We at Somos en escrito Literary Foundation Press are pleased to announce ​Postcards from a PostMexican by Alvaro Ramirez won bronze at the International Latino Book Awards. Specifically, The Victor Villaseñor Best Latino Focused Nonfiction Book Award – English. 

Congratulations to Alvaro! If you would like to purchase Postcards from a PostMexcian, head to this link here at our Somos en ecrito store. Buying from us helps us publish more award winning books like Postcards from a PostMexican. 
  
To see this and other results of the International Latino Book Awards, click the link below.
https://www.latinobookawards.org/

Postcards from a PostMexican peels away the façade of the nationalist, folkloric Old Mexico to reveal a country which each day looks more and more like its salsa-loving, border-sharing wall-building neighbor—the U.S.

Author Álvaro Ramírez, the self-defined PostMexican in the title, chronicles the amazing cultural transformation that is taking place in a transnational geographical area that encompasses Mexico and the United States. Ramírez shows that the world as we knew it is disappearing or morphing into another at a dizzying pace in the new millennium, thanks to massive migrations, NAFTA, the Internet, and social media.
These socio-economic and technological forces are deluding the unique cultural identities that differentiated us neatly into nations. What is emerging is a hybrid world where Americans set to a large degree the trends, the cultural models that define the inhabitants of both countries.

Interestingly, most people are unaware of the changes Mexicans are going through in the postMexican condition until they have a chance to visit either country. American tourists (especially Mexican Americans) are shocked and put off by the heavy presence of American culture (music, movies, sports, clothes, fast food) in Mexico; Mexicans are surprised at the amount of their national culture alive and doing well in the United States (food, mariachis, ballet folklórico, Cinco de Mayo, Día de los Muertos).

After witnessing and studying these phenomena for many years, presenting papers at conferences, and teaching many courses on the subject, Ramírez decided to start a blog where he could rant and rave on these matters in a non-academic style, free of jargon, accessible to all readers. In Postcards from a PostMexican, he offers short, lucid analyses of the transnational world in which he lives.

The twilight of Mexican nationalism, the relation of Mexico and its migrants, the rise of the NAFTA Generation, Mexican racism and xenophobia, the populism of Donald Trump and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, are but a few of the issues that Ramírez addresses with flair and a good dose of humor, which leaves the reader with an understanding that Mexicanness is not what it used to be.   

See Postcards from a PostMexican in our Somos en escrito Foundation Press page, get it at Amazon, and follow @PostMexican happenings on its Facebook.

​ Álvaro Ramírez, born in Michoacán, México, of Purépecha origin, migrated with his family to Ohio as an adolescent. A Professor of Literature at various California schools, he has been  a Professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Saint Mary’s College (Moraga) since 1993, where he specializes in Spanish Golden Age and Latin American literature, Mexican Film, and Chicano Cultural Studies. His first book, a collection of short stories in Spanish, Los norteados, was a finalist in the 2017 International Latino Book Awards competition.

​Somos en escrito is pleased that the first two books from our press are ILBA finalists! Theorizing César Chávez is a finalist in the category "Victor Villaseñor Latino Focused Nonfiction Book – English" and Insurgent Aztlán is a finalist in the category "Best Political/Current Affairs Book – English." 

Congratulations to other finalists who have appeared in Somos en escrito, Alvaro Huerta, Eduardo Cabrera, Sergio Troncoso, and Juan Alvarado Valdivia.

​See more at the International Latino Book Awards site.
Click here for the full list of finalists.

Theorizing César Chávez: New Ways of Knowing STEM presents a new paradigm for examining and analyzing science through an understanding of César Chávez’s values and beliefs, theorizing the application of his innovative thinking to STEM, particularly to address its state in U.S. education today. Author Armando A. Arias ("Dr. Sonny Boy") forges connections between the arts, humanities, social and behavioral and hard sciences, using science friction, including his own visionary travails, to create a presence in the absence of César Chávez. 

​Learn more and get a copy here.

Best Latino Focused Fiction Book – English or Bilingual

Cabañuelas: A novel, Norma Elia Cantú; University of New Mexico Press; Mexico/Xicana; San Antonio, TX
Click here to read an excerpt of Cabañuelas. 


Best Play or Collection of Plays

Teatro de inmigrantes en los Estados Unidos, Eduardo Cabrera; Argentina; Chicago
Click here to read an excerpt of another book by Eduardo Carbrera.


Best Collection of Short Stories – English or Bilingual

A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son, Sergio Troncoso; Cinco Puntos Press; U.S. Mexican American; New York

Ballad of a Slopsucker: Stories, Juan Alvarado Valdivia; University of New Mexico Press; Mexico/Peruano; San Francisco
Click here to read an excerpt of Ballad of a Slopsucker.


Best Political/Current Affairs Book – English
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Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities, Alvaro Huerta, Hamilton Books; Lanham
Click here to read an excerpt of Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities.