By Roberto Leal

 On Friday, October 1 at 6:30 PM, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center will launch the opening of the Latino Bookstore with a ribbon-cutting ceremony (1:00 PM) and author signings (6:30 PM) The bookstore and gift shop will be located in the Historic Progresso Pharmacy on 1300 Guadalupe St., San Antonio, Texas.

 The Ribbon-Cutting will be live-streamed on the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center  Facebook Page 

The book desert on the West Side of San Antonio and the lack of representation of Latino books in existing bookstores across the state and the country will at long last have a literary oasis in West San Antonio for residents to refresh their minds, hearts and soulds.

 The bookstore  will feature curated titles by Texas Latino authors. Fall and Winter programming will focus on Day of The Dead and Navidad/Holiday traditions and 2022 will kick off with the bookstore’s monthly author series. 

 “So many writers, visual artists, musicians, and filmmakers, have a long history with the Guadalupe.,” says Cristina Balli, the Guadalupe Cultural arts Center Executive Director, “We want to celebrate that history and make it accessible to tourists, students, and families.” 

For more information: https://guadalupeculturalarts.org/

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Winners Announced September 12, 2020, September 12, 2020  

The International Latino Book Awards is a major reflection that the fastest growing group in the USA has truly arrived. The Awards are now the largest Latino cultural Awards in the USA, with the 297 finalists this year in 96 categories. The Intl. Latino Books Awards have honored 3,194 authors and publishers over the past two decades. The size of the Awards is proof that books, by and about Latinos, are in high demand. In 2020 Latinos will purchase over $750 million in books in English and Spanish. 

This year the Awards Ceremony will be held virtually on September 12, 2020. It is free and open to the public to view on www.LatinoBookAwards.org. The event will begin at 2:30 with entertainment and the Ceremony at 3PM (PST).

Five new award have been renamed after people who have both opened for writers and the Latino community overall. These are: The Rudy Anaya Best Latino Focused Fiction Award in honor of the late “grandfather of Chicano literature” Rudy Anaya; the Isabel Allende Best Inspirational Fiction Award in honor of the best selling Latina author in the world, Isabel Allende; the Alma Flor Ada Best Latino Focused Children’s Picture Book Award for luminary of children’s literature, Alma Flor Ada; The Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award for the first Latino U.S. Poet Laureate; and The Victor Villaseñor Best Latino Focused Nonfiction Award for the trailblazing author.

In 2021 we are adding: The Charlie Ericksen Best Book Written by a Youth Award for the editor who mentored more Latino journalists than anyone; the Dolores Huerta Best Community Service Book Award for the woman who has inspired millions; the Hank Lacayo Best Labor Book Award for the labor leader; the Mimi Lozano Best Family History Book Award for the woman lives to see family histories created; the Ambassador Julian Nava Best Educational Themed Book Award and the Raul Yzaguirre Best Political/Current Affairs Book Award for the man of many firsts. 

 About 40% of all winners were were published by U.S. or international publishers; 25% from medium sized publishing house; and 35% were from small publishing houses or even self published. In order to handle this large number of books, the Awards had 214 judges in 2020. The judges almost in unison shared that this was by far the best year yet for the Awards and how hard it was because there are now so many great books being published. Judges included librarians, educators, media professionals, leaders of national organizations, and Pulitzer Prize Winners. The Awards celebrates books in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Finalists are from across the USA and Puerto Rico, as well as from 17 other countries. 

The Awards are produced by Empowering Latino Futures, formerly Latino Literacy Now, a nonprofit organization co-founded in 1997 by Edward James Olmos and Kirk Whisler. For more information 760-579-1696.

Here is a complete list of the finalists:

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Like so many Latinos, David Damian Figueroa was blessed with a Mexican mother who always had a “dicho” (saying) to confront just about any challenge, loss or triumph—blessings. 

Figueroa has penned a book that is part memoir, part self-help, and overall a great journal. A Reminder to My Twenty-Three-Year Old Self is founded on the great lessons his beloved mother taught him growing up. During these current times of great doubt, injustices, and mistrust, this book comes at a perfect time.

Figueroa, who lost his mother, Antonia Hernandez Figueroa when he was 23 years old, has dedicated the book to her– honoring the abundance of love, wisdom, and guidance she packed into his life– from the day he was born until the day she died. “A Reminder to My Twenty-Three-Year Old Self” is a gem of a book, where Figueroa shares all that he learned growing up– wisdom that came in the form of dichos.

I found the book to be an addictive read and with each axiom, my mind wandered back to my own childhood during those times when my own mother would offer up her own dichos at times to defuse a sad situation with some humor.

Figueroa has published the best of his mother’s dichos and has added a few more from other people he admires, like Dolores Huerta and some of his own that have come to him throughout his life.

The book begins with an introduction about Figueroa’s life with his mother, a loving tribute to the woman who shaped his childhood and prepared him for the rest of his life. Afterward, each additional page expands as a journal, where readers write in their own thoughts, tailoring each dicho’s wisdom to fit into their own lives.

All around, “A Reminder to My Twenty-Three-Year Old Self” is a book about staying positive to meet a goal and/or build confidence. Each page presents a “saying” opposite a lined journal page to write your ideas, quotes, and whatnots. And, oh what a joy to learn about the significances of dichos that many Latinos have heard their entire lives. Personally, I found myself reading this book and remembering my mother reciting the dichos as stress-relieving moments.

For those who need a boost in creativity, some of the journal pages can be filled with ideas and drawings or doodles that often come when we’re drawing a blank on what to do or what to write, draw or invent next.

A Reminder to My Twenty-Three-Year-Old Self: A Book of Quotes, Thoughts on Life, and Personal Wisdom
David Damian Figueroa
Lulu.com, 2019
ISBN: 1684702445, 9781684702442
172 pages

About the Author
The host of The David Damian Show, David Damian Figueroa life has led him to work with some of this country’s most iconic civil rights icons, artists, and entertainment professionals. In addition, Figueroa is a respected non-profit leader, activist, and farmworker advocate. He partnered with actors/activists Eva Longoria, Forest Whitaker, and author Eric Schlosser to bring focus to the farmworker issues with the critically-acclaimed documentary Food Chains. He was also associate producer of The Harvest—The Children Who Feed America/La Cosecha—Los niños que alimentan America.

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At first glance the reviews by The New York Times and GoodReads.com were glowing. Once the avalanche of criticism began in mid-December with a blog by Myriam Gurba calling foul on Jeanine Cummins‘ American Dirt (Macmillan Publishing), a novel about Mexicans, by a writer who isn’t, there The New York Times printed a second not so glowing review and an GoodReads.com updated its review minus the “glow”.

From the onset, Gurba claims Cummins book has:

1. Appropriating genius works by people of color
2. Slapping a coat of mayonesa on them to make palatable to taste buds estados-unidenses and
3. Repackaging them for mass racially “colorblind” consumption.

Gurba points out preconceptions of Latinx comes into play in American Dirt which appeal to White America. “Recently, a white woman got angry at me when she found out that I’m Mexican,” Gurba says. “She insisted that I didn’t look or act Mexican and that I had confused her. But she confused herself. She had a stereotype of what Mexicans are. I defied it. That made her uncomfortable. Now, apply that scenario to the literary equation that [American Dirt has] presented.”

Gurba goes on to point out Cummins, (now self identifying as a Latinx with a Puerto Rican grandmother), having proclaimed just five years ago in an interview that she did not want to write about race and that she was White, is now embracing her Latinx heritage on the heels of her writing about the Mexican immigration novel American Dirt.

Cummins claims, “I wished someone slightly browner than me would write it [an immigration story]”. They did. Cummins even thanks them in the pages of her book (sans their literary credits). Among the authors is award-winning novelist Luis Alberto Urrea whose magnificent novels, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Hummingbird’s Daughter and Into the Beautiful North are two fine examples of the immigrant story told authentically. Other authors she included were Oscar Martinez, Sonia Nazario, Jennifer Clement, Aida Silva Hernandez, Rafael Alarcon, Valeria Luiselli, and Reyna Grande.

Cummins claims she wrote her novel to give the “the faceless brown mass” a voice. But unlike the Latinx writers mentioned above, her book speaks largely to a White audience, with the stereotypes and clichés mainstream America has come to expect when reading about Mexicans. This is what they know…the border crossing, the suffering mother and yes of course the Cartel. No Mexican story is complete, in their eyes without the Cartel.

This past Tuesday, Oprah announced on CBS This Morning that Cummins’ American Dirt was her new book club selection. By then social media was abuzz with American Dirt “dirt” by the Latinx community at large. A sizeable chunk of the 59 million Latinos/as in the U.S. were having their say. The buzz has reached definitely reached Oprah as she has been mercifly tagged at @oprah, to the point that comment were disabled on her Instagram. Word is there is some concern with the unexpected avalanche of backlash.

While Cummins did get endorsement from some high profile Latinx writers Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez and Jane the Virgin‘s Gina Rodriguez; and Oscar-nominated Roma actress Yalitza Aparicio, the criticism definitely outweighed the endorsements.

“As a Mexican immigrant, who was undocumented, I can say with authority that this book is a harmful, stereotypical, damaging representation of our experiences. Please listen to us when we tell you, this book isn’t it,” Julissa Arce Raya, author of My (Underground) American Dream told The Guardian.

BuzzFeed News reports that David Bowles, a Chicano writer, and professor, called American Dirt “…harmful, appropriating, inaccurate, the trauma-porn melodrama” in a withering review. He also took issue with the use of Spanish words in the dialogue, writing, ‘Actual examples of Spanish are wooden and odd as if generated by Google Translate and then smoothed slightly by a line editor.'”

In one of four version of articles written in The New York Times, Cummins is quoted as saying “I do think that the conversation about cultural appropriation is incredibly important, but I also think that there is a danger sometimes of going too far toward silencing people,” she said. “Everyone should be engaged in telling these stories, with tremendous care and sensitivity.”

But it seems that these rules have not apply to some Latinx writers. As author Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, (The Dirty Girl Social Club) writes in her blog today. “The second novel I wrote, after my bestselling debut novel The Dirty Girls Social Club, was Story in B-Minor, an as-yet unpublished book about a young Irish American jazz saxophonist in Boston, and her elderly African American mentor; it was based on my own experience, as a quarter-Irish American jazz saxophonist who went to Berklee College of Music, and had Andy McGhee as my mentor. I was told by my editor at the time that “no one will believe you can write authoritatively about a white experience, it’s not in your brand.”

It begs the question, what would be the more authentic perspective to an immigrations story about Mexicans? A Mexican writing the story or a White identifying author, who just recently claimed her Latinx roots?

In Gurba’s initial scathing takedown of the novel, she dissects the “store-bought taco seasoning” use of Cummins Spanish and “absurd” writing of her protagonist Lydia as seen here below.

“Lydia is incoherent, laughable in her contradictions. In one flashback, Sebastián, Lydia’s husband, a journalist, describes her as one of the “smartest” women he’s ever known. Nonetheless, she behaves in gallingly naïve and stupid ways. Despite being an intellectually engaged woman, and the wife of a reporter whose beat is narcotrafficking, Lydia experiences shock after shock when confronted with the realities of México, realities that would not shock a Mexican.”

This controversy has brought to light many underlying issues that have been festering for years, the shunning of ethnic authors; of books written for White audiences by White authors; the inequity of fees paid ethnic authors compared to “White” mainstream writers. This, it can be said, is a positive to come out of this controversy…at least for the Latinx community. It’s time these issues are being expressed and talked about in the open.

One of best thing to come out of this controversy was best said by Gurba herself in her most recent Tweet:

“Do not be mistaken: This is not a literary scandal. You are witnessing a “cultural inflection point.”

Myriam Chingona Gurba de Serrano

If social media prove one thing is that it is an equalizer where not only persons like Oprah can have a voice, but where the voices of large ethnic communities can be heard just as loud. And with that we leave you with some of those voices.

Esmeralda Bermudez @LATBermudez Tweet:
I am an immigrant. My family fled El Salvador with death pounding on our door. The terror, the loss, the injustice of this experience shaped everything about me. I see no part of myself reflected in #AmericanDirt, a book white critics are hailing as the great immigrant novel.

Obed Manuel @obedmanuel Tweet:
This American Dirt controversy is another sad showing of Latinos not having a platform to tell our stories. Our stories are told through someone else’s perception. They want our stories, our food, our culture, and our languages, but they don’t want us.

Writing My Latino Novel Parodies on Twitter:

*Bel Hernandez collaborated on this editorial

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