Category: Sandra Cisneros

Links: First-Time Callers

by Mark Athitakis, posted in Don DeLillo, Jay McInerney, Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Sarvas, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sandra Cisneros, Toni Morrison

Hello there. There’s a goodly chance that you’re here today because Mark Sarvas was nice enough to include this blog on his list of ten “Really, Really Smart Literary Blogs.” I feel a bit like the little old lady whose hair is still in curlers when the Prize Patrol van arrives, but I appreciate your swinging by. If this is your first time here, a few “greatest hits” posts you might want to look at: my piece on the best books of 2008, some stray thoughts on Saul Bellow’s Mr. Sammler’s Planet, a few more on the future of book reviewing, a guide to Haruki Murakami‘s translations of American authors, and some thoughts about best practices about for DIY publishing. I usually do link roundup like this once a week, but as with many things in life, this is changeable. Onward.

Don DeLillo‘s America points to a cache of DeLillo radio
interviews on YouTube.

Jay McInerney talks to the Wall Street Journal about his new story collection, How It Ended which includes an update on the life of Alison Poole, the protagonist of his novel Story of My Life. Poole was modeled after one of his ex-girlfriends, Rielle Hunter, perhaps better known for her attachment to former presidential candidate John Edwards.

One less teacher is using Toni Morrison‘s Beloved in the classroom. Kids are still using The Scarlet Letter to learn about public humiliation, though.

The Daily Iowan catches up with longtime Kurt Vonnegut confidante Loree Rackstraw; make sure to check out the slideshow, which has some fine images of Vonnegutiana in Rackstraw’s home.

It’s the 25th anniversary of Sandra Cisneros‘ The House on Mango Street. At a recent event at Rice University honoring the book, she offered some of the best advice for writers I’ve heard: “First, you write like you’re talking to someone in your pajamas. Then you revise like your enemy is reading it.”

Sandra Cisneros: Problem?

by Mark Athitakis, posted in Sandra Cisneros

Those looking for another canary in the coalmine signaling that the book-publishing industry is having a rough go of it these days—not that you need much more evidence—might consider the case of the Edward James Olmos Houston Latino Book and Family Festival, which recently hosted its sixth and final event. The Houston Press reported earlier this month that festival founder Nuestra Palabra, a nonprofit supporting Latino writers, pulled the plug in part due to book-business economics:

In January, [Nuestra Palabra chief Tony Diaz] says, Continental Airlines stopped their sponsorship of nonprofit organizations and banking institutions pulled their support. Even book publishers, usually eager to have their authors appear at high-profile events like the EJOLBFF, stopped covering travel and appearance fees for authors.

The organization still has a reading series, though, and Diaz makes an interesting point to the Press about how bringing in brand-name Latino authors might force the organization to rethink how it promotes itself:

“Nuestra Palabra is bringing in Sandra Cisneros in to Houston in 2009, but she’s not just a Latino writer any more. She’s at the point where for her to be thought of as just a Latino writer is a disservice to her work and to other folks who can embrace her writing, even though they’re not Latino. So I think this is the time for us to come up with new ways of how to be authentic to who we are but also open up to other communities. It’s not enough to be multi-cultural anymore. We have to be multi-multi-cultural. We have to be multi-media.”

It’s a classic crisis: Go more mainstream and you court criticism that you’ve lost sight of your mission; stay small and you court criticism that you’re not doing enough to get the word out. Inviting Cisneros to speak hardly seems like it would ignite a contentious situation, but it’s funny what sort of battle lines get drawn in a bad economy.