An epic novel of jazz, race and the effects of war on an American family This sweeping drama of intimately connected families --black, white, and Latino-- boldly conjures up the ever-shifting cultural mosaic that is America. At its heart is Vidamía Farrell, half Puerto Rican, half Irish, who sets out in search of the father she has never known. Her journey takes her from her affluent home to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where her father Billy Farrell now lives with his second family. Once a gifted jazz pianist, Billy lost two fingers in the Vietnam War and has since shut himself off from jazz. In this powerful modern odyssey, Vidamía struggles to bring her father back to the world of jazz. Her quest gives her a new understanding of family, particularly through her half-sisters Fawn, a lonely young poet plagued with a secret, and Cookie, a sassy, streetsmart homegirl who happens to be "white." And when Vidamía becomes involved with a young African-American jazz saxophonist, she is forced to explore her own complex roots, along with the dizzying contradictions of race etched in the American psyche. Edgardo Vega Yunqué vividly captures the myriad voices of our American idiom like a virtuoso spinning out a series of expanding riffs, by turns lyrical, deadly, flippant, witty, and haunting.

No Matter How Much You Promise . . .: A Symphonic Novel

Literature & Fiction

Yunqué, Edgardo Vega

United States

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Twenty essays and short stories by established and new Puerto Rican authors address the ambiguities and joys of being a child of both Puerto Rican culture and American society

Growing Up Puerto Rican: An Anthology

Politics & Social Sciences

De Jesus, Joy L.

Sociology

Avon/Books

Spanish Harlem, New York's oldest barrio, is home to some 120,000 people, half of whom are of Latino origin. To live in Spanish Harlem is to confront some of the city's worst problems: crime, drug abuse, AIDS, chronic unemployment. But Spanish Harlem also serves as the "capital of Hispanic America." The mecca where Puerto Ricans first settled is now shared with African Americans and new arrivals from Latin America. Each year, former residents of Spanish Harlem return for "Old Timer's Day," a celebration of the flamboyance and the gritty self-reliance of the neighborhood. Joseph Rodriguez's photographs bring the reader inside Spanish Harlem - from the Good Friday procession, to the Dominoe social club, to the dance called the Bomba Plena, to vibrant stoop life in the neighborhood. Spanish Harlem remembers its past even as a new future is forged. On a street corner, an ice cream cart sign reads: "Puerto Rico is my enchanted. Here is where I stay."

Spanish Harlem (American Scene, 3)

Arts & Photography

Rodriguez, Joseph

Photography & Video

National Museum of American Art

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Books by Yunqué, Edgardo Vega