Oscar Hijuelos

Chronicles the sojourn of journalist-explorer Henry Stanley; his wife, the painter Dorothy Tennant; and Mark Twain, Stanley's longtime friend, as they head for Cuba in search of Stanley's father.

In the 1960s, Rico Fuentes, a pale-skinned Cuban American teenager, abandons drug-infested New York City for the picket fence and apple pie world of Wisconsin, only to discover that he still feels like an outsider and that violent and judgmental people can be found even in the wholesome Midwest.

The first Latino novelist to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Oscar Hijuelos (1951?2013) wrote rich and radiant novels that brought the Cuban American immigrant experience into the heart of American literature. "I marveled," recalls Juan Felipe Herrera, at "how meticulous he was and how deep he got into the lives of Latino and Cuban Americans in the United States." Hijuelos launched his career with Our House in the Last World (1983), a masterful recreation...

With a suitcase full of songs and hearts filled with passion, two brothers come to America in search of the American dream of fame and fortune.

In his first work of nonfiction, the author writes about the people and places that inspired his previous novels. Born in Manhattan's Morningside Heights to Cuban immigrants in 1951, he introduces readers to the colorful circumstances of his upbringing. The son of a Cuban hotel worker and exuberant poetry writing mother, his story, played out against the backdrop of an often prejudiced working class neighborhood, takes on an even richer dimension...

"Hector Santinio is the youngest son of Alejo and Mercedes, who moved to New York from Cuba in the mid-1940s. The family of four shares their modest apartment with extended relatives in Harlem, where homesickness and nostalgia are dispelled by nights of dancing and raucous parties. But life's realities are nevertheless harsh in the Santinio family's adoptive land. When Mercedes takes Hector and his brother to visit Cuba, to better know her culture,...