A fresh, indispensable look at the wide, multicultural world of Latine women writers.
A significant collection of Latine women voices across five centuries.
Inspired to “disrupt erasure and myths,” Guzmán, who comes from an Indigenous Caribbean clan, hopes these selections from 34 nations—translated from 21 languages, including 17 “native mother tongues of the Americas”—will establish “a new literary canon.” The work is divided into 13 sections, representing the 13 moons of the year. Thirteen, notes Guzmán, “is considered a sacred and holy number, and another word for ‘god’ in the Maya tradition.” In addition to Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners, poets laureate, a Nobel laureate, and international bestselling authors, Guzmán highlights many lesser-known names, such as the late Honduran water protector Berta Cáceres, of Lenca Indigenous descent, the winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize. In an excerpt from her acceptance speech, she urges her listeners, “Let us wake up! Let us wake up, humankind! We’re out of time. We must shake our conscience free of the rapacious capitalism, racism, and patriarchy that will only assure our self-destruction. Our Mother Earth, militarized, fenced in, poisoned, a place where basic rights are systematically violated, demands that we take action.” Some of the more famous names include Jamaica Kincaid, Giaconda Belli, Edwidge Danticat, Laura Esquivel, Audre Lorde, Sandra Cisneros, Anaís Nin (daughter of Cuban parents), Ada Limón, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Guzmán also includes the voices of trans and nonbinary writers. This post-colonial, inclusive compendium will be an excellent literary source for libraries and schools. Guzmán succeeds in her presentation of “a luminous universe of texts that navigate across time and space, genre, styles, and traditions,” and the book does indeed contain “the wisdom, memory, and DNA, or oral traditions more ancient than time itself.” Other contributors include Cristina Rivera Garza, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Julia Alvarez, Ruth Behar, and Irma Pineda.
A fresh, indispensable look at the wide, multicultural world of Latine women writers.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9780063052574
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.
The comedian argues that the arts of moderation and common sense must be reinvigorated.
Some people are born snarky, some become snarky, and some have snarkiness thrust upon them. Judging from this book, Maher—host of HBO’s Real Time program and author of The New New Rules and When You Ride Alone, You Ride With bin Laden—is all three. As a comedian, he has a great deal of leeway to make fun of people in politics, and he often delivers hilarious swipes with a deadpan face. The author describes himself as a traditional liberal, with a disdain for Republicans (especially the MAGA variety) and a belief in free speech and personal freedom. He claims that he has stayed much the same for more than 20 years, while the left, he argues, has marched toward intolerance. He sees an addiction to extremism on both sides of the aisle, which fosters the belief that anyone who disagrees with you must be an enemy to be destroyed. However, Maher has always displayed his own streaks of extremism, and his scorched-earth takedowns eventually become problematic. The author has something nasty to say about everyone, it seems, and the sarcastic tone starts after more than 300 pages. As has been the case throughout his career, Maher is best taken in small doses. The book is worth reading for the author’s often spot-on skewering of inept politicians and celebrities, but it might be advisable to occasionally dip into it rather than read the whole thing in one sitting. Some parts of the text are hilarious, but others are merely insulting. Maher is undeniably talented, but some restraint would have produced a better book.
Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781668051351
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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