|
|
|
|  | Martin & Meditations on the South Valley by Denise Levertov, Jimmy S. Baca
Fiercely moving, the two long narrative poems of Martin & Meditations on the South Valley revolve around the semi-autobiographical figure of Martin, a mestizo or `detribalized Apache.` Abandoned as a child and a long time on the hard path to building his own family, Martin at last finds his home in the stubborn and beautiful world of the barrio. Jimmy Santiago Baca `writes with unconcealed passion, ` Denise Levertov states in her introduction, `but he is far from being a naive realist; what makes his writing so exciting to me is the way in which it manifests both an intense lyricism and that transformative vision which perceives the mythic and archetypal significance of life-events.` AUTHOR: Denise Levertov, Jimmy S. Baca
PUBLISHER: New Directions Publishing Corporation
FORMAT: Paperback
CATEGORY: Fiction 
|
 | Sleep Demons by Bill Hayes
Folk remedies, therapy, sleeping pills, and wishful thinking have all been called upon by this insomniac memoirist to secure a good night's rest. Here, in detailing his trials to fall asleep, he muses on much sleep-related trivia that ranges from the biochemical to the truly bizarre. Hayes uses his lifelong sleeplessness as a backdrop to meditate on other details of his life--his homosexuality, his partner's AIDS, and his childhood. AUTHOR: Bill Hayes
PUBLISHER: Atria Books
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: Fiction
|
 | Parrot in the Oven - El Perico en el Horno by Robert Ramirez, Victor Martinez
Manuel Hernandez faces a time of many changes during the year leading up to anticipated initiation into a gang. Manny's alcoholic father calls him el perico, or parrot, comparing him to the Mexican saying about a parrot that complains about how hot it is in the shade while all along he's sitting inside the oven and doesn't know it. Will Manny find a way to escape for the oven he's trapped himself in? AUTHOR: Robert Ramirez, Victor Martinez
PUBLISHER: HarperCollins Children's Book Group
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: Fiction
|
 | Many Stones by Carolyn Coman, Mandy Siegfried
Sixteen-year-old Berry agrees to accompany her estranged father on a trip to South Africa. The trip is an attempt for both of them to come to terms with the death of Berry's older sister, who was murdered a year earlier while serving as a volunteer teacher in a Capetown school. Still angry at her father for divorcing her mother and moving away, Berry realizes that she must heal not only the emotional wounds following her sister's murder, but also her relationship with her father. A 2001 Michael L. Printz Honor Book for Excellence in Literature for Young Adults. AUTHOR: Carolyn Coman, Mandy Siegfried
PUBLISHER: Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers
FORMAT: Paperback
CATEGORY: Fiction
|
 | Novels, 1942-1954 by Joseph Blotner, Noel Polk, William Faulkner
GO DOWN, MOSES is a cycle of seven interrelated episodes (including the much-anthologized story, The Bear ) examining the complex, changing relationships among the descendents of the McCaslin family in Faulkner's mythical Yoknapatawpha County. The novel recounts the early days of Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin, and continues through the lives of his many descendants, both black and white, in a noteworthy exploration of race and miscegenation, and of the impact of the South's vanishing wilderness on the rural population. Lucas Beauchamp of GO DOWN, MOSES reappears in INTRUDER IN THE DUST. Beauchamp has been accused of murdering a white man, Vinson Gowrie. To save Lucas from lynching, it is up to Chick Mallison, with the help of an old woman and a small boy, to find the real murderer. Faulkner's novel was made into an acclaimed motion picture in 1949. REQUIEM FOR A NUN is a sequel to the earlier SANCTUARY, and continues the story of Temple Drake eight years later. Now married to Gowan Stevens, Temple tries to save the life of a nurse who is accused of murdering Temple and Gowan's child. Most of the novel is presented in the form of a play. Each act begins with an essay giving the background of the events and a history of the mythical Yoknapatawpha County, as well as a consideration of the ways in which the past affects the present--Faulkner's perennial theme. Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1955, A FABLE is an allegorical novel about a French corporal--meant to be seen as a Christ figure--during World War I. In perhaps his most ambitious work, Faulkner abandoned Yoknapatawpha County, and set A FABLE largely in the trenches of France. He spent more than ten years writing this complex novel and considered it to be his masterpiece. AUTHOR: Joseph Blotner, Noel Polk, William Faulkner
PUBLISHER: Library of America, The
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: Fiction
|
 | Novels & Stories by Michael D. Bell, Sarah Orne Jewett
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909), one of the foremost local color writers in America, wrote exclusively about her native Maine--its landscape, its people, and its fading rural traditions. Her unsentimental, humorous, and deeply affectionate stories and sketches provide a realistic picture of a bygone time that is based on Jewett's family, neighbors, and personal experience, but that is filtered through the consciousness of an extremely gifted and observant fiction writer. DEEPHAVEN, a coming-of-age novel-in-stories about a young woman who views her small-town community with an amused but never cynical eye, has much in common with Jewett's shorter fiction. It is one of her most loved and admired works. Originally published in 1896, THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS concerns a young woman writer, summering in the Maine fishing village of Dunnet Landing. As she stays there, she becomes closer to the people of the village, and to the power of the land and sea that surround her. The characters include an ancient sea captain who claims to have once explored the Arctic, a shepherdess who has resisted marriage to the man she loves for 40 years, Mrs. Todd the herb expert, and a legendary hermit. AUTHOR: Michael D. Bell, Sarah Orne Jewett
PUBLISHER: Library of America, The
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: Fiction
|
|
|
