Tag Archives: immigration

GuerrillaReads No. 45: René Colato Laínez

René Colato Laínez is a writer and teacher. In this guerrilla reading he reads from his most recent work, the award-winning bilingual children’s book, From North to South / Del norte al sur. Among the honors it has received are the 2011 International Latino Book Award for Best Bilingual Children’s Picture Book and 2011 California Book Award Finalist.

Illustrations in North to South are by another guerrilla reader, Joe Cepeda.

In an interview with Paper Tigers, Colato talked about the challenge of becoming a professional writer and the importance of persistence and hard work:

It was definitely rocky and challenging, but all the rejection letters that I received did help me to craft my stories and make them better. I did not give up: I went to Vermont College and got a masters in “Writing for Children and Young Adults.” I might not have had any of my books published if it weren’t for those letters, in a way.

To see more of his books and learn more about the author, visit his website.

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GuerrillaReads No. 38: Reyna Grande

Today’s guerrilla reader, Reyna Grande, reads from her award-winning novel, Across a Hundred Mountains. This book won the 2010 Latino Books Into Movies Award, a 2007 American Book Award, and the 2006 El Premio Aztlan Literary Award. It was chosen by Eastern Connecticut as its 2007 “One Book/One Region” selection and in 2010 the city of Watsonville, CA selected it for its “On the Same Page” community reads program.

In an interview with ¡LatinoLA!, Grande said this about her work:

I write about things that I care about, that matter to me. The immigrant experience is one of them. Right now I am working on a memoir in which I write about my childhood in Mexico, living in poverty, being raised by my grandmother because my parents were here in the U.S. working. I write about what it was like to come here as an illegal immigrant, and the difficulties of trying to close the gap created by eight years of separation between me and my father. So to answer the question, yes, I do plan to continue writing about immigration and families, among other things. I am always looking for new ideas and topics. One has to grow as a writer, and one way to do that is to take chances and try new things.

Find more on Grande’s website, Facebook and Twitter.

GuerrillaReads No. 21

Author David Corbett reads from his novel about immigration, war  and family, Do They Know I’m Running?

Corbett explained his approach to this book in a recent blog post:

Believing that what was genuinely needed at this time was a more sincere, empathetic but not sanitized attempt to imagine the lives of people we think of as different, and remembering one of my favorite quotes from John Coltrane–“If there is something one does not understand, one must go humbly to it”–I tried in Do They Know I’m Running? to depict a Salvadoran-American family dealing with both the damage of war and the nightmare of deportation.

Before writing his first novel, Corbett worked for a private investigations firm and his wife’s law practice. He’s the author of three critically acclaimed novels as well as many articles and stories.