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LIVING BEYOND BORDERS

GROWING UP MEXICAN IN AMERICA

Well worth reading; a welcome addition to any bookshelf.

Twenty original contributions by Mexican American authors about growing up in the U.S.

In a note to readers, editor Longoria describes feeling compelled to create this anthology as she saw Mexican Americans being attacked and derided in the media. The result is this collection of short stories, personal essays, graphic stories, and poems by Mexican American authors. The standouts here pack a real emotional punch. Awareness of the impact of socio-economic status often takes center stage, and several pieces are set in the Rio Grande Valley. Protagonists vary in age from middle school through adult and are predominantly mestizx. “The Body by the Canal,” by David Bowles, is not to be missed and, along with “Coco Chamoy and Chango,” by e.E. Charlton-Trujillo, brings queer representation to the project. The opening story, “Ghetto Is Not an Adjective” by Dominic Carrillo, successfully cannonballs into the deep end of the social justice pool, while “Morning People” by Diana Lopez wades into the murky waters of the taboo. “Yoli Calderon and Principal Hayes” by Angela Cervantes offers an exemplary use of the first person, and both “This Rio Grande Valley” by Daniel García Ordaz and “Sunflower” by Aida Salazar are full of beautiful imagery. “Ode to My Papi” by Guadalupe García McCall and “La Princesa Mileidy Dominguez” by Rubén Degollado both tug at the heartstrings. The variety of narrative styles contributes to the broad appeal of this volume.

Well worth reading; a welcome addition to any bookshelf. (contributor bios) (Anthology. 13-adult)

Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-20497-9

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Philomel

Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021

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PEMMICAN WARS

A GIRL CALLED ECHO, VOL. I

A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.

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In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.

Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.

A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.

Pub Date: March 15, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7

Page Count: 48

Publisher: HighWater Press

Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018

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THE WICKED KING

From the Folk of the Air series , Vol. 2

A rare second volume that surpasses the first, with, happily, more intrigue and passion still to come.

A heady blend of courtly double-crossing, Faerie lore, and toxic attraction swirls together in the sequel to The Cruel Prince (2018).

Five months after engineering a coup, human teen Jude is starting to feel the strain of secretly controlling King Cardan and running his Faerie kingdom. Jude’s self-loathing and anger at the traumatic events of her childhood (her Faerie “dad” killed her parents, and Faerie is not a particularly easy place even for the best-adjusted human) drive her ambition, which is tempered by her desire to make the world she loves and hates a little fairer. Much of the story revolves around plotting (the Queen of the Undersea wants the throne; Jude’s Faerie father wants power; Jude’s twin, Taryn, wants her Faerie betrothed by her side), but the underlying tension—sexual and political—between Jude and Cardan also takes some unexpected twists. Black’s writing is both contemporary and classic; her world is, at this point, intensely well-realized, so that some plot twists seem almost inevitable. Faerie is a strange place where immortal, multihued, multiformed denizens can’t lie but can twist everything; Jude—who can lie—is an outlier, and her first-person, present-tense narration reveals more than she would choose. With curly dark brown hair, Jude and Taryn are never identified by race in human terms.

A rare second volume that surpasses the first, with, happily, more intrigue and passion still to come. (map) (Fantasy. 14-adult)

Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-316-31035-2

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018

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