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Mother Tongue Audiobook
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In 1988, poet, journalist and activist Demetria Martinez was indicted on charges of conspiracy for helping Salvadorans escape their country. After she was acquitted, she began writing Mother Tongue. The result is the powerful story of a young woman's efforts to help a people who were routinely "disappeared" by their government. A nameless El Salvadoran man, fleeing torture and imprisonment, arrives in the United States-his only hope for asylum. The American woman who has volunteered to help him is searching for something to add meaning to her life. When these two lonely people meet, their haunting relationship fulfills their hearts' desires, but it also gives life to their darkest dreams. Mother Tongue won the Western State Book Award for fiction in 1994. Reviewers from coast to coast, including Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, The Bloomsbury Review, and The Washington Post Book World have praised Martinez's novel for its astonishing imagery and poetic force.
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“Poetry, politics, and no-holds-barred emotions burst from the tiny binding of a notable first novel by poet and activist Martínez…Striking from the very first line is Martínez’s ability to combine poetic language and imagery with novelistic structure and suspense…Beautiful writing and atute commentary.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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“It is a great beauty of a book, and I am so proud of you for standing with and for the disappeared. A sister, a lover, a witness.”
— Alice Walker, New York Times bestselling author of Possessing the Secret of Joy -
“A book that becomes more timely every day, in our present political climate, and deserves the widest possible audience for its beautiful prose and humanitarian heart.”
— Barbara Kingsolver, New York Times bestselling author -
“Demetria Martínez has pulled out all the stops: here is truth to arouse any hardened heart; here is the ‘insanity’ of a woman in love calling forth a revolutionary lucidity. Read it. Get angry. And act.”
— Luis J. Rodríguez, author of Always Running -
“Demetria Martínez’s Mother Tongue is beautiful, taut, deep, and unique, a book that should have been written and ought to be read.”
— Andre Dubus, author of Adultery and Other Choices
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About Demetria Martínez
Demetria Martínez is an author, activist, journalist and creativity coach. Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she now resides, she earned her BA from Princeton University in 1982. She is an activist on several fronts, including work with the Jardines Institute which is committed to food justice and sustainable farming in economically disadvantaged communities. In 2011, she was honored with the Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature. Her autobiographical essays, Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana, won the 2006 International Latino Book Award in the category of best biography. Her widely translated novel, Mother Tongue, winner of a Western States Book Award for Fiction, is based in part upon Martinez’s 1988 trial for conspiracy against the United States government in connection with allegedly transporting Salvadoran refugees into the country, a charge that with others carried a twenty-five-year prison sentence. A religion reporter at the time covering the faith-based Sanctuary Movement, she was found not guilty on First Amendment grounds. She also co-authored a children’s book, Grandpa’s Magic Tortilla, with Rosalee Montoya-Read, which received the Young Reader’s Book Award in 2011 from the New Mexico Book Awards.
About Alyssa Bresnahan
Alyssa Bresnahan is a dynamic dancer, actor, and audiobook narrator. She has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, has earned twenty Earphones Awards, and was named one of AudioFile magazine’s Golden Voices. In 2009 she was a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best fiction narration.