Latin Journey

Latin Journey details an eight-year study of Mexican and Cuban immigrants.

A kaleidoscopic, fast-paced tour of Latin America from one of the Spanish-speaking world’s most outstanding writers. Lamenting not having more time to get to know each of the nineteen countries he visits after winning the prestigious Premio Alfaguara, Andrés Neuman begins to suspect that world travel consists mostly of “not seeing.” But then he realizes that the fleeting nature of his trip provides him with a unique opportunity: touring and comparing every country of Latin America in a single stroke. Neuman writes on the move, generating a kinetic work that is at once puckish and poetic, aphoristic and brimming with curiosity. Even so-called non-places—airports, hotels, taxis—are turned into powerful symbols full of meaning. A dual Argentine-Spanish citizen, he incisively explores cultural identity and nationality, immigration and globalization, history and language, and turbulent current events. Above all, Neuman investigates the artistic lifeblood of Latin America, tackling with gusto not only literary heavyweights such as Bolaño, Vargas Llosa, Lorca, and Galeano, but also an emerging generation of authors and filmmakers whose impact is now making ripples worldwide. Eye-opening and charmingly offbeat, How to Travel without Seeing: Dispatches from the New Latin America is essential reading for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of the Americas.

For the first time, music legend Rudy Pérez shares his remarkable journey from a poor refugee kid in Miami to composing the greatest hit songs on the world stage. Named the most successful Latin songwriter in history, Rudy Pérez is the creator behind some of the bestselling records of Beyoncé, Julio Iglesias, Christina Aguilera, and IL Divo. In his one-of-a-kind memoir, Rudy tells about his childhood in Cuba and the heart-gripping visits to his father in prison during the height of the communist revolution. Tracing his family's perilous escape on one of the last Freedom Flights to America, Rudy opens up about the years of poverty and growing up in a crime-ridden neighborhood. These memories contrast with tender moments of dancing to the stereo with his siblings, nodding along to his mother's classical favorites, and swaying to blues melodies with his father. At a young age, Rudy tried his hand at recreating the music he loved, and his talent led him to an unprecedented career with over 300 hit songs. With years of hard work, ceaseless creativity, and a strong faith, Rudy was the first Latin music artist to win Billboard Producer of the Decade. Looking back over his five-time Grammy winning legacy, Rudy shares little-known stories of faith and behind-the-scenes details of working with stars like Fergie, Jaci Velasquez, Michael Bolton, Simon Cowell, and Sam Moore. A must-read for every music lover, The Latin Hit Maker is a genuine rags-to-riches story filled with inspiration, fascinating details, and a powerful reminder of God's grace and transforming creativity.

Internationally renowned essayist and cultural commentator Ilan Stavans spent five years traveling from across a dozen countries in Latin America, in search of what defines the Jewish communities in the region, whose roots date back to Christopher Columbus’s arrival. In the tradition of V.S. Naipaul’s explorations of India, the Caribbean, and the Arab World, he came back with an extraordinarily vivid travelogue. Stavans talks to families of the desaparecidos in Buenos Aires, to “Indian Jews,” and to people affiliated with neo-Nazi groups in Patagonia. He also visits Spain to understand the long-term effects of the Inquisition, the American Southwest habitat of “secret Jews,” and Israel, where immigrants from Latin America have reshaped the Jewish state. Along the way, he looks for the proverbial “seventh heaven,” which, according to the Talmud, out of proximity with the divine, the meaning of life in general, and Jewish life in particular, becomes clearer. The Seventh Heaven is a masterful work in Stavans’s ongoing quest to find a convergence between the personal and the historical.

His Principal Interest Was In Archaeology And Politics, And His First Stop Was Bolivia, Which Had Recently Experienced A Far-Reaching Revolution, And Where He Had The Opportunity To Study The Inca Remains At Tiahuanaco And Elsewhere. He Moved On To Peru, Visiting Cuzco, Macchu Picchu And Lima, And Along The Andes To Guayaquil In Ecuador Before Sailing Up The Coast To Panama, Costa Rica And Guatemala, Where He Was Caught Up In The Cia Overthrow Of The Arbenz Government, And Later Mexico, Where He Was To Meet Fidel Castro For The First Time.Throughout His Travels, The Young Guevara Kept A Spasmodic Diary In Which He Recorded His Impressions Of His Two-Year Journey. It Was An Expedition, Which Thousands Of Backpackers Accomplish Today, And Thousands More Dream About.

This classic anthology on Latin America shows the Argentine-born revolutionary's cultural depth, rigorous intellect, and intense emotional engagement with a continent and its people. In a letter to his mother in 1954, a young Ernesto Guevara wrote, “The Americas will be the theater of my adventures in a way that is much more significant than I would have believed.” In The Awakening of Latin America we have the story of those adventures, charting Che’s evolution from an impressionable young medical student to the “heroic guerrilla,” assassinated in cold blood in Bolivia. Spanning seventeen years, this anthology draws on from his family’s personal archives and offers the best of Che’s writing: examples of his journalism, essays, speeches, letters, and even poems. As Che documents his early travels through Latin America, his involvement in the Guatemalan and Cuban revolutions, and his rise to international prominence under Fidel Castro, we see how his fervent commitment to social justice shaped and was shaped by the continent he called home.

This book takes a new approach to travel writing about Latin America by examining ‘domestic’ journey narratives that have been produced by travellers from the continent itself and largely in Spanish. Historically, travel writing about Latin America has been written primarily from the perspective of the foreign, often European, traveller. As such, and following the large influx of military, scientific, and leisure travellers in the region since its colonisation, much of this foreign travel writing has depicted the continent in predominantly exoticist and/or imperialist terms. Lindsay explores how Latin American travellers have conceived and constructed narratives about travel at home and considers how such texts (many of them available in English translation or with subtitles) function to counter or corroborate long-standing myths about the continent. Through a series of regionally- and thematically-oriented case studies that engage with key issues, themes and debates in both Latin American and travel studies, Lindsay provides the first sustained interdisciplinary study of contemporary domestic travel narratives about the region and will also comprise an important intervention into methodological debates about travel and travel writing.

Exploring small villages, large cities, vineyards, restaurants, hotels, and historic sites, a combination of food and travel captures the passion and flavor of six Latin American cultures.

What kind of language is Latin, and who is it for? Contrary to most accounts, this book tells the story of Latin as a language of ordinary people. Surveying the whole span of the language's history, it explores the evidence that exists for ordinary Latin around the Roman world, arguing that this material is just as worthy of readers' attention as the famous classics. Those classics are reassessed in the light of popular concerns, as works of art that evoke ancient, sustainable, and communal ways of living, encompassing broad and diverse traditions of readers through time. And of course Latin lived on: this account revisits what happened to the language after the Roman empire, tracing its twin streams - intellectual lingua franca and a series of Romance languages - into the twenty-first century. What emerges is a human chain stretching back thousands of years and still in existence today, a story of workers and weavers, violets and roses, storytellers and musicians, a common and democratic archive of world history. Kerrigan's strong and attractive case for a new conception of Latin sends out a call to arms to reevaluate the place of Latin in history. On the one hand, an interesting and readable history of the language, on the other, this book sets out to provoke questions for readers, students, and teachers of Latin, as well as anyone interested in the ancient Mediterranean world. Latin was and should always be for all.

This book takes a new approach to travel writing about Latin America by examining ‘domestic’ journey narratives that have been produced by travellers from the continent itself and largely in Spanish. Historically, travel writing about Latin America has been written primarily from the perspective of the foreign, often European, traveller. As such, and following the large influx of military, scientific, and leisure travellers in the region since its colonisation, much of this foreign travel writing has depicted the continent in predominantly exoticist and/or imperialist terms. Lindsay explores how Latin American travellers have conceived and constructed narratives about travel at home and considers how such texts (many of them available in English translation or with subtitles) function to counter or corroborate long-standing myths about the continent. Through a series of regionally- and thematically-oriented case studies that engage with key issues, themes and debates in both Latin American and travel studies, Lindsay provides the first sustained interdisciplinary study of contemporary domestic travel narratives about the region and will also comprise an important intervention into methodological debates about travel and travel writing.