The emerging societies of the Caribbean in the 17th century were a riotous assembly of pirates, aristocrats, revolutionaries, and rogues--outcasts and fortune seekers all. In They're Cows, We're Pigs, acclaimed Mexican novelist Carmen Boullosa animates this world of bloody chaos and uncertain possibility through the eyes of the young Jean Smeeks, kidnapped in Flanders at age 13 and sold into indentured servitude on Tortuga, the mythical Treasure Island. Trained in the magic of medicine by le Negre Miel, an African slave healer, and Pineau, a French-born surgeon, Smeeks signs on as a medical officer with the pirate band the Brethren of the Coast. Transformed by the looting and violence of pirate life, Smeeks finds himself both healer and despoiler, servant and mercenary, suspended between the worlds of the law-abiding, tradition-bound "cows" and the freely roaming and raiding "pigs."

They're Cows, We're Pigs

Literature & Fiction

Carmen Boullosa

Literary

Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio

Residents on both sides of the Rio Grande, or the Rio Bravo as it's known in Mexico, have suffered horrific violence as numerous peoples have sought control of the land. In 1836, in what is now Texas, a young girl named Cynthia Ann Parker was kidnapped by Comanches who behaved "like vengeful drug dealers," spearing, scalping and castrating their victims. Spared death, she was adopted by the tribe, only to be "saved" twenty years later by the Texas Rangers. Today, kidnappings continue in Mexico. In this wide-ranging collection of 29 essays, internationally renowned Mexican novelist and essayist Carmen Boullosa explores issues that unite and separate Americans and Mexicans, from the nineteenth century to the present. Themes of greed and barbarism abound. There's Dimaso Salazar, a Mexican captain who in 1841 strung the ears of fallen Texans on a necklace; Susana Chavez, a poet and activist brutally murdered after protesting the killings of women in Ciudad Juarez; and Edelmiro Cavazos, the mayor of the city of Santiago, who was executed during Mexico's ruthless drug wars. Violence is still common on both sides of the border. These thought-provoking essays delve into a variety of subjects, including Occupy Wall Street and Arizona's political offensive against immigrants. Long a feminist, Boullosa also shares her perspective on women's rights, musing on the repression of women artists and the lack of recognition for their work. Similarly, women who participated in wars and rebellions have been forgotten, and the author asserts that erasing them from our memory hurts us all. Containing the author's original Spanish and Nicolas Kanellos' English translation, these are absorbing reflections on Texas-Mexico border history, women's issues, art and literature.

Cuando Mexico Se (Re)Apropia de Texas / When Mexico Recaptures Texas: Ensayos / Essays (Spanish and English Edition)

Essays & Correspondence

Arte Publico Press

Leaving Tabasco

Contemporary

ATLANTIC BOOKS *

The term Mexican Drug War misleads. It implies that the ongoing bloodbath, which has now killed well over 100,000 people, is an internal Mexican affair. But this diverts attention from the US role in creating and sustaining the carnage. It's not just that Americans buy drugs from and sell weapons to Mexico's murderous cartels. It's that ever since the US prohibited the use and sale of drugs in the early 1900s, it has pressured Mexico into acting as its border enforcer—with increasingly deadly consequences. Mexico was not a helpless victim. Powerful forces within the country profited hugely from supplying Americans with what their government forbade them. But the policies that spawned the drug war have proved disastrous for both countries. Written by two award-winning authors, one American and the other Mexican, A Narco History reviews the interlocking 20th-century histories that produced this 21st-century calamity and proposes how to end it.

A Narco History

Mike Wallace

OR Books

En el contexto de una Nueva España que apenas despierta a su vida de conquistada, y que se apresta a comenzar de lleno la nueva aventura del mestizaje, Carmen Boullosa borda con manos de experta una ficción que tiene mucho de verdad y otro tanto de imposible. En Duerme presenta el intrincado personaje de Claire, una mujer del "Viejo mundo" que gusta de vestir como hombre y vivir en tesitura masculina, en la orilla del riesgo, viajera en tierras recién conocidas por Europa. Mientras los españoles construyen piedra sobre piedra la cristiandad donde antes se erguían templos majestuosos, sobre las espaldas y a costa de los indios, Claire se desembaraza, a veces a su pesar de diversas identidades cuando las situaciones se vuelven más apremiantes. Carmen Boullosa recrea con un despliegue de recursos el mundo colonial, en el que se funden la realidad hispana y las creencias mágicas indígenas, y nos presenta una novela de aventuras, ampliamente documentada en sucesos históricos.

Duerme (Alfaguara hispánica) (Spanish Edition)

AGUILAR,ALTEA,TAURUS,ALFAGUARA

En el siglo XVII, el esclavo Smeeks, que ha aprendido de sus amos el arte de curar, se une a la gran Cofradia de los Hermanos de la Costa, una sociedad de piratas sanguinarios y crueles, pero generosos y solidarios entre si. Carmen Boullosa sumerge al lector, a partir de las memorias del cirujano Alexander Olivier Esquemelin, en las costumbres de bucaneros y filibusteros de una epoca en la que el mar Caribe rebosaba de accion y de prodigiosas aventuras.

El medico de los piratas (Spanish Edition)

Siruela

Messico

GUADALUPE NETTEL

Juan Villoro

Valeria Luiselli

Aatish Taseer

Pino Cacucci

Dario Alemán

Jacobo García

Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil

Federico Mastrogiovanni

Elena Reina

Iperborea

Poeta, dramaturga y narradora, Boullosa fundó el Taller Editorial Tres Sirenas; obtuvo las becas Salvador Novo, INBA, la del Centro Mexicano de Escritores y de la Fundación Guggenheim. Recibió el premio Xavier Villaurrutia por su novela Antes en 1989. Ingresó al Sistema Nacional de Creadores en 1994. Reúne en el presente volumen una selección de sus libros de poesía publicados anteriormente, así como material inédito, agrupado bajo el título de "La infiel".

La salvaja (Spanish Edition)

FONDO DE CULTURA ECONOMICA*

Poeta, dramaturga y narradora, Boullosa fundó el Taller Editorial Tres Sirenas; obtuvo las becas Salvador Novo, INBA, la del Centro Mexicano de Escritores y de la Fundación Guggenheim. Recibió el Premio Xavier Villaurrutia por su novela Antes en 1989. Ingresó al Sistema Nacional de Creadores en 1994. En La Delirios nos transporta por un itinerario en el que la voz poética se adueña de los designios de la historia para someterlos a su propio juicio.

La Delirios (Spanish Edition)

Biographies & Memoirs

Reformulación en clave contemporánea de la Gitanilla de las Novelas ejemplares de Cervantes y de la guerrera legendaria que, a bordo de la galera La Real, combatió en la batalla de Lepanto; María la bailaora -personaje central de esta novela ambiciosa, afortunada y fiel a su inspiración cervantina- ve pasar su siglo en un libro intensamente literario cuyas páginas se persiguen sin aliento.

La otra mano de Lepanto (Letras Mexicanas) (Spanish Edition)

World Literature

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Books by Carmen Boullosa