Martita, I remember you = Martita, te recuerdo / Sandra Cisneros ; traducción de Liliana Valenzuela.
Material type:
TextLanguage: English, Spanish Original language: English Series: Vintage contemporaries originalPublisher: New York : Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2021Copyright date: ©2021Edition: Dual-language editionDescription: 55, 57 pages ; 21 cm Carrier type: - volume
- 9780593313664
- 0593313666
- Martita, te recuerdo [Added title page title]
- Martita, I remember you, a story in English and Spanish [Cover title]
- PS3553.I78 M3718 2021
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Books
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Edsel Ford Memorial Library First Floor | New Fiction | 863.64 C49 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | 35120001918858 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
As a young woman, Corina leaves her Mexican family in Chicago to pursue her dream of becoming a writer in the cafes of Paris. Instead, she spends her brief time in the City of Light running out of money and lining up with other immigrants to call home from a broken pay phone. But her months of befriending panhandling artists in the subway, sleeping on crowded attic floors, and dancing the tango at underground parties are given a lasting glow by her intense friendships with Martita and Paola. Over the years the three women disperse to three continents, falling out of touch and out of mind-until a letter unearthed in a closet brings Corina's days in Paris back with breathtaking immediacy.
Told with intimacy and searing tenderness, this tribute to the life-changing power of youthful friendship is Cisneros at her vintage best, in a beautiful dual-language edition.
This is a dual-language edition of 'Martita, I Remember You'. Written in English, it was translated into Spanish as 'Martita, te recuerdo'.
Tête-bêche; book presented in two parts bound back-to-back and inverted.
"A story in English and Spanish" from cover.
"An enchanting story about a writer remembering her short time in Paris and her reflections on friendships, relationships, and her younger self in a beautiful dual-language edition. Paris has long been romanticized as the city of light. A city with a vibrant literary and artistic expatriate community. Corina--nicknamed Puffina--is a young writer hoping to find that idealized community, but when her money runs out sooner than expected, she finds a network of artists simply trying to find work, make rent, and make Paris home. Years later, when a letter from her friend Martita resurfaces, Corina finds herself older and with enough distance to articulate her time in Paris. While Paris did not bring her the affirmation she was looking for as a writer, Corina finds an emotional connection to her friend that transcends space and time and demonstrates that we are most honest in our writing. Told with intimacy and tenderness, Martita, I Remember You is Sandra Cisneros at her best"-- Provided by publisher.
"De joven, Corina deja a su familia mexicana en Chicago para perseguir su sueño de convertirse en escritora en los cafés de París. En cambio, en su breve tiempo en la Ciudad de la Luz, se lo pasa quedándose sin dinero y haciendo fila con otros inmigrantes para llamar a casa desde un teléfono público defectuoso. Pero esos meses relacionándose con artistias pobres en el metro, durmiendo en apartamentos abarrotados y bailando tango en fiestas clandestinas dejan una huella gracias a su intensa amistad con Martita y Paola. Al pasar los años, las tres mujeres se disperan por tres continentes, olvidándose y perdiedo el contacto, hasta que una carta encontrada en una gaveta trae de vuelta los días de Corina en París con una inmediatez impresionante." -- book cover.
Dual language item; English in one direction, book flipped for Spanish; translated from English.
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Publishers Weekly Review
In this bilingual edition (written originally in English and translated into Spanish by Liliana Valenzuela) of Cisneros's exquisite story (after Puro Amor), a woman relives her time in Paris two decades earlier via a cache of discovered letters. At 20, Corina aspires to become a writer and escape her poor Mexican Chicago family, prompting her to travel to Paris. She meets Marta, from Chile, and Paola, from Italy, and mingles with artists, dancers, and performers. She stretches her money to stay longer, realizing, "I can't go home yet. Because home is bus stops and drugstore windows, elastic bandages and hairpins, plastic ballpoints, felt bunion pads, tweezers, rat poison, cold sore ointment, mothballs, drain cleaners, deodorant." Back in Chicago, she holds onto a photo of herself with Marta and Paola, but swiftly loses touch with them. Decades later, she discovers a letter from Marta sent shortly after she'd left, suggesting they meet in Spain, "in case you're still traveling." Corina speaks to Marta in her thoughts and gives the rundown of her life: divorced, remarried, two daughters. Cisneros's language and rhythm of her prose reverberate with Corina's longing for her youth and unfulfilled promise. The author's fans will treasure this. Agent: Susan Bergholz, Susan Bergholz Literary. (Sept.)Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated this book was translated from the Spanish into English.Booklist Review
Concentration is an art form for Cisneros. Every word is a skipped stone creating ripples in its wake, every image vibrates with implication. In this welcome and vital return to fiction, Cisneros, beloved by readers and the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, portrays three adventurous young women seeking their fortunes in Paris. Memories of this interlude in her life surface as Corina scrapes "a hundred and six years of varnish like layers of honey-drenched phyllo" from a dining room hutch in a Chicago three-flat. She is prompted to retrieve and open a box of letters from those long-ago allies who befriended her on her quest to become a writer, and soon Martita of Buenos Aires and Paola of northern Italy come to life as they navigate family pressure, poverty, and unwanted sexual advances in pursuit of independence and fulfillment. Mexican American Corina's reflections on her harrowing experiences, including living with two busking puppeteers and the racism of Parisians, alternate with missives from Martita and Paola charting the meandering paths of their lives after Corina left Paris. Every heart-revving scene is sensuously and incisively rendered, cohering into a vivid, tender, funny, bittersweet, and haunting episodic tale of peril, courage, concession, selfhood, and friendship. Cisneros' intricately multidimensional and beautifully enveloping novella is presented in both English and Spanish.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A new book from Cisneros is guaranteed to generate impassioned interest, and this vibrant novella will be much discussed.Kirkus Book Review
A Chicago woman discovers old letters from a long-lost friend she'd met as a young adult in Paris, leading her to recall friendships forged in the yearning days of her youth. When Corina unearths a pack of letters from her friend Martita as she renovates her house, she recalls her time as a 20-year-old with Martita and Paola among the out-of-reach glamour of Paris, where they bonded over their shared poverty and dreams to do better for themselves. Corina is waiting for a letter of acceptance from a French art foundation as her money disappears, hoping it arrives before she's forced to go home to Chicago. Paola, from Italy, and Marta, from Buenos Aires, both let Corina stay with them in their own less-than-desirable living situations, and they walk around the glittering streets, looking but unable to access most of what they see, still holding onto their determination to partake of what they can with joie de vivre. We glean snippets of Corina's life back home: Her father disapproving of her choices, her family making tamales in an assembly line for Christmas. When Corina finds herself back in Chicago, working at the gas company and married with children, pieces of Martita's and Paola's further adventures are detailed in their letters. Tightly written, unfolding in a controlled spool of memory, the story is told in a combination of correspondence and narrative vignettes; its length is closer to that of a long short story but it works as a stand-alone volume, especially as it's paired with its Spanish version. A tale both beautiful and brief. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.Author notes provided by Syndetics
Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago, Illinois on December 20, 1954. She received a B.A. in English from Loyola University of Chicago in 1976 and a M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Iowa in 1978. She has worked as a college recruiter, an arts administrator, a teacher to high school dropouts, and a poet. She has also visited numerous colleges around the country as a visiting writer. She has written numerous books including The House on Mango Street, Caramelo, Loose Woman, Have You Seen Marie?, and A House of My Own: Stories from My Life. She has received numerous awards including the MacArthur Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the Lannan Literary Award, the American Book Award, and the Thomas Wolfe Prize.(Bowker Author Biography)