2009-10 ¡Adelante! Book List

In this astonishing true story, award-winning journalist Sonia Nazario recounts the unforgettable odyssey of a Honduran boy who braves unimaginable hardship and peril to reach his mother in the United States.

Based on the Los Angeles Times newspaper series that won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for feature writing and another for feature photography, Enrique's Journey is the timeless story of families torn apart, the yearning to be together again, and a boy who will risk his life to find the mother he loves.

This is the true story of journalist Steve Lopez's discovery of Nathaniel Ayers, a former classical bass student at Julliard, playing his heart out on a two-string violin on Los Angeles' Skid Row. Deeply affected by the beauty of Ayers's music, Lopez took it upon himself to change the prodigy's life — only to find that their relationship had a profound change on his own life.

Mary Brave Bird grew up fatherless in a one-room cabin, without running water or electricity on a South Dakota reservation. Rebelling against the aimless drinking, punishing missionary school, narrow strictures for women, and violence and hopelessness of reservation life, she joined the new movement of tribal pride sweeping Native American communities in the '60s and '70s and eventually married Leonard Crow Dog, the movement's chief medicine man, who revived the sacred but outlawed Ghost Dance.

In the rubble of post-World War II Berlin, artist Charlotte flees her past and everything she's lost by responding to an ad calling for "strong women who can cook and do farm work" in Iceland. But painful memories and ghosts follow Charlotte as she struggles to make a new life in a raw and rugged landscape. This debut novel celebrates the twin powers of storytelling and art as ways to reassemble the fragments of Charlotte's broken self and move her and everyone she loves toward peace.

Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is abused and raped by her father and attempts to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.

"The novel caused tremendous outrage." So begins Nawal El Saadawi's 10th novel. And indeed, when the famous Egyptian psychiatrist and writer released The Novel in 2005, it was banned all over the Arab world. But the novel inside The Novel is by a young woman — a woman who is only 23 years old, who has "no family, no university degree, no national identity card," whose name does not appear on this "lists of prominent women writers." A woman, that is, whose biography is as unlike Saadawi's own as possible, as if she has stripped herself of all the effects of her own worldly existence to explore something earlier, more elemental, than the political work for which she is so well known. In following the life of this young, unnamed, woman writer as it intersects with those of a famous writer named Rostum, his wife Carmen, and a poet called Miriam, El Saadawi gives us a deeply felt exploration of the nature of identity, of fame, of writing, and of freedom.

A rousing manifesto for our climate-challenged future.

Faderman tells the compelling story of lesbian life in the 20th century, from the early 1900s to today's diverse lifestyles. Using journals, unpublished manuscripts, songs, news accounts, novels, medical literature, and numerous interviews, she relates an often surprising narrative of lesbian life.

Known for her beloved Ya-Ya books (Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Little Altars Everywhere, and Ya-Yas in Bloom), Rebecca Wells has helped women name, claim, and celebrate their shared sisterhood for over a decade. Now Wells debuts an entirely new cast of characters in this shining stand-alone novel about the pull of first love, the power of life, and the human heart's vast capacity for healing.

The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder is the sweet, sexy, funny journey of Calla Lily's life set in Wells's expanding fictional Louisiana landscape. In the small river town of La Luna, Calla bursts into being, a force of nature as luminous as the flower she is named for. Under the loving light of the Moon Lady, the feminine force that will guide and protect her throughout her life, Calla enjoys a blissful childhood — until it is cut short.

From the distinguished educator, international crusader for humanitarian causes, and widow of the Nobel Peace Prize-winner President Anwar Sadat comes a foolproof plan for peace in the Middle East.

In 1979, the Camp David Accords, brokered by Jimmy Carter between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, culminated in the signing of the historic Israeli- Egyptian peace treaty, the first agreement in which an Arab country recognized Israel and an agreement that has held up to this day. Jehan Sadat was there, and on the thirtieth anniversary of this historic event, she brings us a polemic for peace like no other. My Hope for Peace answers a set of three challenges: challenges to Sadat's faith, challenges to the role women play in that faith, and, most of all, challenges to the idea that peace in the Middle East is an unattainable dream.