America Libre propels readers into the not-so-distant future, where the United States is plagued by extremism, racial conflict and violence. In response to the upheaval, legislators force Hispanic citizens to relocate to walled-off Quarantine Zones. America Libre is vibrant and intellectually stimulating—readers will become rapt in a mixture of revolution, rhetoric and romance.

International Latino Book Award-winner and author Raúl Ramos y Sánchez discusses his debut novel America Libre.

How did you balance fact and fiction in this novel?

Ramos: Pablo Picasso once said, “art is the lie that tells the truth.” I’ve tried my bestl to make America Libre a compelling, action-packed story peopled by characters a reader can identify with. Along the way, America Libre exposes readers to many little-known facts about minorities and U.S. history. Most of all, I hope readers connect with the humanity of people different than themselves – and grasp the dangers of stereotypes and prejudice.

In what ways did your background influence and inspire America Libre?

Ramos: Reflecting on my past, it’s not surprising I would write about a rebellion. I experienced Cuba’s revolution firsthand as child. In 1957, my father joined Castro’s insurgency. My mother, fearing for our safety and unhappy with my father’s political decision, divorced him and brought us to the United States. My father was not an ideologue but an ordinary man convinced he was helping rid his country of a tyrant. He risked his life on the hope of a better future for his family. Sadly, his deeds simply helped usher in another dictator. The realization that sincere and caring people inhabit both sides of every conflict continues to shape my perspective to this day.

If you were a character in this novel, which character's ideologies would most align with your own?

Ramos: America Libre depicts an ideological and cultural clash that escalates into open conflict. That meant creating characters with views extreme enough to propel them into violence. For that reason, I would say none of the main characters represent my personal views. I think ideology is much less important than the extent to which someone will go to carry out their agenda. Reasonable people can disagree. But in my mind, the real enemy is extremism.

In the novel, you include government officials, thugs, families, and political revolutionaries. How did you decide how to represent each of these groups?

Ramos: My life experiences exposed me to most of the cultural settings for the characters in America Libre. As I mentioned earlier, my father was a revolutionary. I also grew up in a gritty, working-class immigrant community in Miami. Later, I moved to the U.S. Midwest where my Ohio-born bride and marketing career introduced me to the breadth of U.S. mainstream society. What I’ve found is people are complex and often contradictory, wherever you go. Yet we all want the same things: to be loved, to live well, to care for our families, to be decent and fair, to see justice prevail. Our differences inevitably surface in the way we think these things should be done. We humans have an incredible capacity for letting self-interest shape our world view.

What was the inspiration behind Jo's character?

Ramos: Josefina Herrera, called “Jo” by her friends in the story, shatters many Hispanic stereotypes. She is blonde and blue-eyed, perfectly bilingual, educated and rich. You’ll find few depictions of a Latina like Jo in commercials, TV shows and movies. But in reality Jo is representative of many Latin Americans. The excuse most producers and directors give for their stereotypical casting is that a woman like Jo would not be identified as a Latina by mainstream audiences. Unfortunately, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Along with being a unique character with an intense ideological passion, I wanted Jo to challenge Latino typecasting.

The quotes at the beginning of each chapter are very poignant. What purpose did you want these to serve?

Ramos: I wanted the Latino insurrection in America Libre to have an ideological foundation that was fictional yet believable. So I created Jose Antonio Marcha, a character whose quotations appear at the beginning of several chapters. A one-time cabinet member with the CIA-deposed government of Chile’s Salvador Allende, Jose Antonio Marcha is the patron saint of the novel’s Latino separatists. Marcha’s writings, created in exile in the United States, embrace the idea of a Hispanic pan-ethnic identity with a common agenda: the reclamation of U.S. territory once part of Mexico and Spain. In an irony missed by many reviewers, Marcha’s territorial agenda is in many ways similar to the Manifest Destiny movement that drove U.S. expansion across North America. It’s not unusual for readers to ask me if Jose Antonio Marcha is real. I take that as a tribute to the research that went into the character.

What were the main challenges you faced while writing America Libre?

Ramos: From its inception, America Libre has been a genre-bending book. Most people say it reads like a thriller but the subject matter is about Latinos and is politically controversial. So the main challenge I’ve experienced has been for people to get their heads around a novel written by a Latino that doesn’t read like “Latino fiction.”

You focus on racial dynamics between Hispanic and White Americans, but don't elaborate on other minority groups. How would the book's dystopia affect African Americans and other racial minorities?

Ramos: This is an excellent question. Like all good questions, however, it has no simple answer. As a Latino, I felt somewhat qualified to speak out about issues affecting all Hispanics. While some may argue that’s presumptuous on my part, it would be even more so if I speculated about racial dynamics regarding the African-American community and other minorities in the novel. So I knew tackling that subject fairly would require a considerable amount of space in the novel. During the editing process, I cut nearly 20,000 words from the America Libre manuscript. I wanted the novel to be a taut narrative that kept the reader focused on the principal characters and the plot. In eliminating thematic tangents, limiting the story to the Latino community was one of the choices I made. Interestingly, I’ve received numerous positive comments from African Americans who have read the novel.

What do Americans need to know about the immigration experience?

Ramos: I think most mainstream Americans know they’re descendants of immigrants. But they often fail to realize the motivations driving today’s immigration are no different than those of their own ancestors. The family from Oaxaca who crosses the U.S. border in search of a better life is no different than the English settlers from four centuries ago who braved an ocean and a strange new land for the same reasons. In truth, both came uninvited. But neither came to conquer. They came to prosper and coexist. I hope America Libre puts a human face on immigrants and helps all Americans see themselves in today’s new arrivals.

What are your thoughts on a film adaptation of this novel?

Ramos: I’ve been very encouraged by the many readers and reviewers who have said America Libre would be a compelling film. I didn’t set out to create a cinematic novel but the sharply-drawn characters and strong plot certainly leave that impression. We’ve already had an offer from one indie producer but my agent advised against it. A second production company is now considering the novel. We’ll have to wait and see how that pans out. My main concern with a film adaptation of America Libre is to make sure the characters do not become stereotypes. I’m hopeful we’ll find a producer with the courage to tell this provocative story – and tell it without the usual Hollywood typecasting of Latinos.

America Libre can be purchased locally at Book People on Lamar. Visit the author at RaulRamos.com.

By all accounts, Chesa Boudin’s family life provided a great deal of experience. Well, technically, it was his family’s experience, but nonetheless, his life was shaped because of it.

His parents, Katherine Boudin and David Gilbert are involved parents, as involved as parents can be as inmates in the New York State prison system. As members of the 1970s radical group The Weathermen, they’ve been there since Chesa was 14 months old, having been incarcerated for for roles played in the 1981 Brink’s robbery in Rockland County.

Chesa went on to have a stable, middle-class life being raised by two other Weathermen leaders, Bill Ayers and Bernandine Dorhn in Chicago’s Hyde Park area. So needless to say, he had a different point of view when it came to life.

But they weren’t fully his experiences, not his lesson’s learned, but he’s telling them now in his book, “Gringo, A Coming of Age in Latin America.”

After graduating high school in 1999, Boudin’s first experience with Latin America was a short visit to Guatemala to study Spanish. This would be the start of an eight year journey that would take him throughout Latin America.

You could say that the life experience he took with him to Latin America was his ability to be comfortable moving through different worlds.

As he puts it, “Brought up with the privileges and opportunities the United States offers some, and a political line that condemned the very existence of an elite, I lived a contradiction.”

It’s a contradiction he knew how to articulate very well within the confines of English among familiar American landscapes, but on that first visit to Guatemala, the language barrier was too great to  explain to his San Andres host family.

“Their tight faces suggested fear, confusion, concern, maybe even fear,” Boudin explains. “I wanted them to see me as a friend, to articulate a self-portrait of a good gringo, an ally, but I wasn’t so sure who I was myself.”

This is a lot for a 19-year-old to explain, and under ‘normal’ circumstances, his family life is something Boudin says he’s never shied away from telling.

Now,  he’s a 28-year-old Rhodes Scholar with degrees from Oxford and Yale Universities his book tells his story and some history of Latin America as well. But it’s ultimately his experiences, and told in a surer voice than what his 19-year-old self would have said.

Gringo, Coming of Age in Latin America comes out in April and is published by Simon and Schuster.

It’s an experience a growing number of men and women enlisted today share. The deployment to Iraq. 

But not all share the experience Edgar Hernandez had. Hernandez enlisted into the U.S. Army in 2003 and one month later found himself held captive for 21 days at one of Saddam Hussein’s  secret prisons. 

His personal account is told in vivid detail in the book, Edgar Hernandez: POW-An American Hero, written by journalists Jose Martinez and Megan Rellahand. 

Hernandez is a 21-year-old Army Specialist when his convoy was ambush. During the attack, Hernandez was shot and hit by grenade shrapnel in the face. 

“I panicked when saw blood coming down my face,” Hernandez recalled. “I was bleeding all over. I thought I was never going to make it back home.” 

Hernandez and the other soldiers, including Jessica Lynch were taken by Hussein’s Special Guard and paraded as war trophies in front of an angry mob. 

The McAllen, Texas native said that while he when he was captured, he got a closer look at the enemy. 

“I remember there were a lot of Iraqi soldiers looking at us through the windows,” Hernandez said. “I saw one guy’s face and noted he was my age. I remember thinking, ‘that’s my enemy. I’m fighting people that are my age. I’m supposed to kill them and they are supposed to kill us. What a waste of life.”

Hernandez survived the attack and came home a national hero. After a whirlwind period of award ceremonies, parades and press conferences, Hernandez was honorably discharged but not quite ready to stop serving his country. 

So in July of 2003, he re-enlisted in the Army for four more years. This time around he chose to become a dental assistant stationed at the Sam Houston base in San Antonio. During those four years, Hernandez attended college and won multiple soldiering awards.

Today, Hernandez has transitioned from his decorated military career to serving the Pharr, Texas police department. 

Settling into this new chapter of his life, Hernandez can’t help but look back on his life as a POW. 

“What happend to me wasn’t like the movies because it is real,” Hernandez says. “You lose friends, and engage in real firefights. I know war is not a good thing but I feel patriotic and part of the team that protects America. Joining our military is big commitment so I feel everyone who serves is a hero.” 

POW: Edgar Hernandez--American Hero is distributed by Atlas Books/Ingram and published by Ocean Breeze Books 

It could be said that we spend most of our lives running away from the memories of our awkward teen years only to wake up one day and realize we’ve completely forgotten how it is to live life as a teen. 

Throw in life in a poor neighborhood in San Diego, divorced parents and a multi-racial background and you’ve got Danny’s life, the main character of Mexican WhiteBoy, author Matt de la Pena’s second novel.

Danny has trouble fitting in at his private school, a non-Spanish speaking light brown boy among white faces. He lives with his White mom who wants him to move to San Francisco with her and the White man she’s dating. He has trouble fitting in with his culture, convinced that his whiteness drove his father back to Mexico. 

Danny’s also got a secret talent. Despite his tall and skinny stature, he throw a 95 mile an hour fastball, but gets so nervous on the baseball mound, he can’t convince his school mates of his talent. 

As summer approaches, he plans on spending the vacation in Mexico with his father in hopes facing a couple of these issues. 

The book is aimed for young readers, and the language is not squeaky clean kid friendly. But it’s real, and probably more true to how teens really speak. 

Of course, not everyone can relate to a gangly teen boy straddling two cultures, but young readers may find, despite his differences, he’s just a teen the same as they are. And that lesson of tolerance and understanding is something they can remember long after they’ve forgotten their teen years.    

Mexican WhiteBoy is published by Random House.