Latino Literacy Now’s International Latino Book Awards
More Good News! Cross Over Water: A Novel is a finalist for an International Latino Book Award in the category of Best Novel (Adventure/Drama-English).
This is the largest and most important book awards for Latino authors and themes founded by Latino Literacy Now, which promotes literacy in the Latino community in all forms: educational, financial, reading, and community awareness. Since 1997, 49 Latino Book & Family Festivals have been held around the USA with a combined attendance of over 800,000. It also conducts the Latino Books into Movies Awards as an effort to increase the number of Latino themed films that are produced.
The 14th annual International Latino Book Awards will be held the evening of June 5, 2012 at 7 p.m. at the Instituto Cervantes in New York City in the heart of midtown at 211 East 49th Street.
Each year the International Latino Book Awards are held during BookExpo America, the largest publishing trade show in the United States, held annually at the Javits Center in New York City. This places the most important book industry event together with the most important awards for Latino books. Last year ILBA honored 137 publishers and authors. This is truly an international event with publishers and authors from across the USA, Latin America, and Spain.
Click HERE for a complete list of the 148 finalists for the International Latino Book Awards.
¡Mas y Mas!
World Book Night is an annual celebration designed to spread a love of reading and books. To be held in the U.S. as well as the U.K. and Ireland on April 23, 2012. It will see tens of thousands of people go out into their communities to spread the joy and love of reading by giving out free World Book Night paperbacks.
World Book Night, through social media and traditional publicity, will also promote the value of reading, of printed books, and of bookstores and libraries to everyone year-round.
Successfully launched in the U.K. in 2011, World Book Night will also be celebrated in the U.S. in 2012, with news of more countries to come in future years. Please join our mailing list for regular World Book Night U.S. news. And thank you to our U.K. friends for such a wonderful idea!
Additionally, April 23 is UNESCO’s World Book Day, chosen due to the anniversary of Cervantes’ death, as well as Shakespeare’s birth and death.
Visit www.worldbooknight.org for more details.
The editors of ForeWord Reviews named Cross Over Water: A Novel as a Finalist for Book of the Year—Adult Fiction (Multicultural).
ForeWord is the only review journal devoted exclusively to covering books from independent houses—ranging in size from university presses publishing up to a hundred titles a year to niche, POD, and small presses who may publish one title in a lifetime.
ForeWord’s Book of the Year Awards program was designed for booksellers and librarians to share in the process of discovering distinctive books across a number of genres with judgments based on their own authority and on patron interests.
The best independent titles from 2011 (Gold, Silver, and Bronze Award Winners), as well as the Editor’s Choice Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction, will be announced on June 23, 2011, at the American Library Association Conference in Anaheim, CA.
Go here for a complete list of finalists in several genres.
Happy New Year!
It’s hard to believe that it has been almost a year since my debut novel made its way into the world. As I have shared on this page, there have been many occasions to celebrate its publication. You can review photos, news, and notes of appreciation on the Archive page (click HERE to visit).
Most recently, I am very happy to mention that Cross Over Water was cited on two end-of-the-year book lists:
Latino Stories – 2012 Top Ten “New Latino Authors” to Watch (and Read). Click HERE to see the complete list of authors/books listed.
Southwest Books of the Year::Pima County Library – “Notable Book” in Fiction. Click HERE to read what W. David Laird wrote about my novel.
I am thrilled to share the company of many other fine authors with books published in 2011. And I am especially proud to be recognized in the Chicano/Latino literary community.
¡ Mas y Mas !
Thanks to all communities — El Paso, El Chuco, Lower Valley, La Frontera — who have lent their voices to my writer’s vision.
My novel received a cool (and positive) review in the Fall 2011 issue of Texas Books in Review (Vol. XXXI, No. 3).
Until a link is available, I thought I would post a photo.
Thanks to Laura Wilson and the Southwest Regional Humanities Center
& Center for the Study of the Southwest at Texas State University-San Marcos for their support of contemporary literature in Tejas.
![I am very appreciative of readers who have shared their thoughts and reflections on my novel at personal appearances and through my Facebook page. Listening to voices in the community is one of the main reasons I enjoy being a writer.
Here are two well-written reviews that have been posted on goodreads:
Reader: Keith Michael
“The title of Richard Yañez’s novel, Cross over Water, could refer to the physical act of immigration for many Mexican-Americans. But 12-year-old “Ruly” Cruz’s crossing begins when his childhood home is inexplicably “left behind like a lizard tail in the desert,” and can only end when he recognizes his role in the future of the borderland. As a boy, Ruly wanders through his adolescence without the framework of cultural tradition and community, indulging in fast food and fantasies of gridiron triumphs. He passes the usual milestones of teenage life: first parties and puppy love, alienation and embarrassment, but he is unfulfilled by his job (a cart-boy at a local retail store), living in a casita behind an elderly woman’s house, eating his microwave dinners and watching television. When he discovers a public park operating as a migrant work camp and re-designated as “People’s Park,” his restless spirit is mended by voluntary acts of compassion, and his life is forever changed. Yanez’s rendering of El Paso is nuanced and colorful, almost Zen-like in its thoughtful intensity: the author strikes the target without aiming. The character of Ruly represents the rich inner life, contradiction and mystery of the city: “Raul is El Paso personified: aware of the past, but always heading to the future because ‘the past could deport you to a place in your memory. And no matter how much you declared yourself to the present, you were hopelessly uprooted.’ “ Yañez’s prose resembles an awaited letter with its calm intimacy and directness. His writing addresses the effects of suffering and growth upon the human spirit. The binary relationships between Mexico and America, tradition and change, manhood and adolescence press upon the narrative of Cross Over Water, but it is a story of loss as well as regeneration, like the desert lizard with the missing tail.”
*
From Melissa, who blogs at The Feminist Texican [Reads]:
“Cross Over Water by Richard Yañez is the coming of age story of “Ruly” Cruz, a Mexican American boy growing up 0n the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas. The book begins following Ruly at the age of 12, when he’s still an aloof tween whose primary preoccupations are masturbating and hanging out with his cousin Laura. Following his mother’s promotion, Ruly is uprooted from his childhood home into a new house in the suburbs, throwing the routine of his life into disarray. As he eases into young adulthood, Ruly begins to mature into a thoughtful young man who is slowly embracing his roots and seeking out his past. Through it all, El Paso is just as important a “character” as Ruly is: isolated in the middle of a desert, right across from Juarez, Mexico, the city is Ruly’s playground, home, and teacher.
The first half of the book traces all of the typical rites of passage of a Chicano teen boy growing up on the border, like navigating the social hierarchies of junior high and high school, dating (and trying to lose his virginity in the process), and crossing the border into Mexico to party with friends. The writing here is pretty straightforward; in restricting his narrative to reflect Ruly’s maturity at any given age, Yañez allows the reader to grow along with Ruly. Although it was at times trying to be stuck inside the mind of a boy obsessed with his “palito,” by the end of the book, one can certainly appreciate the overall evolution of Ruly’s interests and desires.
After high school, Ruly’s friends move on to the next phase of their lives while Ruly stays on in El Paso, lonely and working in a dead end job at a grocery store. For a while, it’s business as usual. He continues goofing off, until one day he stumbles across the community of homeless people living in People’s Park. From that point on, Ruly’s eyes are opened; he absorbs the stories of everyone he encounters and has a sudden urge to learn about his own history. Walking back home with his girlfriend shortly after this intellectual awakening, dozens of thoughts swim through Ruly’s mind:
He didn’t want to turn her off by admitting how much he didn’t know from books…he wondered why no teacher had ever bothered to teach him about Cesar Chavez and the UFW and their place in his people’s history. If it hadn’t been for his grandparents taking him to church, he wouldn’t have learned about La Virgen either.
Having grown up in an English-speaking household and largely ignorant of Chicano movements and figureheads for the better part of his teen years, Ruly’s priorities completely shift once he becomes aware of all the things he does not know about his culture (I have a similar background, so this was certainly something I could empathize with). As events in his personal life unfold, Ruly also finds himself forging–and at times defending–his own meanings of family, friendship, and loyalty.
It was refreshing to come across a Latino coming of age story that didn’t revolve around the immigrant (or child-of-immigrant) experience. The El Paso described in these pages is warm and vibrant, and Yañez ushers his young protagonist from adolescence to adulthood with compassion and nuance. As Ruly “crosses over” into the next stage of his life, you can’t help but root for him as he builds bridges between his cultural past, present, and future.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvtgvlXOyv1qdsctqo1_250.jpg)
I am very appreciative of readers who have shared their thoughts and reflections on my novel at personal appearances and through my Facebook page. Listening to voices in the community is one of the main reasons I enjoy being a writer.
Here are two well-written reviews that have been posted on goodreads:
Reader: Keith Michael
“The title of Richard Yañez’s novel, Cross over Water, could refer to the physical act of immigration for many Mexican-Americans. But 12-year-old “Ruly” Cruz’s crossing begins when his childhood home is inexplicably “left behind like a lizard tail in the desert,” and can only end when he recognizes his role in the future of the borderland. As a boy, Ruly wanders through his adolescence without the framework of cultural tradition and community, indulging in fast food and fantasies of gridiron triumphs. He passes the usual milestones of teenage life: first parties and puppy love, alienation and embarrassment, but he is unfulfilled by his job (a cart-boy at a local retail store), living in a casita behind an elderly woman’s house, eating his microwave dinners and watching television. When he discovers a public park operating as a migrant work camp and re-designated as “People’s Park,” his restless spirit is mended by voluntary acts of compassion, and his life is forever changed.
Yanez’s rendering of El Paso is nuanced and colorful, almost Zen-like in its thoughtful intensity: the author strikes the target without aiming. The character of Ruly represents the rich inner life, contradiction and mystery of the city: “Raul is El Paso personified: aware of the past, but always heading to the future because ‘the past could deport you to a place in your memory. And no matter how much you declared yourself to the present, you were hopelessly uprooted.’ “
Yañez’s prose resembles an awaited letter with its calm intimacy and directness. His writing addresses the effects of suffering and growth upon the human spirit. The binary relationships between Mexico and America, tradition and change, manhood and adolescence press upon the narrative of Cross Over Water, but it is a story of loss as well as regeneration, like the desert lizard with the missing tail.”
*
From Melissa, who blogs at The Feminist Texican [Reads]:
“Cross Over Water by Richard Yañez is the coming of age story of “Ruly” Cruz, a Mexican American boy growing up 0n the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas. The book begins following Ruly at the age of 12, when he’s still an aloof tween whose primary preoccupations are masturbating and hanging out with his cousin Laura. Following his mother’s promotion, Ruly is uprooted from his childhood home into a new house in the suburbs, throwing the routine of his life into disarray. As he eases into young adulthood, Ruly begins to mature into a thoughtful young man who is slowly embracing his roots and seeking out his past. Through it all, El Paso is just as important a “character” as Ruly is: isolated in the middle of a desert, right across from Juarez, Mexico, the city is Ruly’s playground, home, and teacher.
The first half of the book traces all of the typical rites of passage of a Chicano teen boy growing up on the border, like navigating the social hierarchies of junior high and high school, dating (and trying to lose his virginity in the process), and crossing the border into Mexico to party with friends. The writing here is pretty straightforward; in restricting his narrative to reflect Ruly’s maturity at any given age, Yañez allows the reader to grow along with Ruly. Although it was at times trying to be stuck inside the mind of a boy obsessed with his “palito,” by the end of the book, one can certainly appreciate the overall evolution of Ruly’s interests and desires.
After high school, Ruly’s friends move on to the next phase of their lives while Ruly stays on in El Paso, lonely and working in a dead end job at a grocery store. For a while, it’s business as usual. He continues goofing off, until one day he stumbles across the community of homeless people living in People’s Park. From that point on, Ruly’s eyes are opened; he absorbs the stories of everyone he encounters and has a sudden urge to learn about his own history. Walking back home with his girlfriend shortly after this intellectual awakening, dozens of thoughts swim through Ruly’s mind:
He didn’t want to turn her off by admitting how much he didn’t know from books…he wondered why no teacher had ever bothered to teach him about Cesar Chavez and the UFW and their place in his people’s history. If it hadn’t been for his grandparents taking him to church, he wouldn’t have learned about La Virgen either.
Having grown up in an English-speaking household and largely ignorant of Chicano movements and figureheads for the better part of his teen years, Ruly’s priorities completely shift once he becomes aware of all the things he does not know about his culture (I have a similar background, so this was certainly something I could empathize with). As events in his personal life unfold, Ruly also finds himself forging–and at times defending–his own meanings of family, friendship, and loyalty.
It was refreshing to come across a Latino coming of age story that didn’t revolve around the immigrant (or child-of-immigrant) experience. The El Paso described in these pages is warm and vibrant, and Yañez ushers his young protagonist from adolescence to adulthood with compassion and nuance. As Ruly “crosses over” into the next stage of his life, you can’t help but root for him as he builds bridges between his cultural past, present, and future.”
I recently celebrated my 44th Birthday and was blessed with many cool gifts, the best being the company of loving familia and wonderful friends/awesome literary folks. Pictured here are Carolina Monsiváis, Daniel Chacón, Amit Ghosh, and Rigoberto González.
