After years of anti-immigrant backlash, anger seethes in the nation's Latino communities. The crowded streets bristle with restless youth, idled by a deep recession. When undercover detectives in San Antonio accidentally kill a young Latina bystander during a botched drug bust, riots erupt across the Southwest. As the inner-city violence escalates, Anglo vigilantes strike back with shooting rampages. Exploiting the turmoil, a congressional demagogue succeeds in passing legislation that transforms the nation's Hispanic enclaves into walled-off Quarantine Zones. Citizens tagged Class H-those who are Hispanic, are married to a Hispanic, or have at least one grandparent of Hispanic origin-are forced into detention centers. Amid the chaos in his L.A. barrio, Manolo Suarez is out of work and struggling to support his growing family. But under the spell of a beautiful Latina radical, the former U.S. Army Ranger and decorated war veteran now finds himself questioning his loyalty to his wife-and to his country.
Author Highlights:
Author named #1 among "2011 Top Ten Latino Authors" by LatinoStories.com
AMERICA LIBRE wins a Books Into Movies Award - Latino Literacy Now
AMERICA LIBRE wins a Best Novel Award - International Latino Book Awards
AMERICA LIBRE named Violet Crown Awards Fiction Finalist, Writers League of Texas
AMERICA LIBRE selected as a USA Today 2009 Summer Read
AMERICA LIBRE a LATINA Magazine "10 Hottest Summer Reads" for 2009
Besides developing a documentary for public television, Two Americas: The Legacy of our Hemisphere, Raul is host of MyIimmigrationStory.com -- an online forum for the U.S. immigrant community. He began writing America Libre in 2004, with the input of scholars from Latin America, Spain, and the United States. After five months as a self-published edition, America Libre, was acquired by Grand Central Publishing (formerly Warner Books). A revised version of the novel by Grand Central Publishing was released July 29, 2009. Grand Central Publishing also acquired House Divided, the sequel to America Libre. House Divided's release is January 28, 2011.
In his own words...
"January" is the first English word I ever learned. I read it on the calendar thumbtacked to the wall of our apartment in the Bronx. Han-noo-a-ree, I pronounced it. That was in the winter of 1957. My mother had just divorced my father and moved us from Havana to New York City. My father was busy trying to overthrow Batista and my mother thought her prospects for raising a seven-year-old son looked much better sewing sequins on evening gowns in the midtown garment district than in a Cuban prison. Thanks, mamá. You made the right call.
Since mastering that first English word, the power and joy of words have become my life. I not only love words, I've made a living from them. First, composing them into pages as a graphic designer, and later arranging them into sentences as an advertising writer. After twenty-four years of creating the fiction commonly known as advertising, I decided to start telling my own stories.
America Libre is my first novel. The idea came when the producer I was working with on a public television film said, "You should write a book about this." The film was a comparative study of the political and racial landscapes of the U.S. and Latin America. Despite the project's impressive collection of international scholars, we were struggling to find funding. Inspired by the producer's idea, I began to write while waiting for the foundations to respond. Soon, the characters came to life and took the story far beyond the original scope of the film. The longer the foundations took, the more I wrote. Seventy-five thousand words later, I realized this piece of fiction had expressed the message of the film in a much more compelling way. I'm still waiting for the funding on the film.
Reflecting on my past, it's not surprising I would write about a rebellion. I saw one unfold firsthand between 1957 and 1961 in Cuba. Staying with my father during summer breaks from U.S. schooling, I experienced the life of an insurgent. My father and uncle ran contraband supplies to Castro using a used tire business as a cover. Perhaps most sobering was learning how fragile a government can be. Fulgencio Batista fled the island in 1959. Overnight, the police and military no longer had the might to maintain public order.
Castro's sudden rise to power transformed Cuba. During the anti-American rallies Castro fomented, I heard my relatives shout hateful slogans about people I knew and loved in Miami. Castro was preparing Cuba for war and I saw how some leaders use hate, fear, and patriotism for their own ends. As an eleven-year-old I received military weapons training. That's how desperate Castro's war preparations were.
Thanks to my mother, I managed to escape. She returned to Cuba and arranged a trip for us to visit relatives in Madrid. When our flight made a stop in Bermuda, we got off the plane. Eventually, we were able to return to the United States. We have not had any contact with our Cuban relatives since that day. These experiences were the wellspring for many of the characters and scenes of America Libre.
