Sister
Chicas
Co-authored
with Lisa Alvarado and Jane Alberdeston Coralin, Sister Chicas
tells the story of three young Latina friends in Chicago. They
meet while working on the school paper, but during their weekly
coffee dates they form a friendship that gives them the sisters
they never had, and together they struggle with the normal stresses
of growing up: parents, careers, boys, fashion, all while figuring
out their identities and learning how to fit their rich cultural
heritage into their lives as modern Norteamericanas.
Sister Chicas
represents a collaboration between three Latina writers from as
diverse backgrounds as their subjects. The novel has alternating
chapters that feature the three different characters, written
in their individual voices. When combined the result is a rich
tapestry that weaves the story of teenage Latina friends, who
refer to each other as "sister chica".
2006 New American
Library, Penguin Books. Visit
Barnes and Noble.com to buy the
book.
The
Gift of the Cuentista
"Ann
Hagman Cardinal's novel, Gift of the Cuentista is a lush retelling
of a childhood, not lost, but relegated to the borderland---that
place between cultures, between real and imagined, between the
land of the living and the dead. The book centers around Isla,
half Puerto Rican, half Anglo and the way in which she is quintessentially
American when she is in Puerto Rican, and never quite the All-American
girl when at home in New York. She is made further other/hero
by the family 'gift' of visions from those who have passed beyond.
It is this gift, however, that begins the slow movement toward
understanding, toward a kind of mixed world wholeness and a celebration
of the valuable position of embracing more than one story, more
than one reality." Ellen Lesser, author of the Shopkeeper's
Apprentice
Ann’s
monthly column on La Bloga deals with the subjects of motherhood,
diversity, and the general issues affecting a transplanted, New
York Latina living in Vermont. Ann has been called the Latina
Erma Bombeck and with her monthly column she brings unique and
modern perspectives that speak to her readers through universal
themes. Café con Lupe deals with those interesting vignettes
that make our day to day lives so humorous and touching when looked
at from the right point of view.
