Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing Up Hispanic in the United States (Edge Books) (Spanish Edition) Hardcover – July 15, 1994 by Lori Marie Carlson (Editor), Oscar Hijuelos (Introduction)
 
Growing up Latino in America means speaking two languages, living two lives, learning the rules of two cultures. Cool Salsa celebrates the tones, rhythms, sounds, and experiences of that double life. Here are poems about families and parties, insults and sad memories, hot dogs and mangos, the sweet syllables of Spanish and the snag-toothed traps of English. Here is the glory, and pain, of being Latino American.
 
Latino Americans hail from Cuba and California, Mexico and Michigan, Nicaragua and New York, and editor Lori M. Carlson has made sure to capture all of those accents. With poets such as Sandra Cisneros, Martín Espada, Gary Soto, and Ed Vega, and a very personal introduction by Oscar Hijuelos, this collection encompasses the voices of Latino America. By selecting poems about the experiences of teenagers, Carlson has given a focus to that rich diversity; by presenting the poems both in their original language and in translation, she has made them available to us all.
 
As you move from memories of red wagons, to dreams of orange trees, to fights with street gangs, you feel Cool Salsa's musical and emotional cross rhythms. Here is a world of exciting poetry for you, y tú también.
 
As hot as jalapenos and as cool as jazz, this collection serves up "ingles con chile" and Spanish that "you feel in the blood of your soul." Lyrical, traditional poems share space with street-smart free verse, and works by the likes of Sandra Cisneros and Gary Soto are juxtaposed with entries from lesser-knowns. 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." Ages 12-up.

Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.