Eulogy For A Brown Angel: A Gloria Damasco Mystery


Book Description

Eulogy for a Brown Angel began a new chapter in the mystery genre with the creation of the first Chicana detective in American literature. Now available for the first time in paperback, readers can discover, or rediscover, Lucha CorpiÍs dynamic detective Gloria Damasco in the classic novel that started it all. A Chicano Civil Rights March has been disrupted by the Los Angeles police, resulting in the gruesome death of a prominent reporter. The tear gas has barely settled when a small, defiled body is left on a street in Los Angeles. A feisty political activist finds the murdered child and begins an investigation that will lead her on a trail of international conspiracy and bloody vengeance. Before long, two other people are dead, and Gloria is determined to piece the mystery together, no matter how long the search may last. Adding to the mystery is Gloria DamascoÍs dark gift, a puzzling extra-sensory awareness that forces her to confront situations in which solutions demand more than reason and logic. Eulogy for a Brown Angel is a fast-paced and suspenseful novel, packed with an assortment of interesting characters. A member of the international writersÍ circle Sisters in Crime, Lucha Corpi brings the intrigue to a hard-hitting conclusion in the picturesque Wine Country of Northern California.




Eulogy for a Brown Angel


Book Description

In 1970 in East Los Angeles, Gloria Damasco, a feminist political activist from Oakland, and her best friend Luisa are attending a march in support of the Chicano Moratorium. After the protest turns into a riot, Gloria and Luisa discover the dead body of a 4-year old boy named Michael David Cisneros; he has been strangled and his body defiled. Working unofficially with the lead LAPD homicide investigator, Gloria and Luisa become acquainted with the dead boy's family, who are also in town from Oakland for the march. Then the key witness, a young gang member, is also murdered and the trail to the boy's killer goes cold. The story then shifts to the San Francisco Bay Area and fast-forwards to 1988. Gloria's husband, who discouraged her from continuing the investigation, has died and her daughter is grown, but she is still haunted by little Michael David's murder. Worried about Gloria's state of mind, her mother hires private investigator Justin Escobar to solve the mystery once and for all. Together, Gloria and Justin uncover a trail of international conspiracy and family tragedies before they finally learn the truth behind the 18-year old murder.




Cactus Blood: A Gloria Damasco Mystery


Book Description

In California, Chicana detective Gloria Damasco investigates the death of a strike leader who was involved in a grape boycott. Officially the death was suicide, but Damasco thinks murder more likely. By the author of Eulogy for a Brown Angel.




Death at Solstice: A Gloria Damasco Mystery


Book Description

Chicana detective Gloria Damasco has a ñdark gift,î an extrasensory prescience that underscores her investigations and compels her to solve numerous cases. This time, the recurring vision haunting her dreams contains two pairs of dark eyes watching her in the night, a phantom horse and rider, and the voice of a woman pleading for help. But most disquieting of all is GloriaÍs sensation of being trapped underwater, unable to free herself, unable to breathe. When Gloria is asked to help the owners of the Oro Blanco winery in CaliforniaÍs Shenandoah Valley, she finds herself on the road to the legendary Gold Country. And she canÍt help but wonder if the ever-more persistent visions might foreshadow this new case that involves the theft of a family heirloom, a pair of antique diamond and emerald earrings rumored to have belonged to MexicoÍs Empress Carlota. Soon Gloria learns that thereÍs more to the case than stolen jewelry. Mysterious accidents, threatening anonymous notes, the disappearance of a woman believed to be a saint, and a ghost horse thought to have belonged to notorious bandit JoaquÕn Murrieta are some of the pieces Gloria struggles to fit together. A womanÍs gruesome murder and the discovery of a group of young women from Mexico being held against their will in an abandoned house send Gloria on a fateful journey to a WitchesÍ Sabbath to find the final pieces of the puzzle before someone else is killed. Corpi weaves the rich cultural history of CaliforniaÍs Gold Country with a suspenseful mystery in this latest installment in the Gloria Damasco Mystery series.




Black Widow's Wardrobe: A Gloria Damasco Mystery


Book Description

Was it a spectre from the past, some Aztec revenant that had inspired the "Black Widow" to kill her husband? Or did these chilling murders have more to do with the rights of property and inheritance, and mere greed? Who better than Gloria Damasco, that indomitable detective with a flair for clairvoyance, to unravel this intricate and pulsing plot, which winds its way from an exotic Day of the Dead celebration in San Francisco to the even more exotic sites and customs of Tepozotlan. Gloria soon finds herself in an uncanny struggle to rescue the soul of Licia, the Black Widow, who believes herself possessed by the spirit of La Malinche, the eternally condemned slayer of her mixed-blood offspring during the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Part thriller, part exploration of myth and history, Black Widow's Wardrobe is a page-turner.




A Gringo Manual on How to Handle Mexicans


Book Description

José Angel Gutiérrez is the firebrand civil rights leader of the 1960s and 70s who succeeded in making a minority-based political party a reality in Texas and various other states. In 1970, Gutiérrez led la Raza Unida Party to stunning victories in Crystal City, Texas, and surrounding communities, with Mexican Americans winning all contested seats on the city council and school board, seats held for decades by Anglos. One of the four great leaders of the Chicano Movement, Gutiérrez, along with César Chávez, Reies López Tijerina, and Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, made national calls for militancy and unity, penned nationalist manifestoes, and forced political and educational reform at national and regional levels. Despite Gutiérrezs total commitment to la causa, he found time to write in order to share his political wisdom. Originally self-published during the head of the Chicano Movement, A Gringo Manual on How to Handle Mexicans, now expanded and revised, is a humorous and irreverent manual meant to educate grassroots leaders in practical strategies for community organization, leadership, and negotiation. With tongue in cheek, Gutiérrez attacks the authorities and sacred cows that caused Chicanos anxiety for decades. The manual is a classic in Chicano politics and as a political self-help recipe book. It remains as relevant today as when it was originally published in the early 1970s.




Fat No More


Book Description

The author relates his journey from obese infant and child, through his struggle to lose the weight and emerge as a healthy young man.




Memoir of a Visionary


Book Description

This compelling autobiography traces the trajectory of the groundbreaking Puerto Rican leader Antonia Pantoja, from a struggling school teacher in Puerto Rico to her work as principal engineer of the most enduring Puerto Rican organizations in New York City.




Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant


Book Description

The history of the United States in large part is the history of immigration, an immigration of working class peoples. Usually documented by sociologists, economists and other social scientists, the history becomes sanitized, devoid of the sweat, toil, and tears that make up the stories of real people. Here is an authentic, unexpected document from the very hands of a laborer whose trials have been even more burdensome due to his illegal status. Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant, the first book by RamÑn ñTianguisî P?rez, is written in a style that makes the stories of P?rez and his compatriots even more poignant, more touching, and more absurd given the nature of American politics and immigration policy. This is the true story„not the type of sensational report one might find in the news media„of an undocumented immigrant worker. Here is his odyssey through the United States, his endless trail of menial jobs, his indignities, his humor and his optimism. Perhaps this will shed light on the often obscured experiences of the intelligent, persevering, hard-working human beings we take for granted as they wait our tables, clean our houses, and pick our fruits and vegetables. This is their story.




Chicano Detective Fiction


Book Description

In his 1985 novel Partners in Crime, writer Rolando Hinojosa introduced homicide investigator Rafe Buenrostro, the first Chicano protagonist in one of the most enduring genres of modern literature. Since that time, Chicano writers have embraced the detective novel, successfully diversifying and refining a traditional Anglo American and British genre. The 21 whodunits of Hinojosa, Rudolfo Anaya, Lucha Corpi, Michael Nava and Manuel Ramos are closely studied in this groundbreaking work. The models, both contemporary and Romantic, of this relatively new Chicano genre are first discussed. Next come detailed analysis and reviews of such novels as Shaman Winter, Partners in Crime, Cactus Blood and 18 others, focusing on how each writer departs from contemporary detective genre formula, uniquely rendering a particular regional or cultural variation of what it means to be Chicano. It is this departure from the norm that defines these writings and distinguishes them from the Anglo American and British whodunit. Interviews with the writers conclude the work.