Books and Bites, Ep. 105: Books by Hispanic-American authors === Carrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Books and Bites podcast. Each month we bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them. I'm Carrie Green, and I'm here with my co-hosts, Michael Cunningham and Jacqueline Cooper. Michael: Hello. Jacqueline: Hello everyone. Carrie: So we've got a few programs coming up that we wanna tell you about. Michael, you wanna share that? Michael: Yes. So we've got some things coming up in the Books and Bites world. So our Books and Bites Book Club. We kind of changed the date and time a little bit, so now it's gonna be on the first Wednesday of the month. And it's gonna be at two o'clock. And then September 18th, we're gonna be having our Silent Book Club, which is gonna be here at the main library from 6:30 to 7:30. Are we gonna do it out there by the-- Carrie: Yeah, we'll do it by the fireplace where we have the comfy chairs, and you'll be able to grab a chair and maybe a drink or a snack and [00:01:00] get some of your reading done and cross off a bingo square. Michael: And we'll have some bookish conversation as well to follow. Carrie: Yes, always fun. Michael: And then in October, on Tuesday, October 21st, will be the book club for The Dark Library by Mary Anna Evans from 6:30 to 7:30. Carrie: And just to remind folks for that one, we do have a few physical copies circulating, but if you want to join us for the book club discussion, we have free copies to give out to people who register and come to the book club discussion. So that registration will open a month before the program. So, September 21st, I think? Michael: Yeah. And then you can also find the ebook on Hoopla Digital right now. And also through Libby. Carrie: Yes. So lots of [00:02:00] options. And Michael and I, well, I just finished it. Michael, you're about halfway through, you said? Michael: Yeah, I'm about halfway through and I got my suspicions. Carrie: Yeah. So no spoilers today. It is a very good fall read, I think. Michael: Yeah. Yeah. For sure Carrie: Got all those Gothic elements that we love. Michael: Yes, I do love those Gothic elements. Carrie: And for the October Books and Bites, we are gonna be speaking with the author Mary Anna Evans. So we'll also be looking for if you have any questions for the author. We'll be taking those from people through our Facebook group. Or you can email us at podcast@jesspublib.org. Jacqueline: Fun. Carrie: All right. Yeah. Jacqueline: Yeah. Sounds great. Carrie: So today we're discussing books by Hispanic-American authors, and that's one of the prompts on the summer-fall bingo sheet. And September 15th [00:03:00] through October 15th is National Hispanic Heritage Month. So it's a great time to read for this prompt. Michael: We do have a list on our Books and Bites page of a lot of great titles that will help fill this prompt for you. Jacqueline: You can always look in NoveList too if you don't see anything on that page. Michael: Yep. That's a great resource. Jacqueline: Mm-hmm. Carrie: We've got some great options for you today too. Michael: Yes. Jacqueline: My pick for this month is Breathe and Count Back from Ten by Natalia Sylvester. The main character, Verónica, is a Peruvian American teen living in central Florida. Her family moved from Peru in hopes of giving their children a better life. Verónica was born with hip dysplasia and spends much of her time swimming for physical therapy. Swimming not only helps ease her pain, it also fuels her dream of becoming a professional mermaid. Inspired by childhood visits to the [00:04:00] famous underwater attraction Mermaid Cove and her mother's folklore tales about Peruvian mermaids. But Verónica's life is shaped by strict expectations. Her parents want her to work in an office, avoid boys, and never draw attention to their family due to fears of deportation. When she began dating her new neighbor, Alex, and secretly auditions to become a mermaid performer, she risks defying everything her parents had planned for her. The story takes a deeper turn when Verónica has a troubling encounter with a boy named Jeremy who mocks her body and makes her question what consent truly means. As Verónica begins to assert her independence, she discovers she's not the only one keeping secrets. Her parents have been hiding the truth about her medical condition. In an effort to shield her from worry, they've kept her in the dark about her surgeries and treatments, leaving her confused and unaware of how profoundly her life could be affected. Her parents have been making decisions about her care without fully explaining the potential consequences. [00:05:00] She feels that she's not been able to voice her feelings without fear or humiliation or deportation. Now Verónica feels she's old enough to decide what happens to her body and is determined to take control of her future. Will her parents understand that she needs to be part of the decision making process? Or will they continue to try to control her through shame and humiliation? This powerful novel explores themes of identity, autonomy, disability, immigration, and the tension with family expectations and personal dreams. It's a moving story about finding your voice and standing up for yourself even when it means challenging those you love most. In the novel, Verónica explains that many Peruvian dishes use cilantro, and I found a recipe for a spicy Peruvian green sauce from Cookie and Kate. This sauce is made with cilantro, jalapenos, a little mayonnaise and Parmesan. Often served with grilled chicken, steak, or vegetables in Peruvian American restaurants. Michael: Well, that sounds, it sounds like a heavy, kind of heavy novel. Jacqueline: Yeah. [00:06:00] I think it kind of goes toward middle grade. Which middle grades do tend to like, seems like they are kind of heavy with like something happens and there's like-- I guess because maybe they're struggling with so much at that age, I'm not really sure. Like how do they like, especially with boys, like how do they interact with people who they like? You know, what is too far, and are they able to say, Hey, no, don't do that. Or they just kinda like get paralyzed. 'cause they're just, it's so new and they don't know how to inter, how to, react. And I think, and plus how to like, tell your parents, you know, I wanna know what's going on. I don't need you to shield me anymore. And things like that. Michael: Yeah, I guess that is about the age when you start, you know, dealing with some of these heavier topics. Jacqueline: Yeah. Yeah. It's not actually necessarily, I guess not necessarily a fun read. But it is kind of [00:07:00] fun learning about like the, she does have like a lot of Peruvian tales about mermaids and stuff in there if you're interested in folklore and stuff like that. So that was kind of, that was kind of interesting. Carrie: So this is, yeah, it sounds like a good and powerful read. For like a non-serious element, have you guys ever heard of Weeki Waachee Springs in Florida? Jacqueline: I think they mentioned that in the book actually. Carrie: So that is where, I think it started in like the fifties or sixties, but there are underwater mermaids, performers, at Weeki Waachee Springs, and there's like this underwater theater. And the performers, I mean, they're dressed like mermaids. I've been there quite a few times. Jacqueline: Oh, that's so cool. Carrie: It's on the west coast of Florida and, I mean, they are amazing, like, [00:08:00] they can hold their breath for so long. I mean, they do have like oxygen tubes that they take surreptitious hits of every now and then, but they're very athletic and Yeah. Jacqueline: They talk about that in the book, like how they take little sips of air once in a while. And that also they talk about the athleticism of, of doing that. Like even though she has the hip dysplasia with being in the water, she doesn't feel it as much. And she almost feels like she's more at home there than on land in some ways 'cause it's so hard for her to walk. And she also mentions the Little Mermaid, like the real Little Mermaid. How when she actually walked on the land, how like hurt to walk on land. So I thought that was a good parallel in the story and stuff. They mentioned, I have a feeling that might be the same place that they're talking about. Do they have, they also talk about manatees. I know that [00:09:00] Manatees in Crystal Springs, Florida. Carrie: Crystal River. Jacqueline: Crystal River. Okay. Yeah, Carrie: Yeah, yeah. Weekee Wachee is close to Crystal River. Yeah. I mean, there's manatees all over Florida. But there are a lot of manatees there. Jacqueline: Yeah. She talks about those. So there, yeah, there are some fun elements in the book. But there's a lot of angst and stuff as well. Michael: Yeah. I was gonna say that my mom used to, she grew up in Fort Lauderdale, but she used to, they used to go out there,and I would hear stories about the mermaids. Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. Jacqueline: Oh, really? That's so cool. I have to, I'd love to see that, it does sound pretty entertaining. Carrie: It's one of those like kitschy old Florida kind of things that's fun to do. Like before Disney World, you know, that kind of thing. Jacqueline: Mm-hmm. Yeah, they mentioned all that in the book. You have to read this book, Carrie. I think you'll enjoy it. Michael: Do they, did they mention, is it like Silver Dollar [00:10:00] or Silver? Carrie: Silver Springs? Michael: Might be, maybe Carrie: Yeah. That's in Ocala. Michael: Ocala, okay. Carrie: But yeah, that was where Michael: it was like a. Was it Old West or maybe? Carrie: Well, it's where Tarzan was filmed. Michael: Okay. Yeah. Carrie: So they have like a glass bottom boat. Michael: Yes. Yep. Oh, yes. That, yeah. My mom talked about that too. Jacqueline: Mm-hmm. Carrie: Yeah. That's another like pre Disney kind of, I mean it's still there. But you know, it was more popular in the days before the big theme parks and everything. Michael: Yeah. Good old days. Carrie: Yeah. Before they paved over the whole state. Jacqueline: And they talk about how they stay away from the Disney, like calling the mermaids Ariel and stuff like that. They stay away from that because of Michael: Can't say that. Jacqueline: Yeah. Because they can't say that and Michael: that costs money, Jacqueline: stuff like that. But yeah. And they talk about how that they're trying, that she actually is writing, like she writes her own little script for her own little scene to kind of update it from the [00:11:00] sixties era where it was, you know, to bring it more to modern life because there's like. Actually there's a young man in the book that he wants to, he wants to be a mermaid, he wants to try out and get a tail and stuff too. To be a merman or whatever. So anyway. Carrie: Yeah. Cool. Jacqueline: Fun book in some ways. Michael: This month I read Tiny Threads, the adult debut from Lilliam Rivera. It's a psychological, slow burn thriller laced with gothic atmosphere that tackles a dark intersection of the fashion industry, capitalism, and misogyny. Our story follows Samara Martin, who was just arrived in Vernon, California, a former mill town that's been rapidly gentrified. A Whole Foods has taken the place of a century old tailor shop, but the town slaughterhouse still stands, a sharp reminder of its grittier [00:12:00] past. Into this uneasy setting, Samara steps into her new role as executive director for Global Brand Voice at the House of Antonio Mota, a revered but fading fashion designer. Her task: to pull off an audacious dual fashion show in just two months and prove that Mota is still relevant. But Samara isn't starting fresh. She's running from something. After the death of her beloved grandmother, a terrible event drove her away from her family in New Jersey, a secret that still shadows her every move. As she tries to settle in, the gothic elements creep in right away. Strange noises in her apartment, the bloody specter of a woman appearing on the streets at night. Her insomnia worsens and she begins leaning on alcohol and caffeine pills to push through the mounting demands of her job. Meanwhile, Antonio Mota grows even more petulant and her grip on reality starts to fray. The tension ratchets up as Samara's visions intensify. Blurring the line between her unraveling mind and Vernon's haunted past something buried in the town [00:13:00] refuses to stay silent, and Samara may not escape it unscathed. Tiny Threads is sharp, unsettling, and gorgeously gothic, a fresh take on how ambition and industry can devour the people caught in their threads. I paired this with a recipe for a mojito, a classic Cuban cocktail. The recipe I found on the kitchen.com calls for rum, mint, lime, simple syrup and topped off with club soda. A perfect drink to beat the summer heat. Carrie: They really are. Michael: Oh yeah. Carrie: That's the kind of drink that just hits you too, because you don't realize how much alcohol is in it. Michael: Yes. Yes. Carrie: And you're like, this is so refreshing. Michael: Yeah. I remember my first one I had, I was in New Orleans in Marigny, and there was this little bar and I ordered a mojito. I was like, man, this is like the perfect drink for this weather. Jacqueline: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Carrie: Did you know that Louisville has the highest concentration of Cubans outside of Miami in the United States? Michael: No. Are you [00:14:00] serious? Carrie: Yeah. Apparently there are a lot of amazing Cuban restaurants in Louisville. I haven't, I wanna go check them out. We used to get a lot of good Cuban food where I grew up. But yeah. Michael: Yeah. I'm going to have to look that up. We went to, me and my wife went to a concert years ago on the waterfront, and there was a Cuban food truck there. And they had plantains Jacqueline: mm-hmm. Michael: It was so good. Jacqueline: Yeah. Hmm. Michael: Yeah. I'm gonna go check out the Cuban scene in Louisville. Jacqueline: Yeah. Yeah. I, there's a restaurant in Danville that does like Cuban and Mexican, kind of like a mix of Latino food Michael: where? Jacqueline: It's downtown Danville. I can't think of the name of it, but they have really good plantains, so I'll have to get you that. Michael: Is it not Copper and Oak? Jacqueline: Oh, no, no, no. Copper and Oak is a steak place, but It's really good too, if you like, Carrie: it's hard to beat a fried plantain. Michael: Oh, man. Jacqueline: Yeah. They're so [00:15:00] delicious. Carrie: I read How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz. This novella is told from the point of view of Cara Romero, a 56-year-old woman from the Dominican Republic who lives in the New York City neighborhood of Washington Heights. It's the height of the Great Recession, and Cara lost her job at "the factory of little lamps" nearly two years ago. She's been subsisting on unemployment since then, and now, in order to keep her unemployment while she continues to look for work, she's enrolled in a senior workforce program. In this 12 week program, Cara meets once a week with a career counselor. The book is structured as if Cara is talking to her counselor, with a chapter for each week. "My name is [00:16:00] Cara Romero," the first session begins, "and I came to this country because my husband wanted to kill me. Don't look so shocked. You're the one who asked me to say something about myself." As you can see from that excerpt, the conversation meanders pretty early on from her work history and skills to stories of her life. Cara talks about her difficult relationship with her mother who didn't protect her from her husband. She expresses grief and regret over her estrangement from her only son, a gay man named Fernando. She also tells stories about the family and friends in her building: her exacting younger sister Angela, and her gentle brother-in-law, Hernan; her neighbor, Lulu, and others. Interspersed between the sessions are job search documents, such as her applications and interview preparation, rent invoices, and eventually a citizenship application. [00:17:00] What emerges from both the interviews and documents is a portrait of a spirited, complex, and often funny character. Cara believes in the spam emails she gets from Alicia the Psychic and makes decisions about jobs based on them. She cares deeply about her community, offering the kind of emotional, unpaid labor that is so often overlooked in capitalist societies. She babysits her sister's children, for example, and cooks daily meals for an elderly neighbor. Her neighbors struggle with job loss and gentrification too, and Cara is there for all of them, but she also makes plenty of mistakes, as in her broken relationship with her son. If you enjoy character-driven fiction with strong, first person voices and an experimental structure, you might like How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water. Even though the characters are very different ages, the voice-driven narration reminded me of Sandra Cisneros's novella The House on Mango Street, another excellent choice for this prompt. Near the end of the novel, Cara brings her counselor, "some pastelitos without raisins because I don't like raisins. I fried them this morning so they're fresh. Also, I brought you a cafe con leche from the restaurant because it is better and costs three times less than the ones they sell in the white people cafe." According to Jasmin Hernandez, "Dominican pastelitos are deep fried patties made of highly seasoned ground beef, pork, chicken, shrimp, or spinach and cheese stuffed with chopped olives, and sometimes with bits of egg and raisins." And we'll link to her recipe on our blog. Michael: Interesting. I would love to try one, the, the raisin thing. Just, Carrie: yeah. Michael: It sounds interesting. Carrie: [00:19:00] Apparently there's like two camps, you know? The narrator doesn't like them with raisins and the person whose recipe I found, she also doesn't like them with raisins. But there are a lot of people who like them with raisins. I guess it's kind of like kind of savory Indian recipes that have raisins. So there are some savory foods with raisins in them. Michael: Yeah, I know some people do like, like a chicken salad. I think they'll do some raisins in there. Or grapes. Jacqueline: It's interesting that, you know, she's a senior looking for work, and I'm more, I'm kind of interested in like how struggling that is. You know, as we get older, how even for everyone, no matter what race, like the struggle to get work when you're older. Did they really talk a whole lot about that? Like how it was hard for her to find work or anything? Carrie: Yeah. I mean, she talks about that. She's [00:20:00] 56, so I mean, technically she's not a senior. The program was, I guess for 55 and up. Jacqueline: Oh, okay. Carrie: But, you know, it was during the recession of 2008. So just a lot of people were out of work, and she had worked at the same factory basically since she came to the states. Jacqueline: yeah, that's a tough year for people in middle age. I remember I was working at a community college and a lot of women, you know, had been going there for several years and kind of reeducating them, getting ready for this change with moving from, you know, factories to tech, but a lot of the men had not, were not attending these colleges. And it was a devastating, kind of hard period for men in particular. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Jacqueline: But evidently, I'm sure it was probably hard for women as well. Carrie: Oh yeah. I mean, it was hard for everyone. I [00:21:00] was looking for a job in 2008. So yeah, I can definitely relate to that. Jacqueline: Yeah. I think the job market does get the older you get. It does seem like the job market. It seems like there's less choices maybe, or people are, Carrie: Well, I think there's a lot of ageism. Michael: Oh yeah. Carrie: And people think that just because you're older, you can't do the work even though you have experience and wisdom that someone much younger wouldn't have. Jacqueline: Yeah. Sometimes people don't value that experience, which it's really, it is very valuable. I think that people should, employers hopefully do value it when they're making these decisions. Not always sure that that's the case. No, I'm afraid of it. Carrie: It was a very unique structure for a book, so I really enjoyed it. Thanks for listening to the Books and Bites [00:22:00] podcast. Our theme music is The Breakers from the album In Close Quarters with The Enemy by Scott Whiddon. You can learn more about Scott and his music at his website, adoorforadesk.com.