Mexican Archives - BookDragon

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia [in Booklist]

04 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Mexican American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW After voicing Velvet Was the Night (2021), Gisela Chípe returns to read Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “loosely inspired” adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau. In Yaxaktun, a remote late-19th-century ranch in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, French expat Dr. Moreau lives with his 14-year-old daughter,...

New and Selected Stories by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated by Sarah Booker, Lisa Dillman, Francisca González Arias, Alex Ross, Cristina Rivera Garza [in Shelf Awareness]

25 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latin American, Mexican, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Cristina Rivera Garza, one of Mexico's most important contemporary authors, is progressively gaining renown in the U.S. (where she's lived since 1989) and has won a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship and a 2020 National Book Critics Circle finalist nod in Criticism. Indie press Dorothy's release of New...

Home Reading Service by Fabio Morábito, translated by Curtis Bauer [in Booklist]

25 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Mexican, Repost, Translation

Poet, essayist, and fiction writer Fabio Morábito’s latest novel arrives stateside with the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize, Mexico’s highest literary honor. Egypt-born, Italy-raised, Mexico-domiciled since 15, Morábito is polyphonic; American poet and professor Curtis Bauer adroitly enables English access here. Literacy, fluency, and interactive engagement with words...

Perpetual West by Mesha Maren [in Shelf Awareness]

09 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Repost

To compress Mesha Maren's exhilarating second novel, Perpetual West, into a quick description would be an injustice to her intricately plotted, unsettling narrative about two 21-year-olds unsure of who they really are. Whereas her debut, Sugar Run, had its characters return to Maren's home landscape of rural...

Child of the Flower-Song People: Luz Jiménez, Daughter of the Nahua by Gloria Amescua, illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh [in Shelf Awareness]

20 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Biography, Children/Picture Books, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Repost

Educator and poet Gloria Amescua makes her picture-book debut with the inspiring Child of the Flower-Song People, spectacularly illustrated by award-winning Mexican American author/artist Duncan Tonatiuh (Undocumented). Amescua poignantly uses her own experiences of "almost losing my Spanish language and culture" as a Latina in Texas...

Battles in the Desert by José Emilio Pacheco, translated by Katherine Silver, afterword by Fernanda Melchor [in Shelf Awareness]

05 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latin American, Mexican, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Mexican poet, writer, and essayist José Emilio Pacheco's novella Battles in the Desert returns in a glorious 40th-anniversary edition, re-translated by Katherine Silver from her own decades-old original. Award-winning author Fernanda Melchor appends an illuminating afterword that contextualizes the coming-of-age classic in the Mexican canon. Carlos, still...

Author Interview: Silvia Moreno-Garcia [in Shelf Awareness]

20 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Canadian, Fiction, Latin American, Mexican, Repost

Silvia Moreno-Garcia: On Publishing, Racism, and a "Real Horror Story" Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a literary chameleon, successfully writing across genres, including speculative short fiction (This Strange Way of Dying), historical fantasy (The Beautiful Ones), magical realism (Gods of Jade and Snow) and horror (Mexican Gothic). She's also edited several anthologies, is the publisher of micro-indie...

Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia [in Shelf Awareness]

19 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Latin American, Mexican, Repost

Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mexican Gothic) opens Velvet Was the Night with an epigraph quoting a June 1971 U.S. Department of State telegram about the Hawks, a murderous Mexican government-trained "shock group" supported by the CIA. She ends with this final sentence in her afterword: "My novel is noir,...

Onion Skin by Edgar Camacho, translated by the author [in Booklist]

09 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Repost, Translation

Rolando’s been fired from a marketing gig he hates, which was actually an act of corporate kindness, because he gets severance pay, allowing him to be a screen hermit in his man cave. When his roommates finally drag him out, he ends up abandoning them...

Illegal: A Disappeared Novel by Francisco X. Stork [in School Library Journal]

17 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Mexican American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Narrators Roxana Ortega and Christian Barillas resume the high-octane energy of the Zapata siblings introduced in Francisco X. Stork’s heart-thumping Disappeared. Separated after surviving the treacherous crossing over the U.S. border, former journalist Sara remains imprisoned in the Fort Stockton Detention Center, while teen Emiliano...

Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia [in Booklist]

04 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Mexican American, Repost

Gabriela Garcia turns her MFA thesis for Purdue University (where she studied with the revered Roxane Gay) into her widely buzzed first novel. Presented in 12 chapters that read more like interlinked stories, Garcia channels her Miami-based Cuban-Mexican American heritage into five generations of a...

The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez by Rudy Ruiz [in Booklist]

25 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Mexican American, Repost

Some happy endings are inevitable ...

Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino: Stories by Julián Herbert, translated by Christina MacSweeney [in Shelf Awareness]

13 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

The genre-hopping, award-winning Mexican writer, poet, musician, and teacher Julián Herbert made his English-language debut with Tomb Song, an autobiographical novel focused on his relationship with his late mother, a prostitute dying of leukemia. His nonfiction The House of the Pain of Others is a hybrid...

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia [in Shelf Awareness]

03 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Mexican American, Repost

Mexican Canadian Silvia Moreno-Garcia is an award-winning, genre-hopping literary chameleon, having successfully written fantasy, fairy tales, vampiric adventure, noir, short stories. Clearly channeling her inner H.P. Lovecraft in Mexican Gothic, she's created her own varietal of irresistible 1950s fungal horror. Socialite Noemí is summoned home early...

The Fallen by Carlos Manuel Álvarez, translated by Frank Wynne [in Booklist]

18 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cuban, Fiction, Mexican, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW The family is Cuban. The son, 18, is fulfilling his military conscription, enduring mind-numbing sentry duty any way he can until his release. The mother, once a schoolteacher, is housebound with a violently debilitating illness. The father, who manages a four-star tourist hotel, is...

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli [in Booklist]

02 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Mexican American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Valeria Luiselli’s spectacular latest – her first fiction in English – also marks her co-narrator debut. The Mexican-born Luiselli is the dominant voice here; her accent slight, her enunciation careful. Only her collaboration could have enabled the affecting print-to-audio metamorphosis, choosing how photos, drawings,...

Manuelito by Elisa Amado, illustrated by Abraham Urias [in Booklist]

08 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Canadian, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Mexican American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Guatemalan-born Canadian author Elisa Amado (What Are You Doing? 2011) “has known many people whose lives have been disrupted, if not destroyed, by the conflicts that have occurred [in Guatemala] since the 1950s,” her author’s bio reveals. That violence continues in the Northern Triangle of Central America...

The House of the Pain of Others: Chronicle of a Small Genocide by Julián Herbert, translated by Christina MacSweeney [in Booklist]

26 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Memoir, Mexican, Mexican American, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

The “largest mass slaughter of Asians on the American continent” claimed the lives of over 300 Chinese immigrants in May 1911 in Torreón, in the Mexican state of Coahuila. Despite its magnitude, the massacre remains a “buried episode,” obscured by substantial erroneous coverage, that writer,...

Undocumented: A Worker’s Fight by Duncan Tonatiuh [in Booklist]

19 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Mexican American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Surviving a life-threatening journey from Mexico to a “strange city” in the U.S., Juan joins his uncle and three cousins. He owes his low-wage, 12-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week restaurant job to a boss who insists he’s “doing [Juan] a favor because [he] had no papers.” Although he’s...

I See the Sun in Mexico | Veo el Sol en México by Dedie King, illustrated by Judith Inglese, translation by Julio Ortiz Manzo

10 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Bilingual, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Latin American, Mexican, Nonethnic-specific, Translation

Boutique press Satya House Publications continues their around-the-world cultural tour in their bilingual I See the Sun series with a first Latin American stop. Young Luis excitedly prepares to join his Papa on the tourist excursion boat on which his father works as the cook. On his way to...

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