Writing about my mothering experience as a foreigner raising bilingual and bicultural children, dealing with the system on behalf of my special needs son and navigating Chicago and the world with my kids.
In my previous life, the one before I had kids, I was a voracious reader. Since an early age, when I was growing up in a village with barely any other kids, and where my shiny Game Boy was the most exciting technological advance we had ever seen, books were my best friends. Eventually I would become a “professional” reader, as I was pursuing a PhD in Literature (spoiler: I never finished it). At that time I would read five books a week, and then some articles.
Fast forward a few years and a baby, and I was barely reading anything.
Last year GoodReads happily informed that I had read all of 21 books. In a year. That makes less than two books a month.
This year I decided to make reading more a priority. I have set a goal of 40 books for my Reading Challenge, to keep myself accountable. And to help with my accountability, I am going to share what I have read at the end of each month. I am omnivorous, and I read in English and in Spanish. I favor fiction and poetry, but I will read even the instruction manuals of toys. My books posts will be bilingual too, I will post in both my In English and my En español sections.
Although one of my dream jobs would be to be a book critic (or restaurant critic, movie critic, travel writer… like pretty much everyone else out there, right?), I won’t pretend that I am one. I will just share what I like about each book, my impressions. I will share the info of the books, in case you are interested. I am only going to ask you a favor: if you decide to buy one of them, consider buying it from an independent bookstore. They are pretty magical places, and they are an endangered species. In Chicago, a few I recommend are Sandmeyer’s Bookstore, Unabridged Bookstore, City Lit, Women and Children First or The Book Cellar. As with books, I will happily take bookstore recommendations.
And without more delay, here are my February books.
Sab, by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda. Manchester University Press, 2001.
This is a remnant of my Grad School days. I have a bookshelf and a half full of books that I have accumulated in the last 17 years. I am making an effort to read them in the order they fell there when we last moved, because otherwise there are some that I would never read. This is one of them. It is a 19th century novel staged in Cuba, and it tells of the love felt by Sab, a slave, for Carlota, the daughter of the owner of the ranch where he lives. It is a Romantic novel, one more in the genre of Caribbean and South American slave stories. The particularity of this one is that it was written by a woman, which was not common at the time. It was an OK novel, with not much new. But now I would love to read a biography of its author, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda.
Reluctant Mirrors: New and Selected Poems, by Aaron Rosen. Sheep Meadow, 2006.
For every birthday and holiday, my husband gives me a poetry book. By now I have a sizeable collection, many of them waiting to be opened. I didn't connect with this book, maybe because I read most of it right after having a baby. I am not sure if the poems are as surreal as I perceived them, or if the hormonal daze made it look that way.
Poesía urbana. Luis García Montero. Sevilla: Renacimiento, 2011.
I truly enjoyed every single page of this book. It is an anthology, and the link among all poems are different cities in the world. Madrid, New York, Granada become the background for the poet's adventures and affairs, told in playfully plain Spanish. It is a world that no longer exists, a world where poets smoke cigarettes, and describe the reality as it is, not as it is on Instagram. These are the kind of poems that I would like to read in bed. In good company. I haven't found an English version of this particular book, but I found a translation of one of his books of poems: The World So Often: Poems 1982-2008, Salt Publishing 2013.
Los besos en el pan, by Almudena Grandes. Barcelona: Tusquets, 2015.
In an ideal world, there would be infinite books by Almudena Grandes. I never read her books as soon as they are publish to make sure that I always have one on hand for when I really need literary comfort. Whatever happens around me, and however tough some of the stories she tells are, I always know that her books will give me comfort, will take care of me, will make me happy. This one is not an exception. It tells the stories of several families through the last economic recession. And although some of those stories are hard to read, the book ends in a hopeful note. Coincidentally, Almudena Grandes is married to Luis García Montero. As I was reading both books at the same time, all I could think is that dinners at their house have to lead to a hell of many interesting conversations. I haven't found a translation for this book, but you can easily find a translation of The Ages of Lulu, her breakthrough novel.
Oceanic, by Aimee Nezhukumatathil Copper Canyon Press
Another gift of poetry, I was able to connect with this one immediately. The fact that several of the poems talk about maternity may have had something to do with it, since that is what I am spending most of my time on right now. The titles of the poems alone are so creative that they are reason enough to read it.
Mi chica revolucionaria, by Diego Ojeda, Madrid: Mueve tu lengua, 2014.
I will start by saying that Diego Ojeda is not Luis García Montero. His poems lack the depth that García Montero's reach. But his work is an honest and refreshing attempt at renovating Spanish poetry, at trying to do something different (one of his poems reads like hip-hop!), and that attempt has attracted young Millennials to poetry in a way that no one had been able to attract the previous generations, including mine. They are fun to read, and he still has plenty of time for his writing to mature, so I would keep and eye on him. I haven't found any of his books translated into English, but they are perfect for those who want to start reading in Spanish, as they are very rich in vocabulary
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