1	Books Great summer reads from Dirty Girls to the business wisdom of billionaire Jorge Pérez. read more...
2	Film & TV How a Garcia girl made a movie; Nestor Carbonell runs Gotham in The Dark Knight. read more...
3	Music The Pinker Tones redefine Latintronica; Jorge Villamizar gets personal; and Esperanza Spalding makes her debut. read more...
4	Ask Julie Understanding the Gold Standard. read more...
5	Calendar Outstanding events around the country. read more...

Latin Forum

BOOKS

Dirty Girls Comeback

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez dishes on her book that started a literary frenzy, The Dirty Girls Social Club, as well as on the return of its six leading ladies in Dirty Girls on Top, and what’s next.

When The Dirty Girls Social Club was released in 2003, it took the literary world by storm—and critics by surprise. The story of six twenty-something, smart, ambitious, accomplished Latina friends from Boston, a group of women with backgrounds, ideals and aspirations as different as can be, fast became a huge success, landing on The New York Times bestsellers list.
The title is a play off of the word sucias, or dirty girls in Spanish, a title that the women jokingly give each other.
The six characters: Lauren, a half-Cuban, self-effacing newspaper columnist with questionable taste in men; Sara, a wealthy Cuban Jew from Miami with an abusive husband; Elizabeth, a beautiful black news anchor from Colombia with a secret; Amber, a struggling musician with a love of indigenous and Mexica culture; Usnavys, a pretentious Puerto Rican bombshell despite her heft; and Rebecca, a control-freak of a magazine editor who built her empire from the ground up. They are varied in everything from style to speech to personality, yet these college friends have set aside two dates each year to reunite and catch up on each other’s lives.
The story immediately resonated with readers, both Latino and non-Latino, in a way that defied genre. Those quick to label Dirty Girls as an ethnic book missed the mark; those happy to call it chick lit weren’t seeing the nuance. The only solution, it seemed, was to develop a new genre, and the media dubbed it chica lit, a story style that appealed women, especially Hispanic women, and also served to brand the author, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez.
“Newspapers say it did well because it is an ethnic book. I am silly enough to hope the book did well because I write well,” Valdes-Rodriguez says. “It is flattering, but also demeaning to say that my book did well because I was Latina. I write books and try not to pay too much attention to how they are classified.”
It appears that book buyers didn’t pay much attention to the classifications either. The book sold hundreds of thousands of copies in its first run, was translated into Spanish, and found success as a paperback. Women’s magazines hailed it as a perfect summer read with some substance.
“I wanted to reach people who were not reached by books, to get people who were not reading to read. I tried to make it very diverse for that reason,” Valdes-Rodriguez says. “I wanted it to be clear and make people laugh and to entertain. I wanted to represent the spectrum of identities. I wanted to make it a book for everyone to read. [The characters] all had a universal issue of trouble finding the right guy, of family violence, and of wanting the wrong guy for the right reason.”
As her first novel, The Dirty Girls Social Club launched Valdes-Rodriguez into the forefront of the literary scene, where some dubbed her the book world’s “it” girl for her honesty and her storytelling chops. After its success, Valdes-Rodriguez found the characters would not leave her.
“After Dirty Girls Social Club, I wrote [a novel about a jazz artist] and then I wrote a sequel for Dirty Girls,” she says. “The girls were still alive and my editor said we should wait. She said I should try to get another book out of the way, so I shelved it and did some other books, but the characters kept speaking to me. I went back and revisited [the sequel] and I changed it a lot. I want to do another one now.” She hopes to give Lauren’s character her own book.
Dirty Girls on Top, the sequel, revisits the friends five years later, after they have moved on and found love, divorce, career success and, to some extent, a greater sense of comfort in their own skin. The characters are transformed into a stronger version of themselves as women in their early 30s.
And like the first book, this one, too, is written from the perspectives of all the women, with each chapter devoted to one of them. The shift from writing as one character to the next in a short span posed a challenge for the writer, who counts greats such as Joyce Carol Oates among her literary influences. But her love of writing and her talent, cultivated with education and training, were inherent.
“I think I inherited it,” Valdes-Rodriguez says of her writing ability. “Both my parents are writers, and I saw them doing it at home, in addition to reading. My dad is from Cuba and is a good oral storyteller, and there, there is this whole culture of big fish stories.”
While her father is the tall tale-teller of the family, Valdes-Rodriguez began her career as a journalist, having graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism and then working for The Boston Globe, where she, like Lauren, had a column, and for the Los Angeles Times. The switch to fiction came as a result of her growing dissatisfaction with the news world.
In her novels, she says, she is open to writing a different kind of truth, one not regulated by the newsroom code. However, she is quick to note that most the time she spent in journalism was positive; it taught her to write quickly, accurately and clearly. Plus, it gave her fodder for the Dirty Girls.
“In the novel, there is a moment where the editor asks [Lauren if she] knows where to buy Mexican jumping beans,” she says, adding that actually happened to her. “[Co-workers] would stop and compliment my English and ask for the Latino community perspective.”
Even though Valdes-Rodriguez has been away from the newsroom for a decade, she still observes it with the critical eye of a journalist. And more than ever, she says, news stories rely on the same stereotypes she tried to obliterate with her book.
“I think more now than in he past [the media] traffic in stereotypes,” she says. “There isn’t an openness to complexity or history. ... I have seen that. In terms of Hispanics you see the press using immigrant, illegal immigrant and Hispanic all as synonymous.”
There is one nontraditional news outlet that Valdes-Rodriguez does frequent and sees it as the destination for the thoughtful and news-hungry: blogs. In addition to reading several, she has her own. The newsroom got her in the habit of writing daily, and blogging alleviates some of that need.
“I need an outlet. It’s almost a compulsion, I can’t just stop writing,” she says. “I have to write. Now I am branching out into other areas. I am working on a non-fiction work of essays, a script and a TV series.”
A deal in television would not be her first. A few years back Valdes-Rodriguez was working with Lifetime Television for a televised version of the Dirty Girls, but the two sides didn’t have the same creative vision. In fact during one creative meeting, producers asked her to consider having one of the women involved with a prison inmate. So, this time she has teamed up with super producers Nely Galan and Debra Chase Martin for a show on The N, a network for teens and ‘tweens from the Nickelodeon family.
The show is based on her book Haters, her teen novel about a 16-year-old whose world is turned sideways when she and her father move from Taos to Orange County.
“TV writing is the hardest I have ever done. You have to be so precise and calculating. In TV you are really leading people to make conclusions,” she says. Though tough, she is happy with the support and cultural understanding she receives from The N.
It’s the kind of support she hadn’t seen from other networks, and in a few cases, from publishers. Valdes-Rodriguez had tried to sell other books she had written, one about a female jazz saxophonist (she’s an accomplished one herself), another based on a friend of hers, and yet another about an elderly man. But when she went to discuss the possibility of publishing them she was told they weren’t Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez books. Publishers, she says, now see her name as a brand.
To escape this, she is considering using a pseudonym in the future.
“I would want it to be a Spanish name, like Duran, that people would not think is a Spanish name, or Lira,” she says. “I don’t want to make my loyal readers think I am abandoning them. I am a mix of all different people. I would like to express a lot of different sides of me.”

Book Notes

Need to fill your long summer days? These books might just do the trick. From lessons in business and life to a haunting historical study, these titles have you covered.

Powerhouse Principles: The Billionaire Blueprint for Real Estate Success
By Jorge Pérez
Penguin, $23.95

In today’s real estate climate, investing in property might seem intimidating to most. Not to Jorge Pérez, the intense and intrepid developer who’s been called the Trump of the Tropics and King of Condominiums.
Pérez began his billion-dollar real estate empire in a market that mirrors today’s, and by determination and savvy managed to make $1 million in his first year. He has since expanded from his first low-cost housing development in 1979 to an multi-national enterprise that includes million-dollar luxury condos, along the way building more than 60,000 units in Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Mexico.
Pérez, the chief executive of the closely held Related Group and one of the most successful Hispanic businessman in America, has made money in every real estate environment, and he believes you can, too. If you’ve ever wished you had a billionaire uncle who would put his arm around your shoulder and reveal his roadmap to success, this book is the next best thing.
Pérez shares how he grew from the young lad who arrived in Miami as a Cuban immigrant with $2 in his pocket to become a billionaire. He outlines his key business philosophies along with personal anecdotes, insider strategies, case studies of his deals and more. Throughout his book he reassures readers they can do this too, as if he were an average guy who just happened to hit on a winning formula. But Pérez is not an average guy. How many people do you know who would yell at a bank president—yes, a bank president—for chitchatting with an underling during a property inspection?
Pérez’s focus, sharpness and passion can be matched by few. But reading about them is still useful for entrepreneurs in any field that requires decision-making and risk-taking.

The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro’s
Schoolmates from Revolution to Exile
By Patrick Symmes
Vintage Departures, $15.95

Through a portrait of a group of Cuban schoolboys in the 1940s, Symmes pieces a picture of young men, heirs to the island’s highest society, who were schooled at the Colegio de Dolores to fulfill their destiny as leaders. That is until one of their own, Fidel Castro, obliterated their reality and sent many into exile. Author Symmes, who also wrote Chasing Che, delves into the boys’ lives for a glimpse of pre-Castro Cuba, and even of pre-Castro-era Castro with a journey through his formative years, schooling with Jesuit priests and evolution in politics. Light is also shed on the rearing of Fidel’s brother Raul, of which little has been known before.

The Gift of Time:
Letters from a Father
By Jorge Ramos
William Morrow, $14.95

Journalist and author Jorge Ramos looks inward for this intimate snapshot of his life as a parent. Each chapter begins with a letter, all to his children, yet written with different lessons in mind. In two, written for his parents’ grandchildren, he offers the lessons of his own parents to his offpring, delighting the reader in the wisdom of Ramos’ family and lending insight into the people who created the newscaster. In others, the letters offer a father’s hope that his children have faith, that they know they are loved and how to go on after they lose their father. Sentimental and touching, the book is at once a memoir, how-to and biography, perfect for children and parents alike.

Top Shelf

Consider stocking your bookcase with some of these new titles sure to inspire, inform or entertain.

Políticas
Latina Public Officials in Texas
By Sonia R. Garcia, Valerie Martinez-Ebers, Irasema
Coronado, Sharon A. Navarro and Patricia A. Jaramillo
University of Texas Press, $19.95
Hispanic women have come a long way, and quickly, since they began to hold public office in the U.S. in the 1950s. Today, they comprise just over 27 percent of all Hispanic officeholders, and most of them preside in Texas. This book pays homage to the fearless firsts who blazed a trail in Texas.

Tarnished Beauty
By Cecilia Samartin
Atria Books, $23.95
In search of a cure for a hideous birthmark, a beautiful Mexican woman illegally crosses the border into L.A. Once there she finds work in a mental hospital where an angry elderly man reveals his amazing story to her, and together they form an unexpected bond.

Practically Posh: The Smart Girl’s Guide to a Glam Life
By Robyn Moreno
Collins, $23.95
Author and journalist Moreno explains step-by-step how to make a girl of modest means into a thrifty glamazon. A frequent contributor to top women’s magazines, Moreno adopts their signature fun and flirty approach in this how-to tome.

Island of Eternal Love
By Daína Chaviano
Riverhead Books, $25.95
Translated from the original Spanish, this much-loved book by the is a multi-generational family epic spanning more than a century. Cecilia is a lonely journalist in Miami and one of her few friends is a mysterious older woman who weaves a story of three families whose lives intersect in Cuba.

No Way Home: A Dancer’s Journey from the Streets of Havana to the Stages of the World
By Carlos Acosta
Scribner Books, $27.50
Born in the slums of the Cuban capitol, Acosta’s life is transformed when his father enrolls him in ballet. With a natural talent, Acosta begins an international career. On the road he faces loneliness and stereotype, and struggles to maintain the bonds of family and country.

For A Sack
of Bones
By Lluís-Anton Baulenas
Harcourt, $25
A member of the feared Foreign Legion, Sergeant Genis Aleu returns from the front in the Spanish Civil War to honor a promise made to his dying father.

Married to Me
How Committing to Myself Led to Triumph After Divorce
By Dayanara Torres
Celebra, $26.50
The former Miss Universe and ex-Mrs. Marc Anthony reveals how she rebuilt her life (for the better) after the very public divorce from the famous salsa singer.

Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love and Spain
By Lori L. Tharps
Atria Books, $22
Tharps lays bare her complicated relationship with Spain in this memoir or shattered illusions. In fact, a much more complex Spanish life lies in store for her.

The Smell of Old Lady Perfume
By Claudia Guadalupe Martinez
Cinco Puntos Press, $15.95
Chela Gonzalez is at the crossroads of several worlds: Mexico and the U.S., tradition and assimilation, and childhood and adolescence.