Books

Canto de las Moscas (Song of the Flies), by the late Colombian poet María Mercedes Carranza, was published for the first time in 1997, following a decade marked by extremely high levels of violence in Colombia. At this point the country had already endured nearly half a century of armed struggle between government and rebel groups, and had more recently experienced the emergence of paramilitary forces and warring drug lords.

Carranza wrote these twenty-four poems, each bearing the name of a town or city that had been the site of large-scale violence, as a sort of chronicle and commemoration of the tragedies the people endured. The titles reflect a contradiction characteristic of Colombian reality: the beautifully-musical and whimsical place-names stand in cruel contrast to the events that marked them as massacre sites. Written in a form similar to Japanese haiku but not adhering to its strict line-and-syllable counts, the poems are short and spare.

“Clif Ross is among the most highly respected activists of the Left Coast… His own poetry, a generation of works, is here warmly presented in the context of a maturation of tone and voice that is quietly remarkable--and very much like himself. Ross is a fusion of a lyric realism and the power of metaphor. His voice isn't of the plosive kind. He writes an organic lyric, resisting any attempt on the part of the "Poet" in himself to overcome himself by a kind of verbal oblivion. His poems are expressions of his determination that friendship triumphs through beautiful communications that make one feel solidarity without feeling one's being indoctrinated or recruited.”
Jack Hirschman
Poet Laureate of San Francisco
from the introduction to the English edition.

Piri Thomas, who reached millions of readers with his bestselling autobiography, Down These Mean Streets, now gives readers of all ages a vivid slice of the life in El Barrio—a place where people face their problems with energy, ingenuity and love. He draws vivid stories from his past 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. Speaking in the voice of the streets and from his heart, Piri captures the spirit, the laughter and the hope of his people.

Reviews
“Stories From El Barrio is a crystal clear reflection of the general facet of Piri Thomas’s literary power. It is tender, powerfully compassionate, humanely provocative.”
Claude Brown, author of Manchild in the Promised Land