Las Mamis: Favorite Latino Authors Remember Their Mothers [Hardcover]

For this collection of well-wrought literary snapshots, Santiago (When I Was Puerto Rican) and Davidow (founding editor of S! magazine) have gathered reminiscences from 14 accomplished Latino authors, including Mandalit del Barco, Il n Stavans and Francisco Goldman. Since the present generation of Latino writers had mothers who were almost always working women, many contemporary Latino authors have claimed that their cultural education came from their grandmothers. Thus this anthology also affords an intriguing glimpse of an often overlooked generation of Latinas. Dominican Junot D!az describes his family as "Section Eight, los c#pones, AFDC all the way," with his single "moms" keeping them alive. D!az was a rebel and well on the way to total dissolution, when he discovered "she was a person and not just somebody who washed my underwear and cooked my meals. She had a world inside of her." At the other end of the economic spectrum, Mar!a Ampara Escand?n describes her mother's shopping obsession, which took the family from Mexico City to Houston twice a year. Marjorie Agos!n writes poetically of a Chilean mother who told her children, "I have lived among the dead and among memories that tell only of the dead," while Chicano novelist Dagoberto Gilb describes how he informed his mother of his transformation from construction worker to award-winning novelist only when she was on her deathbed. From rich mamis to poor ones, loving to relentless, this collection of essays eloquently captures the diversity of Latino culture while paying tribute to its most enduring characteristic: amor a madre. Includes photos of each contributor's mother. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Family always harbors the most passionate and intimate feelings, and good writers express better than most those details of family life. These 14 essays by major Latin American authors such as Marjorie Agos!n tell of humble beginnings, fighting cancer, hiding one's work in order to hide one's homosexuality, and the experience of leaving home for the United States. Mexican thinker Jos Vasconcelos foresaw that Latin America would be the first place in the world to have an ethnic global culture. His vision is borne out by this collection of works by Puerto Rican, Peruvian, Chilean, Cuban, Mexican, and other writers. The book becomes a bridge between the shores, so far well delineated, of Latin world authors and hyphenated-American writers. The editors, Santiago (When I Was Puerto Rican) and Davidow (founder of the Latino magazine S!), correctly disregard origins and pseudo-measurements of latinismo and, as a result, offer a triumph of community and a valuable manifestation of what it is to be Hispanic. We see how definitions of identity are best off in the hands of artists. For this reason and for the very powerful prose, this work belongs in every library.
-Rene Perez-Lopez, Norfolk P.L., VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.