reviewed Gathering StarDust Goodreads – 5 stars: Gathering Stardust filled me with such joy the entire time I read it. Villasenor’s relationship with his mamagrande reads like a fairytale, but it’s real! If everyone had been raised with a grandmother like her, we’d have a kind, loving, peaceful world. And while the story itself is absolutely beautiful, the illustrations make this book magical! I am in awe of Jack Wiens’ talent and heart in bringing the characters and settings and feelings to life. This book is like a literary hug.
Featured Books
Lion Eyes
Lion Eyes is a mystical, heartfelt, soul-inspiring love story of timeless relevance. It shows us that our global future lies not just in our politics and religious beliefs, but also in our unwavering love and our forgotten native wisdom that once we find our totem, everything falls into place, even amidst chaos . . . illustrated by one man’s incredible life, which can become the norm for all of humanity!
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Macho!
MACHO details seventeen-year-old Roberto Garcia’s journey from the state of Michoacán, Mexico, to his illegal entry into the United States. His backbreaking work in the vegetable fields of California and the workers’ divided sentiments over César Chavez’s efforts to unionize the workers are chronicled in a style that many critics have compared to John Steinbeck. MACHO is a novel of the conflict of spiritual, social and economic values during the coming of age of a young Mexican.
More info → Burro Genius
So begins the passionate, touching memoir of Victor Villaseñor. Highly gifted and imaginative as a child, Villaseñor coped with an untreated learning disability (he was finally diagnosed, at the age of forty-four, with extreme dyslexia) and the frustration of growing up Latino in an English-only American school in the 1940s. Despite teachers who beat him because he could not speak English, Villaseñor clung to his dream of one day becoming a writer. He is now considered one of the premier writers of our time.
More info → Crazy Loco Love
His memories of events from 50 years ago are passionately vivid, and at times they seem to leap off the page, striking with such an impact that you wonder how one person could face such abuse of the heart and soul and still emerge with his dignity intact.
He verbosely chronicles his sexual awakening and shares with the reader the pleasures his body, and those of the opposite sex, bring him. If that weren’t enough, his blasphemous conversations with himself about his Catholic faith may prove shocking to some, while others will recoil when they discover what he hides in between the pages of his Bible.
More info → Wild Steps of Heaven
In his critically acclaimed bestseller Rain of Gold, Victor Villaseñor brought his mother's family vividly to life. In Wild Steps Of Heaven, he turns to his father's family, the Villaseñors. Against a vivid backdrop of love and war, magic and heroism, the author breathes life into his father's people--and in particular, the Villaseñor women*Margarita, the indomitable matriarch who was swept away by Don Juan Jesus Villaseñor on the eve of the Mexican revolution*their beautiful daughters, who find strength and endurance in their mother's faith, and searing passion amidst the turmoil of war. But it is little Juan, the youngest son, through whose eyes this tumultuous saga unfolds. Juan would learn from his brother Jose, a hero of the revolution, how to be a man; and from his beloved mother, how to live and love con gusto y amor.
More info → Thirteen Senses: A Memoir
A daring memoir of love, magic, adventure, and miracles, Victor Villaseñor's Thirteen Senses continues the exhilarating family saga that began in the widely acclaimed bestseller Rain of Gold, delivering a stunning story of passion, family, and the forgotten mystical senses that stir within us all.
Thirteen Senses begins with the fiftieth wedding anniversary of the aging former bootlegger Salvador and his elegant wife, Lupe. When asked by a young priest to repeat the sacred ceremonial phrase "to honor and obey," Lupe surprises herself and says. "No, I will not say 'obey'. How dare you! You don't talk to me like this after fifty years of marriage and I now knowing what I know!" After the hilarious shock of Lupe's rejection of the ceremony, the Villaseñor family is forced to examine the love that Lupe and Salvador have shared for so many years -- a universal, gut-honest love that will eventually energize and inspire the couple into old age.
More info → Rain of Gold
Rain of Gold is a true-life saga of love, family and destiny, pulsing with bold vitality, sweeping from the war-ravaged Mexican mountains of Pancho Villa’s revolution to the Prohibition days of California. Bursting from the pages with real-life characters and passionate drama, RAIN OF GOLD is a major work by a Mexican-American writer of extraordinary power, Victor Villaseñor.
More info → The Stranger and the Red Rooster
One day in a small California barrio, a scary-looking stranger with an ugly scar on his face arrives. Silence falls on the streets. Normally raucous children stop playing, and their fearful mothers quickly beckon them inside. Everyone peeks out of windows and doors to watch the stranger walk down Main Street.
More info → Mother Fox and Mr. Coyote
The home of Mother Fox and her three babies is hidden by the roots of a tree stump in a long valley. In the beautiful fields around their home, Mother Fox cares for her children, who are so tiny they fit in the palm of a human hand. She brings them treats to eat, and she leads them to sit on the rocks in the sun.
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