What do you think?
Rate this book
Class H #1
America Libre
After years of anti-immigrant backlash, anger seethes in the nation's Latino communities. The crowded streets bristle with restless youth, idled by a deep recession. When undercover detectives in San Antonio accidentally kill a young Latina bystander during a botched drug bust, riots erupt across the Southwest. As the inner-city violence escalates, Anglo vigilantes strike back with shooting rampages. Exploiting the turmoil, a congressional demagogue succeeds in passing legislation that transforms the nation's Hispanic enclaves into walled-off Quarantine Zones. Citizens tagged Class H-those who are Hispanic, are married to a Hispanic, or have at least one grandparent of Hispanic origin-are forced into detention centers. Amid the chaos in his L.A. barrio, Manolo Suarez is out of work and struggling to support his growing family. But under the spell of a beautiful Latina radical, the former U.S. Army Ranger and decorated war veteran now finds himself questioning his loyalty to his wife-and to his country.
384 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 9, 2009
7 people are currently reading
88 people want to read
About the author
Raul Ramos y Sanchez
6 books35 followers“January” is the first English word I ever learned. I read it on the calendar thumbtacked to the wall of our apartment in the Bronx. Han-noo-a-ree, I pronounced it. That was in the winter of 1957. My mother had just divorced my father and moved us from Havana to New York City. My father was busy trying to overthrow Batista and my mother thought her prospects for raising a seven-year-old son looked much better sewing sequins on evening gowns in the midtown garment district than in a Cuban prison. Thanks, mamá. You made the right call.
Since mastering that first English word, the power and joy of words have become my life. I not only love words, I’ve made a living from them. First, composing them into pages as a graphic designer, and later arranging them into sentences as an advertising writer. After twenty-four years of creating the fiction commonly known as advertising, I decided to start telling my own stories.
THE SKINNY YEARS is my fourth novel. Called “gritty and witty” by Foreword Reviews, it’s a coming-of-age story set in Miami during the stormy 1960s. The novel follows the quirky travails of young Victor “Skinny” Delgado and his Cuban-exile family over their first ten years in the United States. Some readers have asked if the novel is autobiographical. The short answer is “no.” But my childhood memories of growing up in Miami are the inspiration for the story. In reality, my first experiences in the U.S. began in New York City.
Since mastering that first English word, the power and joy of words have become my life. I not only love words, I’ve made a living from them. First, composing them into pages as a graphic designer, and later arranging them into sentences as an advertising writer. After twenty-four years of creating the fiction commonly known as advertising, I decided to start telling my own stories.
THE SKINNY YEARS is my fourth novel. Called “gritty and witty” by Foreword Reviews, it’s a coming-of-age story set in Miami during the stormy 1960s. The novel follows the quirky travails of young Victor “Skinny” Delgado and his Cuban-exile family over their first ten years in the United States. Some readers have asked if the novel is autobiographical. The short answer is “no.” But my childhood memories of growing up in Miami are the inspiration for the story. In reality, my first experiences in the U.S. began in New York City.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 1, 2011
Some Mexicans and Mexican-Americans," writes John Tiffany, "want to see California, New Mexico and other parts of the United States given to Mexico. They call it the 'reconquista,' Spanish for 'reconquest,' and they view the millions of Mexican illegal aliens entering this country as their army of invaders to achieve that takeover." Tiffany points out that, as we've heard in recent news reports, armed Mexican soldiers (in league with or impersonated by drug traffickers, we are told by Mexico's smirking, lying government, which publishes cartoon tracts explaining to Mexican serfs how to sneak across the border into the U.S.A.) have fired on American Border Patrol officers. Illegal immigrants have terrorized American ranchers in border states and the porous Mexican border is an ideal point of entry for Islamist terrorists impersonating Hispanic illegals.
The organization US Border Control reports that, according to something called the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, DC, fully 30 percent of the nation's two million prison inmates are illegal immigrants. Heather MacDonald, in her 2004 report in the City Journal, wastes no time framing the problem. "Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens," she writes. She goes on to report that 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (1,200 to 1,500 murders) "target" illegal aliens. Up to two thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens. What's worse, according to MacDonold, is that the Calfiornia Department of Justice has known since 1995 that at least 60 percent of the vicious 18th Street Gang in southern California comprises illegal aliens.
Illegal aliens in the United States are repeatedly, incessantly characterized as innocent, hard-working people who just want to find a better life for themselves and their families. The imagery of these invaders as hapless would-be citizens fleeing poverty, willing to "do work that Americans simply will not do," is so pervasive that it constitutes a de facto propaganda campaign. Just as "bums" and "winos" have become "the homeless" (who are repeatedly mischaracterized as misunderstood and disadvantaged people who are simply "down on their luck," rather than as the unpredictable, frequently diseased, often drug-addicted or mentally unstable societal predators that they too often are), illegal aliens have become "undocumented immigrants" in an attempt to equate them with the huddled masses yearning to breathe free who walked wide-eyed through the gates at Ellis Island. The fact that these latter-day "immigrants" crawled past barbed wire fences, raped a few ranchers' wives along the way, and now accept under-the-table wages while dodging the beleaguered police forces seeking them on murder charges, is dismissed as irrelevant; it does not, after all, fit in with the imagery our popular media strive so hard to create.
When I first picked up a copy of America Libre, I thought that's what I was seeing. I thought the book was an attempt to create a sympathetic view of illegal aliens, equating them to Hispanic American citizens and decrying the injustices of, well, actually enforcing immigration laws. When I started reading the book, however, I was shocked by its content.
Do you remember the days following the Oklahoma City bombing? In countless news pieces, we were told that bomber Timothy McVeigh -- since rushed to his execution with his cooperation -- was inspired to commit the act by the book The Turner Diaries. This is a novel written by a white supremacist who fantasizes about a future in which his white-power protagonists will finally hang their other-racial enemies, while striking explosive blows against an oppressive government secretly run by a Jewish conspiracy. The author has written (crudely, in a style that borders on illiterate) another book called "Hunter," about a fellow whose hobbies include shooting interracial couples for fun.
Disturbing as these badly conceived novels were, they paled in comparison to another book, Serpent's Walk, that I acquired from the same mail-order catalog that carried the other two. At the time I was curious to know how a book could drive a man to commit mass murder. The local bookstores would not deal with the publisher in question, so I went the mail order route, not realizing that what I was buying was neo-Nazi filth. When I finally pushed myself to read Serpent's Walk, having more than had my fill of bizarre racial conspiracy theories, I was horrified in a new way: The book was well written.
Featuring a complex narrative and a dynamic protagonist who shows convincing character development over the book's plot arc, Serpent's Walk was clearly written by someone with genuine literary talent. That such a person could be taken in by theories of white supremacist hatred was at least as worrisome as the possibility that such a person might simply be using these malevolent ideas and ideals as a way of gaining power, cynically and manipulatively, over racist true believers.
I did this research in the months following the Oklahoma City bombing. In the intervening years I forgot most of it, gratefully. When you immerse yourself in racist hate literature, it creates a sensation akin to dipping your head in a bucket of garbage. It is cloying, smothering, fetid, and unpleasant; you can't wait to remove yourself from it. All of this came flooding back to me when I happened across a copy of America Libre by "Raul Ramos y Sanchez." Is Ramos a true believer, or the sort of person who hopes to manipulate racist sentiment for personal gain? Does it matter?
On his website, the author claims he wrote the book "as a wake up call to the dangers of extremism--on both sides of this explosive issue. Illegal immigration is a hotly debated topic. Yet it is only the tip of the iceberg." The first portion of this statement is a blatant lie. America Libre is nothing less than a Chicano nationalist Turner Diaries, a racist, hate-filled screed that gins up anti-Anglo resentment by painting a fantasy landscape in which all Americans with Hispanic surnames or Hispanic spouses are rounded up and put in camps. Ramos' heroes fight back by preparing for and then executing the first stages of a Hispanic revolution, ultimately hoping to create a UN-recognized "Hispanic Republic of North America."
The book is more or less competently written, though the author makes many amateurish mistakes as he rushes through his exposition with too much omniscient narration. One rule of good writing is to show the reader rather than tell the reader. Ramos ignores this rule from the outset, as he has a lot of work to do. Specifically, his book is concerned primarily with depicting, transparently, all non-Hispancis as racist, ignorant, incompetent fools driven only by hatred and given only to brutality. There are no complex characters; there are only Hispanics to varying degrees of purity (ranging from a traitorous gang member to Mano, the novel's protagonist) and Anglos exhibiting varying degrees of racism. To the extent that military veteran and bodybuilder Mano at first loves America, then becomes only too eager to commit cold-blooded murder in seeking revenge for the injustices perpetrated against Hispanics, his character could be considered dynamic. He is, however, only a convenient waterboy carrying the author's racist hate.
The Anglos against whom Mano pits himself with only token reluctance are, almost to a man, racist monsters who spit words like "Beaner," "Greaser," and "Pancho" with every breath. When they're not attempting to rape Hispanic women or killing Mano's children with their incompetence (one of the protagonist's children is run down by a military vehicle by accident, while another dies of lack of medical care in one of the resettlement camps into which Hispancis are herded), they're nervously firing into crowds of understandably angry protesters because these weekend warriors are all ill-trained glory hounds suffering delusions of action-hero greatness.
Two things disturb me about America Libre. The first is that this book won an International Latino Book Award when it is clearly no more than a mediocre work from a writing standpoint. (It was also one of USA Today's picks for "Summer Reads" and was similarly lauded in Latina magazine.) The second is that Ramos' depiction of evil, Hispanic-hating Anglos, only too eager to deny Social Security benefits to illegal aliens (when they're not cruelly deporting them outright), is obviously what he truly thinks of non-Hispanics. "America Libre" exists for only one reason: to foment hatred and revolutionary sentiment among a Hispanic population that has already become volatile in the Southwest United States.
The most damning evidence of this fact is that the author bends over backwards, metaphorically, to excuse the actions of one of his primary characters -- a wealthy instigator named "Jo" who pays a gang member to fire on police officers in order to stir up trouble in the Hispanic ghetto. Believing this will help encourage the inevitable Hispanic revolution (which Jo in turns believes is necessary to correct the many injustices wrought by the evil Anglos and "rednecks" -- oh, does Ramos love to throw around the word "redneck"), she is supposedly shocked when her paid criminals go "too far" and kill the police officers on whom they fire. This is supposed to be one of Jo's "greatest regrets," and she is clearly absolved for this crime in the minds of Ramos' surviving protagonists. By the novel's end, Mano is fully committed to the revolution and to "justicia." He no longer considers himself an American at all, and neither does his long-suffering wife. He vows to continue fighting for these goals. Yet were it not for Jo's calculated rabble-rousing, two of Mano's three children would still be alive.
Or would they? Obviously, in Ramos' mind, the confining of Hispanics in concentration camps is inevitable in an Anglo-dominated, racist America. The crimes and violence perpetrated by illegal aliens and by violent Hispanic gangs like MS-13 are, well, understandable, because, gosh, America is full of redneck racists who won't give Hispanics a fair shake. Why, imagine the injustice, the institutionalized racism, of refusing to let illegal aliens -- excuse me, undocumented immigrants -- live off the earnings of American citizens who pay their taxes! No wonder those poor people started murdering politicians they didn't like. After all, in Ramos' vision of the future, the Supreme Court is packed with "hardline conservatives," so obviously you can't expect to vote such tyrants out of office. Better to revolt and start shooting people -- at least in Ramos' mind.
There is an obvious parallel to be made between America Libre and right-wing liberty fiction like Unintended Consequences and Enemies Foreign and Domestic. These latter two books, to use just one pair from among many examples, are also fantasies -- fiction in which oppressed people overthrow (or at least resist) their oppressors. The fundamental difference between America Libre and these right-wing books is, however, that libertarian fiction is rooted in a yearning for a free people to return to the ideals our Founding Fathers set forth in the Constitution of the United States. In this they are an expression of Enlightenment ideals of liberty and equality. America Libre is, by contrast, a racist daydream rooted not in a desire for justice, but in a bloodthirsty yearning for revenge. In Ramos' book, it is not so important that Hispanic people fight for freedom; what is important to Ramos is that those redneck Anglos get what's coming to them. This is a fundamental difference in tenor, tone, and intent.
Our children are growing up in a nation on whose streets they may not be able to communicate as adults unless they learn Spanish. Given this tide and the implicatinos of the illegal alien invasion threatening to swamp social services, education, and law enforcement alike, to pen a monstrous diatribe like America Libre is not merely offensive. It is tantamount to a declaration of war, comparable to soliciting violence and murder for the sake of a never-attainable "justice" that can be wrought only when Hispanics have hanged their imagined enemies from the nation's lampposts. That is the terrifying message of America Libre. This is not a "wake-up call" about widespread extremism; this is a La Raza fantasy of the "reconquista."
A third thing that worries me about this little red book, this Maoist declaration of Chicano nationalist hatred for and resentment toward non-Hispanics, is that nobody is talking about it. Before my own review at Amazon, there was not a single critical reading of the novel. Certainly nobody thought to question the racist tone or seditious implications of a book that encourages violent uprising against non-Hispanics. In this, America Libre certainly is a "wake-up" call about one man's extremism.
That man calls himself Raul Ramos y Sanchez, and he should be ashamed of himself.
The organization US Border Control reports that, according to something called the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, DC, fully 30 percent of the nation's two million prison inmates are illegal immigrants. Heather MacDonald, in her 2004 report in the City Journal, wastes no time framing the problem. "Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens," she writes. She goes on to report that 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (1,200 to 1,500 murders) "target" illegal aliens. Up to two thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens. What's worse, according to MacDonold, is that the Calfiornia Department of Justice has known since 1995 that at least 60 percent of the vicious 18th Street Gang in southern California comprises illegal aliens.
Illegal aliens in the United States are repeatedly, incessantly characterized as innocent, hard-working people who just want to find a better life for themselves and their families. The imagery of these invaders as hapless would-be citizens fleeing poverty, willing to "do work that Americans simply will not do," is so pervasive that it constitutes a de facto propaganda campaign. Just as "bums" and "winos" have become "the homeless" (who are repeatedly mischaracterized as misunderstood and disadvantaged people who are simply "down on their luck," rather than as the unpredictable, frequently diseased, often drug-addicted or mentally unstable societal predators that they too often are), illegal aliens have become "undocumented immigrants" in an attempt to equate them with the huddled masses yearning to breathe free who walked wide-eyed through the gates at Ellis Island. The fact that these latter-day "immigrants" crawled past barbed wire fences, raped a few ranchers' wives along the way, and now accept under-the-table wages while dodging the beleaguered police forces seeking them on murder charges, is dismissed as irrelevant; it does not, after all, fit in with the imagery our popular media strive so hard to create.
When I first picked up a copy of America Libre, I thought that's what I was seeing. I thought the book was an attempt to create a sympathetic view of illegal aliens, equating them to Hispanic American citizens and decrying the injustices of, well, actually enforcing immigration laws. When I started reading the book, however, I was shocked by its content.
Do you remember the days following the Oklahoma City bombing? In countless news pieces, we were told that bomber Timothy McVeigh -- since rushed to his execution with his cooperation -- was inspired to commit the act by the book The Turner Diaries. This is a novel written by a white supremacist who fantasizes about a future in which his white-power protagonists will finally hang their other-racial enemies, while striking explosive blows against an oppressive government secretly run by a Jewish conspiracy. The author has written (crudely, in a style that borders on illiterate) another book called "Hunter," about a fellow whose hobbies include shooting interracial couples for fun.
Disturbing as these badly conceived novels were, they paled in comparison to another book, Serpent's Walk, that I acquired from the same mail-order catalog that carried the other two. At the time I was curious to know how a book could drive a man to commit mass murder. The local bookstores would not deal with the publisher in question, so I went the mail order route, not realizing that what I was buying was neo-Nazi filth. When I finally pushed myself to read Serpent's Walk, having more than had my fill of bizarre racial conspiracy theories, I was horrified in a new way: The book was well written.
Featuring a complex narrative and a dynamic protagonist who shows convincing character development over the book's plot arc, Serpent's Walk was clearly written by someone with genuine literary talent. That such a person could be taken in by theories of white supremacist hatred was at least as worrisome as the possibility that such a person might simply be using these malevolent ideas and ideals as a way of gaining power, cynically and manipulatively, over racist true believers.
I did this research in the months following the Oklahoma City bombing. In the intervening years I forgot most of it, gratefully. When you immerse yourself in racist hate literature, it creates a sensation akin to dipping your head in a bucket of garbage. It is cloying, smothering, fetid, and unpleasant; you can't wait to remove yourself from it. All of this came flooding back to me when I happened across a copy of America Libre by "Raul Ramos y Sanchez." Is Ramos a true believer, or the sort of person who hopes to manipulate racist sentiment for personal gain? Does it matter?
On his website, the author claims he wrote the book "as a wake up call to the dangers of extremism--on both sides of this explosive issue. Illegal immigration is a hotly debated topic. Yet it is only the tip of the iceberg." The first portion of this statement is a blatant lie. America Libre is nothing less than a Chicano nationalist Turner Diaries, a racist, hate-filled screed that gins up anti-Anglo resentment by painting a fantasy landscape in which all Americans with Hispanic surnames or Hispanic spouses are rounded up and put in camps. Ramos' heroes fight back by preparing for and then executing the first stages of a Hispanic revolution, ultimately hoping to create a UN-recognized "Hispanic Republic of North America."
The book is more or less competently written, though the author makes many amateurish mistakes as he rushes through his exposition with too much omniscient narration. One rule of good writing is to show the reader rather than tell the reader. Ramos ignores this rule from the outset, as he has a lot of work to do. Specifically, his book is concerned primarily with depicting, transparently, all non-Hispancis as racist, ignorant, incompetent fools driven only by hatred and given only to brutality. There are no complex characters; there are only Hispanics to varying degrees of purity (ranging from a traitorous gang member to Mano, the novel's protagonist) and Anglos exhibiting varying degrees of racism. To the extent that military veteran and bodybuilder Mano at first loves America, then becomes only too eager to commit cold-blooded murder in seeking revenge for the injustices perpetrated against Hispanics, his character could be considered dynamic. He is, however, only a convenient waterboy carrying the author's racist hate.
The Anglos against whom Mano pits himself with only token reluctance are, almost to a man, racist monsters who spit words like "Beaner," "Greaser," and "Pancho" with every breath. When they're not attempting to rape Hispanic women or killing Mano's children with their incompetence (one of the protagonist's children is run down by a military vehicle by accident, while another dies of lack of medical care in one of the resettlement camps into which Hispancis are herded), they're nervously firing into crowds of understandably angry protesters because these weekend warriors are all ill-trained glory hounds suffering delusions of action-hero greatness.
Two things disturb me about America Libre. The first is that this book won an International Latino Book Award when it is clearly no more than a mediocre work from a writing standpoint. (It was also one of USA Today's picks for "Summer Reads" and was similarly lauded in Latina magazine.) The second is that Ramos' depiction of evil, Hispanic-hating Anglos, only too eager to deny Social Security benefits to illegal aliens (when they're not cruelly deporting them outright), is obviously what he truly thinks of non-Hispanics. "America Libre" exists for only one reason: to foment hatred and revolutionary sentiment among a Hispanic population that has already become volatile in the Southwest United States.
The most damning evidence of this fact is that the author bends over backwards, metaphorically, to excuse the actions of one of his primary characters -- a wealthy instigator named "Jo" who pays a gang member to fire on police officers in order to stir up trouble in the Hispanic ghetto. Believing this will help encourage the inevitable Hispanic revolution (which Jo in turns believes is necessary to correct the many injustices wrought by the evil Anglos and "rednecks" -- oh, does Ramos love to throw around the word "redneck"), she is supposedly shocked when her paid criminals go "too far" and kill the police officers on whom they fire. This is supposed to be one of Jo's "greatest regrets," and she is clearly absolved for this crime in the minds of Ramos' surviving protagonists. By the novel's end, Mano is fully committed to the revolution and to "justicia." He no longer considers himself an American at all, and neither does his long-suffering wife. He vows to continue fighting for these goals. Yet were it not for Jo's calculated rabble-rousing, two of Mano's three children would still be alive.
Or would they? Obviously, in Ramos' mind, the confining of Hispanics in concentration camps is inevitable in an Anglo-dominated, racist America. The crimes and violence perpetrated by illegal aliens and by violent Hispanic gangs like MS-13 are, well, understandable, because, gosh, America is full of redneck racists who won't give Hispanics a fair shake. Why, imagine the injustice, the institutionalized racism, of refusing to let illegal aliens -- excuse me, undocumented immigrants -- live off the earnings of American citizens who pay their taxes! No wonder those poor people started murdering politicians they didn't like. After all, in Ramos' vision of the future, the Supreme Court is packed with "hardline conservatives," so obviously you can't expect to vote such tyrants out of office. Better to revolt and start shooting people -- at least in Ramos' mind.
There is an obvious parallel to be made between America Libre and right-wing liberty fiction like Unintended Consequences and Enemies Foreign and Domestic. These latter two books, to use just one pair from among many examples, are also fantasies -- fiction in which oppressed people overthrow (or at least resist) their oppressors. The fundamental difference between America Libre and these right-wing books is, however, that libertarian fiction is rooted in a yearning for a free people to return to the ideals our Founding Fathers set forth in the Constitution of the United States. In this they are an expression of Enlightenment ideals of liberty and equality. America Libre is, by contrast, a racist daydream rooted not in a desire for justice, but in a bloodthirsty yearning for revenge. In Ramos' book, it is not so important that Hispanic people fight for freedom; what is important to Ramos is that those redneck Anglos get what's coming to them. This is a fundamental difference in tenor, tone, and intent.
Our children are growing up in a nation on whose streets they may not be able to communicate as adults unless they learn Spanish. Given this tide and the implicatinos of the illegal alien invasion threatening to swamp social services, education, and law enforcement alike, to pen a monstrous diatribe like America Libre is not merely offensive. It is tantamount to a declaration of war, comparable to soliciting violence and murder for the sake of a never-attainable "justice" that can be wrought only when Hispanics have hanged their imagined enemies from the nation's lampposts. That is the terrifying message of America Libre. This is not a "wake-up call" about widespread extremism; this is a La Raza fantasy of the "reconquista."
A third thing that worries me about this little red book, this Maoist declaration of Chicano nationalist hatred for and resentment toward non-Hispanics, is that nobody is talking about it. Before my own review at Amazon, there was not a single critical reading of the novel. Certainly nobody thought to question the racist tone or seditious implications of a book that encourages violent uprising against non-Hispanics. In this, America Libre certainly is a "wake-up" call about one man's extremism.
That man calls himself Raul Ramos y Sanchez, and he should be ashamed of himself.
April 18, 2017
So, I'm not sure who recommended this but it has been on my to-read list for a while. It is a decent page turning futuristic suggestion of what could happen given racial tensions in the US and the growing Hispanic population. Unfortunately, even though it was published in 2007, it reads like it was written in 1998. No one has smartphones, they all have vu-phones (similar, but no internet access, much more like the video phones that we all expected to come soon in the 80s) and the riots are reminiscent of the Rodney King stuff (as an aside Gattis' All Involved does a MUCH better job of covering the 1992 riots).
Sanchez does a good job creating a believable backstory and given the current Trump bullshit (let's build a WALL), it is not much of a stretch to internment camps. I especially liked the Catch-22esque note that the planners for the Relocation Communities provided seeds and equipment for gardening to produce their own food, but the local security confiscated all the tools for fear they would be weaponized. I didn't like that Jo, Ramon and Mano are pretty much the leaders of EVERYTHING, even at the UN.
Sanchez does a good job creating a believable backstory and given the current Trump bullshit (let's build a WALL), it is not much of a stretch to internment camps. I especially liked the Catch-22esque note that the planners for the Relocation Communities provided seeds and equipment for gardening to produce their own food, but the local security confiscated all the tools for fear they would be weaponized. I didn't like that Jo, Ramon and Mano are pretty much the leaders of EVERYTHING, even at the UN.
April 30, 2010
Frankly, when I first picked up America Libre I didn’t know what to expect. I suspected it might be very militant and inflammatory in its perspective; a call for violent revolution. But actually, quite the opposite is true. America Libre is a passionate cry for tolerance, understanding and moderation. Raul Ramos y Sanchez’s saga is a plea for justice and sanity…and perhaps most of all, a sobering cautionary tale. It urges us all to remember the genuine principles upon which our great nation was founded.
The book is also one helluva read. The characterization is rich and complex, and the story takes the reader on a pulse-quickening and frightening journey into an American heart of darkness that becomes disturbingly more plausible with each passing day. The lead character, Manolo Suarez, is a man who has served his country honorably only to find a world gone mad in which there are virtually no options left for him and his family. The gut-wrenching choices he is forced to make serve as the crux of the novel.
America Libre is a landmark, thought-provoking work. The novel raises a red flag. And it reminds us that if we do not remain vigilant, that flag could someday turn out to be red, white and blue. I urge you to read it. And think about it.
The book is also one helluva read. The characterization is rich and complex, and the story takes the reader on a pulse-quickening and frightening journey into an American heart of darkness that becomes disturbingly more plausible with each passing day. The lead character, Manolo Suarez, is a man who has served his country honorably only to find a world gone mad in which there are virtually no options left for him and his family. The gut-wrenching choices he is forced to make serve as the crux of the novel.
America Libre is a landmark, thought-provoking work. The novel raises a red flag. And it reminds us that if we do not remain vigilant, that flag could someday turn out to be red, white and blue. I urge you to read it. And think about it.
May 3, 2011
Reviews, reviews, reviews...oh, how I loathe you. But ironically, love to read them that are written by others. So, where do I start with this book? I never really know what makes me get through a mediocre book and then get to the end not really feeling much of anything. I guess, like most of our lives, that's what mediocrity is, right? Not feeling much of anything. That wasn't nice to say, but this book left me feeling just that. Nothing really.
It was a decent enough story to bring me to the end and the premise of the story was interesting enough for me, too. But the characters were a little one-dimensional, like most real people I know. And why do I want to read about people who are like the other mediocre people in my life? Exactly.
I don't.
Anyhow, living in this country, I really get tired of the rhetoric, especially from the Republican side—not to say that the Democrats don't do it—that is crammed down our throats in order to push agendas through that really don't serve the mediocre—I mean, the common man any real healthy purpose in the grand scheme of things. There is WAY too much bigotry rhetoric for my taste in the year 2011. For Christ's sakes, how long have we been roaming this planet and we still act like we were born yesterday.
What does this little rant have to do with this book? Well this books brings to the surface of what oppression, bigotry and ignorance could bring to a society. Hence, the civil war, the race riots of the 1960's, the current situation in the middle east, and so on and so on. Reading this book, I thought, I can see something like this happening here very soon. Not exactly how this book was played out, but definitely similar. Sometimes, I wish we would wake up and demand change that is better for us. Stop accepting the scraps that are given to us. I also wish we would get off our asses, turn off the tv(especially Fox news) and also take a little responsibility too. Read a book(not talking about anybody in the goodreads community, btw) every once in a while. But something needs to be bigger than our apathy for us to do so. And the Tea Party, as much as I admire them TRYING to wake up and demand change(I think they're more pissed we have a black man as a president and his name isn't George or Bob than anything else), I think we need something much more vibrant, energetic, intelligent and more...what's the word I should use here? Hmmm, classy, maybe.
Regardless, this book was a little too preachy for me and a little flat in the end. Again, decent premise and engaging enough for me to finish it. But never did it make my heart pulse faster nor did I have an overwhelming desire to get back to it. Yes, I finished it in a few days, but that's just because I had many other books begging me to read them next.
So...on to the next one.
It was a decent enough story to bring me to the end and the premise of the story was interesting enough for me, too. But the characters were a little one-dimensional, like most real people I know. And why do I want to read about people who are like the other mediocre people in my life? Exactly.
I don't.
Anyhow, living in this country, I really get tired of the rhetoric, especially from the Republican side—not to say that the Democrats don't do it—that is crammed down our throats in order to push agendas through that really don't serve the mediocre—I mean, the common man any real healthy purpose in the grand scheme of things. There is WAY too much bigotry rhetoric for my taste in the year 2011. For Christ's sakes, how long have we been roaming this planet and we still act like we were born yesterday.
What does this little rant have to do with this book? Well this books brings to the surface of what oppression, bigotry and ignorance could bring to a society. Hence, the civil war, the race riots of the 1960's, the current situation in the middle east, and so on and so on. Reading this book, I thought, I can see something like this happening here very soon. Not exactly how this book was played out, but definitely similar. Sometimes, I wish we would wake up and demand change that is better for us. Stop accepting the scraps that are given to us. I also wish we would get off our asses, turn off the tv(especially Fox news) and also take a little responsibility too. Read a book(not talking about anybody in the goodreads community, btw) every once in a while. But something needs to be bigger than our apathy for us to do so. And the Tea Party, as much as I admire them TRYING to wake up and demand change(I think they're more pissed we have a black man as a president and his name isn't George or Bob than anything else), I think we need something much more vibrant, energetic, intelligent and more...what's the word I should use here? Hmmm, classy, maybe.
Regardless, this book was a little too preachy for me and a little flat in the end. Again, decent premise and engaging enough for me to finish it. But never did it make my heart pulse faster nor did I have an overwhelming desire to get back to it. Yes, I finished it in a few days, but that's just because I had many other books begging me to read them next.
So...on to the next one.
August 4, 2010
"America Libre" by Raul Ramos Y Sanchez is a page turner. From the moment I picked it up, I didn't want to do anything but finish it. This is the story about Hispanics in America. Like all people the Hispanics yearn for the right to live ordinary lives like other citizens. To be treated differently erases all their human dignity.
If people lose their self respect because of the insanity of other people, there has to come a breaking point. In the novel this is the time when the more able Hispanics choose to fight rather than to continue to lead such horrific lives. Mano and Rosa are one such couple. They have three children: Julio, Pedro and their little girl. Sadly, Mano can't find work during hard economic times. This unfortunate incident leads to the unraveling of the family's lives.
I was totally unable to remove myself from caring about this one family's turmoil. Their catastrophes seemed to reach out like the tentacles of an octapus touching the whole Hispanic community until danger had reached every corner of the barrios of California.
Each chapter is listed as days and months. Each chapter begins with a quotation about repression, revolution, etc. It is as if Raul Ramos Y Sanchez thought of the need for centering while reading the pages of his book. After all inside the book the whole world is wildly out of control. The author forced me to look at the world through the eyes of a Hispanic.Somehow, this intimacy or empathy is not gained by just looking at nightly news or a two hour documentary. Reading the book forced me to sit down and linger over the words of the United States government and the words of the Hispanic. I could hear in my ears and read over and over again the stereotypes faced by this community.
Yes, the age old term "stereotypes" plays a role in this book. I questioned myself. How much of what I believe is truly true rather than what I expect to see or hear because of gleanings from the media or friends? The book made me search my heart. After finishing the book, I can make a statement. I see more clearly now.
Thank goodness Raul Ramos Y Sanchez won The International Latino Book Award for Best Novel. He and the words from his pen will help America truly live by and believe in the words on The Statue of Liberty.
March 10, 2010
I don't usually write reviews, I read them. However, I don't necessarily believe that America Libre was such a good read, or even a tolerable one for that matter. The book was not very well written, as the characters were very one-dimensional and predictable. The protagonist who is a handsome war hero who has noble intentions made without a single flaw making him someone difficult to relate too. He is too good and the antagonists too evil, having no room for gray areas. The "revolution" is founded on the belief that Latinos everywhere are treated unjustly and that the "man" is happy in keeping them down due to their unwavering racism. I find this a little too hard to believe. While it is true ghat there is mistreatment of people on general, not just Latinos, in the United States, the series of events that occur from the beginning of the book to the end are just too unbelievable. While I do appreciate a level of suspended belief when reading a good novel, I expect the author to at least meet me halfway by providing a plausible cause and effect in a story of his own imagining. This book comes off as too preachy and far too pushy in it's attempt to paint white Americans as ignorant bigots and Latinos as the quiet underclass who can stand no more. This novel comes off as a book infused with too much politics and not enough story, or rather the equivilent of a hispanic version of the ultra-conservative The Last Centurion by John Ringo, another novel that believed it's message was far more important than it's characters. Writing as a Mexican-American who learned Spanish before speaking English, I wouldn't really recommend this book
December 7, 2010
This is Raul Ramos y Sanchez' debut novel and it is packed with suspense!
As the immigration crisis reaches the boiling point, once-peaceful Latino protests explode into rioting. Cities across the nation are in flames. Anglo vigilantes bent on revenge launch drive-by shootings in the barrios, wantonly killing young and old. Exploiting the turmoil, a congressional demagogue succeeds in passing legislation that transforms the nation’s teeming inner-city barrios into walled-off Quarantine Zones. In this chaotic landscape, Manolo Suarez is struggling to provide for his family. Under the spell of a beautiful Latina radical, the former U.S. Army Ranger eventually finds himself questioning his loyalty to his wife—and his country.
Mr Sanchez' blockbuster won first place in the new Books Into Movies Awards, which seek to identify Hispanic-themed films that could become motion pictures.
"The Books Into Movies Awards were sponsored by Latino Literacy Now, an organization founded by renowed Latino author Edward James Olmos. The award ceremony took place on October 9, 2010 at the Los Angeles campus of California State University.
“I really liked this book and definitely think it should be a movie with many interesting characters and conflicts,” said Olmos. “It is very thought provoking and in many ways educational. The author’s devotion to his readers and his work exceeds any I’ve seen.”
Put this one on your “must read” list!
I am also reading Mr. Sanchez' soon to be released novel, "House Divided." I will keep you posted.
As the immigration crisis reaches the boiling point, once-peaceful Latino protests explode into rioting. Cities across the nation are in flames. Anglo vigilantes bent on revenge launch drive-by shootings in the barrios, wantonly killing young and old. Exploiting the turmoil, a congressional demagogue succeeds in passing legislation that transforms the nation’s teeming inner-city barrios into walled-off Quarantine Zones. In this chaotic landscape, Manolo Suarez is struggling to provide for his family. Under the spell of a beautiful Latina radical, the former U.S. Army Ranger eventually finds himself questioning his loyalty to his wife—and his country.
Mr Sanchez' blockbuster won first place in the new Books Into Movies Awards, which seek to identify Hispanic-themed films that could become motion pictures.
"The Books Into Movies Awards were sponsored by Latino Literacy Now, an organization founded by renowed Latino author Edward James Olmos. The award ceremony took place on October 9, 2010 at the Los Angeles campus of California State University.
“I really liked this book and definitely think it should be a movie with many interesting characters and conflicts,” said Olmos. “It is very thought provoking and in many ways educational. The author’s devotion to his readers and his work exceeds any I’ve seen.”
Put this one on your “must read” list!
I am also reading Mr. Sanchez' soon to be released novel, "House Divided." I will keep you posted.
November 6, 2011
Scarily realistic scenarios of a life in the next decade for people of Hispanic descent. I really liked the warfare descriptions, the reminder that not all Hispanic people are the same generic stereotype. I am dismayed a bit by the representations of women in this book. They are all two dimensional, and I am not a fan of that. I did like the ideas this book brought forward, but I think that if it had focused on the political and military side instead of the two-dimensional people throughout, it would have been a stronger novel. That said, I couldn't stop turning pages because I had to know how it ended.
December 30, 2009
Sad thing is..., I believe this is a possible outcome of the current immigration issue and the inability of US leaders to discuss it effectively and positively, as well as the society's fear for the unfamiliar and hesitation to explore the unknown.
December 9, 2012
Very suspenseful. Makes you wonder if something like this could really happen.
December 1, 2010
I really liked this book once I got past some of his cheesy physical descriptions of people. It was an interesting view on the future and oddly plausible. His foreboding is intense.
February 22, 2016
A page turner you will not be able to put it down I highly recommend this series.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews