A love story. A journey in search of self. A meditation on our frightening times. With Mother Tongue, Demetria Martínez gives us all these and more, in an unforgettable novel infused with the color, sunlight, and cool shadows of the world her two lovers inhabit. Told in the cadences of a poet, with the unsparing honesty of a woman looking back on the most important decision of her life, the events in Mother Tongue unfold with the urgency, the inevitability, of destiny. Mary is nineteen and living alone in Albuquerque. Adrift in the wake of her mother's death, she longs for something meaningful to take her over. Vulnerable to love and game for anything, Mary knows she has found the other part of herself when Jose Luis enters her life. A refugee from El Salvador and its vicious and bloody civil war, José Luis has been smuggled to the United States as part of the sanctuary movement that is attempting to expose the plight of thousands of citizens being harassed, tortured, and disappeared by a United States-supported military government. Mary cannot help but fall in love with the movement and the man who represents it for her--his strength, his sadness, and the life he has left behind. And little by little, she begins to reveal to José Luis the hope that always lives in love. Though violent times conspire against Mary's dreams, she is about to lay claim to a part of herself she has never known.

Mother Tongue

Literature & Fiction

Martínez, Demetria

United States

One World/Ballantine

"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 Mary is nineteen and living alone in Albuquerque. Adrift in the wake of her mother's death, she longs for something meaningful to take her over. Then José Luis enters her life. A refugee from El Salvador and its bloody civil war, José has been smuggled to the United States as part of the sanctuary movement. Mary cannot help but fall in love with the movement and the man. And little by little, she begins to reveal to José Luis the part of herself she has never known. . . . "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 "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

One World

Confessions Of A Berlitz-tape Chicana (CHICANA & CHICANO VISIONS OF THE AMERICAS)

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Univ of Oklahoma Pr

“We’re everywhere, and it’s time to come out of the closet: I speak of the tongue-tied generation, buyers of books with titles like Master Spanish in Ten Minutes a Day while You Nap. . . . We grew up listening to the language—usually in the kitchens of extended family—but we answered back mostly in English.”
Demetria Martínez wields her trademark blend of humor and irony to give voice to her own “tongue-tied generation” in this notable series of essays, revealing her deeply personal views of the world. Martínez breaks down the barriers between prayer and action, between the border denizen and the citizen of the world, and between patriarchal religion and the Divine Mother. She explores her identity as a woman who has within her the “blood of the conquered and the conqueror,” and who must daily contend with yet a third world—white America.

Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana (Volume 4) (Chicana and Chicano Visions of the Américas Series)

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

University of Oklahoma Press

Demetria Martínez has entered the public consciousness by way of the heart. In 1994, she captured a Western States Book Award with her first novel, Mother Tongue, which went on to win widespread national attention. Now, in Breathing between the Lines, the writer returns to poetry, her first love. Many of the poems in this book touch on the themes from Mother Tongue, about an American activist who falls in love with a Salvadoran political refugee. Weaving together threads of love and family, social conviction and activism, loss and renewal, Breathing between the Lines carries the reader deep inside the head and heart of a talented Chicana writer. Page by page, the journey is an exhilarating one. What we find at the end is up to us.

Breathing Between the Lines: Poems (Camino del Sol)

Poetry

University of Arizona Press

Demetria Martínez has entered the public consciousness by way of the heart. In 1994, she captured a Western States Book Award with her first novel, Mother Tongue, which went on to win widespread national attention. Now, in Breathing between the Lines, the writer returns to poetry, her first love. Many of the poems in this book touch on the themes from Mother Tongue, about an American activist who falls in love with a Salvadoran political refugee. Weaving together threads of love and family, social conviction and activism, loss and renewal, Breathing between the Lines carries the reader deep inside the head and heart of a talented Chicana writer. Page by page, the journey is an exhilarating one. What we find at the end is up to us.

"I can no more describe love," writes Demetria Martínez, "than mystics can light."     Don't believe it for a minute.     In this collection of fifty-three poems, the author of the award-winning novel Mother Tongue explores the themes that have long characterized her writing: the creative and destructive powers of romantic love, the failure of political systems, the spiritual life, and the need to forgive oneself in order to move on with the work of transformation, both social and personal.     Through poems that confront mortality even as they demand social justice, Martínez writes of surviving in a culture where traditional values often get lost in the complexities of everyday life. Of nurturing relationships with nieces, nephews, and parents while pondering questions of life and death, love and loss. Of caring for one's own body when "each cough is an underground nuclear explosion, / Unraveling your body’s hard-won peace accord."     Martínez cauterizes old wounds inflicted by various agents: death, political repression, betrayal, and of course failed romance: "Don’t bother, I did it / First. Broke my own / Damn heart." Here are "kernels of loneliness too stubborn to grind / Down to blue meal," and the struggle for a renewed sense of self as middle age approaches:At this age you touch what little sanctity you can muster.The yearning burns to do more, to do more by hand.To thread your very life through a needle's eye.     Martínez serves up a heady blend of political and sensual imagery. Her keen observations and compassionate voice lead the reader on a journey of self-exploration, of coping with life's mundanities as well as its heartaches: "I could use a loving word, / A loaf of bread, a rose, / Help with the laundry." Through her unquenchable passion for life, Demetria Martínez leaves the devil’s workshop and brings us closer to an understanding of what is real.

The Devil's Workshop: Poems (Camino del Sol)

"I can no more describe love," writes Demetria Martínez, "than mystics can light." Don't believe it for a minute. In this collection of fifty-three poems, the author of the award-winning novel Mother Tongue explores the themes that have long characterized her writing: the creative and destructive powers of romantic love, the failure of political systems, the spiritual life, and the need to forgive oneself in order to move on with the work of transformation, both social and personal. Through poems that confront mortality even as they demand social justice, Martínez writes of surviving in a culture where traditional values often get lost in the complexities of everyday life. Of nurturing relationships with nieces, nephews, and parents while pondering questions of life and death, love and loss. Of caring for one's own body when "each cough is an underground nuclear explosion, / Unraveling your body’s hard-won peace accord." Martínez cauterizes old wounds inflicted by various agents: death, political repression, betrayal, and of course failed romance: "Don’t bother, I did it / First. Broke my own / Damn heart." Here are "kernels of loneliness too stubborn to grind / Down to blue meal," and the struggle for a renewed sense of self as middle age approaches: At this age you touch what little sanctity you can muster. The yearning burns to do more, to do more by hand. To thread your very life through a needle's eye. Martínez serves up a heady blend of political and sensual imagery. Her keen observations and compassionate voice lead the reader on a journey of self-exploration, of coping with life's mundanities as well as its heartaches: "I could use a loving word, / A loaf of bread, a rose, / Help with the laundry." Through her unquenchable passion for life, Demetria Martínez leaves the devil’s workshop and brings us closer to an understanding of what is real.

Grandpa Luis loves to have his grandchildren, Alejandra, Daniel, and Benjamín, visit him in his hometown of Chimayo, New Mexico, and is happy to make a fresh batch of homemade tortillas whenever the children want them. One morning, Grandpa Luis leaves a tortilla on the griddle too long, almost burning it. Grandma puts the crunchy tortilla aside for Grandpa's lunch quesadilla, but not before the children discover something very unusual about the tortilla. Benjamín has seen the perfect shape of a bear, but Daniel swears he saw a dolphin. When Alejandra goes for a second look, all three of them watch as the body of the bear changes into a dolphin and then into a coyote right before their eyes. Word spreads quickly and soon the neighborhood children are clamoring to see animals appear in the magic tortilla.Through a child's lens, this lighthearted bilingual tale presents the contemporary phenomenon of sacred and mundane objects appearing on everyday items like doors, walls, toast or, in this case, a tortilla.

Grandpa's Magic Tortilla

Children's Books

Montoya-Read, Rosalee

Growing Up & Facts of Life

University of New Mexico Press

Three Times a Woman: Chicana Poetry

De Alba, Alicia Gaspar

Herrera-Sobek, Maria

Alicia Gaspar De Alba

María Herrera-Sobek

Demetria Martinez

Alba, Alicia Gaspar De

Contemporary

Bilingual Pr

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