Authors and Stories from Mexico
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Like Water for Chocolate
by
Call Number: F ESQThis classic love story takes place on the De la Garza ranch, as the tyrannical owner, Mama Elena, chops onions at the kitchen table in her final days of pregnancy. While still in her mother's womb, her daughter to be weeps so violently she causes an early labor, and little Tita slips out amid the spices and fixings for noodle soup. This early encounter with food soon becomes a way of life, and Tita grows up to be a master chef, using cooking to express herself and sharing recipes with readers along the way. Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico blends poignant romance and bittersweet wit.
About the Author
Laura Esquivel was born in Mexico City in 1950. Her first novel, Like Water for Chocolate, has sold more than four and a half million copies around the world and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year. She currently lives in Mexico.
from SimonandSchuster.com
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The Old Gringo
by
Call Number: F FUEOne of Carlos Fuentes's greatest works, The Old Gringo tells the story of Ambrose Bierce, the American writer, soldier, and journalist, and of his last mysterious days in Mexico living among Pancho Villa's soldiers, particularly his encounter with General Tomas Arroyo. In the end, the incompatibility of the two countries (or, paradoxically, their intimacy) claims both men, in a novel that is, most of all, about the tragic history of two cultures in conflict.
About the Author
Carlos Fuentes was one of the most influential and celebrated voices in Latin American literature. He was the author of 24 novels, including Aura, The Death of Artemio Cruz, The Old Gringo and Terra Nostra, and also wrote numerous plays, short stories, and essays. He received the 1987 Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's highest literary honor. Fuentes was born in Panama City, the son of Mexican parents, and moved to Mexico as a teenager. He served as an ambassador to England and France, and taught at universities including Harvard, Princeton, Brown and Columbia. He died in Mexico City in 2012.
from us.Macmillan.com
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Rain of Gold
by
Call Number: F VILRain of Gold is a true-life saga of love, family and destiny that pulses with bold vitality, sweeping from the war-ravaged Mexican mountains of Pancho Villa's revolution to the days of Prohibition in California. It all began when Villasenor's maternal grandmother sat him down in their little home in the barrio of Carlsbad, California, gave him sweet bread and told him the story of their past. Of his mother Lupe, the most beautiful girl in the whole village who was only a child when Villa's men came shooting into their canyon. And of his father Juan and his family, reduced to rags and starvation as they sought refuge across the border, where they believed that endless opportunity awaited.
Lupe and Juan met and fell in love in California, but they found that the doors to the Promised Land were often closed to those from south of the border. His father was forced to take the law into his own hands, in spite of his wife's objections. With love and humor, Villasenor shares this passionate love story that celebrates the triumph of the human spirit.
About the Author
Born in the barrio of Carlsbad, California in 1940, Victor Villaseñor was raised on a ranch four miles north in Oceanside. Since his parents were born in Mexico, Villaseñor spoke only Spanish when he started school. After years of facing language and cultural barriers, heavy discrimination and a reading problem, later diagnosed as dyslexia, Victor dropped out of high school his junior year and moved to Mexico. There he discovered a wealth of Mexican art, literature, music, that helped him recapture and understand the dignity and richness of his heritage.
Victor returned to the U.S. at the age of 20. He began to feel the old frustration and anger return as he once again witnessed the disregard toward poor and uneducated people and especially toward the Mexicans. Then a chance encounter with James Joyce’s Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Man, changed Victor’s life. It awakened a desire to confront through literature the problems associated with his cultural heritage that continued to plague him.
from victorvillasenor.com