NewPages Blog :: Books

Generation Exile: The Lives I Leave Behind by Rodrigo Dorfman
Arte Público Press, March 2023

Rodrigo Dorfman, the son of prominent dissidents, was six years old when his family fled Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship a month after the CIA-backed coup in 1973. They fled to Argentina, and then to Havana, Paris, Amsterdam and finally Bethesda, Maryland. Mapping the memory of exile, he remembers the contradiction of living with his seething anger at losing his home and his resistance to settling down. Rebellion was an ancestral badge of honor he wore proudly. At 18, he returned to Chile and fought against the fascist dictatorship, running for his life with bullets and tear gas flying by. Dorfman’s involvement in the resistance movement there planted the seeds for his future life as a community-centered documentary filmmaker. His restless search for a place to call his own led to his wandering—around the United States, to Morocco and Turkey and the Path of Sufism. He finally made a home in the American South, where he became a “Latino” and found kinship with other immigrants who settled there. This compelling narrative recounts a displaced man’s life-long quest to establish family, roots and a sense of belonging by bearing witness to what he calls the “Nuevo South.”

Player’s Vendetta A Willie Cuesta Mystery by John Lantigua
Arte Público Press, March 2023

Willie Cuesta, former Miami Police Department detective-turned-private investigator, is swinging in his hammock, estimating the number of mango daquiris he can squeeze from a ripe piece of fruit about to fall from his tree. He’s also waiting for a prospective client who refused to discuss her case over the phone. Ellie Hernandez hasn’t seen her fiancé, Roberto “Bobby” Player, in ten days, and she wants Willie to find him. Bobby has been obsessed with the suspicious death of his parents more than thirty-five years ago in Cuba, and he recently went to the island to find their killers. Only six years old when they were murdered, he was living in the United States, where they were supposed to join him. He was one of the “Peter Pan” kids smuggled out when Fidel Castro took over. Willie learns the Players controlled one of the most successful casinos on the island and a large sum of money—half a million dollars—disappeared with their deaths. His investigation reveals an assortment of suspicious characters who were in Havana when the Players were killed, including a former Cuban spy now living in Little Havana, Mafia gangsters involved in gambling institutions and even an undercover US intelligence agent.

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Man of the People: The Autobiography of Congressman Robert Garcia
 Arte Público Press, April 2023

Three weeks into his first term as a US Congressman, Robert Garcia found himself sitting down for a second time with the president of the United States. The son of a laborer at the Central Aguirre sugar mill in Puerto Rico, he couldn’t help but think, “Only in America!” Garcia grew up in the South Bronx and in his autobiography—published posthumously—he shares his story of struggle, rising from poverty to become a Korean War veteran, New York State Assemblyman and Senator and ultimately a US Congressman representing his beloved community.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!