Mother Tongue

score! 50c op shop find today.

Lyrical & poetic, it's like silk and barb wire caressing your heart. Brings to life the heartache of refugees from El Salvador and the war there in the 80's. Based partly on the authors experiences helping the underground railroad of refugees out of El Salvador, it's an easy and quick read. Contains poetry from various Latin Americans and is written via the voices of several characters and three generations and at it's heart is love and justice. Most of the details of the politics and atrocities cited are true although woven around the fictional characters. If you know nothing of the horrors committed in the Salvadoran civil war....the film "Salvador" (1986) directed by Oliver Stone & starring James Wood, show more is a good place to start. (if you get the DVD version with extras the 62 minute documentary "Into the Valley of Death" is also insightful. While the Salvadoran war fades into history the impact of that still resonates today with the people it has touched. With so many countries tightening their borders these days (including Australia against the influx of "boat people") one has to reflect back on situations like El Salvador and be mindful that we don't cast all refugees into an enemy role. show less

An exquisite little novel, full of human longing, about a young Hispanic woman who falls in love with a refugee from the war in El Salvador in the 1980s.

Mary/Maria is a young single woman, living in Albuquerque, working at dull jobs, and feeling her life is without meaning. Then she agrees to help and hide a young man escaping from the U.S.-supported violence in El Salvador. She immediately falls in love with the stranger and gradually finds her love returned. Looking back from the perspective of twenty years, she is the primary narrator of their summer together and her life since.

Read more on my blog: me, you and books
http://mdbrady.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/mother-tongue-by-demetria-martinez/

If only more people could understand what the U.S. has done to El Salvador, maybe then they'd show more caring and understanding to the people from El Salvador.

FROM AMAZON: In 1988, poet, journalist, and activist Demetria Martinez was indicted on charges of conspiracy for helping Salvadorans escape their country. After she was acquitted, she began writing Mother Tongue. The result is the powerful story of a young woman's efforts to help a people who were routinely "disappeared" by their government.

A nameless El Salvadoran man, fleeing torture and imprisonment, arrives in the United States - his only hope for asylum. The American woman who has volunteered to help him is searching for something to add meaning to her life. When these two lonely people meet, their haunting relationship fulfills their hearts' desires, but it also gives life to their darkest dreams.