Publisher Description
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.”
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Kirkus Reviews
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.