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FOUR LATINA WRITERS REPRESENT NEW YORK CITY’S
INDEPENDENT AND ALTERNATIVE LITERATURE AT THE INTERNATIONAL
BOOK FAIR OF MEXICO CITY
EDITORIAL CAMPANA PRESENTS ITS NEW TITLES
New York, February 19, 2007 –
Writers Sonia Rivera Valdes (Stories of Little
Women and Grown-Up Girls, Cuba), Casa
de las Americas prize winner, Margarita Drago (Memory
Tracks: A Memoir from Prison, Argentina),
Paquita Suarez Coalla (So I Don’t Forget,
Spain) and Jacqueline Herranz Brooks (Scenes
for Tourists, Cuba), all authors represented
by Editorial Campana, New York City, will participate
as special guests of the International Book Fair of
Mexico D. F. Their presentation will take place on Saturday,
March 3, at 15:00, in the Sotero Prieto auditorium of
the Palacio de Mineria.
The fair, which coincides with the celebration of Women’s
History Month, will provide an opportunity for these
Latina residents of New York City to present, using
unconventional and irreverent styles, different points
of view from women who come from different worlds and
classes. Their characters are Latina women who think
in ways that defy taboos and myths, or who, in other
instances, are voices amidst a silence in the societies
they live in.
Aside from being a publishing house, Editorial Campana
is a multi-disciplinarian organization that has grown
steadily over the past few years, whose objective is
to publish literature written by Latinos who challenge
established patterns of a conventional literary model.
Campana’s books represent the idea that a culture
is everyone’s patrimony, and promote Latino writers
whose work reflects themes around the personal and historical
recovery of Latino memory.
Four Books From Four Uncommon Writers
Stories of Little Women and Grown-Up Girls,
by Sonia Rivera Valdes, is a book that has
been long awaited by readers who read Rivera Valdes’
last book, The Forbidden Stories of Marta Veneranda,
winner of the Casa de Las Americas prize in 1997. In
her new book, readers will again find more women who
have chosen to own their loves, their anxieties, their
mistakes and of course, their fantasies. The book has
an amusing and sensual style to it, and its protagonists
have no verbal or moral restrictions as they communicate
what they want. Stories of Little Women and
Grownup Girls obtained fifth place on Barnes
& Noble’s (the largest book store chain in
the United States) bestseller list.
Memory Tracks: Fragments From Prison,
by Margarita Drago, is a collection of an Argentine
political prisoner’s memories, dating from 1975
to 1980. A teacher under house arrest and accused of
political crimes, she is taken to the Women’s
Prison of Rosario. During those five years, she witnessed
and was a victim of multiple interrogations, torture
sessions, and violations. There, in the basement she
shared with other companions, she set up a printing
press using cigarette packages. Her intimate body cavities
became safe refuges and secret places to hide study
materials and prison information. As indignity followed
indignity, she would feel the terror and cold of the
machine guns, hear the noise of soldiers’ boots
and the bark of police dogs a few centimeters away,
and despite this, she would never lose her strength
or hope.
In So I Don’t Forget, by Paquita
Suarez Coalla, several Asturian women recount their
stories in eighteen extraordinary tales that span more
than a century. In this passionate book the reader will
find behind those voices first-person narratives with
subversive connotations and parody, questioning and
critical. The fierce Franquista dictatorship, the Spanish
Civil War, hunger, captivity, marriage, motherhood,
innumerable domestic obligations, frustration, love,
and happiness mark the life of mothers, daughters, and
granddaughters. Three generations: A surprising confession
and many secrets create a choral tale that gives form
to a collective Asturian memory. But So I Don’t
Forget is, above all colloquial poetry, where
not a detail, word or anecdote is wasted. It’s
a space where bodies sweat and resist control; where
colors, smells, words, and sensations are key.
Scenes for Tourists, by Jacqueline
Herranz Brooks, is comprised of twenty-seven stories
in which the protagonist, a young Cuban lesbian, disoriented
and unsure of what she is going to do with her life,
embarks on a long journey, interrupted and without purpose,
across the island. With unusual capacity for someone
her age, she observes and narrates, almost dispassionately,
her relationship with her mother, lovers, drugs, and
herself. Jacqueline Herranz Brooks uses black humor
as a central characteristic of her protagonist, a humor
that allows her protagonist to survive external circumstances,
and above all, internal ones.
Event: Presentation of Editorial Campana’s
new books. A conversation with the authors.
Where: Sotero Prieto Auditorium, Palacio
de Mineria, Tacuba No. 5, Centro Historico, Mexico,
D.F.
When: Saturday, March 3 at 15:00.
For more information, synopsis, authors biographies,
and excerpts from the books, visit www.editorialcampana.com
For interviews with the authors, please contact:
Diana Vargas: Diana@dianavargas.com, tel. 917-658-7735
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