Download or read book The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love written by Oscar Hijuelos and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2013-11-14 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestseller: A “lush, tipsy, all-night mambo of a novel about Cuban musicians in strange places like New York City” (People). Brothers Nestor and Cesar Camillo arrive from Cuba in 1949 with dreams of becoming famous mambo musicians. This memorable novel traces the arc of the two brothers’ lives—one charismatic and macho, the other soulful and sensitive—from Havana to New York, from East Coast clubs and dance halls to the heights of musical fame. The basis for a popular film, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love “tells of the triumphs and tragedies that befall two men blessed with gigantic appetites and profoundly melancholic hearts. . . . Hijuelos has depicted a world as enchanting as that in Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera” (Publishers Weekly). “Rich and provocative . . . a moving portrait of a man, his family, a community and a time.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Download or read book Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love written by Oscar Hijuelos and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2023-10-03 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When it was first published in 1989, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love became an international bestselling sensation, winning rave reviews and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that changed the landscape of American literature returns with a new afterword by Oscar Hijuelos. Here is the story of the memorable Castillo brothers, from Havana to New York's Upper West Side. The lovelorn songwriter Nestor and his macho brother Cesar find success in the city's dance halls and beyond playing the rhythms that earn them their band's name, as they struggle with elusive fame and lost love in a richly sensual tale that has become a cultural touchstone and an enduring favorite.

Download or read book A Study Guide for Oscar Hijuelos s The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love written by Gale, Cengage Learning and published by Gale, Cengage Learning . This book was released on 2016-06-29 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Study Guide for Oscar Hijuelos's "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

Download or read book Beautiful Maria of My Soul written by Oscar Hijuelos and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this mesmerizing sequel to a Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, the "heart-stealing heroine" (Amy Tan) and muse of Cuban musician Nestor Castillo takes readers on the journey of a lifetime with this story of reinvention, romance, and revolution. In The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, María is the great Cuban beauty who stole musician Nestor Castillo’s heart and broke it, inspiring him to write the Mambo Kings’ biggest hit, ‘Beautiful María of My Soul.’” Now in her sixties, María García y Cifuentes is the lady behind the song, living as an exile in Miami. But while she left Cuba decades ago, she has never forgotten Nestor. We now see the Mambo Kings’ story through Maria’s eyes—and as she thinks back to her days and nights in Havana, an entirely new perspective on the story unfolds. We meet her as an illiterate young woman with unspeakable, head-turning beauty who meets and falls in love with Nestor in Havana, but ultimately chooses to stay involved with a cruel, wealthy lover. When the Cuban Revolution intervenes, Maria and her daughter seek refuge in Miami. And as she finds community with other Cuban women and begins to take lessons at a local college, Maria finally goes from muse to the writer of her own story. Beautiful María of My Soul is a stunning act of reinvention, and another contemporary classic from an extraordinarily talented writer. Includes a Reading Group Guide.

Download or read book Mr Ives Christmas written by Oscar Hijuelos and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1996-08-30 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hijuelos' novel tells the story of Mr. Ives, who was adopted from a foundling's home as a child. When we first meet him in the 1950s, Mr. Ives is very much a product of his time. He has a successful career in advertising, a wife and two children, and believes he is on his way to pursuing the typical American dream. But the dream is shattered when his son Robert, who is studying for the priesthood, is killed violently at Christmas. Overwhelmed by grief and threatened by a loss of faith in humankind, Mr. Ives begins to question the very foundations of his life. Part love story--of a man for his wife, for his children, for God--and part meditation on how a person can find spiritual peace in the midst of crisis, Mr. Ives' Christmas is a beautifully written, tender and passionate story of a man trying to put his life in perspective. In the expert hands of Oscar Hijuelos, the novel speaks eloquently to the most basic and fulfilling aspects of life for all of us.

Download or read book Thoughts without Cigarettes written by Oscar Hijuelos and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-06-02 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist turns his pen to the real people and places that have influenced his life and literature. A comprehensive look into the mind of a writer. Born in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights to Cuban immigrants in 1951, Oscar Hijuelos introduces readers to the colorful circumstances of his upbringing. The son of a Cuban hotel worker and exuberant poetry-writing mother, his story, played out against the backdrop of a working-class neighborhood, takes on an even richer dimension when his relationship with his family and culture changes forever. During a sojourn with his mother in pre-Castro Cuba, he catches a disease that sends him into a Dickensian home for terminally ill children. The yearlong stay estranges him from the very language and people he had so loved. With a cast of characters whose stories are both funny and tragic, Thoughts Without Cigarettes follows Hijuelos's subsequent quest for his true identity — a mystery whose resolution he eventually discovers hidden away in the trappings of his fiction, and which finds its most glorious expression in his best-known book,The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Illuminating the most dazzling scenes from his novels, Thoughts Without Cigarettes reveals the true stories and indelible memories that shaped a literary genius.

Download or read book American Literature on Stage and Screen written by Thomas S. Hischak and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 525 notable works of 19th and 20th century American fiction in this reference book have many stage, movie, television, and video adaptations. Each literary work is described and then every adaptation is examined with a discussion of how accurate the version is and how well it succeeds in conveying the spirit of the original in a different medium. In addition to famous novels and short stories by authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Willa Cather, many bestsellers, mysteries, children's books, young adult books, horror novels, science fiction, detective stories, and sensational potboilers from the past two centuries are examined.

Download or read book Our House in the Last World written by Oscar Hijuelos and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2024-04-09 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A first-generation Cuban son comes of age in the debut––and most autobiographical––novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Winner of the Ingram Merrill Foundation Award and the Rome Prize Hector Santinio is the younger son of Alejo and Mercedes, who moved to New York from Cuba in the mid-1940s. The family of four shares their modest apartment with extended relatives in Harlem, where homesickness and nostalgia are dispelled by nights of dancing and raucous parties. But life’s realities are nevertheless harsh in the Santinio family’s adoptive land. When Mercedes takes Hector and his brother to visit Cuba, to better know her culture, Hector contracts a serious illness that leads to a terrifying period of hospitalization back in the United States where, isolated from his family, he loses much of his ability to speak Spanish. And it is this fracturing that sparks a lifelong quest to not only reconcile his Cuban identity with his American one, but to also understand his parents’ ambitions and anxieties within the country at large. In this profoundly moving account of immigrant life, Oscar Hijuelos displays, once again, his mastery over both character and language—and sets readers on an unforgettable journey of hope, longing, and self-discovery. Includes a Reading Group Guide.

Download or read book The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love written by Oscar Hijuelos and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cesar and Nestor Castillo move to New York from Cuba in 1949 to form a mambo band, and eventually play on I Love Lucy.

Download or read book Dark Dude written by Oscar Hijuelos and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-03-12 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Oscar Hijuelos comes a riveting young adult novel set in the late 1960s about a haunting choice and an unforgettable journey of identity, misidentity, and all that we take with us when we run away. He didn’t say good-bye. He didn’t leave a phone number. And he didn’t plan on coming back—ever. Fifteen-year-old Rico Fuentes has had enough of life in Harlem, where his fair complexion—inherited from an Irish grandfather—keeps him caught between two cultures without belonging to either. He pours his outsider feelings into a comic book Dark Dude, with his friend Jimmy illustrating. But when Gilberto, who’s always looked out for Rico, moves to Wisconsin and Jimmy loses himself to an insidious habit, Rico decides enough is enough. With Jimmy in tow, Rico runs away to the Midwest in search of Gilberto. The heavily white community feels worlds away from Harlem, and for the first time, Rico sees what it’s like to blend in—no longer the “dark dude” or the punching bag for the whole neighborhood. But the less energy Rico needs to put into proving he’s Latino, the less he feels like one. And the more he gets to know the people around him, the more it’s clear that a change in location doesn’t change human nature—and that there’s no such thing as a perfect community. Faced with the truth that there are things that can’t be cut loose or forgotten, things that keep him from ever having an ordinary white kid’s life, Rico must decide whether he can make a home in the place he ran to…or the one he ran from.

Download or read book Empress of the Splendid Season written by Oscar Hijuelos and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2000-01-05 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oscar Hijuelos vividly brings to life the joys, desires, and disappointment of American life witnessed through the experience of a formerly prosperous Cuban émigré named Lydia Espana--now a cleaning woman in New York. In magnetic prose, he juxtaposes Lydia's tale with the stories of her clients, contrasting her experiences with the secret lives of those for whom she works. No one writes better of love or the pulse of a city, nor has any writer better captured the complexity inherent in the emigration experience; how assimilation is at once the achievement of dreams, yet also a loss of the past. Empress of the Splendid Season is Hijuelos at his masterful best, a novel filled with incantatory, rhythmic prose and rich in heartfelt vision.

Download or read book Life on the Hyphen written by Gustavo Pérez Firmat and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2012-04-18 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expanded, updated edition of the classic study of Cuban-American culture, this engaging book, which mixes the author’s own story with his reflections as a trained observer, explores how both famous and ordinary members of the “1.5 Generation” (Cubans who came to the United States as children or teens) have lived “life on the hyphen”—neither fully Cuban nor fully American, but a fertile hybrid of both. Offering an in-depth look at Cuban-Americans who have become icons of popular and literary culture—including Desi Arnaz, Oscar Hijuelos, musician Pérez Prado, and crossover pop star Gloria Estefan, as well as poets José Kozer and Orlando González Esteva, performers Willy Chirino and Carlos Oliva, painter Humberto Calzada, and others—Gustavo Pérez Firmat chronicles what it means to be Cuban in America. The first edition of Life on the Hyphen won the Eugene M. Kayden National University Press Book Award and received honorable mentions for the Modern Language Association’s Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize and the Latin American Studies Association’s Bryce Wood Book Award.

Download or read book Hispanic Nation written by Geoffrey E. Fox and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new ethnic identity is being constructed in the United States: the Hispanic nation. Overcoming age-old racial, regional, and political differences, Americans of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and other Spanish-language origins are beginning to imagine themselves as a single ethnic community - which by the turn of the century may become the United States' largest and most influential minority. Only in recent years have great numbers of Hispanics begun to consider themselves as related within a single culture. Hispanics are redefining their own images and agendas, shaping a population, and paving wider pathways to power. In the process, they are changing both themselves and the culture, government, and urban habits of the communities around them. In this ground-breaking book, Geoffrey Fox shows how and why Hispanics are changing the United States. Based on interviews, observations, and extensive research, Hispanic Nation examines why such diverse people are imagining themselves as one; the politics of turning a statistical fiction into a social reality; the impact of the Spanish-language media on Hispanics' self-images; ethnic consciousness and political movements (Cesar Chavez and the farm workers movement, the Young Lords and La Raza Unida, Puerto Rican and Mexican encounters in the Midwest); controversies surrounding "high" and popular Hispanic/Latino art, music, and literature; and the institutionalization of the movement everywhere - from local school boards to the U.S. Congress.

Download or read book Butterfly s Child written by Angela Davis-Gardner and published by Dial Press Trade Paperback. This book was released on 2012-04-10 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When three-year-old Benji is plucked from the security of his home in Nagasaki to live with his American father, Lt. Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, and stepmother, Kate, on their farm in Illinois, the family conceals Benji’s true identity as a child born from a liaison between an officer and a geisha—and instead tells everyone that he is an orphan. When the truth surfaces, it will splinter this family’s fragile dynamic and send Benji on the journey of a lifetime from Illinois to the Japanese settlements in Denver and San Francisco, then across the ocean to Nagasaki, where he will uncover the truth about his mother’s tragic death. Don’t miss the exclusive conversation between Angela Davis-Gardner and Jennifer Egan at the back of the book.

Download or read book You Came Back written by Christopher Coake and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty-something midwesterner Mark Fife believes he has successfully moved past the accidental death of his young son Brendan, as well as his subsequent divorce from his college sweetheart Chloe. He's successful, he's in love again, and he believes he's mastered his own memories. But then he is contacted by a strange woman who tells him not only that she owns his old house, but that she believes it to be haunted by Brendan's ghost. Will Mark--who does not believe in ghosts--come to accept the mounting evidence that Brendan's is real? Will his engagement to his new love Allison be threatened by the reappearance in Mark's life of Chloe--who does believe? If the ghost is real, what can these two wounded parents do to help their son? You Came Back examines the beauty and danger of belief in all its forms--not only belief in the supernatural, but in the love that binds parents and children, husbands and wives.

Download or read book Icons of Latino America 2 volumes written by Roger Bruns and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2008-08-30 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latinos have contributed a tremendous amount to American cultural heritage, injecting energy, a unique style, and piquant flavor. This set profiles the big names from this century and the last who represent the highest achievement in their field and who have inspired, led, educated, informed, and entertained us. A diverse representation from the world of sports, entertainment, education, music, journalism, literature, and labor is offered. Biographical essays engagingly tell the story behind the icon, with background including family and education, career trajectory and highlights, and contributions and circumstances that have led to icon status. Along with these famous figures, several essays on other types of Latino pop culture icons—iconic characters from cartoons and comics and film and even iconic Latino foods—are included. Entertaining side bars and classic photos complement the essays. Perfect for student reports and browsing, with more in-depth coverage than an encyclopedia entry but less than a full biography, there is something fascinating and informative here for everyone. Readers will find that that a number of the icons profiled were influenced by other icons profiled or have an important connection to one another. For example, Tito Puente and Celia Cruz performed together for many years. Actress Jennifer Lopez portrayed the singer Selena in a biopic. Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta made the United Farm Workers union a reality. Furthermore, in telling the story of these icons, each essay relates so much of the historical and social issues of the times. Thus, together, these essays offer a good sense of recent Latino and Latin American history and progress. Icons include Desi Arnaz; Ruben Blades; Fabiola Cabeza de Baca; Cesar Chavez; Chiles, Tortillas, and the Mexican Food Explosion; Sandra Cisneros; Roberto Clemente; Celia Cruz; Placido Domingo; Jaime Escalante; Gordo, Speedy Gonzales, Dora the Explorer, Bondo, and La Cucaracha; Dolores Huerta; Jennifer Lopez; Rita Moreno; Edward James Olmos; Tito Puente; Ruben Salazar; Carlos Santana; Cristina Saralegui; Selena; Lee Trevino; Luis Valdez; Ritchie Valens; and Zorro.

Download or read book Improvising Sabor written by Sue Miller and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Improvising Sabor: Cuban Dance Music in New York begins in 1960s New York and examines in rich detail the playing styles and international influence of important figures in US Latin music. Such innovators as José Fajardo, Johnny Pacheco, George Castro, and Eddy Zervigón dazzled the Palladium ballroom and other Latin music venues in those crucible years. Author Sue Miller focuses on the Cuban flute style in light of its transformations in the US after the 1959 revolution and within the vibrant context of 1960s New York. While much about Latin jazz and salsa has been written, this book focuses on the relatively unexplored New York charangas that were performing during the chachachá and pachanga craze of the early sixties. Indeed, many accounts cut straight from the 1950s and the mambo to the bugalú’s development in the late 1960s with little mention of the chachachá and pachanga’s popularity in the mid-twentieth century. Improvising Sabor addresses not only this lost and ignored history, but contends with issues of race, class, and identity while evaluating differences in style between players from prerevolution Cuban charangas and those of 1960s New York. Through comprehensive explorations and transcriptions of numerous musical examples as well as interviews with and commentary from Latin musicians, Improvising Sabor highlights a specific sabor that is rooted in both Cuban dance music forms and the rich performance culture of Latin New York. The distinctive styles generated by these musicians sparked compelling points of departure and influence.