This powerful and enriching collection of nine stories explores and illuminates the fusion of intimate and public dramas. Focusing on the persistence of personal memory amid political and historical upheaval, the tales in The Eighth Continent portray the impact of broad political and historical events on individual lives, success in the face of low expectations and the humor that redeems everyday struggles. In rich evocative language, award winning author Alba Ambert invokes strong characters and demonstrates the cool detachment of modern life. Populating the stories are engrossing individuals: underground revolutionaries faced with fear of betrayal; a woman who looks back at a massacre she witnessed as a child and the wrenching consequences of this event on her life; a linguist who makes a dangerous trip to a tropical island and finds a language on the verge of extinction; and a young woman in a mental hospital who challenges our perception of truth and lies, sanity and insanity.

In this expertly crafted, richly detailed guide, Raymond Leslie Williams explores the cultural, political, and historical events that have shaped the Latin American and Caribbean novel since the end of World War II. In addition to works originally composed in English, Williams covers novels written in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and Haitian Creole, and traces the profound influence of modernization, revolution, and democratization on the writing of this era. Beginning in 1945, Williams introduces major trends by region, including the Caribbean and U.S. Latino novel, the Mexican and Central American novel, the Andean novel, the Southern Cone novel, and the novel of Brazil. He discusses the rise of the modernist novel in the 1940s, led by Jorge Luis Borges's reaffirmation of the right of invention, and covers the advent of the postmodern generation of the 1990s in Brazil, the Generation of the "Crack" in Mexico, and the McOndo generation in other parts of Latin America. An alphabetical guide offers biographies of authors, coverage of major topics, and brief introductions to individual novels. It also addresses such areas as women's writing, Afro-Latin American writing, and magic realism. The guide's final section includes an annotated bibliography of introductory studies on the Latin American and Caribbean novel, national literary traditions, and the work of individual authors. From early attempts to synthesize postcolonial concerns with modernist aesthetics to the current focus on urban violence and globalization, The Columbia Guide to the Latin American Novel Since 1945 presents a comprehensive, accessible portrait of a thoroughly diverse and complex branch of world literature.

The stories in this collection span almost one thousand years of story-telling in India. Most originate in North India and all were written by Jain monks for the edification and amusement of the faithful. The treasures of India`s heritage of story-telling are known to us today mainly from these Jain stories which have been carefully preserved through the years. The Stories in The Clever Adulteress have been translated by a renowned group of scholars from India, North America and Europe. Each translator has chosen his or her favorites from the vast treasures of Jain literature.

There has been a dramatic increase in the amount of narrative work published by Chicana and Latina authors in the past 5 to 10 years. Nonetheless, there has been little attempt to catalog this material. This reference provides convenient access to all forms of narrative written by Chicana and Latina authors from the early 1940s through 2002. In doing so, it helps users locate these works and surveys the growth of this vast body of literature. The volume cites more than 2,750 short stories, novels, novel excerpts, and autobiographies written by some 600 Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Cuban American, Dominican American, and Nuyorican women authors. These citations are grouped in five indexes: an author/title index, title/author index, anthology index, novel index, and autobiography index. Short annotations are provided for the anthologies, novels, and autobiographies. Thus the user who knows the title of a work can discover the author, the other works the author has written, and the anthologies in which the author's shorter pieces have been reprinted, along with information about particular works.

Combining pieces of nonfiction, fiction, and parody, this collection of writing reflects contemporary women's lives as they struggle with coming of age, relationships, and parenthood.

A marvelous new anthology from the editors of Las Christmas in which our most admired Latino authors share memories of their mothers. The women lovingly portrayed in Las Mamis represent a cross section of Latino life and culture. They come from rich families in the big cities of Latin America, from rural immigrant families, and from the worlds in between-and they share an extraordinary inner strength, often maintained against incredible odds. Pressed by conflicting cultural expectations, circumstance, and religion, they have managed the challenges of motherhood, leaving enduring legacies for their children. Now, in these vivid, poignant, and sometimes hilarious reminiscences-all of them infused with distinct sabor latino-Las Mamis celebrates the universality of family love and the special bond between mothers and children. Contributors include: Esmeralda Santiago, Piri Thomas, Marjorie Agosin, Junot Diaz, Alba Ambert, Liz Balmaseda, Mandalit del Barco, Gioconda Belli, Maria Escandon, Dagoberto Gilb, Francisco Goldman, Jaime Manrique, Gustavo Perez-Firmat, Ilan Stavans

Providing a detailed historical overview of Hispanic literature in the United States from the Spanish colonial period to the present, this extensive chronology provides the context within which such writers as Sandra Cisneros, Rodolfo Anaya, and Oscar Hijuelos have worked. Hispanic literature in the United States is covered from the Spanish colonial period to the present. A detailed historical overview and a separate survey of Hispanic drama provide researchers and general readers with indispensable information and insight into Hispanic literature. An extensive chronology traces the development of Hispanic literature and culture in the United States from 1492 to 2002, providing the context within which such Hispanic writers such as Sandra Cisneros, Rodolfo Anaya, and Oscar Hijuelos have worked. Topics include an overview and chronology of Hispanic literature in the United States, a who's who of Hispanic authors, significant trends, movements, and themes, publishing trends, an overview of Hispanic drama, adn the 100 essential Hispanic literary works. Biographical entries describe the careers, importance, and major works of notable Hispanic novelists, poets, and playwrights writing in English or Spanish. A comprehensive, up-to-date bibliography lists primary sources. Essays detail the most important past and current trends in Hispanic literature, including bilingualism, Chicano literature, children's literature, exile literature, folklore, immigrant literature, Nuyorican literature, poetry, and women and feminism in Hispanic literature. More than 100 exceptional illustrations of writers, plays in performance, and first editions of important works are included.

Set amid the political turmoil of the Puerto Rican independence movement and labor disputes, this stunning novel takes us into Marina Alomar's life as she makes a surprising discovery that may finally reveal how her anarchist mother died and by whose hand. Alba Ambert is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet. She was born in Puerto Rico and has lived in Greece and England. She currently lives and writes in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Defending Their Own in the Cold: The Cultural Turns of U.S. Puerto Ricans explores U.S. Puerto Rican culture in past and recent contexts. The book presents East Coast, Midwest, and Chicago cultural production while exploring Puerto Rican musical, film, artistic, and literary performance. Working within the theoretical frame of cultural, postcolonial, and diasporic studies, Marc Zimmerman relates the experience of Puerto Ricans to that of Chicanos and Cuban Americans, showing how even supposedly mainstream U.S. Puerto Ricans participate in a performative culture that embodies elements of possible cultural "Ricanstruction." Defending Their Own in the Cold examines various dimensions of U.S. Puerto Rican artistic life, including relations with other ethnic groups and resistance to colonialism and cultural assimilation. To illustrate how Puerto Ricans have survived and created new identities and relations out of their colonized and diasporic circumstances, Zimmerman looks at the cultural examples of Latino entertainment stars such as Jennifer Lopez and Benicio del Toro, visual artists Juan Sánchez, Ramón Flores, and Elizam Escobar, as well as Nuyorican dancer turned Midwest poet Carmen Pursifull. The book includes a comprehensive chapter on the development of U.S. Puerto Rican literature and a pioneering essay on Chicago Puerto Rican writing. A final essay considers Cuban cultural attitudes towards Puerto Ricans in a testimonial narrative by Miguel Barnet and reaches conclusions about the past and future of U.S. Puerto Rican culture. Zimmerman offers his own "semi-outsider" point of reference as a Jewish American Latin Americanist who grew up near New York City, matured in California, went on to work with and teach Latinos in the Midwest, and eventually married a woman from a Puerto Rican family with island and U.S. roots.