Author: Book Importer

Book Importer

Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Middle

As a Latina educator, poet, mother, lecturer and native of El Paso, Texas, Pat Mora is a denizen of nepantla—a Nahuatl word meaning “the land in the middle.” In her first collection of essays, Mora negotiates the middle land’s many terrains exploring the personal issues and political responsibilities she faces as a woman of color in the United States. She explores both the preservation of her own Mexican American culture and her encounters with other cultures.

A Different Kind Of Heat

Luz Cordero is on fire. She’s burning up with rage. She was there the night her brother got killed. She saw the cop pull the trigger. She tried to do something positive about it by going to protests, but all her anger got her into trouble. Now Luz is living at the St. Therese Home for Boys and Girls, working to turn her life around. Sister Ellen and Luz’s three fellow residents are helping. When Sister Ellen gives Luz a journal to write everything down, Luz is finally able to face the truth about what happened that night. And she’s able to forgive her brother, the man who took him away, and—most importantly—herself. A Different Kind of Heat is a gritty, heartbreaking, and uplifting story of one girl’s struggle to forgive and remember.

Brujas, Lechuzas Y Espantos / Witches, Owls And Spooks

In this bilingual collection of five stories, Don Cecilio tells the neighborhood children stories that make their hair stand on end. \”In my barrio they told the story…\” and so his cuento would begin. In \”The Owl and the Bundle,\” young Tomas disappears without a trace. Distraught, his parents and siblings look for him everywhere with no luck. Upon returning home, his father sees something curious, an owl flying above the house carrying a bundle with its talons. \”Is it possible,\” he wonders, \”that the bundle is Little Tomas?\” Could the owl have taken their precious son? Based on oral tradition, these stories featuring witches, owls, and other spooky creatures have been told in Spanish-speaking barrios for generations. Now, this new edition with a first-ever English translation provided by John Pluecker will entertain and terrify a new generation of English- and Spanish-speaking children with the supernatural tales of the Hispanic community. Originally published in Spanish in 1972 as La Lechuza: Cuentos de mi barrio (The Naylor Company), Brujas, lechuzas y espantos / Witches, Owls and Spooks will fascinate children interested in scary stories and at the same time will provide a window into a different time and place, when people lived a more rural life and winged shadows flitted across the darkened countryside.

The Dead And The Gone

Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Life as We Knew It enthralled and devastated readers with its brutal but hopeful look at an apocalyptic event–an asteroid hitting the moon, setting off a tailspin of horrific climate changes. Now this harrowing companion novel examines the same events as they unfold in New York City, revealed through the eyes of seventeen-year-old Puerto Rican Alex Morales. When Alex’s parents disappear in the aftermath of tidal waves, he must care for his two younger sisters, even as Manhattan becomes a deadly wasteland, and food and aid dwindle.>With haunting themes of family, faith, personal change, and courage, this powerful new novel explores how a young man takes on unimaginable responsibilities.

The Confessional

Mexican guy. White guy. Classmates and enemies from across the border and on each other’s turf. Big fight. White guy wins. Next day, he’s dead. Everyone’s a suspect. Everyone’s guilty of something.

Does what you look like or where you come from finally determine where your loyalties lie? Who’s Us? Who’s Them? Which side is your side? Is it Truth?

Contemporary politics, the consequences of guys-being-guys, and questions about faith and personal responsibility pulse throughout the pages of this provocative, eloquent debut.

Lolo and Red-Legs

When eleven-year-old Lolo captures a tarantula, it turns an ordinary summer into a series of adventures that take him and his friends beyond their Mexican-American neighborhood in East Los Angeles.

¿de Veras?

For one month each year, the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque brings together New Mexico teens for a creative writing program that immerses them in a process of reflection and creativity while encouraging them to explore their identity as people, as a culture, as a region, and as a society. These students unite their varied experiences, backgrounds, and beliefs to form a supportive community of respect through conversation and writing.¿de Veras? (really?) features a collection of poems, essays, and stories written in the Voces program between 2002 and 2006 that represent the diversity of perspectives and individuality of voices of the young creators. These writings reflect the authors’ courage to examine their lives, their neighborhoods, their families, and their cultures. What emerges is their amazingly perceptive, sometimes damning, yet always-honest insights.

Crazy Loco

Lively, fascinating, and often laugh-out-loud funny, this short story collection provides an intimate glimpse into the life of Mexican American kids in South Texas. From the tale of a boy’s first crush to that of a girl who yearns to see more of the world, from the feud between Texas brothers and their California cousins to the exploits of a reluctant altar boy, from a poignant reminiscence about a family’s maid to a zany tale of a car-crazy dog, this collection is a whirlwind of insight and entertainment. Loosely based on the author’s own Mexican American childhood, Crazy Loco depicts a South Texas full of charm, humor and energy.

Featured in Volume VI, Issue 1 of WOW Review.

The Boy without a Flag: Tales of the South Bronx

The violent world of the underclass and the daily battle with hopeless poverty, drug addiction, and other urban horrors come vividly to life in a collection of stories about being young and desperate in the South Bronx. A first collection. Original.