Lesléa Newman
Here Is the World: A Year of Jewish Holidays
Abrams
September 2014 * 978-1-4197-1185-5  $18.95

Here Is the World is a joyful celebration of the Jewish holidays that take place in a calendar year. A family celebrates the birth of a daughter and then shares with her all the joy of the year: eating apples and honey on Rosh Hashanah, lighting the menorah for Chanukah, planting a tree for Tu B’Shevat, etc. The book concludes with an explanation for each holiday, as well as a recipe or craft for each one as well.

—–

Joe Jiménez
The Possibilities of Mud
Kórima Press
August 2014 * 978-0-9889673-7-3 *  $15.00

The Possibilities of Mud roots down in the Texas Gulf. These poems touch the world not to take from it but to know it, to belong to it more fully. Jiménez renders the violent end to a long relationship, and makes notations for a praise song, prayers toward how to go on.

—–

Jesús Alonzo
Jotos del Barrio
Kórima Press
August 2014 * 978-0692218921 * $15.00

Jotos del Barrio is a play presented as a collection of poems, monologues, and vignettes that takes the audience into the lives of young Latino, Chicano, Tejano, Mexicano, and Mexican-American gay men as they discover the joys and trials of their multiple identities.

—–

Maya Chinchilla
The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética
Kórima Press
June 2014 * 978-0988967380 * $15.00

The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética makes visible Central American-Guatemalan diaspora and disentangles myths from mayhem of civil wars, urban wars, and wars raging in young hearts, while honoring Central American feministas, Long Beach roqueras, families divided by war, lovers separated by borders, and celebrates the pleasure and heartbreak of femmes, machas, y mariconadas.

—–

Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano
Amorcito Maricón
Kórima Press
April 2014 * 978-0-9889673-5-9 * $15.00

A collection of poems exploring queer Xicano desires, literal and mythical homeland(s), and brown bodies in perpetually active displacement. Sitting at the intersectional multiplicities of reminisced childhood pop culture, coquettishly amorphous Xicanidad, and defiantly claimed Mexicanidad, Amorcito Maricón basks in the inherent politic, inevitable heartbreak, and inescapable draw of brown on brown desire.

—–

Adelina Anthony
The Beast of Times
Kórima Press
March 2014 * 978-0-9889673-6-6 * $15.00

The Beast of Times is a queer political allegory exploring the contradictions and pains of coming to political consciousness in a world where environmental and ethnic diversity are fast diminishing. The play, in which radicalized animals put humans on trial, exposes human love of greed and greed for love.

—–

Carlos T. Mock
Historias
Floricanto Press
June 2014 * ISBN 978-1499582642 * $12.95

Historias is Carlos T. Mock’s latest musings on his past seen through his imagination. A set of short stories ranging from childhood jokes to life-and-death situations.

—–

Renée Bess
The Rules
Regal Crest Enterprises, LLC
April 2014 * ISBN: 978-1-61929-156-0 * paperback $16.95; 978-1-61929-157-7  * eBook $9.99

Blackmail, missing persons, and hidden identities link lives that otherwise would be unconnected. One woman’s desire to reach out to a kindred spirit, another’s bitter awareness of class differences, misguided ardor, and greed are the threads that entwine themselves around a multiracial cast of characters.

—–