LA PLAZA: CONVERSATIONS WITH ILAN STAVANS VI


601 America Ferrera
Honduran American actress America Ferrera caught the attention of critics and fans alike with her portrayal of Ana, the curvaceous young Mexican American girl in “Real Women Have Curves.” Ferrera’s work in the independent film earned her the Special Jury Prize for Best Actress at the Sundance Film Festival. Her other films include “Lords of Dogtown” and “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.” In her other life Ferrera is a college student at the University of Southern California where the former high school valedictorian is on an academic scholarship majoring in International Relations and Theater. She speaks with Ilan Stavans about the pressures and demands of a show business life.

602 Julia Alvarez
Like many Dominicans in the United States, author Julia Alvarez’ life is a transnational experience. Although she was born in New York City, Alvarez spent her first four years in the Dominican Republic, and although she lives in bucolic Vermont, much of her work is connected in some way to the Caribbean island. Her most popular work is “In the Time of the Butterflies,” the story of the legendary Mirabal sisters, who fought and died for democracy under the brutal Trujillo dictatorship. No one in the Dominican Republic was untouched by Trujillo’s reign on terror. Alvarez’ own family was forced to flee the island after her father’s political work put them in grave danger. Alvarez and Stavans discuss the evolution of her work and her position as one of a handful of successful Latino authors.

603 Luis Alberto Urrea
Mexican born author Luis Alberto Urrea is the son of a Mexican father and a U.S. mother. Since he was a child, when his parents registered him as a U.S. Citizen Born Abroad, he has had one foot in the U.S., and the other in Mexico. His work as an author reflects that duality. His most successful book, “The Devil’s Highway: A True Story” tells the tragic story of a group of Mexican migrants who risked walking across the Arizona desert for a chance to enter the U.S.—14 of them died. Stavans and Urea talk about the painful process of researching and writing the “The Devil’s Highway: A True Story.”

604 Melinda López
Actress and playwright Melinda López’ work explores the complex relationship between the Cuban American diaspora and the island they left behind. Her latest work, “Sonia Flew” centers around a young girl put on a plane bound for U.S. soon after Castro rises to power. The play premiered to outstanding reviews and audience support at Boston’s Virginia Wimberly Theater. It is a production of the Huntington Theater Company. López is a recipient of the Elliot Norton Award for her plays “God Smells Like a Roast Pig,” and “Midnight Sandwich.”

605 Lila Downs
Mexican singing sensation Lila Downs burst on to the music scene with her stunning performance of a song from the film “Frida” at the 75th annual Academy Awards. But this native of the Mexican state of Oaxaca has made music all of her life. Downs, the daughter of a Mixtec-Amerindian mother and a U.S. filmmaker/academic father, started singing Mariachi music at the age of 8, and began a formal music education at the age of 14. She recently released her fourth album, “Una Sangre” to many accolades and Billboard magazine describes her as “one of the most spellbinding voices to grace the world music scene.” She won “Best Folk Album” at the 2005 Latin Grammy Awards.

606 Camilo José Vergara
Acclaimed photographer Camilo José Vergara has devoted much of his professional career to the documentation of the American city. He has exhibited his stark, elegant photographs throughout the world and his work is included in the collections of the New York Public Library, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City, and the Getty Center in Los Angeles. A writer as well a photographer, Vergara has produced numerous books including “The New American Ghetto,” “American Ruins, Silent Cities: The Evolution of the American Cemetery,” and “Subway Memories.” His work on the documentation of the urban poor neighborhoods led Kenneth T. Jackson to label Vergara “the Jacob Reis of our time.”

607 Alberto Voulvoulias-Bush
In 2005, veteran journalist and scholar Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush was appointed the Executive Editor of the nation’s oldest Spanish-language daily newspaper El Diario La Prensa. El Diario is the number one newspaper in New York with a daily readership of 243,000 and a circulation of more than 50,000. Before joining El Diario, Vourvoulias-Bush was the Deputy Editor of Time Magazine’s Latin America Edition. Prior to his work at Time he spent four years at the Council on Foreign Relations and worked as a lecturer at New York University and an instructor at Yale University. Bush speaks with Ilan Stavans about the growing importance of Spanish language media in the U.S.

608 Héctor Tobar
Hector Tobar is the author of “Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-speaking United States.” The book grew out of Tobar’s work as the Latino national affairs correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, a job that allowed him the opportunity to roam the “Latin Republic of the United States.” Tobar is a veteran journalist, who shares the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for the LA Times coverage of the Los Angeles riots. He is currently the Mexico City bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. Tobar speaks with Ilan Stavans about language, identity and ethnicity among U.S. Latinos

609 Julián Zugazagoitia
Julián Zugazagoitia is the new director of El Museo del Barrio, New York’s leading Latino cultural institution. Zugazagoitia is a no stranger to the world of art exhibition. He served as the curator of numerous exhibitions internationally, was a member of the Director’s Office at the Guggenheim Museum, and served as the director of special projects at the Getty Conservation Institute. A native of Mexico City, Zugazagoitia holds a doctorate from the Sorbonne and is a graduate of L’Ecole du Louvre. Zugazagoitia talks with Ilan Stavans about role of cultural institutions in the Latino community.

610 María Hinojosa
María Hinojosa, senior correspondent for the PBS series NOW, anchor and managing editor of NPR's Latino USA, and former CNN Correspondent,is one of the country's best known Latina journalists. An accomplished writer, Hinojosa is the author of Crews-Gang Members Talk with María Hinojosa, based on her award-winning NPR report. Her latest book, Raising Raúl, is a memoir about raising a Latino child in a multicultural society. Hinojosa is the recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy award for "Manhood Behind Bars," a story for NPR which documented how jail has become a right of passage for men of all races.

611 Gregory Rabassa
Hailed by critics and authors alike as the most important translator of 20th century Latin American literature, Gregory Rabassa translated more than three dozen books from Spanish and Portuguese into English— including works by Nobel laureates Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Octavio Paz, and Miguel Angel Asturias. Garcia Márquez, the author of "100 Years of Solitude," calls Rabassa "The best Latin American writer in the English language." Gregory Rabassa is a man dedicated to his craft. His memoir, "If This Be Treason: Translation and its Dyscontents", is an insightful exploration of the fine art of literary translation.

612 Rolando Hinojosa-Smith
Award-winning writer Rolando Hinojosa-Smith is a son the Texas Rio Grande Valley, on the border with Mexico. His father was Mexican American and his mother was white and he is equally comfortable in English and Spanish. Hinojosa-Smith is best known for the "Klail City Death Trip" series, a collection of short novels set in the fictional Rio Grande Valley town of Klail City, Texas. Although considered the dean of Chicano literature, the New York Times calls him “a writer for all readers."

613 Pedro Noguera
The son of a schoolteacher and a New York City policeman, Pedro Noguera is now one of the country’s foremost authorities on education. His message, that schools in America’s inner city—where most of the students are children of color—are in desperate need of fixing has earned him praise and scorn. Noguera is a professor in the Steinhardt School of Education at NYU.