Salsa Stories

An evocative collection of short stories by a three-time Pura Belpre honoree. Now available in paperback! When Carmen Teresa receives a notebook as a holiday gift, the guests suggest she write down their own childhood stories, which they tell. But Carmen Teresa, who loves to cook, collects their family recipes instead! With energy, sensitivity, and warmth, Lulu Delacre introduces readers to a symphony of colorful characters whose 9 stories dance through a year of Latin American holidays and customs. Countries include Mexico, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Guatamala and Peru. Seventeen delicious and authentic recipes are included.

Delacre presents a collection of stories within the story of a family celebration where the guests relate their memories of growing up in various Latin American countries. Also contains recipes. B&W linocuts.

With more than seventy mouthwatering recipes, this vibrant memoir by food writer Viviana Carballo shares the Havana of her childhood -- warm nights, pounding surf, energetic music, and the memorable meals that both nourished and delighted her and her family throughout the years. In the 1940s and 1950s, at the height of government corruption, Havana was a nonstop party. Food and music defined the culture, and the pervading sensuality -- the physical beauty of the city itself with its frisson of danger -- made it a magnet for tourists, gangsters, and the world's most glamorous celebrities. This was the Cuba of Viviana Carballo's magical childhood and adventurous adolescence. Born in 1939, she was the only child of a stylish and spirited woman and a handsome astrologer and writer, whose passion for food ignited Carballo's own taste for the exotic, eclectic cuisine for which Havana had become known. By the time she reached her teenage years, sultry nights dancing at the Tropicana and rubbing elbows with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Meyer Lansky, and Guillermo Cabrera Infante nourished her hunger for the rhythm and creativity pulsating throughout her beloved city. But all of that changed in 1959, when Fidel Castro took command of this rollicking paradise, turning it into a country marked by extreme poverty, food shortages, power outages, and daily water stoppages. In 1961, Carballo left her beloved country with the clothes on her back and no idea when she would ever see her husband, family, or friends again. It is only through her memories that she has ever returned to the place that defined her. Havana Salsa is a collection of stories about her large, extended family, a rather eccentric group who conducted their lives against the extraordinary backdrop of Havana, and of her own experiences amid the city's former delicious decadence. It also showcases the food and recipes Carballo associates with each delightful family memory, beginning with her childhood in the forties (calabaza fritters, sweet plantain tortillas, and oxtail stew), through the sensual fifties (roast shoulder of lamb, Cuban bouillabaisse), and then the first eighteen months of Castro's revolution (mango pie, pollito en cazuela, and papas with chorizo). Havana Salsa tells the history of Carballo's Havana as only she can -- through the intimate and unifying experience of food, family, and friends.

Learning Stories and Teaching Inquiry Groups is a practical text focused on how ECE practitioners can establish teacher inquiry and reflection groups and integrate the use of learning stories to strengthen their assessment, teaching practices, and knowledge of child development. Drawing on relevant research and the authors' direct work with teachers, the book focuses on describing ways the authors have adapted the framework of the learning stories approach from New Zealand to specific US educational contexts via examples from several urban and rural ECE contexts. The book provides practical examples of novice through veteran early childhood teachers engaging and collaborating in onsite and cross-site inquiry and reflection with a focus on learning stories. This text will be useful for infant, toddler, and preschool teachers taking courses at the AA, BA, and MA levels, as well as teachers engaged in onsite professional development. This text will help early childhood educators learn to write learning stories as an observational and assessment approach to document young children's learning experiences and to deepen teachers' understanding of the role of narrative in linking child development knowledge with effective environmental design, high-quality curricular approaches, and socially and culturally inclusive relationship practices. The text will support early childhood educators' professional development through easily understood instructions and case study samples of inquiry work with learning stories through community of practice. Educators will learn how linking learning stories with regular, systematic forms of teacher inquiry, documentation, and reflection promotes a new image of children as holistic learners.

Everyone knows the flamboyant, larger-than-life Celia Cruz, the extraordinary salsa singer who passed away in 2003, leaving millions of fans brokenhearted. indeed, there was a magical vibrancy to the Cuban salsa singer. to hear her voice or to see her perform was to feel her life-affirming energy deep within you. relish the sizzling sights and sounds of her legacy in this glimpse into Celia’s childhood and her inspiring rise to worldwide fame and recognition as the Queen of salsa. Her inspirational life story is sure to sweeten your soul.

In Cuban Fire, the prize-winning author Isabelle Leymarie tells the thrilling story of popular music of Cuban origin and its major artists from the 1920s to today. Afro-Cuban music derives its richness from the fusion of many cultures. On the island of tobacco, rum and coffee, nicknamed 'The Green Caiman' because of its long and curvy shape, the wedding of sacred and secular African musical genres with Spanish and French melodies gave rise to numerous genres that have gained international fame- son, rhumba, guaracha, conga, mambo, cha-cha-cha, pachanga, and nueva timba. The history of Cuban music also unfolds in the United States, where large Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican and other Hispanic communities have established themselves over the years. It was in New York, indeed, that the boogaloo, salsa and Latin jazz, created by such musicians as Machito, Mario Bauz , Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo, emerged out of the contact with the Puerto Ricans and African-Americans of that city. This major reference book also deals with the incandescent rhythms of Puerto Rico and -- to a lesser degree -- Santo Domingo, integrated today into salsa and Latin jazz.

With whimsical illustrations by Paulette Bogan, Aaron Reynolds has created a hilarious picture book about one rooster's quest for culinary delight. What happens at Nuthatcher Farm when the chickens get tired of the same old chicken feed? The rooster hatches a plan, of course! With a pinch of genius, a dash of resourcefulness, and a little pilfering from the farmer's garden, the chickens whip up a scrumptious snack of chips and salsa. When the rest of the barnyard gets a whiff of the spicy smells and want to join in, it can mean only one thing . . . FIESTA! But when the big day arrives, all their spicy southwestern supplies are gone! It seems that Mr. and Mrs. Nuthatcher have caught on to the flavor craze as well, and the only thing left for the animals to do is to try a new culinary style-ooh la la!

The Corso: The Real Nuyorican Salsa Story is a must-read book not just because it’s a fantastic and incredible story of success but also it’s a historic legacy of how it was at the beginning of the salsa movement. It is narrated firsthand by someone who was there and was an important part of it, if not the most important. Pete Bonet was born in a very humble, extremely poor part of the island of Puerto Rico. Even the police would not go in there. It was too dangerous. It is a place called El Fanguito, “the Muddy.” His mother, Olga, was abandoned there with her six children, ages fifteen down to a newborn baby. Pedrito, as he was called, was the fourth child; he was six years old when his father left for good. Olga was left alone with no money, no food, no man to protect the family, no government help, no nothing, not even shoes for the kids to go to school. The neighbors would say, “Poor Olga, she’s going to die along with all the six kids.” Pedrito left that part of the world at the age of fifteen to go to New York City, not knowing how to say no in English. At the age of twenty-one, Pedro graduated from Central Commercial High School with honors in bookkeeping and business law, typing sixty words a minute without errors. He then took the test in order to enter the United States Air Force and qualified in administration and thus entered the United States Air Force. Upon returning home with an honorable discharge, Pedro went to work for different construction companies as a timekeeper onsite—Marshall Const. Co., Arc Electric Co., Turner Const. Co., Melnick Const. Co., among others. He would go dancing on weekends to different nightclubs in New York City, from the world-famous Palladium Ballroom called the home of the mambo and cha-cha-cha, located on Broadway and Fifty-Third Street, the Manhattan Center on Thirty-Fourth Street, the Hunts Point Palace in the Bronx, and this was where Pete met the love of his life, Margie. They fell in love at first sight while dancing to the wonderful music of Tito Rodriguez and his big band orchestra. They got married six months later and still together today, in the year 2019, fifty-seven years and still counting. Pete Bonet, as he got to be known, got into music by mere chance. He started singing with Alfredito Valdez and his charanga, then Ray Barretto and his charanga, La Moderna. Then he went with Mongo Santamaria and his orchestra under the musical direction of trumpet player Marty Sheller. He formed his own big band together with the great Louie Ramirez as his arranger and musical director. After a couple of years, he got a call from Tito Rodriguez and went on to sing with the one and only Tito Rodriguez and his big band. Upon Tito Rodriguez’s death, he joined the Joe Cuba Sextet. He also sang with the king of Latin music, Tito Puente and his big band, and over forty other Latin orchestras in New York, Hollywood, and Puerto Rico. By reading this book, you will get to appreciate that great era, an extraordinary moment in time, the very beginning when the term “salsa” was born and started to be used instead of all the different names of all that great Cuban music. You will feel all the excitement of non-Latins dancing in clubs like the Corso that most likely will never be repeated again.

“You might think that dancing doesn’t have a lot to do with social research, and doing social research is probably why you picked this book up in the first place. But trust me. Salsa dancing is a practice as well as a metaphor for a kind of research that will make your life easier and better.” Savvy, witty, and sensible, this unique book is both a handbook for defining and completing a research project, and an astute introduction to the neglected history and changeable philosophy of modern social science. In this volume, Kristin Luker guides novice researchers in: knowing the difference between an area of interest and a research topic; defining the relevant parts of a potentially infinite research literature; mastering sampling, operationalization, and generalization; understanding which research methods best answer your questions; beating writer’s block. Most important, she shows how friendships, non-academic interests, and even salsa dancing can make for a better researcher. “You know about setting the kitchen timer and writing for only an hour, or only 15 minutes if you are feeling particularly anxious. I wrote a fairly large part of this book feeling exactly like that. If I can write an entire book 15 minutes at a time, so can you.”

SUPERANNO A celebration of salsa music chronicles the lives of more than forty salsa musical giants. Singers, musicians, and experts guide us around the spicy world of salsa in this educational, historic, entertaining, touching legacy from the musicians to their fans. Learn about the most important unifying element of the Hispanic culture--its music--in a departure from the more straight-laced, historical or musicological fare with more than 300 photographs.