Cuando le dije a mi esposa que "Oro, Incienso y Mirra" era un libro tanto para niños como para aquellos chiquillos de antaño que ahora son viejos, ella sonrió dejándome desconcertado. He aquí el por qué de mi confusión: José, Patricia, y Pablo son tres niños que, como tantos en el mundo, sufren las consecuencias de una sociedad desigual. Sumergidos en sus universos de contradicciones ven por primera vez un árbol de navidad. Les pareció mágico. Siguiendo su rastro conocen a Rocío del Valle, una anciana que, medio siglo atrás, había sido una actriz famosa, sin embargo, ahora estaba abandonada. Junto a ella descubren a un Dios que, a pesar de estar prohibido, los ama. Aprenden que trabajar por amor es mejor que por dinero; y que, aunque no tengan nada, son tan importantes y únicos como aquellos que lo tienen todo ¡Un momento! Pensándolo mejor, ya entiendo para quienes escribí este libro: para los viejos que, víctimas de la sociedad, no pudieron ser niños, y para los niños que, por el mismo motivo, nunca llegaran a ser viejos.

Ariel González Calzada, nacido en 1975 en Cuba: Estudio Derecho en la Universidad de la Habana. Es graduado de Técnico en Química Industrial. Desde hace 10 años es entrenador de delfines y lobos marinos en el Theater of the Sea, en los cayos de la Florida.

    Rosalino "Chalino" Sanchez was a Mexican immigrant from the Mexican state of Sinaloa who came to the US in search of opportunity.  In his pursuit of perseverance his gift and talent for writing corridos for the common working class man initiated a world wind phenomena that appealed to Mexican-American youth in Los Angeles, California.  Chalino’s corridos provided a cultural medium in which Chicanos identified with their own roots. Chalino’s contribution to the musical genre of corridos bridged Mexican immigrant music of the Mexican corrido with Mexican-American youth.

Day of the Dead/ Día de los Muertos. By Manuel Luis Martínez. ISBN: 978-1-888205-19-0 $25.95

    Matadores is a unique, solid, and authoritative collective biography covering the career of various Latino and a few American toreros, who performed in the old Plaza Monumental de Toros of Ciudad Juárez over the plaza’s five decades of operation. This detailed reference book includes over 200 biographies of matadores, novilleros, rejoneadores, picadores, banderilleros and even a handful of writers who were regulars in the plaza. There is an ample selection of both famous and not-so-famous names.

   Among the biographies covering high points of their careers are Calesero, Luis Procuna, Carlos Arruza, Armillita, the Capetillos, Fernando Dos Santos, Finito, Inclusero, García Higuras, Francisco Ruiz Miguel, Cordobés, Mario Sevilla, Caleserito, Marian Ramos, Manolo Martínez, Eloy Cavazos, Curro Rivera, Curro Leal,  Geno, David Renk, Jesús Solórzano, Fabián Ruiz, Jaime Bravo, Guillermo Montes Sortibrán, Jose Antonio Gaona, Bernardo Valencia, John Fulton, Patricia McCormick, Rogelio Leduc, Fabián Barba, Gastón Santos, and many others.

Matadores is not only an authoritative reference source of toreros Latinos, but it also pays homage to the arte taurina, las faenas, to both bullfighter and bulls, to the extraordinary men who have kept and still keep alive an ancestral Hispanic cultural tradition.

Por culpa de Candela. By Teresa Dovalpage. ISBN: 978-1-888205-15-2  $23.95

    This is a collection of Cuban American short-stories. The island of Cuba absent or present. That one, which some want desperately to escape from; the island that many dream to return to.  Cuba is the common denominator to these fourteen shot stories of love and of love betrayed.

    “Whether straight, bisexual, closeted or openly gay, Latino voices have made a deep mark in the poetry scene.  Despite distinction in style, dialect, and customs within the Latino mosaic, our voices have been unified by a determination to be heard.  Much like poetry in general, whether academic or self-taught, the need to express ourselves cannot be restricted within borders.  Whatever language transferred between pen and paper, it is imperative to share our experiences with the world at large.” 

Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino is a ground-breaking poetry collection edited by Emanuel Xavier.  The collection features the work of 17 poets from across the United States and Buenos Aires including: Francisco Aragon, Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano, Brandon Lacy Campos, Dino Foxx, Andres “Chulisi” Rodriguez, Urayoan Noel, Yosimar Reyes, Robert Ortiz, Walter Viegas, Joe Jimenez, Will Sierra, Rane Arroyo, Pol Ajenjo, Daniel Torres, Carlos T. Mock, M.D., Xuan Carlos Espinoza-Cuellar and Emanuel Xavier.  Featured poems are published in English and Spanglish with several translated into or from Spanish.

    A novel about the un-easy and often misunderstood relationships of Crypto-Jews and Hispanos in New Mexico and their deep common roots in Spanish history--conquest and colonization--and religious faith and shared values.

Brotherhood of the Light follows the lives of three men from one family who lived in different centuries but were inexorably bound by the legacy of a cross that was brought from the Old World to the New. A relic that had come to prominence at the battle for Granada, when Spain united to expel the Moors.  Descendants of Sephardic Jews who fled the Inquisition in Spain, the family joined Los Hermanos Penitentes. This secretive society of lay Catholic men in Northern New Mexico, who believe in emulating Christ’s Passion, his trial, his walk, and his suffering on the cross at the end of each Lenten season, was used for a dozen generations as a shield by the family to disguise their Crypto-Jewish identity while they struggled with the legacy bestowed upon them.

Las Niñas: A Collection of Childhood Memories. By Sarah Rafael García ISBN: 978-1-888205-09-1  $19.95

Comprende?: The Significance of Spanish in English-Only Times. By Steven W Bender. ISBN: 978-1-888205-08-4  268 pgs. $26.95

    Today, the contentious issue of Latino immigration has spurred backlash efforts to anoint English as the official language in federal and state government to the exclusion of Spanish and other languages, than English. Even cities have weighed in to restrict the legitimacy of Spanish in local government affairs. Last century, European immigrant groups stood accused of failing to assimilate in the American melting pot. But while European immigration has slowed, Latino immigration has surged. This steady immigration, combined with the geographical proximity that brought Latinos into the Southwest long before Anglo immigrants, assures a different cultural dynamic for Latinos than for other groups.

The centuries of continued Latino occupation and then immigration have forged a unique, shared destiny between the United States and Mexico, as well as other Latin American countries. U.S. history has hosted more than a casual sharing of Mexican recipes in the kitchen; rather, a passionate and lively mating of cultures-Latino and "American." Foremost among these cultural exchanges is the influence of the Spanish language in the United States. With a foothold of several centuries, and the recent propulsion of mass media and pop culture, Spanish has significantly entered the American mainstream through the open and receptive borders of the English language. Taking a lighter view of the current anti-immigrant frenzy, this book offers considerable and colorful examples of the historical and current cross-pollination of the English and Spanish languages in settings ranging from geography to culture and cuisine.

Ultimately, it urges recognition of our increasingly shared languages-not by rejecting Spanish and legislating an official status for English, but by embracing our shared culture as a uniquely American blend of culture and language. In contrast to the anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican, and anti-Spanish forces trying to tear us apart, acknowledging the contributions of Spanish language to our past, present, and future will help to unite Americans and the Americas. Valuing the Spanish language and tapping the resource of our Spanish-speaking youth can be a catalyst of the surprising unity that recognition and respect for difference can bring. The alchemy of Spanish is that it holds the potential for propelling the U.S. into a new realm of multicultural connection and influence with its neighbors that is sorely needed in this time of increased isolation and nativism. ¿Comprende?

    This book focuses on how a dictator or a culturally dominant power can use language to impose cultural values. As an instrument of power, language is used by a dictator to educate, induce, or manipulate a nation's citizens into acting in accordance with the ruling power's cultural values and beliefs. Jorge Zalamea's El Gran Burundún-Burundá ha muerto, Gabriel García Márquez's El otoño del patriarca, and Mario Vargas Llosa's La fiesta del Chivo draw attention to how the use of the vernacular can resist cultural imposition by employing specific words in order to represent its own culture and nature of reality. The original significance of these words is then altered in the translated text creating a new meaning determined by the dictator's or translator's ideology and usage. The new words that have substituted the original ones reveal how the construction of language defines relationships of power and resistance between a dictator and his nation, or between one culture and another, such as the relations of the United States over Latin America. The analysis of this relationship will provide an understanding of how language functions as an instrument for the imposition of power to gain or maintain cultural or political supremacy.

Dónde más si no en el Paraíso. By Vicente Cabrera Funes     ISBN 978-1-888205-11-4  176 pages. $23.95

Raw Silk Suture. By Lisa Alvarado. ISBN: 978-1-888205-06-0   $11.95

     It provides a most detailed account of the forces and activities of the French and Mexican sides, during the last three days before, the day of and the day after the battle itself. Examines also the inspiring history of a triumphant Chicano general, Ignacio Zaragoza, (1829-1862), born in a period of international conflicts and forced to flee from his home as a youth because of the American settler's revolt in Texas in 1836. It includes nine patriotic poems (Spanish-English parallel text) written in California between 1864 and 1865 commemorating CINCO DE MAYO and published for the first time in monographic form. Unquestionably, this is the definitive history book on The Battle of Puebla on the Cinco de Mayo, 1862.

Esperanza: A Latina story. By Sandra C. Chávez. ISBN: 978-0-9796457-8-5.  356 pgs. $24.95

    Fourteen-year old Esperanza Ignacio could only think of a few words to sum up her life: crap, man, crap! She was born into a poor Latino family living in a small crummy apartment in the barrio side of town, where the graffiti chiseled more the souls and character of the residents than it impacted the exterior looks of the buildings or anything else. Her father was a drunkard, gambler, and wife-beater who, one cold night, got arrested after a violent intrusion. Her entire circle of relatives consisted of nothing but formers—former drug-addicts, former gangsters and gang-bangers, former alcoholics, former everything. Yep, her life was nothing but a huge load of crap. And she hadn’t even started high school yet.

The Unfortunate Passion of Hermann Broch. By José María Pérez Gay. Translated by Dr. Eduardo Jiménez. ISBN: 978-0-9796457-3-0.  $24.95

Susanne Kimball, Ph.D. The University of Texas at San Antonio

Mujeres de Conciencia/ Women of Conscience. Spanish English parallel text and photography by Victoria Alvarado. ISBN: 978-0-9796457-7-8. $49.95 Oversized, Hardbound.

    This is an art book with magnificent black and white photos of prominent Latinas who have made definite and long standing contribution to the Hispanic community and the country at large. This photographic essay constitutes an important collective biography as well, with great journalistic insight and integrity into the lives of leading Latina women in the fields of education, science, literature, business, law, the arts, journalism, politics, and other fields of endeavor. This coffee table monograph, which has been published with art-book quality as a collector's edition, provides stunning artistic, B&W photographs of each subject with a parallel biographic journalistic essay in Spanish and English. his title is an important addition to reference collections and individual libraries for they are testament to the vision and values of la mujer Latina.

    Dina Salazar likes to think she has it together.  Dodging the bullet of early marriage and motherhood that every other female in her family has succumbed to, she’s her own woman.  Or is she?  Is she free ...or just lost?

Adventurous, athletic Dina has a satisfying career and her freedom from emotional entanglements.  She has it all. All except the love of her life, Rick Ramos—THE HATED ONE--who ended up marrying another woman nearly six years before. All except the closeness of her blue-collar family, who live in a Latino barrio of Salinas, ninety miles south of Silicon Valley.  All except the feeling of belonging to her cultural heritage.  She speaks Spanish but who is she really?  Is she a mixed mutt with an American mind and a Latino heart? 

 “A delightful, endearing story! You can’t help but root for Dina in her journey of self-discovery.”  --Brenda Novak, Nationally Best-selling Author

“Dina is a character that many Latinos can identify with—a woman trying to weave her own place between cultures. Around Dina, Donna Del Oro has done her own weaving: a heady plot …of crime, romance, family conflict and intrigue.”

                                                --Carlos Alcalá, Sacramento Bee Columnist

    In Shadow of the Fathers, Robert Friedman turns a disturbing, possibly tragic historical event in Puerto Rico into a captivating work of fiction. Personal obsessions and public events collide as the novel's characters grapple with lies, false identities, puzzling connections, U.S. wars and colonialism. A rich, suspenseful tale, the novel moves from the colorful life of San Juan to the snow-covered streets of New York, from the pastel heat of Miami to the fog-shrouded canals of Amsterdam. Pablo Camino is the son of a doctor sent to Puerto Rico over four decades earlier to research a cure for pernicious anemia. While there, Dr. Cornelius Rhoads claimed in a letter to his close friend, "Ferdie" that he had purposely killed eight of his Puerto Rican patients and planned to exterminate several more of "that degenerate race." The letter was discovered and Rhoads was forced to leave the island. He later insisted it was all a joke. Pablo, a highly regarded Puerto Rican artist, is haunted by his dead father's past. Did the doctor really kill those patients? Has Pablo inherited from him the feelings of murder that often grip his own heart? When Pablo kills an intruder in his home, he vows to finally discover the truth about the father he never knew -and about himself. He flees Puerto Rico to look for Ferdie. Back on the island, Ralph Camacho, Pablo's best friend, carries out his own search into a past that casts heavy shadows on individual lives in the present.

    Carlos Aceves has created an allegorical story rooted in the deepest essence of the Latino soul. Diadema is a symbolic artifice very much like Doña Marina, La Malinche, searching for her child, her very being. Knitted in a true story, Aceves bring forward the Latino imperative of who really are we? What are our roots? This is the Hispanic crucial element of understanding self. Latinos are not alone. Spain if often called by Spaniards "the whore of Europe" for it was invaded by most every group in Europe creating a concatenation of races and cultures; today there are over five different languages spoken there. Latinos to a certain extent inherited this dilemma, and Aceves attempts to use fiction weaved in reality to address the Latino, Chicano predicament of self-preservation and self-understanding. Aceves propounds a clear lyric message begin your journey for genuineness and self-understanding and let the road lead you where it may: "Se hace camino al andar." Roberto Cabello-Argandoña, Editor.

    The most extraordinary and exemplary piece of Latino prose writing, bordering in Rational lyricism. Scholarship and art in Europe, traditionally crisscrossed each other, particularly when the brightest minds where at it. Germany has Goethe, the Hispanic world has Unamuno. Both were consummated philosophers and creative writers, who left indelible marks, both in culture and philosophical argumentation. Goethe's "Werther" is credited with initiating Romanticism in Europe. "El Sentido Trágico de La Vida" ponders the ever-present human (and Hispanic) preoccupation for life, death and beyond, immortality. However, it takes a Latino scholar to analyze, scaffold, and present in an very understandable way to us the grandiosity of Unamuno's philosophical concerns and his scrupulous argumentation. Dr. Pedro Blas González is the first Latino scholar to elaborate and deconstruct Unamuno's philosophical work and related creative writings. This is a lyric work of prose, as well as of literary criticism, philosophical analysis, and pure rigorous Latino erudition advancing Hispanic thinking. Roberto Cabello-Argandoña, Editor.

    This a riveting personal account of Maurice Jourdane--currently a Superior Court Judge and a member of Jerry Brown's California Attorney General's Office--leading to his legal representation and advocacy for farm workers and César Chávez's organizing efforts. Mo's life reads like a Greek mythic tale in which the hero suffers and endures moral and physical affliction in his quest, his now legendary legal fights and successes against the powerful California growers and agricultural interests in court. This biography is a testament to human strength in behalf of justice for Latinos. The success of César Chávez's civil rights movement and union organizing efforts cannot be fully understood without knowledge of the life and sacrifices of Maurice Jourdane, El Cortito. His legal successes, at great personal costs, solidified Chávez's leadership and prepared the way for the consolidation of the Farm Workers' Union, and ultimately for the farm workers to prevail against the powerful political and economic interests of the California growers. Roberto Cabello-Argandoña, Editor.

    During the Chicano Movement in the 1960s and 1970s, Chicanas helped Chicanos achieve equal rights, while at the same time suffered oppression as women wihin their own race. In the 1970s, the Chicana Feminist Movement was founded to address the specific needs of Chicanas as women of color in the United States. Chicana artists began to write and produce works in which Chicanas were given a proper name, voice, and image. Soon, Chicanisma, a sense of sisterhood and feminist discourse, emerged to confront the triple oppression of race, class, and gender. Latina Filmmakers and Writers: The Notion of Chicanisma Through Films and Novellas examines the works of seven celebrated Latinas who collectively represent a 20-year history of Chicanisma: Chicana (a film by Sylvia Morales), Puppet: A Chicano Novella (a book by Margarita Cota-Cárdenas), La Ofrenda: The Days of the Dead (a film by Lourdes Portillo and Susana Muñoz), Paletitas de Guayaba (a book by Erlinda Gonzáles-Berry), El Espejo/The Mirror (a film by Frances Salomé España) and Loving Pedro Infante (a book by Denise Chávez). These works demystify masculine power and offer realistic portrayals of Chicanas and give them a rightful name, image, and voice in American culture.

    Huevos is not a politically correct articulation of the plight of Latino men in this era of so called gender equity and diversity. The author contends that while White women have made progress, Latinos, particularly Mexican men, have been entirely ignored by the institutions', both governmental and private; they have become the epitome of the poor working class. Ambitious and upward mobile Latinas often look down upon Latinos, and particularly Mexican males' lackluster economic success preferring other males. Latino males have been left out of any gender or racial discussion, yet suffer the highest work related death rates, lowest college attendance and graduation rates, high incarceration rates, the highest poverty even though they have the highest labor participation rates. The Latino male have become the Sisyphus of America, condemned to low wages by globalization, to ignorance by mediocre, highly-unionized and low-performing public schools, and destined to be marginalized of any equity-political-solution.

    Esta monografía va dirigida a los lectores que ya tienen un conocimiento básico de la literatura hispanoamericana colonial pero que quieren un análisis más profundo de algunas obras principales del canon. Este libro sobre la literatura colonial constituye un esfuerzo por reunir el testimonio de nueve escritores de los siglos XVI y XVII que han expresado algunas experiencias y vicisitudes principales de varios pueblos de Hispanoamérica para acercarse a su identidad nacional y artística. Seleccioné a estas figuras por sus contribuciones únicas a las letras hispanas. El tema central de este libro es la transformación y la "nativización" de los modelos peninsulares por los escritores del Nuevo Mundo. Es mi esperanza que, volviendo a estudiar a estos autores y obras, podamos comenzar a comprender mejor una pequeña parte de la enorme producción literaria de los dos siglos después de la llegada de Cristóbal Colón en 1492. Divido el libro en dos partes principales: "El Siglo XVI: Literatura de la Conquista" y "El Siglo XVII: El Barroco, Arte Hispánico". Al principio de cada parte hay una introducción sobre el marco histórico-social así como de las corrientes estéticas de cada época. Cada uno de los nueve capítulos se dedica a las biografías y al análisis de la obra de los autores seleccionados: Hernán Cortés, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, El Inca Garcilazo de la Vega, Bernardo de Balbuena, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Juan del Valle Caviedes, Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora y Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

    Life is wonderful, and I have learned from it twice, my first 12 years in México, in Spanish, and the many others in California, in English. I know that every one has a unique life, but I could claim that mine has been a bit more unique. Why? I am a 6'4" café Mexican, that's why! In a land of chaparros, there I was in México. In a land of whites, here I was, and am. I was born in the high sierras, then was transplanted to urban Guadalajara. I survived. Then, I went back to the rural sierra, and this now city slicker couldn't rope a cow, especially in my black shoes. Heck, I tried playing soccer in México. Too tall. I tried playing soccer in the USA, there was none in the 1960s. So, when I went into basketball, my feet were faster than my hands on concrete. Shooting? A slingshot at a bird, ok, but a ball at a basket? I went to the fields. Have you ever tried short hoeing lettuce or picking strawberries from my height? I had my gringo phase. Result? I couldn't even convince mother, who kept telling me, 'gringo culo prieto' - with Mexican motherly tender love, of course.

Chat Room & other Latino Plays. Leo Cabranes-Grant.  ISBN: 978-0-9796457-5-4 $22.95

Papi Chulo. Dr. Carlos T. Mock. ISBN:  978-0-9796457-0-9  $24.95

Diversity: Mestizos, Latinos and the Promise of Possibilities. By Amardo Rodríguez. 978-0-915745-92-0  $18.95. 152 pages

La Gringa. By Pedro Martínez. ISBN: 978-0-915745-94-4. 428 pgs. $25.95

     It is 1983. In Rome, Cardinal Siri, the most powerful Cardinal in the Vatican, summons a young Jesuit priest and assigns him a grave and urgent task. The Vatican has been keeping secret an epidemic of deaths among priests in the northeastern United States. Father Javier Barraza must determine how and why they are dying-and whether a suspected international conspiracy against the Holy Roman Church is coming to fruition. Barraza is an Argentinean who has risen swiftly through the ranks to the post of Devil's Advocate-an investigator of candidates for sainthood. In his new assignment, his path immediately intersects with Lillian Davis-Lodge, a special agent with the FBI, and a compelling figure from Barraza's past. The reappearance of Lillian is more than mere coincidence; she is far from the "special agent" she claims to be. She occupies the highest echelons of power in the United States, with full access to information and influence. Secrets and spies inhabit the subterranean world of the Church just as they do the government of the United States, and a disturbing trail of evidence strongly indicates to Barraza that his Church may be complicit in what he has been assigned to investigate. Set in the arcane, yet alluring world of the Vatican, The Mosaic Virus will grip you in its terrifyingly-true-to-life tale of secrets, sex and violence. At the end, you'll pray that it's only fiction. Carlos Mock's maiden voyage proves he is already a master storyteller.