Home Among the Swinging Stars by Jaime de Angulo – Review & Giveaway

26. March 2008 · 50 comments · Categories: Book Review and Giveaway, Latin American Literature · Tags: , ,


Home Among the Swinging Stars is a brilliant collection of poems by Jaime de Angulo (1887 – 1950). His reflections of nature in the American West often feel like lyrics of Native American chants, painting images of coyotes, wild stallions, canyons and cactus. In contrast, other poems speak of the difficulties faced by Native and Latino Americans.

Having fallen in love with the desert myself, I was anxious to read these poems to see if I could recapture the feeling of being under that expansive sky, miles from anywhere. Home Among the Swinging Stars not only delivered those wished-for images, but poetry of the Big Sur and California Redwoods as well. Jaime de Angulo’s poetry feeds the imagination whether you’ve been Out West or not, also giving you a sense of the people who have lived there.

Jaime de Angulo, of Spanish descent, was born in Paris and moved to America when he was 14 years old. He lived in California, Colorado, South America, and several other locations in the U.S. and abroad, leading a rather complicated and continually evolving life, which greatly influenced his work. (If anyone is looking for a subject for writing a biography, this is one I’d love to read!) De Angulo’s writings have inspired many writers, including Jack Kerouac.

If you’d like to have your own copy of Home Among the Swinging Stars, you can enter to win one here. Subscribing to this blog automatically enters you into this and all future book giveaways. Or you may leave a comment on this post telling me what intrigues you about the book. Link to this post on your blog, and you’ll get another entry as well. I’ll choose a winner at random on March 29, 2008, at 12noon EST.

Special Note: I have TWO giveaways running right now! Normally I do one at a time, but since I misread the calendar when posting, you’ve still got time to enter to win The Edge of Europe by Pentti Saarikoski.

Home Among the Swinging Stars is published by La Alameda Press.

Boxing for Cuba by Guillermo Vincente Vidal

09. January 2008 · 4 comments · Categories: Book Reviews, Goldfish Award Books, Latin American Literature · Tags: ,


When I recently started carp(e) libris, I had a vision. I wanted to bring books to readers, unique pieces of literature hunted like gold from small presses who publish works as labors of love. I have found one of those books. Boxing for Cuba by Guillermo Vincente Vidal is exactly the kind of book I wanted to share when I began this blog. It’s written courageously, from the heart, and in such an honest, strong style that I won’t soon forget it.

Boxing for Cuba, published by Ghost Road Press, is the memoir of a man who left Cuba as a boy with Operation Peter Pan in 1961. Operation Peter Pan carried more than 14,000 Cuban children between the ages of 6 and 16 to America to save them from Fidel’s regime. Unfortunately, with too few homes to accept all these children until their parents could hopefully someday join them, many, like Guillermo and his two brothers, ended up in orphanages. Through the pain and struggle of feeling abandoned when his parents sent him and his brothers away, to the reunion of his family only to find his mother and father fight just as viciously as before, Boxing for Cuba brings you an amazing memoir you won’t be able to put down. The journey starts and ends with Cuba, taking you from the tropical home of Vidal and his family, to the U.S. where he grew to adulthood in Colorado, and finally circles back to an emotional visit to his homeland. It’s a story of family history and of learning to be proud of who you are and where you come from. There’s so much to be gleaned from this book, and anyone who reads it is sure to put it down feeling they’ve grown from it.

If ever a book gives the perfect example of why I adore the memoir, this is it.