Imagine a language course that starts off with the instructor giving a monologue that lasts all of sixty minutes, delivered almost entirely in Spanish. What our teacher, Hugo, gave us on that first day was a rundown, delivered at a normal conversational pace, on what we could expect in the next month. There were very […]
Continue ReadingYou can find Karen Hursh Graber’s contributions in many places in MexConnect. She’s a regular contributor with her monthly cooking column, “The Mexican Kitchen”. She also contributes to the food department, “The Cuisines of Mexico”. And she also assists with the web-site’s Food Forum. Here, Kitty, (as she’s known to her friends) came out of […]
Continue ReadingA couple of years ago I wrote an article for MexConnect called “A few kind words on behalf of Mexicans“. My wife, Cecilia, and I had had several exceptionally nice things happen to us when we first arrived in Mexico, a couple of which I simply don’t believe would ever happen in Canada. For example…. […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews Here’s a nifty idea for a book for both Spanish language students and for people interested in Mexico. Author De Mente has found an effective way to reach both groups with a volume that takes a studious and careful look at 130 key words in Spanish and has written a couple of pages […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews It’s made up of some 48 items about the country taken from a wide variety of sources. And they’re almost all interesting. The topics cover the gamut of attractions and delights from a dissertation on mariachis to Carlos Fuentes’ essay on Mexico City’s main square. Nothing is more Mexican than the mariachis’ songs […]
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Cogan’s Reviews I’ve been heard to complain lately about the way a lot of books come to us laden with reviewers’ glowing comments and overblown descriptions of the contents. I picked up a paperback not too long ago that had eight pages of reviews inside the covers and a bunch more on the outside covers, […]
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Cogan’s Reviews If one were to believe that this is really a novel in nine stories, as the author and publisher claim, then one would have to say it was a failure. It simply isn’t a novel. And stringing some short stories together doesn’t make it a novel either, just because a few of them […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews The simplest way to describe this tale is to quote from the author’s preface. “South of Yesterday” is the story of my mother’s life as a bride coming to a strange land. The book flows through the charmed life of an American living in Guadalajara in the early nineteen hundreds, into the violence […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews I’m not sure how come I’ve lived in Mexico these last seven years and never got around to reading this rather well known account of life in Ajijic a good half century ago. This seems to be about the time that the earliest arrivals from up north “discovered” the place and decided to […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews Several months ago I reviewed Mexifornia by Victor Davis Hanson. The author of that one described his book as “a reflection upon the strange society that is emerging as the result of a demographic and cultural revolution like no other in our times” – namely, the heavy duty immigration of Mexicans to California and neighboring […]
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