[Review of] Sabine R. Ulibarri. El Condor and Other Stories

This volume continues in the same vein as Governor Glu Glu, but Ulibarri here delves even more deeply into the world of fantasy. Many of the eleven stories in El Condor are like sugar-coated medicine: the sweetness prepares the reader for the lesson which comes in the form of a moral at the end. The Man Who Didn\u27t Eat, for example, is a tale of the scientific creation of a man who is vegetable Frankenstein\u27s monster, with parts taken from many plants. The creature in Ulibarri\u27s story is benevolent; as a result of his superhuman effort to save his neighbors from a plague to which he is immune, he misses his nutritional injection and dies. Ulibarri concludes with his lesson: No one ever knew, neither in the lay world nor in the scientific world, that a living miracle had lived among us. We do not know how to recognize the miracles that surround us. In A Man Who Forgot, the author presents a self-conscious story about a man who remembers only what is good. The moral here is, how beautiful life would be if we could erase from our memory all that is ugly, and remember only the beautiful and the good

[Review of] Sabine R. Ulibarri. El gobernador Glu Glu y otros cuentos (Governor Glu Glu and Other Stories)

Sabine R. Ulibarrí is a prolific and engaging story teller whose works portray the people, the landscape, the folklore, and the tenacious yet evolving way of life in Hispanic northern New Mexico. His previous bilingual collections include Tierra Amarilla (published in Spanish in Ecuador in 1964 and in a dual-language edition in New Mexico in 1971), Mi abuela fumaba puros/My Grandma Smoked Cigars (1977), and Primeros Encuentros/First Encounters (1982.) In these collections, Ulibarri\u27s portrait of the people and the history of his region is an intimate, loving, and somewhat nostalgic one. This latest volume continues to explore the same territory and people, but here Ulibarrí seems more playful, more folkloric at times, and occasionally the pieces seem like fables

[Review of] Gary Soto. Baseball in April and Other Stories

Gary Soto\u27s previous prose collections (Living Up the Street: Narrative Recollections -- 1985, Small Faces -- 1986, and Lesser Evils: Ten Quartets -- 1988) all contained stories about growing up, but this latest book focuses exclusively on the trials and tribulations of children and young teenagers. The eleven sketches in Baseball in April range in subject from broken Barbie dolls to championship marble tournaments, and all reveal a compassionate, understanding insight as well as the deft handiwork of a fine writer. For those who do not understand Spanish, the author has supplied a short appendix with translations of words and expressions. Artist Barry Root\u27s dust jacket depicting a red pickup full of boys and baseball gear is a splendid one that invites the reader to delve into the volume

[Review of] Nash Candelaria. The Day the Cisco Kid Shot John Wayne

Although Nash Candelaria has published quite a few short stories, it is in the field of the novel where his most outstanding contributions lie. Memories of the Alhambra (1977), Not by the Sword (1982), and Inheritance of Strangers (1985) form an historical trilogy of New Mexico that expresses the conflicts inherent in a society that is largely defined in terms of conquest. The first work takes a disturbing look at a New Mexican who wants to believe he is Spanish, while the other two depict the resiliency of the culture in crisis of the first book

[Review of] Gary Soto. Small Faces

This slim, superb collection is Soto\u27s second foray into the field of prose (Living Up The Street: Narrative Recollections was the 1985 American Book Award winner). The thirty-one vignettes in Small Faces, written in December, 1983, and between June and August, 1984, are imbued with warmth, charm, and nostalgia. They touch subjects such as human nature, human relationships, and love, all from a very personal viewpoint that of the author. During the course of the book, we come to know the poet, his wife and daughter, and his friends. Selections treat the narrator\u27s college days, travel, poetry and philosophy, as well as the mundane episodes of his daily life. The sketches are not presented chronologically, nor are they arranged thematically, so readers can deal with them out of sequence if they so desire. They are short -- from one to four pages -- and because each is an individual unit, one need not set aside a large block of time to read the collection. ( However, the book is so charming that this reviewer read the entire volume in one sitting.

A history of business education in the junior high school

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 1948. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

[Review of] Beatriz Rivera. African Passions and Other Stories

In recent years there have been many novels, collections of short stories, and editions of poetry published by Mexican-Americans, but the works by Cuban-Americans have not been as plentiful. African Passions, the first published collection by Beatriz Rivera, is a promising but not altogether satisfying contribution to the corpus of Cuban-American writing. It is sometimes brilliant and imaginative, sometimes not very inspiring, with eight stories (several of which are interrelated) ranging from the humorous and well-conceived to the rather tedious

[Review of] Americo Paredes. The Hammon and the Beam and Other Stories

Américo Paredes is a seminal figure in Mexican-American studies. Professor Emeritus of English and Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, he is best known for his work in folklore, principally With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and lts Hero. But after a distinguished career as teacher and scholar, he has turned in recent years to literature (mostly written years ago), with the publication of a novel (George Washington Gomez) in 1990 and a collection of poetry (Between Two Worlds) in 1991. The present accumulation of seventeen stories, combined with Paredes’ novel and poetry, provide a clear and comprehesive [comprehensive] literary view of Mexican-American life in Texas and elsewhere during the first half of the twentieth century. An excellent introduction by Ramon Saldivar presents a much-needed history of south Texas and the recurrent ”border troubles” so that the reader can better comprehend the socio-cultural milieu which gave birth to the stories. In Saldivar’s words, Paredes\u27 collection represents brilliantly ”the difficult dialectic between a Mexican past and an American future for the Texas Mexicans living on the border at the margin of modernity and modernization”(xvi). Saldivar also includes information about the author and the histories of many of the selections -- where they were written, dates of composition, circumstances, etc. Most appear in print for the first time in a colorful and attractive volume with cover desigh [design] by Mark Pinon

[Review of] Gary Soto. Who Will Know Us?

Gary Soto is one of America\u27s finest poets, a writer whose previous collections (The Elements of San Joaquin -- 1977, The Tale of Sunlight -- 1978, Father Is a Pillow Tied to a Broom -- 1980, Where Sparrows Work Hard -- 1981, and Black Hair -- 1985) have received wide critical acclaim, not only from Chicano critics but from others as well. In this latest volume Soto again demonstrates that he is an accomplished literary craftsman with a great deal to say. The forty-one poems are presented in three untitled sections and range from pensive reflections on old age and death to poetic accounts of seemingly trival [trivial] daily activities. Chronicle Books, in its first foray into the field of poetry, is to be congratulated for this handsome volume, printed on fine paper and with a lovely cover illustrated by Scott Sawyer