February 2009: Geographies of Home

Latino Book Club meets for its coffee hour on Saturday, 28th February.

Some topics:

1. Religion
2. The most interesting member of the family

28th February
Latino Book Club met today. Thanks to Irene, Cathy, Kathy, Lizzy, Annetta (who joined us for the first time) and our newest member Donna Treolo, for coming out on an awful rainy day like today. Also, thanks to Olga for sending her comments.

We talked about Loida Maritza Perez’ Geographies of Home. The novel has a lot of things that one can talk about and we did: dysfunctional families, domestic violence, poverty, mental illness, and religions (yes, that was a really interesting discussion). None of us knew much about Seventh Day Adventist, but we did figure out that it is a very “strict” way of being. If you know more, please enlighten us by leaving your comments on the blog.

It did lead us to talk about other religions and also the folk forms that we see in the novel (Caribbean/Dominican) and had seen earlier in Bless me, Ultima (South Western/ Mexican).
Despite being a serious and dark in many aspects we enjoyed it. From the technical aspect too, this novel offers quite a bit, in the way things and actions are described and how many of the chapters seem complete in themselves. Some of the characters are simply just so well developed that you actually see them right in front of your eyes.

Moving on to next month- we are reading Victor Villaseñor’s Rain of Gold.
In April we will read Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban and in May Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan. (We will need an anthropologist to lead us through this one).

We are running out titles. Please send us books that you have wanted to read or have heard about. Our only criterion is that it has to be a Latino author of the United States writing in English.

Also, if you remember we had learnt that the public library did not carry any of the books we are reading. Kathy spoke with the NH Public Library and they have agreed to acquire some of the titles. Please send your recommendations, for the must have books.