FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Houston author releases a spiritual memoir of her Texas roots celebrating three generations of aspiration, desperation, and salvation.
Houston, TX Sept 11, 2012
Walking Home: Growing Up Hispanic in Houston – This new book from Sarah Cortez, published by Texas Review Press, is a groundbreaking, mixed-genre memoir of growing up in Houston during the post-World War II era.
Crime fiction author, poet, editor, teacher, speaker – Sarah Cortez shares the memories that molded both her and her fifth-generation Texan families. Born and raised in Houston, she looks back into her family’s most precious stories and spiritual history and into her own youthful, tentative discoveries.
This brief memoir is divided into two sections. In the first, three generations of Hispanic families are viewed through the faith-filled lens of the miraculous and the poignancy of dreams never realized, using the metaphor of a stained glass window to frame the stories. Selected colors are tied to memories of aspiration, desperation, and salvation. Sarah invites us to share how the stories might have unfolded had we been a witness to these scenes. It is soon clear that while the focus is on the past, the memoir illustrates the foundation of Sarah Cortez today.
In the second section, the journey continues to the mid-twentieth century metropolis of Houston where poems about what is done are as powerful as those events which were only dreams. Cortez leads the reader on a thoughtful and evolving path from a young girl’s memories of her father and surf fishing to a teenager’s pain at being excluded from her Spanish-speaking cousins’ gossip sessions. The poems are memorable snapshots of family life – a dark green, marbled tackle box, a deer carcass converted to hot dinners, a handsome salesman who dines with the family, a first heartthrob inviting sexual daring during a visit to Atlanta – the big city. Each poem invites re-reading to confirm the intensity of the first impression.
“Walking Home is Houston’s first literary memoir,” Cortez says. “I invite you to step with me into its literary space made sacred through belief.”
Sarah Cortez is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. She has edited five anthologies of poetry, memoir, and crime fiction for both young adult and adult audiences for the publishing houses of Arte Publico Press and Akashic Books. Her most recent editing award is from the International Latino Book Awards for the young adult anthology of mystery fiction entitled, “You Don’t Have a Clue: Latino Mystery Stories for Teens.” Her work has appeared in The Sun, Rattle: Poetry for the 21st Century, The Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, The Texas Review, New Texas, Louisiana Review, Blue Rock Review, Pennsylvania English, The Midwest Quarterly and many other publications. Her work is widely anthologized in collections by Penguin, the Great Books Foundation, and other international publishers.
Texas Review Press, a member of the Texas A&M University Press Consortium, was established in 1979 at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. With a publishing schedule of twelve books a year, it is Texas’ most prestigious literary press.
To purchase Walking Home, visit www.poetacortez.com.
For additional information contact: Ann Boland, ann@annboland.com 520-247-0070
