1 comments about Athletes Remembered: Mexicano/Latino Professional Football Players, 1929-1970.

1. This book written by Mr. Longoria is a unique sports narrative which gives any sports fan another aspect on the history of professional football. Aptly entitled "Athletes Remembered," Mr. Longoria documents the stories of the Latino athletes in a positive and very interesting style. I personally was unfamiliar with many of these athletes; however, I enjoyed reading their stories and learning about these talented players. My professional background is education and I firmly believe that this book would be a tremendous reading experience, not only for Latino children, but for children from all ethinic backgrounds. While Latino children will more readly identify with these athletes, they are really establishing role models for all children, regardless of their ethnicity.

No comments about Old Spain in Our Southwest (Southwest Heritage Series).

No comments about The Story of Mexico: Cortez and the Spanish Conquest (The Story of Mexico).

No comments about The Mexican War of Independence (The Story of Mexico).

3 comments about The Stories of Juana Briones: Alta California Pioneer.

1. The Stories Of Juana Briones is a rendition of a California pioneer, a citizen of Spain, Mexico, and the United States. She was unique in that, unlike most other women of the era, she owned land when California became part of America and many other Hispanic families lost their land. Juana Briones contested the loss of the family estate, took her case to the United States Supreme Court, and won -- even though she could not read or write. Her amazing life story, told through her own eyes as if to her grandchildren, makes for a powerful narrative of a positive role model, highly recommended especially for young readers ages 8 to 11.



2. It is a short book but it has an amazing message for everybody. Her perseverance and her struggling spirit to reach a better future for her family was the best advice that I got from it.

   I would like to recommend this admirable book because we can learn more about California History and how life teaches us to grow up. I believe that this deep message is the most remarkable for me.

   Never lose hope, it is better to die happy.

   Every day I mis up my dreams with the reality of life and this book help me to get my personal goals clear and to follow my ideal for the future.

   Enjoy it.




3. This book was different from the books I normally read.
   The books I read are longer and are written for adults.
   However, I still found this book interesting, and it's a book everybody who lives in California should read. There is a lot of information regarding history in it. That's why I think even people who don't live in California will enjoy the book, too.
   The book is easy to read and the contents are not too childlike. Even older people can enjoy the book and learn about the history.

   "The Stories of Juana Briones" is a history book but also good for people who don't like to read a "dry" history book.

   I learned a lot from the story; the most important part for me was that no matter how and it is and how badly you struggle, especially living in another country, if you belive in something, try to be a good person, learn from people no matter where they are from and don't give up hope; you can reach whatever you want.

   All in all ; I do think this book is an excellent book to read with the whole family. Everybody will understand it and learn about Californian history.

5 comments about Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey.

1. This book is a wonderfully woven, yet economical, description of one young man's constant self examination and exploration of his surroundings. I would like to think that I and others could be as sensitive and compassionate. Also, between the lines I understood what amazing, positive people his parents must have been. Thoughtful, provoking, and above all, beautifully crafted.



2. Both as a memorial to the democracy that was delayed for a generation in Chile (and to his friends who were casualties in the Pinochet terror) and as an account of how a major writer became the bilingual hybrid he is by rejecting first one and then the other of his linguistic selves, this is a fascinating book. . Battered from continent to continent by political events of the twentieth century, Dorfman's survival (as he knows well) depended on considerable luck and on his father's connections. Although he has accepted that his vocation is to tell stories, especially the stories of repression in Chile, there is no doubt that he harbors a considerable amount of survivor guilt.

   Contrary to the misrepresentation of earlier reviewers, Dorfman does mention Borges (three times, all with respect), criticizes Castro as well as Pinochet (though Chile is a place to which he gave his heart and soul), and is not just aware, but explicit that it is ironic "I should have become a spokesperson for the poor in Latin America because I had spent so many years in the rich North" and of the recurrent ironies that the connections of his marxist father got them out of harm's way.

   This is a very honest, un-narcissistic account of an interesting life of multiple exiles, observing failures of democracies, making clear the different selves that emerge in different languages. I would have liked more on the second American exile and assenting to bilingualism, and I regret that the hardback cover composition was replaced by the duller, less bicultural one on the paperback.




3. While Mr. Dorfman's experience of crossing cultures and language during a high profile time in Chilian and American history is poinent, it is not unique or objective. His self absorbtion is irritating. His self rightousness criticism covers unresolved suvivor's guilt which would be better resolved in the analysts chair. It is unfortunate Mr. Dorfman presents such idealised view of the Salvador Allende. I have lived and worked in Chile and am well aquainted with many people,peers of Mr. Dorfman, who also have parents who immigrated from Europe or Russia. Allende caused terrible harm to the Chilian economy in his repartiation of middle class businesses and land amoung other things. Middle class housewives demonstrated in the streets begging the military to oust him. No one approved of the repressive regime, the fear and the disappearances of the early Pinochet years, but in the last years Pinochet opened the Chilian markets to the world. Pinochet was voted out and democracy in with the addition of "primary" elections so that no one will be elected with 33% of the vote as was Allende. There were no monsters in Chile, no saints,but there is complex history, culture and politics. It is a shame Mr Dorfman with his high visability couldn't have addressed that.



4. This book is the internal memoirs of a man whose defining moments were exile from his homelands and his languages. Exile was a longstanding way of life in Dorfman's family, from his grandparents who had to leave Eastern Europe, to his parents who had to flee both Argentina and the US, and now Dorfman himself, who was forced into asylum after the fall of Allende in Chile. But exile is more of a secondary or co-theme of this book. The other major theme is Dorfman's search for identity through his languages. Throughout the book, Dorfman describes how he came to know language, and the identity traits that go along with a language. He also describes how he came to choose which of his two languages, English and Spanish, to use in different contexts and to consciously construct different identities.

   Rather than tell his story chronologically, Dorfman works from a repertoire of pivotal moments. He has asked himself, when and why did I first start using English? When did I begin to write? When did I embrace the philosophy of non-violence? He then describes these episodes in detail, and speculates and philosophizes on them. The story of Dorfman's political activities in Chile and what happened to him during the coup constitute about half of the book, with these political chapters alternating with chapters about the other significant events in his life. The bouncing back-and-forth between time periods moves almost smoothly, like the thought patterns of an insomniac reflecting back at the end of a busy day.

   I found many aspects of this book quite interesting. The first-person account of bilingualism, and its ties to a conflicted identity were described very clearly. The inside perspective on the Allende regime and its fall was also informative. What was particularly telling was the speculation on why the regime lost popularity amongst the Chilean people- -how Dorfman himself shamed people who were celebrating the Allende victory with a right-wing singer who was trying to mend fences, and told them the singer was not welcome in the revolution, or how he didn't reach out to a neighbor whose job was jeopardized and then lost because he wasn't an Allendista. Another aspect of this story that I found intriguing was Dorfman's identity as a gringo English speaker brought to Chile against his will as a young teenager, who came to adopt the country and become active in its politics. I couldn't help but think of another young man, Michael Townley, who was also brought by his American family to Santiago in his teenage years, and also learned the language, married a local girl, and wanted to call Chile his permanent home. But Townley was on the other side of the revolution, and became a right-wing terrorist working for the Chilean intelligence forces. Did Dorfman ever encounter Townley? Of course, Dorfman wasn't actually American- -he was an Argentinean who spent a significant portion of his childhood in the US, but he looked and spoke the part. How many other young Americans adopted Chile during this period? What was their combined influence on Chilean politics?




5. Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden helped me learn some new Spanish words, soak in Chile, Chilito, pisco sour... it also helped me imagine with more concreteness the hell that foreign policy and the Pinochet dictatorship unleashed upon Chilean men and women. I learned pieces of the dialogues by heart and wondered about the implications of human frailty and resistance in general. Alas, I took the work to be an expression of criticism toward the weak-willed husband who was content with a foul compromise, with the so-called "dialogue". This memoir as well as Dorfman's pieces in Counterpunch opened my eyes, however. Dorfman has never advanced past the boy who forsook Spanish for English, the boy so awed by glories of Holywood that he'd rather be a whimsical, charming Ariel than a weird Vladimiro. It is hilarious that he is being criticized for Communist sympathies here, when he is a liberal in the nineteenth c. sense of the term who would fight and die for nothing but his piece of the northamerican pie. I wish I had never read any of his work, and I cannot forgive him his cowardice, his duplicity, his heading AND looking north. I'll stick to Galeano instead.

No comments about 100 Hispanic-Americans Who Changed American History (People Who Changed American History).

No comments about Juana Briones of Nineteenth-Century California.

1 comments about Isabel Allende: Life and Spirits.

1. The simplest description of this book is that it is a short biography of renowned hispanic writer Isabel Allende, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden. It is based on a series of taped interviews between Zapata and Allende made at Zapata's instigation after many years of cajoling, following the beginning of their friendship in the 1980s. It was Zapata, a professor of Latin American literature at San Jose State University, who convinced Isabel, then a new best-selling author living in Venezuela and also newly divorced, to include California in a lecture tour promoting her popular novels in the USA for the first time. In their first meeting at San Jose it was Celia who introduced Isabel to the man who would later become Isabel's second husband, William Gordon. This in turn led to Isabel moving her home from Venezuela to California. The interviews that became this book occurred at regular intervals over a whole year in a rented hotel room near San Francisco Airport, half way between San Jose and Isabel's new home in San Rafael. In one interview Isabel says, "Why do I write? Because I am filled with stories that demand to be told, because the words are choking me, because I like and need to write, because if I don't write my soul dries up and I die." I like Allende's books, and I like her personally even more after reading this compelling biography. It's an easy read, and also includes a helpful chronology of Isabel's complicated life from 1942 to 2002.

No comments about Ellen Ochoa: Pioneering Astronaut (Fact Finders Biographies: Great Hispanics).