colony is named. But in this epic story that captures the trials of a Central American nation during the first three decades of...
A child dies on the border between California and Mexico. This is nothing new: immigrants die crossing the border all the time, escaping from poverty and violence in Latin America. They bake in the desert. But this death is different. Someone has taken body parts from the child. FBI Agent Romilia Chacón, a Salvadoran American, follows this case into a world that swallows her with its horror, a world that exists alongside ours, where children are bought and sold like cattle and shipped to men all across the country. The dealers in this blackest of markets have no moral barometer, only a lust for cash. And one among them has taken murder to a level beyond serial killing. Romilia comes to this case already broken: the man she loved and yet had to hunt--drug runner Tekún Umán, a regular on the FBI's Most Wanted List--is gone. Romilia has two friends, her partner Nancy Pearl--who lives a double life between the Feds and the cartels--and a bottle of booze. Romilia's mother is on her back to get sober; her son drifts further and further away. And the killer is taking away pieces of Romilia's life, day by day.
Broken Souths offers the first in-depth study of the diverse field of contemporary Latina/o poetry. Its innovative angle of approach puts Latina/o and Latin American poets into sustained conversation in original and rewarding ways. In addition, author Michael Dowdy presents ecocritical readings that foreground the environmental dimensions of current Latina/o poetics. Dowdy argues that a transnational Latina/o imaginary has emerged in response to neoliberalism—the free-market philosophy that underpins what many in the northern hemisphere refer to as “globalization.” His work examines how poets represent the places that have been “broken” by globalization’s political, economic, and...
This volume celebrates a fascinating variety of nonfiction known as life writing. This genre resonates quintessentially with the core of the humanities in its profoundly individual ways of fusing narrators with their narrative subjects. The book brings together scholars from around the world to explore the personal mapping of such narrators in the context of their cultural legacies. The hybrid fusions themselves form several subgenres that complement each other as they affirm human dignity and values and our need for human connection, felt at all times, but especially during times of globally met threats. The ever-expanding forms of hybridography here—along with testimonies, diaries, lette...
A Salvadoran American cop is seconded to the FBI to help them track down the serial killer who killed her older sister six years earlier.
The Holy Spirit of My UncleÍs Cojones is a sexy coming-of-age novel. ItÍs the summer of 1978 and sixteen-year-old Antonio ñTonyî McCaugh has tried to commit suicide. Rather than hire an expensive psychologist, TonyÍs mother flies him from his Appalachian fatherÍs house to San Francisco so he can spend the summer with his womanizing, pot-smoking, peyote-eating Uncle Juan ñJackî Villalobos. Hanging out with Jack, she believes, is guaranteed to shake Tony out of his depression. Tony and Jack are soon embarked on a rollicking run for their lives in JackÍs 1967 Mustang. Their adventurous flight takes them into Mexico and refuge in the home of JackÍs true lovehis ex-wife. At first embarrassed by his uncleÍs flagrant Latino mannerisms, Tony soon sees Jack as much more than the macho clich? that the family legends have made of him. Jack, in turn, helps Tony come to terms with his own Latino identity, ultimately rousing his desire to live. This outrageous page turner is the first installment of a trilogy featuring Antonio ñTonyî McCaugh.
This book analyzes and offers fresh insights into the trickster tradition including African American, American Indian, Euro-American, Asian American, and Latino/a stories, Morgan examines the oral roots of each racial/ethnic group to reveal how each group's history, frustrations, and aspirations have molded the tradition in contemporary literature.