100 Love Sonnets
The final 50 were written after the author meets Gioia in San Miguel de Allende. They become lovers and "The second half of the sonnets, from 51 on, were inspired by and written for her."
Both halves, though, are about extraordinary women. read more
A Pillow Stuffed with Diamonds: Tanka on La Vida Mexicana
Margaret Van Every's bilingual lyric poetry, following the seventh century Japanese five-line Tanka format, affords the reader one pleasurable moment after another.
With well-honed sensibilities she unveils her day-by-day confrontation with Mexican culture and its people — a confrontation that soon became a love affair. read more
Homer and the Aztec muse in Mexican literature
Discovering Clues to the Legacy of a Mexican Poet: Manuel Rocha y Chabre
Several years ago, I was rummaging through a box of family photos with my dad, when he showed me an old, yellowing image of his mother from 1908. He told me it was taken in Mexico at the wedding of her cousin, the poet and playwright Manuel Rocha y Chabre.
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Writing about writers: Puerto Vallarta and Jenny McGill
Mexico inspires a growing list of foreign writers
Roberto Bolaño
The wave of media excitement generated in 2009 by the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño was on a par with the announcement of a new Britney Spears release, even if up until that moment ...
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Six degrees of separation: how a Mexican star became a Cajun legend
Even if you have never wondered what ties Mexico to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, I'm going to tell you anyway. It begins with a poem.
Longfellow's epic 1847 poem, "Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie," is the story of an Acadian girl, Evangeline Bellefontaine ("Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers"), her betrothed, Gabriel Lajeunesse ("a valiant youth, and his face, like the face of the morning"), and their agonizing separation when, in 1755, the British deported Acadians (Cajuns) from Nova Scotia in The Great Expulsion. ("… all your lands, and dwellings, and cattle of all kinds, forfeited be to the crown; and that you yourselves from this province be transported to other lands.") Gabriel was torn from Evangeline's side and crammed onto a ship bound for America, leaving her ashore, silently weeping. But not for long.
read moreThe Sanchez Ghost
A tale of haunted guilt set in Mexico City and in the mind of the haunted protagonist, Pablo.
. . . Omar gazed at the rifle trained at his chest, and no presentiment crossed his brow. He knew it was Pablo's gun; he had gone pheasant hunting with him and his old man in the past among the gullies of hills of valleys extending to the great volcano of Popocatépetl. . . .
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Washing Dishes in the Ancient Village / Lavando platos en el antiguo pueblo: A Few Comments
Ghosts of the Palace of Blue Tiles: Los fantasmas del Palacio de los Azulejos by Jorge Fernández Granados
Sacred Lake Poems by Bill Frayer
Available from the author
Life in Mexico observed by someone who is bursting with affection for his new country.
I have reviewed a lot of fiction and non-fiction books for Mexico Connect, but I...
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Loving Pedro Infante by Denise Chavez
"What can I tell you about Pedro Infante? If you're a Mejicana or Mejicano and don't know who he is, you should be tied to a hot stove with yucca rope and beaten with sharp dry corn husks as you stand in a vat of soggy fideos. If your racial and cultural ethnicity is Other, then it's about time you learned about the most famous of Mexican singers and actors."
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The Pearl: a novella by John Steinbeck
In film or fiction, The Pearl is a good story. It is one of those stories so simple that it becomes profound.
read moreMemories of my melancholy whores: a novel
The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.
read moreAlejandro Rangel Hidalgo - Universal artist from Colima
In the half-light I enter the ‘horno’ or oven room. A base of reds frames the pre-Hispanic pieces in the Museum of Alejandro Rangel Hidalgo. It is easy to imagine the fiery origin of the land ...
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Jose Garcia Olvera - El Professor De Los Pobres
Olvera has been teaching a choir in Santa Ana Tepetitlan, for boys aged six to 13 years old, five days a week for the last 23 years.
The first time I hear the choir Ninos Cantores d...
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Queen of the South by Arturo Perez Reverte
The story line concerns a young Mexican girl, Teresa Mendoza, 23 years old, who is in love with a Chicano Cessna pilot who flies cocaine and hashish from Colombia to locations in Texas. It's a dangerous trade to be in and Teresa's lover, Güero Dávila, is well aware of the risks, not only from drug enforcement agents but also from rival narcotraficantes. With the former, the risks are imprisonment. With the latter, the penalty is death should one lose a shipment or not play the game the way the bosses want it played.
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Mexico, a Traveller's Literary Companion by C. M. Mayo
I've reviewed over a hundred books for Mexico Connect. These have covered the gamut of topics, all related to this country - fiction, travel, history, living in Mexico, moving to Mexico, biographies, city profiles and a few volumes difficult to categorize. I thought I had covered just about all aspects of the subject. Imagine my surprise, then, to suddenly be reminded of a sizeable slice of Mexicana that I had barely touched. Discovering it was like opening a door and walking into a brightly lit room filled with all kinds of literary treasures, all of which were produced in Mexico by active homegrown writers, many of whom are probably known to Mexican readers but not necessarily to outsiders like myself who need much more familiarity with Spanish in order to appreciate the breadth and scope of this country's literature.
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Pulp Fiction - Mexico's Historieta
Moralistic, prejudiced, racist, misogynist, manipulative, sexist, daring, exciting, critical, sarcastic and passionate - these are just a few adjectives that commonly describe Mexico's most widely-read...
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Music & Dance In Mexico
MUSIC
The music of Mexico provides a rich tapestry of rhythm, tone, and variety. Its roots are based on a compelling history of disparate influences.
From the music of the Mariachi, the Corri...
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Zorro by Isabel Allende
There have been several versions of the Zorro story since its initial appearance in 1905 in The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley. When I did a search on Google.com I was offered several thousand references to the character. It's all new to me. It's not really clear to me why a novelist as renowned as Isabel Allende would produce yet another version of this oft told story.
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Treasures in Heaven, a Novel by Kathleen Alcala
Here's an interesting novel set in turn-of-the-century Mexico City. It's a story that's mainly concerned with women's rights, which were just about non-existent in those times, and the political turbulence preceding the Mexican Revolution. Estela, a rather attractive and spirited lady, lives in a small rural town with her infant son, Noé. We meet her at the point in her life when she is leaving her husband and heading for Mexico City. Essentially she's looking for her former lover, Dr. Victor Carranza.
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Bilimbique: A Story From Mexico by Peggy Brown Balderrama
One of the problems with reviewing this short but interesting novel is that the plot is based on a couple of surprises. To say too much about it would spoil the story. Once the action gets well underway the reader is presented with a surprising development involving one of the main characters. At that point the reader can even be forgiven for believing the story is essentially over. Read on however, and you'll find that Sra. Balderrama has another trick up her sleeve for the last chapter, a ploy that makes the experience of reading Bilimbique even more satisfying.
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Searching for Sor Juana - Mexican poet
In the preface to his monumental biography Sor Juana, the late Octavio Paz wrote, "In her lifetime [1651 to 1695], Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was read and admired not only in Mexico but in Spain and al...
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Rain of Gold
This novel is a kind of Mexican "Roots" - a big family survival saga covering three generations of two families, complete with a large cast of characters. Author Villaseñor has based his complex, sprawling tale on the experiences of his own family members and his interviews with them. In fact, even though this is a novel, the author has included several actual family photos of the people he's writing about. It certainly lends a measure of authenticity to the narrative. Historically, the novel covers the period from the Mexican Revolution, around 1910, to the Prohibition era in California. The action takes place in many parts of Mexico and in many states in the U.S.
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