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| the mambo kings play songs of love: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Oscar Hijuelos, 2013-11-14 Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestseller: A “lush, tipsy, all-night mambo of a novel about Cuban musicians in strange places like New York City” (People). Brothers Nestor and Cesar Camillo arrive from Cuba in 1949 with dreams of becoming famous mambo musicians. This memorable novel traces the arc of the two brothers’ lives—one charismatic and macho, the other soulful and sensitive—from Havana to New York, from East Coast clubs and dance halls to the heights of musical fame. The basis for a popular film, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love “tells of the triumphs and tragedies that befall two men blessed with gigantic appetites and profoundly melancholic hearts. . . . Hijuelos has depicted a world as enchanting as that in Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera” (Publishers Weekly). “Rich and provocative . . . a moving portrait of a man, his family, a community and a time.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Selected from the Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Oscar Hijuelos, 1992 For the adult new reader, selections from the novel about Cuban-American musicians. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Our House in the Last World Oscar Hijuelos, 2024-04-09 A first-generation Cuban son comes of age in the debut––and most autobiographical––novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Winner of the Ingram Merrill Foundation Award and the Rome Prize Hector Santinio is the younger son of Alejo and Mercedes, who moved to New York from Cuba in the mid-1940s. The family of four shares their modest apartment with extended relatives in Harlem, where homesickness and nostalgia are dispelled by nights of dancing and raucous parties. But life’s realities are nevertheless harsh in the Santinio family’s adoptive land. When Mercedes takes Hector and his brother to visit Cuba, to better know her culture, Hector contracts a serious illness that leads to a terrifying period of hospitalization back in the United States where, isolated from his family, he loses much of his ability to speak Spanish. And it is this fracturing that sparks a lifelong quest to not only reconcile his Cuban identity with his American one, but to also understand his parents’ ambitions and anxieties within the country at large. In this profoundly moving account of immigrant life, Oscar Hijuelos displays, once again, his mastery over both character and language—and sets readers on an unforgettable journey of hope, longing, and self-discovery. Includes a Reading Group Guide. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise Oscar Hijuelos, 2015-11-03 From a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a novel inspired by the friendship between famed writer and humorist Mark Twain and legendary explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley—surely among the best books Oscar ever wrote (Paul Auster). Acclaimed novelist Oscar Hijuelos was fascinated by the Twain-Stanley connection and eventually began researching and writing a novel that used the scant historical record of their relationship as a starting point for a more detailed fictional account. It was a labor of love for Hijuelos; indeed, he was still revising the manuscript the day before his sudden passing in 2013. The resulting novel is a richly woven tapestry of people and events that is unique among the author's works. Ingeniously blending correspondence, memoir, and third-person omniscience to explore the intersection of these Victorian giants in a long-vanished world, the novel superbly channels two vibrant but very different figures, from their early days as journalists in the American West, to their admiration and support of each other’s writing, mutual hatred of slavery, social life together in the dazzling literary circles of the time, and even a mysterious journey to Cuba to search for Stanley’s adoptive father. A compelling and deeply felt historical fantasia that utilizes the full range of Hijuelos’s gifts, as well as an unforgettable coda to a brilliant writing career. Includes a reading group guide. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Thoughts without Cigarettes Oscar Hijuelos, 2011-06-02 A beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist turns his pen to the real people and places that have influenced his life and literature. A comprehensive look into the mind of a writer. Born in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights to Cuban immigrants in 1951, Oscar Hijuelos introduces readers to the colorful circumstances of his upbringing. The son of a Cuban hotel worker and exuberant poetry-writing mother, his story, played out against the backdrop of a working-class neighborhood, takes on an even richer dimension when his relationship with his family and culture changes forever. During a sojourn with his mother in pre-Castro Cuba, he catches a disease that sends him into a Dickensian home for terminally ill children. The yearlong stay estranges him from the very language and people he had so loved. With a cast of characters whose stories are both funny and tragic, Thoughts Without Cigarettes follows Hijuelos's subsequent quest for his true identity — a mystery whose resolution he eventually discovers hidden away in the trappings of his fiction, and which finds its most glorious expression in his best-known book,The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Illuminating the most dazzling scenes from his novels, Thoughts Without Cigarettes reveals the true stories and indelible memories that shaped a literary genius. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Beautiful Maria of My Soul Oscar Hijuelos, 2024-01-16 In this mesmerizing sequel to a Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, the heart-stealing heroine (Amy Tan) and muse of Cuban musician Nestor Castillo takes readers on the journey of a lifetime with this story of reinvention, romance, and revolution. In The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, María is the great Cuban beauty who stole musician Nestor Castillo's heart and broke it, inspiring him to write the Mambo Kings' biggest hit, 'Beautiful María of My Soul.' Now in her sixties, María García y Cifuentes is the lady behind the song, living as an exile in Miami. But while she left Cuba decades ago, she has never forgotten Nestor. We now see the Mambo Kings' story through Maria's eyes--and as she thinks back to her days and nights in Havana, an entirely new perspective on the story unfolds. We meet her as an illiterate young woman with unspeakable, head-turning beauty who meets and falls in love with Nestor in Havana, but ultimately chooses to stay involved with a cruel, wealthy lover. When the Cuban Revolution intervenes, Maria and her daughter seek refuge in Miami. And as she finds community with other Cuban women and begins to take lessons at a local college, Maria finally goes from muse to the writer of her own story. Beautiful María of My Soul is a stunning act of reinvention, and another contemporary classic from an extraordinarily talented writer. Includes a Reading Group Guide. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Dark Dude Oscar Hijuelos, 2025-08-26 From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Oscar Hijuelos comes a frank, gritty, vibrant, and wholly absorbing (Booklist, starred review) young adult novel set in the late 1960s about a haunting choice and an unforgettable journey of identity, mis-identity, and all that we take with us when we run away. Now with a stunning new look! He didn't say good-bye. He didn't leave a phone number. And he didn't plan on coming back--ever. Fifteen-year-old Rico Fuentes has had enough of life in Harlem, where his fair complexion--inherited from an Irish grandfather--keeps him caught between two cultures without belonging to either. He pours his outsider feelings into a comic book Dark Dude, with his friend Jimmy illustrating. But when Gilberto, who's always looked out for Rico, moves to Wisconsin and Jimmy loses himself to an insidious habit, Rico decides enough is enough. With Jimmy in tow, Rico runs away to the Midwest in search of Gilberto. The heavily white community feels worlds away from Harlem, and for the first time, Rico sees what it's like to blend in--no longer the dark dude or the punching bag for the whole neighborhood. But the less energy Rico needs to put into proving he's Latino, the less he feels like one. And the more he gets to know the people around him, the more it's clear that a change in location doesn't change human nature--and that there's no such thing as a perfect community. Faced with the truth that there are things that can't be cut loose or forgotten, things that keep him from ever having an ordinary white kid's life, Rico must decide whether he can make a home in the place he ran to...or the one he ran from. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Mr. Ives' Christmas Oscar Hijuelos, 1996-08-30 Hijuelos' novel tells the story of Mr. Ives, who was adopted from a foundling's home as a child. When we first meet him in the 1950s, Mr. Ives is very much a product of his time. He has a successful career in advertising, a wife and two children, and believes he is on his way to pursuing the typical American dream. But the dream is shattered when his son Robert, who is studying for the priesthood, is killed violently at Christmas. Overwhelmed by grief and threatened by a loss of faith in humankind, Mr. Ives begins to question the very foundations of his life. Part love story--of a man for his wife, for his children, for God--and part meditation on how a person can find spiritual peace in the midst of crisis, Mr. Ives' Christmas is a beautifully written, tender and passionate story of a man trying to put his life in perspective. In the expert hands of Oscar Hijuelos, the novel speaks eloquently to the most basic and fulfilling aspects of life for all of us. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Empress of the Splendid Season Oscar Hijuelos, 2025-10-14 In Empress of the Splendid Season, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Oscar Hijuelos brings the joys and heartbreaks of twentieth-century America vividly to life: “resounds with sights, tastes, textures and even the humming ambience of deep, well-appointed brownstone apartments” (Los Angeles Times). Lydia España—once a wealthy, spoiled daughter of Cuba—works at a sewing factory in New York. Adjusting to her sharp change of circumstances, missing the days when her prosperous father provided her with every luxury, she ruminates on the incident that drove her away from her homeland in the late 1940s—until she falls in love with Raul, a kindhearted, working-class waiter who sees Lydia as the “Queen of the Congo Line” she used to be: the empress of the most beautiful and splendid season, which is love.” Despite their age difference, a loving marriage follows, as well as two children. Lydia revels in her newfound happiness, but when Raul’s health declines, she finds her fortunes reversed yet again. Now working as a cleaning lady, Lydia can’t help but contrast her experiences with those of her clients, whose secret lives and day-to-day realities are so starkly different from her own—but over time, the role may prove to be just what she needs to secure a better life for her children. Written with absorbing, magnetic prose, this tenderly rendered novel follows a proud, hardworking woman through the ups and downs of her simple, sensible, and at times heart-wrenching life. It is Hijuelos at his masterful best, a lasting and expert portrayal of the highs and lows of chasing—and living—the “American Dream.” Includes a Reading Group Guide. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Daughters of the Stone Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, 2009-09-01 Finalist for the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers It is the mid-1800s. Fela, taken from Africa, is working at her second sugar plantation in colonial Puerto Rico, where her mistress is only too happy to benefit from her impressive embroidery skills. But Fela has a secret. Before she and her husband were separated and sold into slavery, they performed a tribal ceremony in which they poured the essence of their unborn child into a very special stone. Fela keeps the stone with her, waiting for the chance to finish what she started. When the plantation owner approaches her, Fela sees a better opportunity for her child, and allows the man to act out his desire. Such is the beginning of a line of daughters connected by their intense love for one another, and the stories of a lost land. Mati, a powerful healer and noted craftswoman, is grounded in a life that is disappearing in a quickly changing world. Concha, unsure of her place, doesn't realize the price she will pay for rejecting her past. Elena, modern and educated, tries to navigate between two cultures, moving to the United States, where she will struggle to keep her family together. Carisa turns to the past for wisdom and strength when her life in New York falls apart. The stone becomes meaningful to each of the women, pulling them through times of crisis and ultimately connecting them to one another. Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa shows great skill and warmth in the telling of this heartbreaking, inspirational story about mothers and daughters, and the ways in which they hurt and save one another. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos Isabelle Tavernier, 1998 |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: A Simple Habana Melody Oscar Hijuelos, 2003-06-17 It is 1947, and Israel Levis, a Cuban composer whose life had once been a dream of music, love, and sadness, returns to Cuba after being mistakenly imprisoned during the Nazi occupation of France. When Levis arrives back in Habana, his mind returns to an unrequited romance with the alluring Rita Valladares, a singer for whom Levis had written his most famous song, Rosas Puras. This 1928 composition became the most famous rumba in the world and changed American and European tastes in music and dance forever. A love story -- of art, family, and country -- A Simple Habana Melody is a virtuoso performance from one of our most important writers. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Finding Manana Mirta Ojito, 2006-04-04 A vibrant, moving memoir of prizewinning journalist and New York Times reporter Mirta Ojito and her departure from Cuba in the Mariel boatlift—an enduring story of a family caught up in the tumultuous politics of the twentieth century. Mirta Ojito was one teenager among more than a hundred thousand fellow refugees who traveled to Miami during the unprecedented events of the Mariel boatlift. Growing up, Ojito was eager to fit in and join Castro’s Young Pioneers, but as she grew older and began to understand the darker side of the Cuban revolution, she and her family began to aspire to a safer, happier life. When Castro opened Cuba’s borders for those who wanted to leave, her family was more than ready to go: they had been waiting for the opportunity for twenty years. Now an acclaimed reporter, Ojito tells her story and reckons with her past with all of the determination and intelligence—and the will to confront darkness—that carried her through the boatlift. In this stunning autobiography, she sets out to find the people who set this exodus in motion, including the Vietnam vet on whose boat, Mañana, she finally crossed the treacherous Florida Strait. In Finding Mañana, Ojito and tell the stories of the boatlift’s key players in superb and poignant detail—chronicling both individual lives and a major historical event. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Bridges to Cuba Ruth Behar, 1995 Cuban and Cuban-American scholars, writers, and artists celebrate the possibility of overcoming divisions of politics and hate |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Phonographic Memories Njelle W. Hamilton, 2019-05-03 Phonographic Memories is the first book to perform a sustained analysis of the narrative and thematic influence of Caribbean popular music on the Caribbean novel. Tracing a region-wide attention to the deep connections between music and memory in the work of Lawrence Scott, Oscar Hijuelos, Colin Channer, Daniel Maximin, and Ramabai Espinet, Njelle Hamilton tunes in to each novel’s soundtrack while considering the broader listening cultures that sustain collective memory and situate Caribbean subjects in specific localities. These “musical fictions” depict Caribbean people turning to calypso, bolero, reggae, gwoka, and dub to record, retrieve, and replay personal and cultural memories. Offering a fresh perspective on musical nationalism and nostalgic memory in the era of globalization, Phonographic Memories affirms the continued importance of Caribbean music in providing contemporary novelists ethical narrative models for sounding marginalized memories and voices. Njelle W. Hamilton's Spotify playlist to accompany Phonographic Memories: https://spoti.fi/2tCQRm8 |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien Oscar Hijuelos, 2024-07-16 With “soaring, matchless prose,” a Pulitzer Prize winner pens a New York Times bestselling saga of the Montez O’Briens, a rambunctious family of Irish Cuban immigrants comprised of fourteen daughters—and one doggedly masculine son (Publishers Weekly). Irish American Nelson O’Brien fell passionately in love with the poetess Mariela Montez while photographing the ravages of battle in Mariela's native Cuba during the Spanish-American War. After marrying, they moved to the United States to start a new life, settling in a small Pennsylvania town where Nelson took over the Jewel Box Movie Theater. Together, they had a remarkable fifteen children: fourteen daughters and one lone son. In Oscar Hijuelos’s The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien, the lives, loves, and tragedies of this sprawling Irish Cuban family unfold. Over the course of a century, each member moves in and out of each other’s lives, traversing Cuba, New York, California, Alaska, and Ireland, while Margarita—the Montez O’Brien’s eldest daughter—ruminates on the nature of femininity, sex, love, and earthly happiness. And as Margarita learns and grows in an overwhelmingly female environment, she can’t help but contrast her experiences with those of Emilio, her intensely masculine brother, whose B-movie career in the 1950s has left him adrift and frustrated, with little hope of success. Lush and gorgeously written, The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien is a masterwork by one of America's greatest writers. Reckoning with cultural assimilation and complex family dynamics, the novel elicits tears and laughter while tenderly revealing the bounteous heart and exhilarating adventures of a warm, passionate family. Includes a Reading Group Guide. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Rent Jonathan Larson, 2008 (Applause Libretto Library). Finally, an authorized libretto to this modern day classic! Rent won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as four Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Score for Jonathan Larson. The story of Mark, Roger, Maureen, Tom Collins, Angel, Mimi, JoAnne, and their friends on the Lower East Side of New York City will live on, along with the affirmation that there is no day but today. Includes 16 color photographs of productions of Rent from around the world, plus an introduction (Rent Is Real) by Victoria Leacock Hoffman. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Growing Up Latino Harold Augenbraum, Ilan Stavans, 1993 A comprehensive collection of Latino writing of fiction and nonfiction works in English. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: The Sixteen Pleasures Robert Hellenga, 2009-09-01 Art and poetry, mystery and desire collide in this sensual and “elegantly moving” literary romance set in the cobbled streets and painted halls of Florence, Italy (New Yorker). Margot Harrington, an American volunteer in Florence, is an expert at book conservancy. While struggling to save a waterlogged convent library, she comes across a fabulous volume of 16 erotic drawings by Giulio Romano, accompanying 16 steamy sonnets by Pietro Aretino. When first published over 4 centuries ago, the Vatican ordered all copies destroyed. This one—now unique—volume has survived. The abbess prevails upon Margot to save the order’s finances by selling the magnificently illustrated erotica discreetly—meaning without the bishop’s knowledge. Margot’s other clandestine project is a middle-aged Italian who is boldly attempting radical measures to save endangered frescoes. She is 29 and available; he, older and married. He shares her sense of mission and soon her bed in this daring story of spiritual longing and earthly desire. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: What Poets Are Like Gary Soto, 2013-08-20 Gary Soto is a widely published author of children's and young adult fiction, and he is an acclaimed poet--often referred to as one of the nation's first Chicano poets. With a sharp sense of storytelling and a sly wit, What Poets Are Like is a memoir of the writing life that shares the keen observation, sense of self and humor of such writers as Sherman Alexie and Nora Ephron. In some 60 short episodes, this book captures moments of a writer's inner and public life, close moments with friends and strangers, occasional reminders of a poet's generally low place in the cultural hierarchy; time spent with cats; the curious work of writing. He tells the stories of his time spent in bookstores and recounts the glorious, then tragic, arc of Cody's Bookstore in Berkeley, ending with the author whose scheduled event fell on the day after the business shut down, but who stood outside the locked door and read aloud just the same. As all writers do, Soto suffers the slings and arrows of rejection, often from unnamed Midwest poetry journals, and seeks the solace of a friendly dog at such moments. Soto jabs at the crumbs of reward available to writers--a prize nomination here, a magazine interview there--and notes the toll they take on a frail ego. The pleasure Soto takes in the written word, a dose of comic relief plus his appreciation of the decisive moment in life make this an engaging and readable writer's confession. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: On Becoming Cuban Louis A. Pérez Jr., 2012-09-01 With this masterful work, Louis A. Pérez Jr. transforms the way we view Cuba and its relationship with the United States. On Becoming Cuban is a sweeping cultural history of the sustained encounter between the peoples of the two countries and of the ways that this encounter helped shape Cubans' identity, nationality, and sense of modernity from the early 1850s until the revolution of 1959. Using an enormous range of Cuban and U.S. sources — from archival records and oral interviews to popular magazines, novels, and motion pictures — Pérez reveals a powerful web of everyday, bilateral connections between the United States and Cuba and shows how U.S. cultural forms had a critical influence on the development of Cubans' sense of themselves as a people and as a nation. He also articulates the cultural context for the revolution that erupted in Cuba in 1959. In the middle of the twentieth century, Pérez argues, when economic hard times and political crises combined to make Cubans painfully aware that their American-influenced expectations of prosperity and modernity would not be realized, the stage was set for revolution. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea Sebastian Junger, 1997-05-17 There is nothing imaginary about Junger's book; it is all terrifyingly, awesomely real. —Los Angeles Times It was the storm of the century, boasting waves over one hundred feet high—a tempest created by so rare a combination of factors that meteorologists deemed it the perfect storm. In a book that has become a classic, Sebastian Junger explores the history of the fishing industry, the science of storms, and the candid accounts of the people whose lives the storm touched. The Perfect Storm is a real-life thriller that makes us feel like we've been caught, helpless, in the grip of a force of nature beyond our understanding or control. Winner of the American Library Association's 1998 Alex Award. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Becoming Maria Sonia Manzano, 2015 Pura Belpré Honor winner for The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano and one of America's most influential Hispanics--'Maria' on Sesame Street--delivers a beautifully wrought coming-of-age memoir. Set in the 1950s in the Bronx, this is the story of a girl with a dream. Emmy Award-winning actress and writer Sonia Manzano plunges us into the daily lives of a Latino family that is loving--and troubled. This is Sonia's own story rendered with an unforgettable narrative power. When readers meet young Sonia, she is a child living amidst the squalor of a boisterous home that is filled with noisy relatives and nosy neighbors. Each day she is glued to the TV screen that blots out the painful realities of her existence and also illuminates the possibilities that lie ahead. But--click!--when the TV goes off, Sonia is taken back to real life--the cramped, colorful world of her neighborhood and an alcoholic father. But it is Sonia's dream of becoming an actress that keeps her afloat among the turbulence of her life and times. Spiced with culture, heartache, and humor, this memoir paints a lasting portrait of a girl's resilience as she grows up to become an inspiration to millions. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Next Year in Cuba: A Cubano's Coming of Age Gustavo P?rez Firmat, 1995-01-01 Gustavo P?rez Firmat arrived in America with his family at the age of eleven. Victims of CastroÍs revolution, the P?rez family put their life on hold, waiting for CastroÍs fall. Each Christmas, along with other Cuban families in the neighborhood, they celebrated with the cry, ñNext year in Cuba.î Growing up in the Dade County school system, and graduating from college in Florida, P?rez Firmat was insulated from America by the nurturing sights and sounds of Little Havana. It wasnÍt until he left home to attend graduate school at the University of Michigan that he realized, as the Cuba of his birth receded farther into the past, he had become no longer wholly Cubano, but increasingly a man of two heritages and two countries. In a searing memoir of a family torn apart by exile, P?rez Firmat chronicles the painful search for roots that has come to dominate his adult life. With one brother beset by personal problems and another embracing the very revolution that drove their family out of Cuba, Gustavo realized that the words ñNext Year in Cuba,î had, for him, taken on a hollow ring. Now, married to an American woman, and father to two children who are Cuban in name only, P?rez Firmat has finally come to acknowledge his need to celebrate his love of Cuba, while embracing the America he has come to love. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Tito Puente, Mambo King/Tito Puente, Rey del Mambo Monica Brown, 2013-03-05 In this vibrant bilingual picture book biography of musician Tito Puente, readers will dance along to the beat of this mambo king's life. Tito Puente loved banging pots and pans as a child, but what he really dreamed of was having his own band one day. From Spanish Harlem to the Grammy Awards—and all the beats in between—this is the true life story of a boy whose passion for music turned him into the King of Mambo. Award-winning author-illustrator duo Monica Brown and Rafael López bring the remarkable story of this talented legend to life in this Pura Belpré Honor Book. Supports the Common Core State Standards. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Oscar Hijuelos, 2023-10-03 When it was first published in 1989, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love became an international bestselling sensation, winning rave reviews and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that changed the landscape of American literature returns with a new afterword by Oscar Hijuelos. Here is the story of the memorable Castillo brothers, from Havana to New York's Upper West Side. The lovelorn songwriter Nestor and his macho brother Cesar find success in the city's dance halls and beyond playing the rhythms that earn them their band's name, as they struggle with elusive fame and lost love in a richly sensual tale that has become a cultural touchstone and an enduring favorite. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: The Jazz Palace Mary Morris, 2016-03-08 Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Boomtown Chicago, 1920s—a world of gangsters, musicians, and clubs. Young Benny Lehrman, born into a Jewish hat-making family, is expected to take over his father’s business, but his true passion is piano—especially jazz. After dark, he sneaks down to the South Side to hear the bands play. One night he is asked to sit in with a group. His playing is first-rate. The trumpeter, a black man named Napoleon, becomes Benny’s friend and musical collaborator. They are asked to play at a saloon Napoleon has christened The Jazz Palace. But Napoleon’s main gig is at a mob establishment, which doesn’t take kindly to their musicians freelancing . As Benny and Napoleon navigate the highs and the lows of the Jazz Age, a bond is forged between them that is as memorable as it is lasting. Morris brilliantly captures the dynamic atmosphere and dazzling music of an exceptional era. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Mexican High Liza Monroy, 2008-06-10 The daughter of an American diplomat, Mila has spent her childhood moving from country to country. When her mother is reassigned to Mexico City for Mila’s senior year of high school, Mila has no idea what to expect. Mexico seems to be a country with the ultimate freedoms: the wealthy students at her private international school—the sons and daughters of Mexico’s ruling class—party hard at exclusive clubs, dress in expensive clothing, and see more of their housekeepers than they do of their globe-trotting parents. But Mila has more in common with them than they know: her father, whose identity has been kept from her, is a high-ranking politician with whom Mila’s mother had a one-night stand in her hippie days. Now Mila is determined to discover who he is, whatever the cost may be. Mexican High is a coming-of-age story about identity, belonging, and first love. In a setting rife with sex, drugs, and political corruption, it is also a revealing look at elite Mexican society and its freedoms, dangers, and excesses. Monroy’s flawless evocation of the brink of adulthood, in many ways mirrored by the turmoil of Mexico City itself, makes this a truly memorable debut. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Martin Dressler Steven Millhauser, 2010-09-01 PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • The author of Voices in the Night reveals the mesmerizing journey of an American dreamer as he walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry. “This wonderful, wonder-full book is a fable and phantasmagoria of the sources of our century.” —The New York Times Book Review Young Martin Dressler begins his career as an industrious helper in his father's cigar store. In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top, accompanied by two sisters--one a dreamlike shadow, the other a worldly business partner. As the eponymous Martin's vision becomes bolder and bolder, a sense of doom builds piece-by-hypnotic piece until this mesmerizing journey reaches its bitter-sweet conclusion. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: A Bell for Adano John Hersey, 2019-06-26 This classic novel and winner of the Pulitzer Prize tells the story of an Italian-American major in World War II who wins the love and admiration of the local townspeople when he searches for a replacement for the 700-year-old town bell that had been melted down for bullets by the fascists. Although stituated during one of the most devastating experiences in human history, John Hersey's story speaks with unflinching patriotism and humanity. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, The tie-in Oscar Hijuelos, 2005-07-05 It's 1949, the era of the mambo, and two young Cuban musicians make their way from Havana to New York. The Castillo brothers, workers by day, become, by night, stars of the dance halls, where their orchestra plays the sensuous, pulsing music that earns them the title of the Mambo Kings. This is a golden time that thirty years later will be remembered with deep affection. In The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Oscar Hijuelos has created an enthralling novel about passion and loss, memory and desire. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Billy Bathgate E. L. Doctorow, 2016-08-04 'I was living in even greater circles of gangsterdom than I had dreamed, latitudes and longitudes of gangsterdom' It's 1930's New York and fifteen-year-old streetkid Billy, who can juggle, somersault and run like the wind, has been taken under the wing of notorious gangster Dutch Schultz. As Billy learns the ways of the mob, he becomes like a son to Schultz - his 'good-luck kid' - and is initiated into a world of glamour, death and danger that will consume him, in this vivid, soaring epic of crime and betrayal. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain Robert Olen Butler, 2001 Butler's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its impact on the Vietnamese is reissued. Includes two subsequently published stories that complete the collection's narrative journey, returning to the jungles of Vietnam. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Elsewhere, California Dana Johnson, 2012-06-01 We first met Avery in two of the stories featured in Dana Johnson's award–winning collection Break Any Woman Down. As a young girl, she and her family escape the violent streets of Los Angeles to a more gentrified existence in suburban West Covina. This average life, filled with school, trips to 7–Eleven to gawk at Tiger Beat magazine, and family outings to Dodger Stadium, is soon interrupted by a past she cannot escape, personified in the guise of her violent cousin Keith. When Keith moves in with her family, he triggers a series of events that will follow Avery throughout her life: to her studies at USC, to her burgeoning career as a painter and artist, and into her relationship with a wealthy Italian who sequesters her in his glass–walled house in the Hollywood Hills. The past will intrude upon Avery's first gallery show, proving her mother's adage: Every goodbye aint gone. The dual–narrative of Elsewhere, California illustrates the complicated history of African Americans across the rolling basin of Los Angeles. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Innocent Scott Turow, 2010-05-04 The unputdownable courtroom drama (Stephen King) and riveting sequel to the landmark bestseller Presumed Innocent, in which Tommy Molto and Rusty Sabich come head-to-head in a second murder trial. Twenty years after Rusty Sabich and Tommy Molto went head to head in the shattering murder trial of Presumed Innocent, the men are once more pitted against one another in a riveting psychological match. When Sabich, now 60 years old and the chief judge of an appellate court, finds his wife Barbara dead under mysterious circumstances, Molto accuses him of murder for the second time, setting into motion a trial that is vintage Turow--the courtroom at its most taut and explosive. With his characteristic insight into both the dark truths of the human psyche and the dense intricacies of the criminal justice system, Scott Turow proves once again that some books simply compel us to read late into the night, desperate to know who did it. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: The Spectator Bird Wallace Stegner, 1990-11-01 From the “dean of Western writers” (The New York Times) and the Pulitzer Prize winning–author of Angle of Repose and Crossing to Safety, his National Book Award–winning novel A Penguin Classic Joe Allston is a retired literary agent who is, in his own words, just killing time until time gets around to killing me. His parents and his only son are long dead, leaving him with neither ancestors nor descendants, tradition nor ties. His job, trafficking the talent of others, had not been his choice. He passes through life as a spectator. A postcard from a friend causes Allston to return to the journals of a trip he had taken years before, a journey to his mother's birthplace where he'd sought a link with the past. The memories of that trip, both grotesque and poignant, move through layers of time and meaning, and reveal that Joe Allston isn't quite spectator enough. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Time Passages George Lipsitz, 2014-05-28 Probes postwar AmericaOCOs complicated relationship between historical memory and commercial cultureOCopopular television, music, and film. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: SO BIG EDNA FERBER, |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: Barbarian Nurseries Héctor Tobar, 2011-09-27 Scott Tores is a thirty-something Mexican-American with a beautiful, blonde wife, Maureen, a mansion outside L.A., and a staff of servants to tend his lawn, clean his house, and care for their three children. But as the novel opens, all the servants have been let go, save for Araceli, the maid. Scott has fallen on hard times after a failed investment and in order to make ends meet has been forced to cut costs. With the recent addition of a newborn into their family, tension escalates, and the couple soon part ways, Maureen to a spa with their baby, Scott to a female co-worker’s house. Both believe the other is caring for the children. Araceli, who has never raised children before, spends more time daydreaming about her former life as a Mexico City artist than caring for the kids. When she starts to run out of food, she spirits the children off on an absurd adventure through Los Angeles in search of their Mexican-American grandfather. When Maureen and Scott finally return home, they panic, thinking Araceli has kidnapped the children. Soon a national media circus explodes over the “abduction.” The Barbarian Nurseries is a lush, highly populated social novel in the vein of Tom Wolfe with a bit of T.C. Boyle that explores dashed dreams through a city divided. |
| the mambo kings play songs of love: In Cuba I was a German Shepherd Ana Menéndez, 2002 A collection of short stories from the heart of Castro's Cuba illuminates the wit and powerful insight of this Pushcart Prize-winning Cuban-American writer. Reprint. 35,000 first printing. |
Mambo (dance) - Wikipedia
Mambo is a Latin dance of Cuba which was developed in the 1940s when the music genre of the same name became popular throughout Latin America. The original ballroom dance which …
Mambo
Mambo Seafood combines the best elements of traditional and innovative American, Latin and Pacific seafood cuisines. Vibrant outpost for micheladas & simple seafood with a Latin kick, …
Mambo Dance: History, Steps, Costume, Music & More
Aug 31, 2022 · Mambo is a type of Latin ballroom dance of Cuban origin. This dance form is characterized by its lively energy, intense and provocative hip movements, fluid body moves, …
Mambo Music Guide: A History of Mambo’s Cuban Origins
Nov 2, 2021 · Mambo is a Cuban music style that derives from the danzón tradition. In many Latin American countries, the style is referred to as danzón-mambo. Mambo combines elements of …
Mambo Dance Demonstration - YouTube
Mambo Dance Demonstration. Part of the series: Mambo Dancing for Beginners. Learn how to mambo dance, including a full demonstration, in this free video less...
Mambo - Dance Pizazz - History & Characteristics of Mambo
The Mambo is a lively, rhythmic dance known for its energetic steps, sharp movements, and Cuban flair. It features a quick tempo with a strong emphasis on beats 2 and 4, intricate …
Mambo Dance - Mambo Dancing, Music and Videos
Mambo dance music is a combination of Afro-Cuban and Latin American rhythms that originated in the early 1940’s in Cuba. American jazz and Afro-Cuban music were also influential in the …
Mambo (dance) - Wikipedia
Mambo is a Latin dance of Cuba which was developed in the 1940s when the music genre of the same name became popular throughout Latin America. The original ballroom dance which …
Mambo
Mambo Seafood combines the best elements of traditional and innovative American, Latin and Pacific seafood cuisines. Vibrant outpost for micheladas & simple seafood with a Latin kick, …
Mambo Dance: History, Steps, Costume, Music & More
Aug 31, 2022 · Mambo is a type of Latin ballroom dance of Cuban origin. This dance form is characterized by its lively energy, intense and provocative hip movements, fluid body moves, …
Mambo Music Guide: A History of Mambo’s Cuban Origins
Nov 2, 2021 · Mambo is a Cuban music style that derives from the danzón tradition. In many Latin American countries, the style is referred to as danzón-mambo. Mambo combines elements of …
Mambo Dance Demonstration - YouTube
Mambo Dance Demonstration. Part of the series: Mambo Dancing for Beginners. Learn how to mambo dance, including a full demonstration, in this free video less...
Mambo - Dance Pizazz - History & Characteristics of Mambo
The Mambo is a lively, rhythmic dance known for its energetic steps, sharp movements, and Cuban flair. It features a quick tempo with a strong emphasis on beats 2 and 4, intricate …
Mambo Dance - Mambo Dancing, Music and Videos
Mambo dance music is a combination of Afro-Cuban and Latin American rhythms that originated in the early 1940’s in Cuba. American jazz and Afro-Cuban music were also influential in the …
