“DANCING HANDS: HOW TERESA CARREÑO PLAYED THE PIANO FOR PRESIDENT LINCOLN”

by Margarita Engle  

Amazon Recommended Grade Level: Preschool – 3

Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

ISBN-13: 978-1481487405

As a little girl, Teresa Carreño loved to let her hands dance across the beautiful keys of the piano.  Soon she was writing her own songs and performing in grand cathedrals. Then a revolution in Venezuela forced her family to flee to the United States. Teresa felt lonely in this unfamiliar place where few of the people she met spoke Spanish. Worst of all, there was fighting in her new home, too—the Civil War. Still, Teresa kept playing, and soon she grew famous—so famous, in fact, that President Abraham Lincoln wanted her to play at the White House!

“SUMMER BIRDS: THE BUTTERFLIES OF MARIA MERIAN”

by Margarita Engle  

Amazon Recommended Grade Level: Kindergarten – 3

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

ISBN-13: 978-0805089370

In the Middle Ages, people believed that insects were evil, born from mud in a process called spontaneous generation. Young Maria Merian was only a child, but nevertheless she disagreed with this idea. She watched carefully as caterpillars spun themselves cocoons, which opened to reveal summer birds (butterflies and moths). Maria studied the whole life cycle of the summer birds and documented what she learned in vibrant paintings. This is the story of one young girl who took the time to observe and learn, and in so doing disproved a theory that went all the way back to ancient Greece.

“THE WILD BOOK”

by Margarita Engle  

Amazon Recommended Grade Level: 5 – 7

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers

ISBN-13: 978-0547581316

Fefa has dyslexia, and the doctor says she will never read or write. Every time she tries, the letters jumble and spill off the page, leaping away like bullfrogs. Then her mother gives Fefa a blank book filled with clean white pages. “Think of it as a garden,” she says. Soon Fefa starts to sprinkle words across the pages of her wild book. She lets her words sprout like seedlings, shaky at first, then growing stronger and surer with each day. And when her family is threatened, it is what Fefa has learned from her wild book that saves them.

“THE LIGHTNING DREAMER: CUBA’S GREATEST ABOLITIONIST”

by Margarita Engle  

Amazon Recommended Grade Level: 7 – 9

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers

ISBN-13: 978-0547807430

“I find it so easy to forget / that I’m just a girl who is expected / to live / without thoughts.” Opposing slavery in Cuba in the nineteenth century was dangerous. The most daring abolitionists were poets who veiled their work in metaphor. Of these, the boldest was Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, nicknamed Tula. In passionate, accessible verses of her own, Engle evokes the voice of this book-loving feminist and abolitionist who at fourteen bravely resisted an arranged marriage and was ultimately courageous enough to fight against injustice. Historical notes, excerpts and source notes round out this exceptional tribute.

Higher Education

“COSMOPOLITAN FILM CULTURES IN LATIN AMERICA, 1896-1960”

Edited by Rielle Edmonds Navitski and Nicolas Poppe

Publisher: Indiana University Press

ISBN-13: 978-0253026460

This book examines how cinema forged cultural connections between Latin American publics and film-exporting nations in the first half of the twentieth century. These connections were defined by active economic and cultural exchanges, as well as longstanding inequalities in political power and cultural capital. The essays explore the arrival and expansion of cinema throughout the region. Examining these transnational exchanges through the lens of the cosmopolitan, which emphasizes the ethical and political dimensions of cultural consumption, illuminates the role played by moving images in negotiating between the local, national, and global, and between the popular and the elite in twentieth-century Latin America.`

“LATIN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY FROM IDENTITY TO RADICAL EXTERIORITY”

by Alejandro Arturo Vallega

Publisher: Indiana University Press

ISBN-13: 978-0253012487

While recognizing its origins and scope, Alejandro A. Vallega offers a new interpretation of Latin American philosophy by looking at its radical and transformative roots. Placing it in dialogue with Western philosophical traditions, Vallega examines developments in gender studies, race theory, postcolonial theory, and the legacy of cultural dependency in light of the Latin American experience. He explores Latin America’s engagement with contemporary problems in Western philosophy and describes the transformative impact of this encounter on contemporary thought.  This book’s three parts: Identity, Dependency, and the Project of Liberation; The Decolonial Turn and the Dissemination of Philosophies; and Thinking from Radical Exteriority.

“STARTING FROM QUIRPINI: THE TRAVELS AND PLACES OF A BOLIVIAN PEOPLE”

by Stuart Alexander Rockefeller

Publisher: Indiana University Press

ISBN-13: 978-0253354976

The people of Quirpini in the Bolivian Andes are in constant motion. They visit each other’s houses; work in their fields; go to nearby towns for school, market, or official transactions; and travel to Buenos Aires. In this rich ethnography, Stuart Alexander Rockefeller describes how these places become intertwined via circuits constituted by the movement of people, goods and information. Drawing on the work of Henri LeFebvre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Nancy Munn, Rockefeller argues that by their travels, Quirpinis play a role in shaping the places they move through. This study makes important contributions to debates about spatiality, temporality, power and culture.

“RETHINKING TESTIMONIAL CINEMA IN POSTDICTATORSHIP ARGENTINA: BEYOND MEMORY FATIGUE”

by Verónica Garibotto

Publisher: Indiana University Press

ISBN-13: 978-0253038500

For roughly two decades after the collapse of the military regime in 1983, testimonial narrative was viewed and received as a privileged genre in Argentina. Today, however, academics and public intellectuals are experiencing “memory fatigue” or a backlash against the concepts of memory and trauma, just as memory and testimonial films have reached the center of Argentinian public discourse. In ”RETHINKING TESTIMONIAL CINEMA IN POSTDICTATORSHIP ARGENTINA,” author Verónica Garibotto looks at the causes for this reticence and argues that, rather than discarding memory texts for their repetitive excess, it is necessary to acknowledge them and their exhaustion as discourses of the present.