Books for Spring / Summer 2011 Contents

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Books for Spring / Summer 2011 Contents Books for Spring / Summer 2011 CONTENTS New Books Anthropology 7, 19, 25, 29 The University of Arizona Press Archaeology 30–32 355 South Euclid Ave., Ste. 103 Biography 6, 20–21 Tucson, Arizona 85719 Border Studies & Immigration 1, 12–15 www.uapress.arizona.edu Cooking 8–9 Fiction 2 OUR WAREHOUSE IS MOVING! First Peoples Series 7, 28–29 History 10–11, 16–17, 19, 23, 26 Our fulfillment operation and customer service will soon have a new home. Until June 17, 2011, our current contact informa- Latin American Studies 19–23, 26–29 tion still applies: Latina/o Studies 1, 3, 12–15, 18 ORDERS Literature 2–5 1-800-426-3797 (phone or fax) Memoir 6 [email protected] Native American Studies 6–7, 18 www.uapress.arizona.edu Natural History 10 RETURNS Poetry 4–5 UA Press Warehouse 330 S. Toole Ave. Tucson, AZ 85701 Recently Published Books 33–35 Best-Selling Backlist Books 36–39 Beginning June 20, 2011, our new orders and returns contact information will be: Sales Information 40 New Title Index inside back cover ORDERS 1-800-621-2736 (phone) Front Cover: Salamander Hill Designs 1-800-621-8476 (fax) [email protected] www.uapress.arizona.edu RETURNS University of Arizona Press c/o Chicago Distribution Center 11030 S. Langley Ave. Chicago, IL 60628 Please note that for non-order-related inquiries our office contact information remains unchanged. Calexico True Lives of the Borderlands PETER LAUFER, PhD Everyday voices from beyond the headlines These days everyone has something to say (or declaim!) about the U.S.– Mexico border. Whether it’s immigration, resource management, education policy, or drugs, the borderlands are either the epicenter or the emblem of a current crisis facing the nation. At a time when the region has been co-opted for every possible rhetorical use, what endures is a resilient and vibrant local culture that resists easy characterization. For an honest picture of life on the border, what remains is to listen to voices that are too often drowned out: the people who actually live and work there, who make their homes and livings amid a confluence of cultures and loyalties.F or many of these people, the border is less a hyphenated place than a meeting place, a merging. This aspect of the border is epitomized in the names of two cities that straddle the line: Calexico and Mexicali. A “sleepy crossroads that exists at a global flashpoint,” Calexico serves Of Related Interest as the reference point for veteran journalist Peter Laufer’s chronicle of day-to-day life on the border. This wide-ranging, interview-driven book finds Crossing Laufer and his traveling companion/photographer on a weeklong road trip with the Virgin through the Imperial Valley and other border locales, engaging in earnest Stories from the Migrant Trail and revealing conversations with the people they meet along the way. Laufer KATHRYN FERGUSON, NORMA A. PRICE, talks to secretaries and politicians, restaurateurs and salsa dancers, poets and and TED PARKS real estate agents about the issues that matter to them the most. ISBN 978-0-8165-2854-7 What draws them to border towns? How do they feel about border $17.95 paper security and the fences that may someday run through their backyards? Is “English-only” a realistic policy? Why have some towns flourished and others Lives on the Line declined? What does it mean to be Mexican or American in such a place? Dispatches from the U.S.–Mexico Border Waitress Bonnie Peterson banters with customers in Spanish and English. MIRIAM DAVIDSON Mayor Lewis Pacheco laments the role that globalization has played in his “Timely and compelling.” —Booklist city’s labor market. Some of their anecdotes are humorous, others grim. ISBN 978-0-8165-1998-9 Moreover, not everyone agrees. But this very diversity is part of the fabric of $17.95 paper the borderlands, and these stories demand to be heard. PETER LAUFER, PhD, is the winner of major awards for excellence in reporting—including the George Polk and Edward R. Murrow awards—and an independent journalist, broadcaster, and documentary filmmaker working in traditional and new media. He has crossed and reported from various borders around the world, including the DMZ between North and South Korea, and the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. He is the author of several other books, including Wetback Nation: The Case for Opening the Mexican–American Border. He holds the James Wallace Chair in Journalism at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. B ORDER STUDIES September 248 pp. 6 x 9 ISBN 978-0-8165-2951-3 $19.95 paper www.uapress.arizona.edu W 1-800-426-3797 1 F rom This Wicked Patch of Dust A Novel by SERGIO TRONCOSO One family’s struggle to become American In the border shantytown of Ysleta, Mexican immigrants Pilar and Cuauhtémoc Martínez strive to teach their four children to forsake the drugs and gangs of their neighborhood. The family’s hardscrabble origins are just the beginning of this sweeping new novel from Sergio Troncoso. Spanning four decades, this is a story of a family’s struggle to become American and yet not be pulled apart by an onslaught of cultural forces. Daughter Julieta is disenchanted with Catholicism and converts to Islam. Youngest son Ismael, always the bookworm, is accepted to Harvard but feels out of place in the Northeast, where he meets and marries a Jewish woman. The other boys—Marcos and Francisco—toil in their father’s old apartment buildings, serving as cheap labor to fuel the family’s rise to the middle class. Over time, Francisco isolates himself in El Paso, while Marcos eventually Of Related Interest leaves to become a teacher but then returns, struggling with a deep bitter- ness about his work and marriage. Through it all, Pilar clings to the idea of The Last Tortilla her family and tries to hold it together as her husband’s health begins to fail. And Other Stories This backdrop is shaken to its core by the historic events of 2001 in SERGIO TRONCOSO New York City, which send shockwaves through this newly American family. “These stories are richly Bitter conflicts erupt between siblings, and the physical and cultural spaces satisfying.” —Publishers Weekly between them threaten to tear them apart. Will their shared history and ISBN 978-0-8165-1961-3 $18.95 paper once-shared dreams be enough to hold together a family from Ysleta, this wicked patch of dust? Brides and Sinners SERGIO TRONCOSO is a graduate of both Harvard College and Yale in El Chuco University and the author of The Last Tortilla and Other Stories and The CHRISTINE GRANADOS Nature of Truth: A Novel, the former also published by the University of “Attention to detail and language Arizona Press. that clearly evokes the intensities of half-filled desires..” —Publishers Weekly “One reads From This Wicked patch of Dust and can only pause ISBN 978-0-8165-2492-1 for a moment to say, ‘Yes.’ Sergio Troncoso writes with inevitable $14.95 paper grace and mounting power. Family, in all its baffling wonder, comes alive on these pages.” —Luis Urrea, author of The Hummingbird’s Daughter “An irresistible read, this compelling novel explores a family’s conflicted desires: to honor the past that connected them closely to one another and to embrace the future that launches them toward separate destinies—to belong and to be free. Sergio Troncoso FIINCT O delivers a moving and unforgettable story.” —Lorraine López, author of Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories Camino del Sol “The novel whirls in and out of expanding cultural identities— September Mexican and American; poor, ambitious, and smart; Catholic, 320 pp. Muslim, and even Jewish—and yet stays centered on a family in the 6 x 9 borderlands, it details a past that is more the cultural future. El Paso deserves big books, and Sergio Trocoso gives us one here—in a voice ISBN 978-0-8165-3004-5 $17.95 paper that is both his and ours.” —Dagoberto Gilb, author of Woodcuts of Women 2 www.uapress.arizona.edu W 1-800-426-3797 The Other Latin@ Writing Against a Singular Identity Edited by BLAS FALCONER and LORRAINE M. LÓPEZ Latino writers explore cultural diversity “The stereotype spells death to the imagination by shrinking all possibilities to one. Generalizations encourage us to stop considering what can be.” —from the Introduction The sheer number of different ethnic groups and cultures in the United States makes it tempting to classify them according to broad stereotypes, ignoring their unique and changing identities. Because of their growing diversity within the United States, Latinas and Latinos face this problem in their everyday lives. With cultural roots in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and a variety of other locales, Hispanic-origin people in the United States are too often consigned to a single category. With this book Blas Falconer and Lorraine M. López set out to change this. The Other Latin@ is a diverse collection of essays written by some of the Of Related Interest best emerging and established contemporary writers of Latin origin to help answer the question: How can we treat US Latina and Latino literature as a Camino del Sol definable whole while acknowledging the many shifting identities within their Fifteen Years of cultures? By telling their own stories, these authors illuminate the richness of Latina and Latino Writing Edited by their cultural backgrounds while adding a unique perspective to Latina and RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ Latino literature. ISBN 978-0-8165-2813-4 This book sheds light on the dangers of abandoning identity by ac- $24.95 paper cepting cultural stereotypes and ignoring diversity within diversity.
Recommended publications
  • Crossing Borders: Personal Essays, by Sergio Troncoso 1 Crossing
    Crossing Borders: Personal Essays, by Sergio Troncoso 1 Crossing Borders: Personal Essays By Sergio Troncoso Arte Público Press (1-800-633-2783) ISBN-10: 1558857109 ISBN-13: 978-1558857100 Publication date: September 30, 2011 A thought-provoking collection of essays about transcending cultural borders *Best Books of 2011 by The Hispanic Reader *Bronze Award for Essays from ForeWord Reviews’ Book of the Year Awards *Second Place for Best Biography in English from the International Latino Book Awards “On good days I feel I am a bridge. On bad days I just feel alone,” Sergio Troncoso writes in this riveting collection of sixteen personal essays in which he seeks to connect the humanity of his Mexican family to people he meets on the East Coast, including his wife’s Jewish kin. Raised in a home steps from the Mexican border in El Paso, Texas, Troncoso crossed what seemed an even more imposing border when he left home to attend Harvard College. “I was torn,” he writes, “between the people I loved at home and the ideas I devoured away from home.” Troncoso writes to examine his life and to create meaning from the disparate worlds he inhabits and the borders he has crossed. In “Letter to My Young Sons,” he documents the terror of his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis and the ups and downs of her surgery and treatment. Other essays explore interfaith marriage and evolving gender roles as Troncoso becomes a husband and father. A Christmas vacation in Ysleta leads to a severe argument with his father and reflection about machismo and independence within immigrant families.
    [Show full text]
  • The Construction of Latina/O Literary Imaginaries
    The Construction of Latina/o Literary Imaginaries The Construction of Latina/o Literary Imaginaries: Essays on Alternative Worldviews By Donna M. Kabalen De Bichara The Construction of Latina/o Literary Imaginaries: Essays on Alternative Worldviews By Donna M. Kabalen De Bichara This book first published 2018 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2018 by Donna M. Kabalen De Bichara All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-0889-7 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-0889-7 To my husband Roberto: Thank you for your patience, for your encouragement and for the gift of time to create. To my children: Monica, Roberto and Denise To Manuel Tapia Becerra and Fabián Montemayor Morales: Many thanks, for without your technical support this book would not have been possible. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Part One: Border Newspapers and the Conservation of Cultural Memory The Hispanic Periodical and Promotion of Moral and Cultural Values: La Prensa .................................................................................................. 11 Expressions of Conflicting Worldviews in Religious Print Culture: Casa Editorial Revista Católica and Casa Bautista de Publicaciones ...... 23 Part Two: Memory, Life Writing, and Fictions Unhailed Heroines ..................................................................................... 41 Performing Autobiography and Identity in The Adventures of Don Chipote, or, When Parrots Breastfeed, by Daniel Venegas ....................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • American Book Review, Volume 42, Number 4, May/June 2021, Pp
    American Book Review, Volume 42, Number 4, May/June 2021, pp. 14-28. An Interview with Sergio Troncoso INTERVENTIONS by Frederick Luis Aldama Author, essayist, and curator of Latinx Sergio Troncoso: I’ve always wanted to show the fctional spaces, Sergio Troncoso adds to, extends, Mexican American writer as a thinker in the mode and complicates a long tradition south of the US/ of Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Fyodor Mexico border creatives who’ve mixed fction Dostoevsky; to be taken seriously as minds that with philosophy, physics, biology, psychology, combine philosophy and literature. For instance, and journalism to wondrous alchemical effect. the frst story I wrote for The Last Tortilla & With Sergio, think Jorge Luis Borges, José Emilio Other Stories (1999) follows a Chicano from Yale Pacheco, José Donoso, and Julio Ramón Ribeyro who calls his Mexican abuelita and argues about — but always rooted in the particulars of the US Heidegger’s “being-toward-death.” Readers at the Latinx borderland experience. time didn’t understand why I combined serious Born and raised on the East Side of El philosophical discussion with issues of the border. Paso, Texas, pursing the life of a writer might have It’s not just about the Mexican American seemed an impossible dream. It wasn’t. A passion writer as thinker. It’s also as thinker about the for transformative wordsmithing seemed to pass working class and about poverty. That’s how I grew down from his abuelo — a journalist jailed dozens up. I’ve spent a lot of time at places like Harvard of times for calling out the Mexican government’s and Yale.
    [Show full text]
  • PDF of a Rock Trying to Be a Stone
    Sergio Troncoso is a writer of essays, short stories, and novels, and the author of five books. Among the numerous awards he has won are the Premio Aztlan Literary Prize, Southwest Book Award, Bronze Award for Essays from ForeWord Reviews, and International Latino Book Award. The son of Mexican immigrants, Troncoso was born and grew up on the eastern outskirts of El Paso, Texas in rural Ysleta. He graduated from Harvard College, and studied international relations and philosophy at Yale University. He won a Fulbright scholarship to Mexico, where he studied economics, politics, and literature. Troncoso was inducted into the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s Alumni Hall of Fame and the Texas Institute of Letters. He also received the Literary Legacy Award from the El Paso Community College. He is a member of PEN, a writers’ organization protecting free expression and celebrating literature. The El Paso City Council voted unanimously to rename the Ysleta public library branch in honor of Sergio Troncoso. He has served as a judge for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and New Letters Literary Awards in the Essay category. For many years, he has taught at the Yale Writers’ Workshop in New Haven, Connecticut and the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Booklist hailed Troncoso’s first book, The Last Tortilla and Other Stories, as “Enthusiastically recommended,” and Publishers Weekly said, “These stories are richly satisfying.” “A Rock Trying To Be a Stone” is one of the twelve stories in The Last Tortilla and Other Stories. www.SergioTroncoso.com “A Rock Trying To Be a Stone,” by Sergio Troncoso 1 A Rock Trying To Be a Stone We took Chuy to the ditch behind my house, Joe, me, and Fernández, and tied him up.
    [Show full text]
  • A Guide to the Sergio Troncoso Papers 1975-2020 Collection 143
    A Guide to the Sergio Troncoso Papers 1975-2020 Collection 143 Descriptive Summary Creator: Sergio Troncoso Title: A Guide to the Sergio Troncoso Papers Dates: 1975-2020 Abstract: The Sergio Troncoso Papers span 1975-2020 and are divided into six series: Personal, Published Works, Magazine and Journal Contributions, Publicity, Student Letters, and Digital Objects. The bulk of the collection is drafts of his early work, including The Last Tortilla and Other Stories, The Nature of Truth, Crossing Borders: Personal Essays, and From This Wicked Patch of Dust. Also of note are his academic essays from his graduate school studies at Yale. Identifier: Collection 143 Extent: 16 boxes (approximately 8 linear feet) Language: English Repository: The Wittliff Collections, Texas State University Administrative Information Access Restrictions Open for research Preferred Citation Sergio Troncoso Papers, The Wittliff Collections, Texas State University Acquisition Information Gift of Troncoso, 2020 Processing Information Processed in 2020 by Susannah Broyles Notes for Researchers Access to computer files and digital materials are handled on a case-by-case basis. Please contact the archives staff for access. 2 Guide to the Sergio Troncoso Papers (Collection 143) Biographical Note Sergio Troncoso (1961-) was born to Mexican immigrants in the Ysleta neighborhood of El Paso, Texas. The family lived in a colonia near the border in a house that Troncoso’s parents built, but without electricity or running water for their first two years in Ysleta. His family had a long history of writing and storytelling. Troncoso’s paternal grandfather, Santiago Troncoso, was the editor and publisher of El Dia, the first daily newspaper in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
    [Show full text]
  • Pluma Fronteriza: Newsletter of Chicano(A)/ Latino(A) Writers of the El Paso and Cd
    University of Texas at El Paso DigitalCommons@UTEP Chicano Studies Campus Newsletters 4-1-2006 Pluma Fronteriza: Newsletter of Chicano(a)/ Latino(a) Writers of the El Paso and Cd. Juárez Border Region UTEP Chicano Studies Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.utep.edu/chic_news Part of the Mass Communication Commons, and the Race and Ethnicity Commons Recommended Citation UTEP Chicano Studies, "Pluma Fronteriza: Newsletter of Chicano(a)/Latino(a) Writers of the El Paso and Cd. Juárez Border Region" (2006). Chicano Studies. Paper 3. http://digitalcommons.utep.edu/chic_news/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Campus Newsletters at DigitalCommons@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Chicano Studies by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Spring 2006 Volume 6, No. 1 Pluma Fronteriza Newsletter of Chicano(a)/Latino(a) Writers of the El Paso and Cd. Juárez Border Region Inside: El Barrio Del Diablo, p.6; Time & Place with Demetria Martínez, p. 4 New books from El Paso, Las Cruces, Cd. Juárez: • Cynthia Farah Haines showcases EPT’s palace theatres; Octavio Solís first play anthology, p. 9 • Carlos Nicolás Flores tells of growing up in Five Points; Christine Granados published first, Selfa Chew’s award-winning book, p. 10 • Denise Chávez on food, p. 12 • Ben Sáenz’ new poetry book on Copper Canyon Press, p. 11 • Romo’s book all over the news, p. 14 1 NEWS Did You Know? Luna and Ortego Enters the Blogsphere The Newspaper Tree Felipe Ortego has created a blog called the Chicano Critical Review.
    [Show full text]
  • Resistance, Celebration, and Hybridity in Sergio Troncoso's from This
    Label Me Latina/o Fall 2015 Volume V 1 Constructing Chicano Identity: Resistance, Celebration, and Hybridity in Sergio Troncoso’s From This Wicked Patch of Dust By James M Cochran “I have often called for Latinos, particularly Chicanos, to define themselves, and not let others, even the well-intentioned media, define who we are.” —Sergio Troncoso, “Latinos Find an American on the Border of Acceptance” (78) Since the 1960s, Chicano literature, art, and politics have worked to resist dominant social norms, value-systems, and stereotypes. Sergio Troncoso’s 2011 novel From This Wicked Patch of Dust follows this same path of resistance. His novel traces the Martínez family as its members move from Ysleta, a Mexican-United States border town, to various parts of the world, including New York City, Jerusalem, and Tehran. Troncoso uses form, language, and indigenous myths and symbols to resist dominant American linguistic authority and popular imagination and to embrace his mestizo and Chicano heritage. However, Troncoso does not advocate a return to old Mexico, which is plagued with androcentrism. He constructs a Chicano identity that is neither stable nor rooted in place. Troncoso resists the idea of a homogenous Latino identity and constructs a Chicano identity that is defined by hybridity, ambiguity and fluidity. Chicano Resistance From This Wicked Patch of Dust is a resistance novel because it calls into question the validity of dominant truth claims. Troncoso does not call for a radical rejection of Western culture and a complete return to Aztlán, the symbolic home of the Aztecs. Similarly, for Troncoso, resistance is not a call to arms.
    [Show full text]
  • The Writers at the Pass of the North
    University of Texas at El Paso DigitalCommons@UTEP Carl Hertzog Lecture Series University of Texas at El Paso Library 3-25-2012 The rW iters at The aP ss of the North Marcia Hatfield aD udistel Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.utep.edu/carl_hertzog Comments: No. 15 Recommended Citation Daudistel, Marcia Hatfield, "The rW iters at The asP s of the North" (2012). Carl Hertzog Lecture Series. 15. http://digitalcommons.utep.edu/carl_hertzog/15 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Texas at El Paso Library at DigitalCommons@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Carl Hertzog Lecture Series by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Lecture Series Marcia Hatfield Daudistel Editor, Grace and Gumption: the Women ofE/ Paso Editor, Literary El Paso; 2010 BRLA Southwest Book Award winner; and Co-Author, Authentic Texas: the People ofthe Big Bend (2013) '' . I The 2011-2012 Carl Hertzog Award and Lecture were made possible through generous underwriting support from: Sam Moore and the late Greta Moore I. T. Schwartz and Susan Amstater Schwartz R. B. Price Family Foundation Special thanks to: Bobby Byrd Bryce Milligan Clay Smith Copyright • 2012 The University of Texas at El Paso El Paso, Texas 79968-0633 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American @ National Standard for Information Sciences. -Permanence of Paper for printed Library Materials, ANSI 239.48-1984 Published in March, 2012, in a printing limited to 500 copies. 'T'Fte Car( 'J-fertzog Lecture Series The Hertzog Lectures, inaugurated on February 5, 1989, and presented biennially to honor the memory and life work of the "Printer at the Pass," J.
    [Show full text]
  • Our Lost Border: Essays on Life Amid the Narco
    Our Lost Border: Essays on Life amid the Narco-Violence, edited by Sarah Cortez and 1 Sergio Troncoso Our Lost Border: Essays on Life amid the Narco-Violence Edited by Sarah Cortez and Sergio Troncoso Arte Público Press (1-800-633-2783) ISBN-10: 1558857524 ISBN-13: 978-1558857520 Publication date: March 30, 2013 *Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association *First Place for Best Latino-focused Nonfiction Book (Bilingual) from the International Latino Book Awards *Finalist for Adult Nonfiction Anthologies in ForeWord Reviews’ Book of the Year Awards With a foreword by renowned novelist Rolando Hinojosa-Smith and comprised of personal essays about the impact of drug violence on life and culture along the United States-Mexico border, the anthology combines writings by residents of both countries. Mexican authors Liliana Blum, Lolita Bosch, and Diego Osorno write riveting, first-hand accounts about the clashes between the drug cartels and citizens’ attempts to resist the criminals. American authors, including José Antonio Rodríguez and José Skinner, focus on how the corruption and bloodshed have affected the bi-national and bi-cultural existence of families and individuals. Maria Cristina Cigarroa shares her poignant memories of life in her grandparents’ home now abandoned in Nuevo Laredo. In their introduction, editors Sarah Cortez and Sergio Troncoso write that this anthology was “born of a vision to bear witness to how this violence has shattered life on the border, to remember the past, but also to point to the possibilities of a better future.” The Making of an Anthology: Our Lost Border: Essays on Life amid the Narco-Violence http://chicolingo.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-making-of-anthology-our-lost-border.html Our Lost Border: Essays on Life amid the Narco-Violence, edited by Sarah Cortez and 2 Sergio Troncoso Book Reviews for Our Lost Border: Essays on Life amid the Narco-Violence: “This eye-opening collection of essays details struggles of Mexican and American citizens affected by drug cartels along the Mexican-American border.
    [Show full text]
  • Sergio Troncoso Is a Writer of Essays, Short Stories, and Novels, and the Author of Five Books
    Sergio Troncoso is a writer of essays, short stories, and novels, and the author of five books. Among the numerous awards he has won are the Premio Aztlan Literary Prize, Southwest Book Award, Bronze Award for Essays from ForeWord Reviews, and International Latino Book Award. The son of Mexican immigrants, Troncoso was born and grew up on the eastern outskirts of El Paso, Texas in rural Ysleta. He graduated from Harvard College, and studied international relations and philosophy at Yale University. He won a Fulbright scholarship to Mexico, where he studied economics, politics, and literature. Troncoso was inducted into the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s Alumni Hall of Fame and the Texas Institute of Letters. He also received the Literary Legacy Award from the El Paso Community College. He is a member of PEN, a writers’ organization protecting free expression and celebrating literature. The El Paso City Council voted unanimously to rename the Ysleta public library branch in honor of Sergio Troncoso. He has served as a judge for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the New Letters Literary Awards in the Essay category. For many years, he has taught at the Yale Writers’ Workshop in New Haven, Connecticut and the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York. The El Paso Times said of Troncoso’s book, Crossing Borders: Personal Essays, “These very personal essays cross several borders: cultural, historical, and self-imposed.... We owe it to ourselves to read, savor and read them again.” The Portland Book Review said the book was “Heart-wrenching.” “Why Should Latinos Write Their Own Stories?” is one of the sixteen essays in Crossing Borders: Personal Essays.
    [Show full text]
  • Latin Post: Sergio Troncoso Shares Truths About the Border, Storytelling
    Latin Post: Author Sergio Troncoso Shares Incredible Truths 1 About the Border and Storytelling Author Sergio Troncoso Shares Incredible Truths About the Border and Storytelling This article is part of "Palabras," the Latin Post Latino Author Series. August 20, 2015 05:00 AM EDT By Nicole Akoukou Thompson ([email protected]) Sergio Troncoso, author of "From This Wicked Patch of Dust" and "The Nature of Truth," was born to a legacy of storytellers, writers and educators, and he was obliged to follow suit and tell incredible truths through writing --even if his grandfather warned him against it. Born on the east side of El Paso, Texas in a rural, Mexicano-populated neighborhood called Ysleta, Troncoso was raised in an adobe home built by his parents. During the first year in the home, the family used kerosene lamps and stoves, and they had an outhouse in their backyard. Nonetheless, it was there, in Ysleta, that the author developed his love for reading. He spent hours at the main branch of the El Paso Public Library, where he fell in love with storytelling. The Ysleta public library branch would one day be renamed in his honor. Also, he frequently biked roughly fifteen miles to the main branch of the El Paso Public Library, reading authors like Rudolfo Anaya and S.E. Hinton, after he'd visit with his maternal grandmother. She was a woman who'd grown up during the Mexican Revolution and told him enchanting stories about Francisco Villa and "el rancho" where his abuelita grew up. Troncoso's paternal grandfather, the editor and publisher of El Dia, the first daily newspaper in Juarez, Mexico in the 1920s, also influenced the author to pursue journalism.
    [Show full text]
  • Day-Of-The-Dead-Instructional.Pdf
    Sergio Troncoso is a writer of essays, short stories, and novels, and the author of six books. Among the numerous awards he has won are the Premio Aztlan Literary Prize, Southwest Book Award, Bronze Award for Essays from ForeWord Reviews, and International Latino Book Award. The son of Mexican immigrants, Troncoso was born and grew up on the eastern outskirts of El Paso, Texas in rural Ysleta. He graduated from Harvard College, and studied international relations and philosophy at Yale University. He won a Fulbright scholarship to Mexico, where he studied economics, politics, and literature. Troncoso was inducted into the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s Alumni Hall of Fame and the Texas Institute of Letters. He is an officer of the Texas Institute of Letters and a member of PEN, a writers’ organization protecting free expression and celebrating literature. The El Paso City Council voted unanimously to rename the Ysleta public library branch in honor of Sergio Troncoso. He has served as a judge for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the New Letters Literary Awards in the Essay category. For many years, he has taught at the Yale Writers’ Workshop in New Haven, Connecticut. Booklist hailed Troncoso’s first book, The Last Tortilla and Other Stories, as “Enthusiastically recommended,” and Publishers Weekly said, “These stories are richly satisfying.” “Day of the Dead” is one of the twelve stories in The Last Tortilla and Other Stories. www.SergioTroncoso.com “Day of the Dead,” by Sergio Troncoso 1 Day of the Dead Doña Rosita took the small ax, raised it, and severed the hind leg from the trunk of the pig on her counter.
    [Show full text]