Cool Salsa

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Carlson, Lori M., ed. Cool salsa: Bilingual poems on growing up Latino in the United States. Introduction by Oscar Hijuelos. Henry Holt and Company: New York. ISBN 0805031359

This book begins with a heart wrenching editors note and introduction. The editor’s note details her love of the Latin culture and how it shaped her future. The editor recalls her high school years in which only poets from Spain were in the Spanish class curriculum and how this must have had an affect on her Puerto Rican girl friend. She states that the poems selected are as varied as the Latin culture itself and “are about struggling to survive and finding respect, about dating and family, dreams and future plans, hot dogs, and orange trees.” She remarks on her search for the best Latino poems for this compilation as if trying to make up for and provide a venue for diverse Latin poetry.

The introduction by Oscar Hijuelos reads as a short autobiography of the lives of immigrants and their first generation American children. This sentence encompasses the reality of Latino immigrants in America – “That panic which characterized my parent’s lives, was what I was raised with; an unrelenting, unending sense of second classness that is perhaps common to all immigrants, but that was certainly enhanced by the gut feeling that we were not, nor ever would be, the inheritors of this earth, this America.”

The thirty-six poems are divided into six categories, School Days, Home and Homeland, Memories, Hard Times, Time to Party and a Promising Future. Some poems are in English, some in both English and Spanish and some translated into English. Many poems are free verse and many lose much in their translations. All are heartwarming and touching. One poem includes the N-word in context and as part of someone’s nickname. Even this poem touched my heart – in sadness for ignorance’s of the past. Includes a bibliography and glossary.

REVIEW EXCERPT(S) :

Review from PUBLISHERS WEEKLY: July 13, 1994

Illustrating the ``beat and pulse'' of generations of U.S. writers of Latin American heritage, the poems are presented both in the original and in translation; poems making use of both languages are easily accessible to English-only readers by virtue of an appended glossary of Spanish terms. In his introduction, Hijuelos ( The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love ) focuses on the ``unrelenting, unending sense of second classness'' that his parents experienced as Cuban emigrants and explains how this ``sense'' affected his uses of English and Spanish. The political agenda is not hidden, but the potency of the volume lies in Carlson's eclectic selection of voices--her volume approximates what one poet here calls ``a Mixtec chant that touches la tierra and the heavens.''

Review from SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL: August 01, 1994

“Whether discussing the immigrant's frustration at not being able to speak English, the violence suffered both within and outside of the ethnic community, the familiar adolescent desire to belong, or celebrating the simple joys of life, these fine poems are incisive and photographic in their depiction of a moment. Some of the poets are well-known, others are not, but all contribute to the whole. The Spanish translations capture the sense of the English so well that without the translator's byline one would be hard pressed to discern the original language. The same is true for those few poems translated from Spanish to English. This is a must for multicultural collections, and excellent enrichment material for literature courses.”