READLatinoLit

  The Comadres & Friends National Latino Book Club  is proud to announce its selection for August's Book of the Month.       THE TASTE OF SUGAR by Marisel Vera W.W. Norton & Co.     “A family saga set against the backdrop of Puerto Rico in the late 1800s, THE TASTE OF SUGAR plunges us into a world where people who are struggling with profound poverty, abuse and discrimination manage to preserve their hopes, dignity, grace and the familial love that holds them together. Marisel Vera’s novel is a real contribution to the literature about the immigrant experience of yesterday―and today.”       -  María Amparo Escandón, author of  Esperanza’s Box of Saints  and  González and Daughter Trucking Co.     SUMMARY:   It is 1898, and groups of starving Puerto Ricans,  los hambrientos , roam the parched countryside and dusty towns begging for food. Under the yoke of S...

O Books IN SEARCH OF THE LUMINOUS HEART By  Victoria Rivera McKinley Published by  O Books Beginning with her family’s origins as tenant farmers in the mountains of Puerto Rico at the turn of the nineteenth century, Victoria Rivera McKinley leads readers through dramatic and painful events, which in spite of psychological explanations, add up to experiences that are much larger. Against a historical backdrop of Puerto Rico’s changing culture, she shows how a family of ten children survive and learn to look out for one another. This is a success story, but not simply because the author leaves Puerto Rico and becomes a psychotherapist in America. Rivera McKinley offers an extraordinary perspective that finds truth in how each person lives experience in his or her own way. Her own journey ends in the Rocky Mountains, where Buddhist teachings offer her a spiritual and philosophical framework with which to understand her life. In Search of the Luminou...