Book Club
Virtual Book Reading and Discussion: Elizabeth Gonzalez James, Mona at Sea
Live via Zoom or in-person6 pm (MST) Live Via Zoom. Register HERE Mona is a Millennial perfectionist who fails upwards in the midst of the 2008 economic crisis. Despite her potential, and her top-of-her-class college degree, Mona finds herself unemployed, living with her parents, and adrift in life and love. Mona's the sort who says exactly the right thing at absolutely the wrong moments, seeing the world through a cynic's eyes. In the financial and social malaise of the early 2000s, Mona walks a knife's edge as she faces down unemployment, (more...)
Virtual Book Reading and Discussion: Hakim Bellamy, Commissions y Corridos
Live via Zoom or in-person6 pm (MST) Live Via Zoom. Register HERE Hakim Bellamy’s latest collection rings with the same power and grace as the people he lauds within its pages, including Nikki Giovanni and Martin Luther King Jr. He celebrates Albuquerque and New Mexico, taking the good with the bad, and reminds Bur-queños that any day when you wake up along the Río Grande is a good day. As Bellamy celebrates the power of creativity and community within the city and the nation, he also demands that we face our society’s faults, (more...)
NHCC Book Club: The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez
Live via Zoom or in-person5:30 pm (MST) Live via Zoom To join, contact cassandra.osterloh@state.nm.us “In the 1950s, tensions remain high in the border town of La Frontera. Penny loafers and sneakers clash with boots and huaraches. Bowling shirts and leather jackets compete with guayaberas. Convertibles fend with motorcycles. Yet amidst the discord, young love blooms at first sight between Fulgencio Ramirez, the son of impoverished immigrants, and Carolina Mendelssohn, the local pharmacist's daughter. But as they'll soon find out, their bonds will be undone by a force more powerful than they (more...)
NHCC Book Club: The Five Wounds
Live via Zoom or in-person5:30 pm (MST) Live via Zoom To join, contact cassandra.osterloh@state.nm.us "From an award-winning storyteller comes a stunning debut novel about a New Mexican family’s extraordinary year of love and sacrifice. The Five Wounds is a miraculous debut novel from a writer whose stories have been hailed as “legitimate masterpieces” (New York Times). Kirstin Valdez Quade conjures characters that will linger long after the final page, bringing to life their struggles to parent children they may not be equipped to save." - Goodreads Free community event
Virtual Book Reading and Discussion: Jessica Helen Lopez, The Blood Poems
Live via Zoom or in-person3 pm (MST) Live Via Zoom. Register HERE The Blood Poems is one part bloodletting, one part healing, and one part sensuous celebration as Jessica Helen Lopez lays out what it means to be a strong brown woman, a single mother, and the kickass bard that the twenty-first century needs. Lopez openly faces a damaging childhood, sex, divorce, and racial injustice in these poems. She proves that love is as complicated as lovemaking -- messy and lusty, raucous and powerful, capable of amazing highs and abysmal lows. (more...)
NHCC Book Club: The Taste of Sugar
Live via Zoom or in-person5:30 pm (MDT) Live via Zoom To join, contact Dr. Patricia Marie Perea by emailing her at Patricia.perea@state.nm.us "It is 1898, and groups of starving Puerto Ricans, los hambrientos, roam the parched countryside and dusty towns begging for food. Under the yoke of Spanish oppression, the Caribbean island is forced to prepare to wage war with the United States. Up in the mountainous coffee region of Utuado, Vicente Vega and Valentina Sanchez labor to keep their small farm from the creditors. When the Spanish-American War and the (more...)
NHCC Book Club: The Wind That Lays Waste
Live via Zoom or in-person5:30 pm (MST) Live via Zoom To join, contact Dr. Patricia Marie Perea by emailing her at Patricia.perea@state.nm.us "The Wind That Lays Waste begins in the great pause before a storm. Reverend Pearson is evangelizing across the Argentinian countryside with Leni, his teenage daughter, when their car breaks down. This act of God or fate leads them to the workshop and home of an aging mechanic called Gringo Brauer and a young boy named Tapioca. As a long day passes, curiosity and intrigue transform into an unexpected intimacy (more...)
NHCC Book Club: Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America
Live via Zoom or in-person5:30 pm (MST) Live via Zoom To join, contact Dr. Patricia Marie Perea by emailing her at Patricia.perea@state.nm.us "In Once I Was You, Maria shares her intimate experience growing up Mexican American on the south side of Chicago and documenting the existential wasteland of immigration detention camps for news outlets that often challenged her work. In these pages, she offers a personal and eye-opening account of how the rhetoric around immigration has not only long informed American attitudes toward outsiders, but also enabled willful negligence and profiteering at (more...)
Día de Familia: Pinturas, Palabras, y Paletas
Domenici Education Building 1701 4th Street SW, Albuquerque, NM, United States11:00 am–3:00 pm Día de Familia: Pinturas, Palabras y Paletas! Bilingual children’s book reading by Dr. Tafolla, a storywalk, and fun activities. Join us for a lively family day featuring celebrated children’s author Dr. Carmen Tafolla, who will read from her children’s books. Participate in a bilingual storywalk, paint watercolor paletas, and make a book for writing your own story. Pete V. Dominici Education Building Free, registration recommended This program generously supported through a Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico Healthy Kids, Healthy Families grant.
Entre Palabras Online Book Club
Live via Zoom5:30 pm Join us for the first installment of our Entre Palabras Online Book Club, featuring the New Mexico classic Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya. NHCC’s Entre Palabras Online Book Club explores diverse themes and topics within the Hispanic/Latine diaspora including identity, place, borders, nationality, race, gender, and language. The book club highlights pieces centered on New Mexico and the Southwest as well as Hispanic/Latine/Latin American works from both the United States and a variety of countries throughout the Hispanic world. Únase al primer evento de nuestro (more...)