In these eight stories Piri Thomas takes us with him into El Barrio—Puerto Rico in New York City—and recreates the scenes he knows so well from his own childhood. He leads us through streets teaming with life, up crumbling front stoops, down dark hallways, into crowded rooms, and into the hearts and minds of his people. He takes us into the ring for a hard-fought boxing match and out of the city on a Boy Scout outing. He sits us in the barber’s chair and right under the burning scalp of a kid getting his hair straightened. He puts us into a boy’s mind for a wild fantasy trip, and into the heart of a sixteen-year-old trying to impress a pretty girl. He draws vivid stories from his part experiences and makes us feel what it means to be poor and proud and generous; to be streetwise and full of bravado but frightened, too; to struggle to go straight; to be ashamed of being ashamed; to dream. Piri Thomas, who reached thousands of readers with his bestselling autobiography, Down These Mean Streets, now gives young readers a vivid slice of the life in El Barrio—a place where people face their problems with energy, ingenuity, and love. Speaking in the voice of the streets and from his heart, he captures their spirit, their laughter, and their hope.

Judith Ortiz Cofer's Pura Belpre award-winning collection of short stories about life in the barrio! Rita is exiled to Puerto Rico for a summer with her grandparents after her parents catch her with a boy. Luis sits atop a six-foot mountain of hubcaps in his father's junkyard, working off a sentence for breaking and entering. Sandra tries to reconcile her looks to the conventional Latino notion of beauty. And Arturo, different from his macho classmates, fantasizes about escaping his community. They are the teenagers of the barrio -- and this is their world.

A young boy explores his vibrant Latino neighborhood, with its vegetable gardens instead of lawns, Nativity parades, quinceaera parties, and tejana and salsa music.

Welcome to José's neighborhood. In his barrio, people speak an easy mix of Spanish and English and sometimes even Chinese. The masked revelry of Halloween leads into the festive remembrances of the Day of the Dead. And murals on the walls and buildings sing out the stories of the people who live here. As familiar as any neighborhood yet as strange as a foreign country, Jose's barrio isn't in Mexico or Argentina--it's in San Francisco. Award-winning author and photographer George Ancona follows José through a season in the barrio, and in the process gives readers a glimpse of a community as rich and varied as America itself.

This new edition brings this study of inner-city life up to date.

This book is published by Floricanto Press. www.FloricantoPress.com www.LatinoBooks.Net #LatinoBooks In this collection of short stories, Irma Olmedo immerses her readers in the world of her childhood growing up in New York's El Barrio during the 1950s. Tinged with nostalgia for her years surrounded by family, celebratory meals, and togetherness while facing economic challenges as other working-class Puerto Rican families in la gran urbe, Olmedo's stories reclaim the humanity of displaced Puerto Rican families in New York through dialogues that are succinct yet truly human, exploding with a candidly felt, nurturing cariño. While the focus rests on her extended family, the stories reveal a larger social and historical moment in New York. Themes such as the mistranslations of migration through consumerism, the power of music and memory, the social alliances between Puerto Ricans and Italians, the limited access to resources, gender and sexual identities, and the diverse generational perspectives of identity and culture across time, all come together in these beautiful narratives of culture, family and communities. Olmedo's unique talent in assuming the voices of her family members throughout these stories, including her own as an adult, is evident throughout the collection. Bravo to a new voice that humanizes Puerto Ricans in the diaspora at a time when the State brutally dismisses our lives as unworthy of recognition. -Frances R. Aparicio, Professor Emerita, Northwestern University Barrio tales is a warm-hearted collection of short stories on memory, love, and loss told with compassion, humor and wit. Moving from Puerto Rico to barrios across the US, each story is a gem that captures the sights, sounds, smells, spirit, and emotions of a community on the move from the island to the diaspora. Irma María Olmedo has a keen ear for dialogue and is an original and inventive storyteller. Anyone interested in the immigrant experience will love these stories.-Dr. Lourdes Torres, Editor, Latino Studies, Vincent de Paul Professor, Department of Latin American and LatinoStudies, DePaul University Irma Maria Olmedo was born in Puerto Rico, and moved to New York City at the age of eight with her family. She remained in the Lower East Side of New York City, where she pursued a Bachelor's and Master's Degrees at the City University of New York. After marrying, she moved to Wisconsin, Chicago and Ohio, received a master's in Latin American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Curriculum from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Education from Kent State University in Ohio. She taught in various colleges and universities, most recently at the University of Illinois-Chicago, from which she retired.

Stories on the people of the Southwest. Silviana strides to her chicken coop, triggering a "feathered pandemonium" as chickens smell death in the air, Mamacita embroiders, "wondering what in the world it feels like to be kissed," and people who buy tortillas at the market "might as well move to Los Angeles, for they have already lost their souls."