1 comments about Latino Sun, Rising.

1. I received this book still in the plastic and was very satisfied with my purchase.

5 comments about Freak.

1. John Said Himself That This Was Based On His Life And How He Really Exaggerated It For The Play And Then To The Book.I Have Seen Part Of The One-Man Show On HBO And I Thought It Was Really Funny.The Book Contains Some Pretty Funny And Weird Subject Matter.I Think That The Elaberation Of The "Characters" In The Book Were Really Funny And Had Some Cool Dialoge.One Part I Thought Was Grose-Out Funny Was His Father's Way Of Trying To Get The KFC Lady To Help John Became A Man.It Is Certinaly Not For Delicate Ears And Open For Open Minds.Hope You Like My Review...Feel Free To Look At My Others.Bye,Bye Now.....Have A Good Day



2. Like Augusten Burroughs' hysterical autobiography "Running With Scissors," Leguizano's family of loose screws made him a screwball, for better or for worse.
   
   At turns morose and gross, and gutbusting and bitingly real, you will transported by a family, though superficially unlike your own, eventually begins to resemble your childhood memories.



3. "Freak" is a fantastic piece of writing and an amazing performance by its writer, in his HBO one-man show. What I don't understand is why HBO wouldn't put it out on DVD. They've done it with Chris Rock's shows... If you can get your hands on a tape, watch it. It's funny and heartbreaking.



4. Freak was a one-man show in San Francisco and off-Broadway, then moved to
   Broadway, gathering Tony nominations. In October 1998 it was an HBO special. For most performers, comedians, it would be just another stand-up concert, a type of program common to HBO. But this is Leguizamo's "Semi-Demi-Quasi-Pseudo Autobiography" and he brings to it such intensity, such a variety of personalities -- as he remembers his family and friends -- that it transcends this description and becomes like, well, a Broadway play.
   
   John Leguizamo has had a remarkably varied career. Fans of the Spawn movie will recall his huge, even monstrous role there. His character and costume was very different in the oddly titled move To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. He probably reached one of his largest audiences early in his career in the usually pasteurized television mass market, briefly enlivened, energized and diversified by his "Latino variety show" "House of Buggin'."
   
   This is a book based on the one man show and HBO special, edited to be
   read, so it of course differs from the performances, which would include some ad lib. One might have expected to save the experience of this show with a tape, or a spoken-word recording, but this paperback is an inexpensive, permanent way to revisit and savor Leguizamo's work again and again, at your pleasure and convenience.



5. This is supposed to be a quasi-autobiographic look back at John Leguizamo's past. I know it is not to be taken literally. I know humor is born of pain. Still, I thought that this funny, funny guy let it all hang out in an odd way. I know it was greatly exaggerated and all, but I felt like I was the only sober one in a bar at 2:30 a.m., and there was this crying drunk hanging all over me, telling me his tale of woe. I'm not against pathos, it just struck me as a kind of strange rendition of the celebrity confessional. Still love him, though, and even bought another one of his books, which I like much better.

No comments about Forgotten People: A Study of New Mexicans (Repr of 1940 ed) (Historians of the Frontier and American West).

No comments about Sammy Sosa (Latinos in the Limelight).

No comments about Roberto Clemente (Biografias Hispanoamericanas / Hispanic-American Biographies).

No comments about Chicano - Sin Fin!.

No comments about Severo Ochoa (Hispanicamerican Biographies).

No comments about The Mexican Revolution (The Story of Mexico).

No comments about An Organizer's Tale: Speeches (Penguin Classics).

2 comments about Heroes, Lovers, and Others: The Story of Latinos in Hollywood.

1. Rodriguez gets us thinking about the place of Latinos in US feature film from the very beginning to the present and in a sense, it's a book with a happy ending, because after decades of near-invisibility, Latinos and Latinas are becoming highly visible and indeed stars with huge followings. I mean, like it or not, Jennifer Lopez has millions of fans, as does Christina Aguillera. Intriguing are her portraits of Hollywood's Latin stars of days gone by, from the dashing Gilbert Roland to the gay superstar Ramon Novarro, and the answers to trivia questions like Olga San Juan. But she has some facts wrong, and it makes me wonder if even I, a non-Latino, can pick up some mistakes she has made, who knows maybe there are even more I don't know about! In her article on raquel Welch, first of all she deplores the fact that Jo Raquel Tejada was forced to change her name to Welch. She says that "Welch was another name in her family." Every fan of Raquel's in fact knows that "Welch" is the name of Raquel's first husband, and she didn't "steal" it or anything from some other member of her own family. Rodriguez also claims that Raquel made her screen debut in the call-girl melodrama A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME, when most historians credit her in appearing in the Elvis programmer ROUSTABOUT way before AHINAH. But, all in all you can't go wrong with Rodriguez (except when she goes wrong), and I love her description of Anthony Quinn as having the greatest gift of a screen actor, the ability to make audiences think they have known the character he is playing in any particular picture, that they have known him for a long time. It's a quirky observation, but a valid one, and a valuable one to boot.



2. It was that gorgeous sepia cover of Rita Hayworth that first drew me to this book. I'm not a movie buff, but that classic pose captivated me, and when I saw the numerous dramatic stills of famous screen icons from across the entire history of film, I immediately purchased four copies-for my mother, my two aunts and my niece.
   Rita Hayworth was born Margarita Carmen Cansino, I quickly learned, and she had begun her career as a a Latin dancer and actor. Her's is only one of a flood of stories of Latinos stars throughout Hollywood's first century. The book is an easy and quick read, but I ended up learning a lot about how the history of Hollywood and America are intertwined. I felt that the historical context deepened and enriched the stories and provided them with a greater meaning.
   One of my favorite stories is about an Austrian actor named Jacob Krantz, whose acting career was going nowhere until he changed his name to Ricardo Cortez and immediately became a big star. His brother Stanley followed him to Hollywood, also changed his name to Cortez, and won several awards as a cinematographer. And did you know that Anthony Quinn came to the US illegally, and picked crops, preached on street corners and boxed before becoming a major star?
   The author writes with an accessible style and great insight. The pictures are wonderful. I'm neither Latino nor a big movie-goer, but I still loved "Heroes, Lovers and Others" because it is such a lively collage of wonderful stories about America and the rich variety of people who populate it.