A glimpse at some of the titles we have acquired for the library.
CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Library is always busy making new acquisitions available to our patrons. To start the semester, we want to share the books that were recently made part of our permanent library collection. Don't forget: you can always visit us in person to read these titles!
Here are some recent titles that the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Library has acquired with abstracts provided by the publishers:
What’s coming to me. Francesca Padilla. Soho Teen, 2022.
Debut novel by queer Dominican-American fiction writer Francesca Padilla.
“After the ice cream stand where she works is robbed, seventeen-year-old Minerva Gutiérrez plans to get revenge on her predatory boss while navigating grief, anger, and dreams of escape from her dead-end hometown.”
Crossing Waters: undocumented migration in Hispanophone Caribbean and Latinx literature and art. Marisel C. Moreno. University of Texas Press, 2022.
Marisel C. Moreno is the Rev. John A. O'Brien Associate Professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Notre Dame.
“Debates over the undocumented migration of Latin Americans invariably focus on the southern US border, but most migrants never cross that arbitrary line. Instead, many travel, via water, among the Caribbean islands. The first study to examine literary and artistic representations of undocumented migration within the Hispanophone Caribbean, Crossing Waters relates a journey that remains silenced and largely unknown. Analyzing works by novelists, short-story writers, poets, and visual artists replete with references to drowning and echoes of the Middle Passage, Marisel Moreno shines a spotlight on the plight that these migrants face. In some cases, Puerto Rico takes on a new role as a stepping-stone to the continental United States and the society migrants will join there. Meanwhile the land border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the only terrestrial border in the Hispanophone Caribbean, emerges as a complex space within this cartography of borders. And while the Border Patrol occupies US headlines, the Coast Guard occupies the nightmares of refugees. An untold story filled with beauty, possibility, and sorrow, Crossing Waters encourages us to rethink the geography and experience of undocumented migration and the role that the Caribbean archipelago plays as a border zone.”
How not to drown in a glass of water. Angie Cruz. Flatiron books, 2022.
Angie Cruz is an American novelist and associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches in the M.F.A. program.
"From the beloved author of Dominicana, a GMA Book Club Pick and Women's Prize Finalist, an electrifying and indelible new novel about a woman who has lost everything but the chance to finally tell her story. Write this down: Cara Romero wants to work. Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life. Over the course of twelve sessions, Cara recounts her tempestuous love affairs, her alternately biting and loving relationships with her neighbor Lulu and her sister Angela, her struggles with debt, gentrification and loss, and, eventually, what really happened between her and her estranged son, Fernando. As Cara confronts her darkest secrets and regrets, we see a woman buffeted by life but still full of fight. Structurally inventive and emotionally kaleidoscopic, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water is Angie Cruz's most ambitious and moving novel yet, and Cara is a heroine for the ages.”
The border of lights reader: bearing witness to genocide in the Dominican Republic. Megan Jeanette Myers and Edward Paulino. Amherst College Press, 2021.
Megan Jeanette Myers is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Iowa State University and Edward Paulino is assistant professor of global history at John Jay College, City University of New York. He is a cofounder of Border of Lights, an organization that commemorates the anniversary of the 1937 genocidal Haitian massacre and promotes solidarity.
“Border of Lights, a volunteer collective, returns each October to Dominican-Haitian border towns to bear witness to the 1937 Haitian Massacre ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo. This crime against humanity has never been acknowledged by the Dominican government and no memorial exists for its victims. A multimodal, multi-vocal space for activists, artists, scholars, and others connected to the BOL movement, The Border of Lights Reader provides an alternative to the dominant narrative that positions Dominicans and Haitians as eternal adversaries and ignores cross-border and collaborative histories. This innovative anthology asks large-scale, universal questions regarding historical memory and revisionism that countries around the world grapple with today.”
Jhensen Ortiz, Librarian