Bodega Dreams

Bodega Dreams: A Novel
by Ernesto Quinonez

Although most of his friends succumb to the vices of street life in the ghetto, like William Bodega, Chino dreams of a better future. Therefore, Chino goes to college, while Bodega becomes the most successful slumlord in East Harlem. Their paths cross when Nazaro, Bodega's lawyer, needs Chino's help finding Bodega's lost love, the one he built his success to impress. Chino is so mesmerized by Bodega's dream of building a professional Latino class and a real estate empire that his vision gets clouded. Instead of remaining true to himself, he succumbs to Nazaro's schemes, only to end up his pawn. Chino discovers that although Bodega's crooked plan for political, social, and economic changes fails, the purity of his dream lives on. Quinonez captures more than just the loss of innocence in this novel, he captures the true flavor of the Latin world in Spanish Harlem. From ethnic food, colloquialisms and crude street-talk, to "Spanglish," evangelical religion, and salsa music, this story pulses with the rhythm of a Latin people dancing on Anglo soil. Furthermore, Quinonez's gripping story sparkles with metaphors so brilliant and tangible that the reader will be absorbed from beginning to end.

When I Was Puerto Rican

When I Was Puerto Rican
by Esmeralda Santiago

Esmeralda Santiago's story begins in rural Puerto Rico, where her childhood was full of both tenderness and domestic strife, tropical sounds and sights as well as poverty. Growing up, she learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. As she enters school we see the clash, both hilarious and fierce, of Puerto Rican and Yankee culture. When her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually take on a new identity. In this first volume of her much-praised, bestselling trilogy, Santiago brilliantly recreates the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years and her tremendous journey from the barrio to Brooklyn, from translating for her mother at the welfare office to high honors at Harvard.