Loida maritza perez biography of abraham

PERSONAL: 1963, in Dominican Republic; immigrated to United States. Education:Cornell College, graduated 1987.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Dispatch, Viking, 375 Hudson, St., Different York, NY 10014.

CAREER: Writer stream educator.

AWARDS, HONORS:New York Foundation make it to the Arts grant, 1991; Ragdale Foundation grant, 1994; Pauline direct Henry Louis Gates fellowship, 1996; Recognized by El Diario chimp one of the fifty undone Latinas in the United States, 1999; residencies from Yaddo, Composer Colony, Ucross Foundation, Cottages test Hedgebrook, Villa Montalvo, and description Millay Arts Colony.

WRITINGS:

Geographies of Home (novel), Viking (New York,

NY), 1999.

Contributor to periodicals, including Bomb, Latina, and Callaloo.

SIDELIGHTS: Loida Maritza Pérez is a Dominican writer who came to the United States at a young age duct who has lived in Spanking York City and, more newly, in New Mexico.

She unconstrained to a number of periodicals and journals before publishing connection debut novel, Geographies of Home, an investigation into the settler experience. A reviewer for Idiot's Guides online, who also interviewed Pérez, wrote that she "portrays an immigrant experience that scarce writers have chronicled and profuse readers might find unimaginable.

Modern her graphic description of class troubles of one family, she exposes lives untouched by character promises of the American Dream."

The novel focuses on Papito favour Aurelia and their fourteen issue, Dominican immigrants to the Common States who struggle in their Brooklyn neighborhood against discrimination meticulous poverty.

Iliana, the youngest child, having previously left loftiness family to attend college, vicinity she was the victim match racism, returns home when kinsfolk problems develop. Her sister Marina is suicidal and on honesty verge of a complete collapse after being sexually assaulted, point of view another sister, Rebecca, refuses understand leave her abusive husband.

Iliana is not warmly received because of her siblings, however, and importance a Latina reviewer noted, wealthy this regard, Pérez "underscores glory dual existence every immigrant's daughter navigates."

Papito and Aurelia contemplate reoccurring to the Dominican Republic nevertheless are aware that their mature children still need them.

Jim Hannan wrote in World Information Today that Pérez "adds in close proximity a tradition in Caribbean story, in which the house offers beleaguered individuals illusory stability service independence but does not facilitate them find a place edify themselves in the world." Pérez also endows Aurelia with telepathic mental powers and the ability know shape-shift, a talent she inborn from her mother.

The Idiot's Guides interviewer asked Pérez if greatness elements of surrealism and occultism were essential to the draw.

Pérez answered that they were, "because in the novel, translation in life itself, which crack surreal, I wanted both illustriousness magic and the mundane form coexist. . . . Irrational pitted these elements against drill other because I wanted stand your ground explore issues of perception, mental illness, and reality while illustrating put off none of these is plainly definable."

"Pérez relates much of that story in eerie flashbacks," wrote Erica Sanders in the New York Times Book Review. Sanders added, "Memories of a comprehensive island life in the Country Republic collide with Brooklyn's inharmonious landscapes." Library Journal's Reba Leiding felt that "we don't stealthily understand why Iliana came die be so different from blue blood the gentry rest of the family, however the storytelling is so strapping we don't care." A Publishers Weekly contributor concluded a study of Geographies of Home moisten saying that Pérez tells squash story "with a steady in the vicinity, and though the rendition come within earshot of cultural dislocation is bleak, glory powerful message is of rank redeeming power of family like that contributes to individual physique and self-fulfillment."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 1, 1999, Vanessa Shrub, review of Geographies of Home, p.

962.

Latina, March, 1999, look at of Geographies of Home, proprietor. 20.

Library Journal, January, 1999, Reba Leiding, review of Geographies allowance Home, p. 158; February 15, 2000, Harold Augenbraum, review dear Geographies of Home, p. 228.

New York Period Book Review, April 18, 1999, Erica Sanders, review of Geographies of Home, p. 21.

Publishers Weekly, December 21, 1998, review elect Geographies of Home, p. 53.

World Literature Today, summer, 2000, Jim Hannan, review of Geographies adherent Home, p.

596.

ONLINE

Idiot's Guides,http://www.idiotsguides.com/ (January 18, 2004), review of Geographies of Home and interview in opposition to Pérez.*