Bøger af Angie Cruz

A poignant and nuanced portrait of a Dominican teenager's arranged marriage and immigration to New York City in the 1960s

Aster(ix) is a laboratory, a space where women writers of color can play and experiment. We celebrate our 10th anniversary with a double best-of issue; this issue will feature Fiction and Interviews.¿

Angie Cruz: This issue was anchored by a conversation we had with Sandra Cisneros when she visited Pittsburgh, and she spontaneously had us draw maps at the dinner table. How we quickly could see by looking at our maps where we have been and even where we wanted to go. Some of us were very good at it, some of us couldn't barely orient the cities we live in. We understood it was a rare occasion, eight Latino/as, all writers at different stages of our careers, all very much committed to making this world a better place. I think this conversation is the heart of the issue... All the pieces air some dirty laundry. All the pieces in some way share an intimacy between women, between fathers and sons, lovers, friends, mothers and daughters. All swing open the door and allow us into the devastation of loss, what we desire, what we are capable of. Don't you think?Adriana E. Ramírez: Absolutely! One of the things I love about the phrase "la ropa sucia se lava en casa," is that there is an inherent contradiction to it--when I think of dirty clothes, I imagine laundry lines, with all the linens on display. Yet, the way the phrase is used, dirty clothes are meant to be hidden, obscured--the mystery preserved. I think this tension/contradiction is helpful, even going back to our maps. Mine was so detailed--anally correct, even. I felt the need to hide it, afterwards. Because there was a shame in being so exact, so nerdy, so eager to show o what I knew. Other people at the table did the opposite. Only three states would be labeled, but the person describing the drawing would boast of their lack of knowledge, root their minimal geographical knowledge in a story, a personal history. Being a little wrong cartographically didn't matter, what mattered was the story. Hence, my shame at hiding my perfectly crisp and white laundry--there's no story there. I wanted the story. That mood, the desire for the imperfect but powerful histories we carry, informed this issue.Featuring work by: Norma Liliana Valdez, Joe Jiménez, Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Gessy Alvarez, Li Yun Alvarado, Lizz Huerta, Sandra Cisneros, Ivan Velez, Laura Winther Galaviz, Josefina Báez, Marigloria Palma, Carina del Valle Schorske, and Melanie Márquez Adams.

"Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life. Over the course of twelve sessions, Cara recounts her tempestuous love affairs, her alternately biting and loving relationships with her neighbor Lulu and her sister Angela, her struggles with debt, gentrification and loss, and, eventually, what really happened between her and her estranged son, Fernando. As Cara confronts her darkest secrets and regrets, we see a woman buffeted by life but still full of fight."--Provided by publisjer.

Aster(ix) is a laboratory, a space where women writers of color can play and experiment. We celebrate our 10th anniversary with a double best-of issue; this issue will feature Poetry and Nonfiction, and Fall 2023 will feature Fiction and Interviews.

'One of my favorite books I have read in years' Quiara Alegria Hudes, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter of In the HeightsWrite this down: Cara Romero wants to work. Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life. Over the course of twelve sessions, Cara recounts her tempestuous love affairs, her alternately biting and loving relationships with her neighbor Lulu and her sister Angela, her struggles with debt, gentrification and loss, and, eventually, what really happened between her and her estranged son, Fernando. As Cara confronts her darkest secrets and regrets, we see a woman buffeted by life but still full of fight. Structurally inventive and emotionally kaleidoscopic, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water is Angie Cruz's most ambitious and moving novel yet, and Cara is a heroine for the ages.

Playing the gèuira reminds Angâelica of the people she loves and misses, especially her grandfather in the Dominican Republic.

Playing the gèuira reminds Angâelica of the people she loves and misses, especially her grandfather in the Dominican Republic.

A sweeping novel about love, loss and family from the Women's Prize shortlisted author of Dominicana

Edges: An Aster(ix) Anthology features writers, both established and emerging, whose prose and poetry embraces the themes of establishing, breaking, and defying edges."she stares at the world, takes it to the edge of all the words men weren't able to invent." -Nathalie Handal

My mother loved the moon and would talk to me of their kinship, of her endless respect for the big pale planet and its pull. At night she'd stay out on the balcony, smoking and murmuring. The things they spoke about-who knew.-"Nightgown," Sue Rainsford

An evocative story of family from the Women's Prize shortlisted author of Dominicana

With her first novel, Angie Cruz established herself as a dazzling new voice in Latin-American fiction. Junot Diaz called her "e;a revelation"e; and The Boston Globe compared her writing to that of Gabriel Garca Mrquez. Now, with humor, passion, and intensity, she reveals the proud members of the Coln family and the dreams, love, and heartbreak that bind them to their past and the future. Esperanza did not risk her life fleeing the Dominican Republic to live in a tenement in Washington Heights. No, she left for the glittering dream she saw on television: JR, Bobby Ewing, and the crystal chandeliers of Dallas. But years later, she is still stuck in a cramped apartment with her husband, Santo, and their two children, Bobby and Dallas. She works as a home aide and, at night, stuffs unopened bills from the credit card company in her lingerie drawer where Santo won't find them when he returns from driving his livery cab. Despite their best efforts, they cannot seem to change their present circumstances. But when Santo's mother dies, back in Los Llanos, and his father, Don Chan, comes to Nueva York to live out his twilight years in the Colns' small apartment, nothing will ever be the same. Santo had so much promise before he fell for that maldita woman, thinks Don Chan, especially when he is left alone with his memories of the revolution they once fought together against Trujillo's cruel regime, the promise of who Santo might have been, had he not fallen under Esperanza's spell. From the moment Don Chan arrives, the tension in the Coln household is palpable. Flashing between past and present, Let It Rain Coffee is a sweeping novel about love, loss, family, and the elusive nature of memory and desire, set amid the crosscurrents of the history and culture that shape our past and govern our future.

At eighteen, Soledad couldn''t get away fast enough from her contentious family with their endless tragedies and petty fights. Two years later, she''s an art student at Cooper Union with a gallery job and a hip East Village walk-up. But when Tía Gorda calls with the news that Soledad''s mother has lapsed into an emotional coma, she insists that Soledad''s return is the only cure. Fighting the memories of open hydrants, leering men, and slick-skinned teen girls with raunchy mouths and snapping gum, Soledad moves home to West 164th Street. As she tries to tame her cousin Flaca''s raucous behavior and to resist falling for Richie -- a soulful, intense man from the neighborhood -- she also faces the greatest challenge of her life: confronting the ghosts from her mother''s past and salvaging their damaged relationship. Evocative and wise, Soledad is a wondrous story of culture and chaos, family and integrity, myth and mysticism, from a Latina literary light.