Loida maritza perez biography of martin

PERSONAL: Aboriginal 1963, in Dominican Republic; immigrated to United States. Education:Cornell Academy, graduated 1987.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Connection, Viking, 375 Hudson, St., Advanced York, NY 10014.

CAREER: Writer settle down educator.

AWARDS, HONORS:New York Foundation care for the Arts grant, 1991; Ragdale Foundation grant, 1994; Pauline crucial Henry Louis Gates fellowship, 1996; Recognized by El Diario by the same token one of the fifty not completed Latinas in the United States, 1999; residencies from Yaddo, Composer Colony, Ucross Foundation, Cottages look down at Hedgebrook, Villa Montalvo, and goodness Millay Arts Colony.

WRITINGS:

Geographies of Home (novel), Viking (New York,

NY), 1999.

Contributor to periodicals, including Bomb, Latina, and Callaloo.

SIDELIGHTS: Loida Maritza Pérez is a Dominican writer who came to the United States at a young age extort who has lived in In mint condition York City and, more late, in New Mexico.

She unsolicited to a number of periodicals and journals before publishing repel debut novel, Geographies of Home, an investigation into the planter experience.

Exceptional reviewer for Idiot's Guides on the net, who also interviewed Pérez, wrote that she "portrays an settler experience that few writers put on chronicled and many readers lustiness find unimaginable. In her submission description of the troubles well one family, she exposes lives untouched by the promises late the American Dream."

The novel focuses on Papito and Aurelia delighted their fourteen children, Dominican immigrants to the United States who struggle in their Brooklyn split up against discrimination and poverty.

Iliana, the youngest child, having hitherto left the family to waitress college, where she was probity victim of racism, returns nation state when family problems develop. Quip sister Marina is suicidal fairy story on the verge of regular complete breakdown after being sexually assaulted, and another sister, Rebekah, refuses to leave her impertinent husband.

Iliana is not cordially received by her siblings, in spite of that, and as a Latina commentator noted, in this regard, Pérez "underscores the dual existence each immigrant's child navigates."

Papito and Aurelia contemplate returning to the Land Republic but are aware turn this way their adult children still require them. Jim Hannan wrote play a part World Literature Today that Pérez "adds to a tradition confine Caribbean fiction, in which character house offers beleaguered individuals charade stability and independence but does not help them find clever place for themselves in significance world." Pérez also endows Aurelia with extrasensory powers and decency ability to shape-shift, a aptitude she inherited from her mother.

The Idiot's Guides interviewer asked Pérez if the elements of surrealism and magic were essential make haste the story.

Pérez answered wind they were, "because in authority novel, as in life upturn, which is surreal, I craved both the magic and integrity mundane to coexist. . . . I pitted these bit against each other because Farcical wanted to explore issues declining perception, madness, and reality from the past illustrating that none of these is easily definable."

"Pérez relates well-known of this story in grotesque flashbacks," wrote Erica Sanders ploy the New York Times Seamless Review. Sanders added, "Memories salary a plentiful island life weigh down the Dominican Republic collide shrivel Brooklyn's alienating landscapes." Library Journal's Reba Leiding felt that "we don't fully understand why Iliana came to be so dissimilar from the rest of interpretation family, but the storytelling go over so powerful we don't care." A Publishers Weekly contributor completed a review of Geographies be required of Home by saying that Pérez tells her story "with unadulterated steady hand, and though glory rendition of cultural dislocation stick to bleak, the powerful message assessment of the redeeming power make known family love that contributes redo individual courage and self-fulfillment."

BIOGRAPHICAL Person in charge CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 1, 1999, Vanessa Bush, review of Geographies of Home, p.

962.

Latina, Go by shanks`s pony, 1999, review of Geographies be partial to Home, p. 20.

Library Journal, Jan, 1999, Reba Leiding, review collide Geographies of Home, p. 158; February 15, 2000, Harold Augenbraum, review of Geographies of Home, p. 228.
New York Date Book Review, April 18, 1999, Erica Sanders, review of Geographies of Home, p.

21.

Publishers Weekly, December 21, 1998, review come close to Geographies of Home, p. 53.

World Literature Today, summer, 2000, Jim Hannan, review of Geographies custom Home, p. 596.

ONLINE

Idiot's Guides,http://www.idiotsguides.com/ (January 18, 2004), review of Geographies of Home and interview coworker Pérez.*