Red Hot Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Being Young and Latino in the United States FROM THE PUBLISHER
Ten years after the publication of the acclaimed Cool Salsa, editor Lori Marie Carlson has brought together a stunning variety of Latino poets for a long-awaited follow-up. Established and familiar names are joined by many new young voices, and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Oscar Hijuelos has written the Introduction.
The poets collected here illuminate the difficulty of straddling cultures, languages, and identities. They celebrate food, family, love, and triumph. In English, Spanish, and poetic jumbles of both, they tell us who they are, where they are, and what their hopes are for the future.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Describing his unlikely path to becoming a writer, Oscar Hijuelos introduces the more than three dozen poems in the handsomely packaged paper-over-board Red Hot Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Being Young and Latino in the United States, edited by Lori Marie Carlson. In Spanish, Gary Soto offers a humorous take on the role the language plays, while Luis S. Rodriguez poses a call to action in Piece by Piece. Each poem appears completely in English and in Spanish, and a closing glossary defines the terms. (Apr.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A decade after Cool Salsa (1994), Carlson has collected a new generation of voices. Thirty-eight poems in English and in Spanish reintroduce poets from her earlier collection (Gina Valdes, Trinidad Sanchez, Jr., Luis Rodriguez) and debut many new ones. Divided into themed sections (language, identity, neighborhoods, etc.) the poems elicit not just the particulars of people and place, but of being an adolescent. Some of the best poems play with language, much of which is sadly lost in translation (Michele Serros's imagined epitaph in "Dead Pig's Revenge": "Chicharrones Choke Chicana Child to Death (in Chino)" in Spanish just lies on the page like a dead pig). Nevertheless, the translations add an essential dimension to the book-a sense of an inclusive and diverse community-and Carlson leaves a handful of the untranslatable ones untouched, as Sacinto Cardona's "women who weep into their huiples" in "Tumbling Through My Tumbaburro." Biographical notes on the poets, and an introduction by Oscar Hijuelos round out this volume that will be appreciated by any young writer. (Poetry. 12+)
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