Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Tianguis Bookclub news and more



The fall brings exciting developments and it starts with our bookclub selection, Like Son by Felicia Luna Lemus. We invite you to read along with us and join us for the bookclub discussion on Wed, Oct. 3rd @ 7 p.m.

If you're sad that summer is ending, I think this is just the page turner to distract you. And if you can't get enough of Nahui Olin, after seeing the Frida Contemporaries exhibit, you will be as delighted as me to see how Felicia brings Nahui Olin to life on the pages of this captivating novel.

We are also reading this book in anticipation of the October 12th event, that will be part of the Sor Juana Festival: Entre Letras, Palabras y Cantos. Which will feature Chicago's local Mexicana poets open for acclaimed author Felicia Luna Lemus. These local poets include: Stephanie Gentry-Fernandez, Magda Banda, Yolanda Cardenas, and The Luna Blues Machine. This event is a collaborative between the National Museum of Mexican Art and Proyecto Latina*.

Like Son is available @ Tianguis and your local library.

About the book: Set amidst present-day New York, 1990s Los Angeles, and 1940s Mexico City, Like Son is the not-so-simple story of a father, a son, and the love-blindness shared between them. Frank Cruz is a post-punk, sardonic, thirty-year-old who unwittingly inherits his father's legacy. Born a bouncing baby girl named Francisca to parents tangled in a doomed love affair, Frank grows up in both the poorest barrios and poshest hills of Southern California. A defiant loner, Frank leaves home at the age of eighteen, but is later sucked back into helping his estranged and blind father navigate an untimely death. On his deathbed, Frank's father gives him a mysterious crumbling photograph of a woman with a stunning gaze: Nahui Olin, a fierce member of the early-20th-century Mexican avant-garde who once brought tragedy upon the Cruz family. Punctured to his core by Nahui, Frank takes her portrait and flees to New York City to start anew--this time for real. In September 2001 the New York skyline tumbles, and Frank finds himself smack in the middle of his predestined fate.


* Proyecto Latina is a seperate collaborative between the women of Tianguis, Teatro Luna and Mariposa Atomica Ink.