Salsa Stories

Salsa music blares from the stereo. One by one, friends and family, who come from all around Latin America, arrive at Carmen Teresa’s house to cook, dance, gossip, and play dominoes. And the New Year’s Day celebration begins… When a neighbor gives Carmen Teresa a blank notebook as a holiday present, she doesn’t know how she will fill it. The guests all have ideas of what she should do with her book. They decide she should fill it with stories about their childhoods. And everyone has a story to tell. But Carmen Teresa, who loves to cook, surprises everyone with how she will use her beautiful new present. With energy, sensitivity, and warmth, Lulu Delacre introduces readers to a symphony of colorful characters whose stories dance through a year of Latin American holidays and customs. And readers will also be treated to recipes for the irresistible foods that appear in each story. When Lulu Delacre set out to collect family recipes for a cookbook of traditional Latin American foods, she discovered something amazing. “How often the flavors of our childhood,” says Ms. Delacre, “unlock memories from our past.” It was this discovery that inspired her also to collect those memories that her friends and family recalled. And she based Salsa Stories on those recollections.

Child of Dandelions

The river of jubilant people alarmed Sabine as they bobbed along Allidina Visram Street in Kampala….The dark faces drew closer. Women in bright gomesi and headscarves danced, and bare-chested men punched their fists into the air, chanting, “Muhindi, nenda nyumbani! Indian go home.”Sabine felt she was drowning in their cries.In August 1972, President Idi Amin declares that a message from God has come to him in a dream: all foreign Indians must be “weeded out” of Uganda in the next ninety days. Fifteen-year-old Sabine and her father, a successful businessman, are confident that their family will not be affected, since they are Ugandan citizens, but Sabine’s fearful mother is certain that they will have to leave.As the ninety days tick by, the President’s message – the “countdown monster,” as Sabine calls it – is broadcast every day on the radio, and life becomes more difficult for her family and other Indians in Uganda. Sabine tries to hold on to her optimism, counting on her best friend, Zena, and her grandfather, Bapa, to keep her spirits up, but after her beloved uncle Zulfiqar disappears and Zena turns against her, Sabine begins to share her mother’s fears. When a new law is declared on the radio – all Indians must leave – Sabine and her family have a hard decision to make. Should they stay and defend their rights, or should they go? And how will they begin a new life in a different land?

See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 2