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Welcome back to the Readers Roundtable
edition of CADL Cast.

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I'm Jessica Trotter and today I am joined
the mic by Cheryl Lindemann.

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Hey, Cheryl. Hello.

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And so it's September.

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Yeah.

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There's lots of things going on.

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We have lots of things going on.

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Very busy. Month.

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Lots of stuff to read. Yes.

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And very little time.

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Mm hmm.

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But, um, it's Hispanic Heritage Month.

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Um, so we have a bunch of titles
along with that for a little bit.

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Yeah.

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But otherwise, everything going okay?

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Yes, just lots of reading.

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We have a lot of end of year lists
that we're reading toward

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and we're realizing there are only
a few months left to try to make those.

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I don't know how it got to this point.
I know.

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It just seemed to have gone very fast.

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Yeah.

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And it was just, again, so much to read,
so much to choose from and just so hard to

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so hard to pick.

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So we're in that really intense
reading cycle of the of our jobs, I think.

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I think so, yeah.
Yeah. The pressure that we agree.

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So my

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first title today is one
that I was really looking forward to.

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I'm a big lover of magical realism
and fiction.

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I'm not as much a fiction reader. I'm
the nonfiction selector.

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But this is a work of nonfiction
that reads like magical realism fiction,

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because the story is so magical

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and it is a true story of a woman's life.

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It's called The Man Who Could Move Clouds
by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

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And she's the author of the fiction novel
The Fruit of the Duncan Drunken Tree

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Set in Colombia.

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And she and her family left
Colombia in the 1990s

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amidst extreme
violence, threat of kidnaping.

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It was time to go.

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They went to Venezuela
and then went to California.

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But what this story is, is the story of

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Ingrid

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Rose Rojas, Contreras family
and in particular, her grandpa.

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No, no. And he was a quote on death row.

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And he worked in their community
to eliminate spirits.

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He could move the clouds, he could heal.

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He was a healer.

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And at the

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after he died,
people kept going to his grave.

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People kept asking for intercession still.

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And in this book, what they do
is they go back to to his bones

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and make this family journey.

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And it's filled with family history
and that sort of thing.

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And then to scatter his ashes
so that he can be free of this burden

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of being a coyote and arrow,
which actually was a burden even in death.

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But in this story,

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he's a healer.

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His daughter,
who's Ingrid's mother as a healer.

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And Ingrid has a bike accident
and has amnesia.

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And after amnesia, they come to her
and they say,

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this is how your mother got the power.

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She got the powers of being killed.

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And Dara, now you have them, too.

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So it's really the author wrestling
with this with this history

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that's gone through her grandfather,
through her mother, to her.

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But it also has her going back
and looking into her Colombian heritage,

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the heritage of colonialism

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and looking at just her all these

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these incredible,
really, truly incredible family stories.

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And there's one part in particular
where she's trying to search her genealogy

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and she's looking at some papers
in the library,

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and they literally disintegrate.

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And she starts to just cry.

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And they have this moment with her.

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She and her mother

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and her mother says she is
I can't even you know, you hit that point

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with colonialism and your history
where you can't get those family stories.

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And that was particularly poignant and
heartbreaking in the stories to find that.

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And her family, of course, it's a history

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of indigenous people in the past,
but also the Spanish.

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And so the people that had more
the family that sort of took the side,

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more of the Spanish were very mistrustful
of the current small powers.

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Mm hmm.

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And so there's that sort of push
and pull in the family, too.

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So just a really amazing story.

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The man who could move clouds.

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That's really interesting.

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Okay, so that one's been on my list.

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It's still on my list, but my list is

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huge.

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So long.

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But jumping off from that,

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I'm going to go with my first title
is The Duct.

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Excuse me, the daughter.

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I started to say the doctor of doctor,
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau

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by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

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This caught my eye for a few reasons.

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One, it's Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and I
loved her about gods who played in shadow.

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And then everyone loved her breakthrough

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horror title, Mexican Gothic.

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But it's also inspired by the classic
The Island of Dr.

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Moreau by H.G. Wells.

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But this is sort of a refashioning
of the tale

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from the point of view of the doctor's
daughter, Carlotta, and his majordomo.

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Montgomery,
who is an English English Scottish dude,

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sort of end up ends up working on the,

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uh, in the household.

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It takes that sort of mad scientist story,
which Dr.

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Moreau was a vivisection as to trying to

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blend man and animal.

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But then it explores
the plight of the other.

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I mean, because his creations

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are thinking, breathing
things that have a point of view and

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are existing

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in this community,
but also the colonialism at that time.

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It's she, um,

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instead of an island in the Caribbean, uh,

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Miranda Garcia sets it in the Yucatan
Peninsula, which in its own way,

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because of the landscape,
is sometimes depicted as an island.

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And it's also against the backdrop
of the caste war

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that started in 1847 and lasted
for a good five decades in Mexico.

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And so you've got,

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uh, Mayan resistance,

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uh, mixed blood people, Spanish

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and English all involved.

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And, um,

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throughout this you've got Moreau,
who has a, um, who has a patron

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who's really just wants the hybrids
to further their colonialism

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and they need somebody
to work their plantations.

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Now, you can't get
you can't get Africans to do it anymore.

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You can't use that period of time.

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So, I mean, in the slave trade,
it's already ended so that it's just

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a further attempt to prolong that colonial

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power.

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But it's a really interesting story,
interestingly told,

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you know, it's that blend of magic

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and horror and science and

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you have very interesting voices

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both in Montgomery,
who actually was in the original.

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There's a character named Montgomery
who is in the original story.

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And then Carlotta, who is the daughter

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and has her own unique problems.

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You just go from there.

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It's just very well done.

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She's a fabulous writer.

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If you haven't read anything by her,
pick something.

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There's almost any genre.

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You can grab it from her.

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I mean, she's done kind of noir.

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She's done
horror, she's done straight fantasy.

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It's her

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Mexican Gothic is, I think, gothic horror.

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It's just all very well written.

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And she just has a very interesting point
of view and really looks at colonialism.

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And I think everything.

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Sounds really good.

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Oh, well, my next title is going out

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of my collection area into teen books.

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Actually,
I don't read that many teen books,

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but this one really caught my eye,
probably because it has a horse on.

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I can't help it.

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I was really drawn to it.

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It is a beautiful book.

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It's called Remy's Rebellion by Margarita
Angle

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and Maricela has brought Margarita
to our podcast before.

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I remember hearing some books
that she's bought and brought in the past,

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and Margaret and Margarita Angle
has written a huge number of books.

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She's won the Pure Belpre
Award, the Walter Dean Meyers Honor Award.

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She's a finalist for the Also Award
for Excellence in Nonfiction.

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She's a Cuban American woman
who tells the stories of her people

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and of her own history in Cuba,
which is what the story's about,

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is set and starts in the 1920s in Cuba.

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It's a novel in verse,
which I really love.

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It's beautifully written, lyrical, poetic,

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and it's about Rima,
who is a kind of younger girl.

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But this is set over a number of years
in the story through her teen years,

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and she lives with her mama and her abuela
in a small little, tiny little home.

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And they're lace makers.

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But she is the illegitimate child
of a very wealthy man.

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And this is before
the adultery law was abolished in Cuba.

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So she's really looked down upon.

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She does not have full rights
and her grandmother and mother

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and now herself, they're all part of
a group of women called them on business

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who fought earlier
in the revolutionary wars in Cuba.

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And they are feminists

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and they're fighting for suffrage
and for an end to the adultery law.

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And so this is a story about women's
suffrage and a very difficult time.

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It's about dictators coming through,

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promising something better
and not delivering on it.

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It's about the revolution, another
revolution in Cuba, extreme violence.

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It is definitely a teen novel.

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There's great peril in the book
for our main character,

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and it's also about the love for her horse

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Alla Josie Buck Buttermilk Buckskin.

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And that's the one time she feels
that freedom is just galloping

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on that horse's back.

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There's a lot of really wonderful
and accurate horse detail in the book,

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which I loved, and it's also a love story
in the middle of all this.

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So just a beautiful book.

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Rima’s Rebellion by Margarita Engle
also has a

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history of Cubans
women's suffrage at the back.

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So a lot of really good information
in here to.

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All right.

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I'm going to stick with Mexico
and go out of my comfort zone.

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I think I've mentioned before
I did a bit of a deep

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dove into Westerns earlier in the year
and this one is finally coming out.

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I had actually read it pre pub it's
the Valley of Shadows by Rudy Ruiz.

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This is really interesting.

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It's it's a western.

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There's no question it's a western,
but it's a blend of Western magic movie,

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magical realism, mystery
and a little bit of horror

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totally kept my intention

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surprised me in a number of places,
but it deals Harran

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with the effects
of the Mexican-American border changes

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in the 1860s and seventies,
and then just the ever present racism

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and injustice to both

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Mexican and indigenous populations,
particularly along the border.

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It follows, oh, it's in in one sense,

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it's a murder mystery

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set in a Western.

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Some graphic murders have been happening
in this border town a little.

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And a former Dallas

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Sanitario Cisneros is called back
to a town that he used to be

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the law of,
but he was basically kicked out when

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white men came

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in and took over the towns
when the border changed.

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And but he has just a unique ability

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to trek and and hunt people down.

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And part of that
is because he sees ghosts,

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so they help him along
and he does not want to get involved.

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He is totally just he is
he's had personal issues.

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He's he's lost his wife.

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He's he does
not want to get attached to people.

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He is coerced.

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He feels coerced

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people.

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He gets close to get killed.

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He doesn't want to go back to this town

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where he lost his wife.

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But he goes he
he does a preliminary look around.

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He tells them
kind of what they need to be looking for.

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And he goes home.
Unfortunately, his former

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is all I can think a sidekick.

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But basically his lieutenant, when he was

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in charge of the law in
the town, is murdered with his family.

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And so he goes back and starts
tracking down

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the killer.

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But it's it's

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much more if the Westerns were told

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and I say this in quotes
because they're not

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but it's Westerns were told
from the point of view of the other,

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not always the American colonial

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obnoxious for me, point of view
that a Western is told from

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this is he is and he is,

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uh, he's Mexican,

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he's has an indigenous background.

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His family, his friends are the,
you know, it's the indigenous

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and Mexican-American people who are,
you know, that's where he grew up.

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That's what he is.

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He does have,
you know, Spanish ancestors as well.

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And that's part of his problem
in this curse.

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But it's it's
just an interesting different

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point of view in a Western
and we just don't have that many.

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Yeah. In that genre.

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I mean it's almost against the basis
of that genre, which is unfortunate.

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There's a few more people breaking through
and actually featuring people of color

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and you know, on both
the stories set in the West,

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but it's still few and far between.

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Yeah. Wow.

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So but really, really,
this is somebody to watch his

00;13;56;26 - 00;13;57;21
he grew up on the border

00;13;57;21 - 00;14;01;03
and all his stories seem to be very much
with that in that vein.

00;14;01;24 - 00;14;04;03
Wow, you made me actually
want to read a Western.

00;14;04;03 - 00;14;06;09
That is I'm not sure about this one bit.

00;14;06;09 - 00;14;08;22
But a little too violent.

00;14;08;22 - 00;14;09;13
That's the other thing.

00;14;09;13 - 00;14;11;06
I mean, they a lot of them still are.

00;14;11;06 - 00;14;12;15
And the ones that I've read

00;14;13;29 - 00;14;14;12
and the

00;14;14;12 - 00;14;18;04
ones that actually do feature
people of color and indigenous,

00;14;18;10 - 00;14;22;11
you know, indigenous characters
make the characters Black Americans.

00;14;22;11 - 00;14;24;28
It's just
they're still very, very violent.

00;14;24;28 - 00;14;26;04
So it's one of those things

00;14;26;04 - 00;14;29;29
where yeah, it's, it's
it's still part of the genre very much so.

00;14;29;29 - 00;14;32;11
Yeah.

00;14;32;11 - 00;14;36;05
Well, my next book
actually has a very loose tie to that.

00;14;36;05 - 00;14;36;16
Okay.

00;14;36;16 - 00;14;39;25
In the sense of representation
in a genre that is.

00;14;40;02 - 00;14;41;11
Woefully I know where you're.

00;14;41;11 - 00;14;44;25
Going has very low representation
as a horse person.

00;14;44;25 - 00;14;46;28
I read every horse book
I could get my hands on.

00;14;47;09 - 00;14;52;03
And this is a genre
where there was very poor

00;14;52;03 - 00;14;56;01
representation of anybody
besides really white characters,

00;14;56;24 - 00;14;59;23
even a lot of boys
with the Black Stallion books.

00;14;59;23 - 00;15;01;15
And then finally more girl characters

00;15;01;15 - 00;15;04;00
in the eighties and nineties
and that sort of thing.

00;15;04;16 - 00;15;08;23
But this this was just an absolutely
just a perfect Jay novel.

00;15;08;23 - 00;15;10;05
I loved this book.

00;15;10;05 - 00;15;12;15
It's called Can’t Be Tamed by

00;15;14;02 - 00;15;15;22
Yamile

00;15;15;22 - 00;15;18;05
is how you pronounce her
first name, Saied Mendez.

00;15;18;23 - 00;15;22;14
And this is a part of a series called
Horse Country.

00;15;22;15 - 00;15;28;24
There will be three books in this series,
and it's the main characters, about 11.

00;15;28;29 - 00;15;34;03
So it'd be just a nice middle grade read,
but it's absolutely fantastic.

00;15;34;03 - 00;15;36;09
And the author the author has written

00;15;37;08 - 00;15;39;16
I also want to Pura Belpre Award

00;15;39;16 - 00;15;42;11
for the novel Furia

00;15;43;04 - 00;15;45;25
and she's an Argentinean American.

00;15;45;25 - 00;15;47;08
She grew up in Argentina.

00;15;47;08 - 00;15;50;27
And when she was a child,
she walked past this extremely fancy

00;15;51;23 - 00;15;54;27
quotation riding school,
and she and her sister would peer

00;15;54;27 - 00;15;58;25
through the bars and say,
Oh, we would love to ride like that.

00;15;58;25 - 00;16;00;22
And then she didn't
have an opportunity to ride

00;16;00;22 - 00;16;03;17
until her daughter took riding lessons
as an adult.

00;16;04;00 - 00;16;07;20
She lives in Utah and she
then started to take her own lessons

00;16;07;20 - 00;16;12;14
as a gift to herself because as a child,
her her one access to horses was books.

00;16;12;14 - 00;16;17;09
And again, books with no representation
with people that looked like her at all.

00;16;17;23 - 00;16;21;07
So her mission in writing these books
is to provide that representation

00;16;21;07 - 00;16;24;09
and to provide characters
that kids can fall in love with.

00;16;24;09 - 00;16;27;06
Just like she fell in love with the Black
Stallion books when she was a kid.

00;16;27;25 - 00;16;32;06
So this is the story of Karolina
Aquas Vivus, and she's

00;16;32;06 - 00;16;33;28
grown up on Paradise Ranch.

00;16;33;28 - 00;16;36;27
Her family
are the caretakers of the ranch.

00;16;36;27 - 00;16;38;28
They live in a cottage there.

00;16;38;28 - 00;16;40;19
They are very happy there.

00;16;40;19 - 00;16;42;18
They get to be intimately involved
with the horses.

00;16;42;18 - 00;16;44;16
She's been involved with them
pretty much since birth.

00;16;44;16 - 00;16;46;26
She gets to ride,
she gets to care for them.

00;16;47;07 - 00;16;49;06
And it's a family affair.

00;16;49;06 - 00;16;51;07
Well,
there's new owners that come to the ranch

00;16;51;16 - 00;16;55;06
and there's a daughter named Chelsey
Sanchez, who's also an Argentinean,

00;16;55;07 - 00;17;00;26
Argentinean American,
but as very has kind of a snooty attitude.

00;17;00;26 - 00;17;03;00
And she gets to live in the mansion. And

00;17;04;12 - 00;17;07;11
and so these girls set
off on a very bad note with each other.

00;17;07;11 - 00;17;09;14
They have to clean
the small barn together,

00;17;09;14 - 00;17;11;22
which was Carolina's special jobs.

00;17;11;22 - 00;17;13;08
And she's very upset.

00;17;13;08 - 00;17;16;00
Horses are her refuge,
and she feels like she's losing that.

00;17;16;14 - 00;17;21;06
So this is really a story
about really friendship

00;17;21;15 - 00;17;24;12
and opening up and working together.

00;17;24;13 - 00;17;28;00
There's so many fantastic
life lessons for kids in this story.

00;17;28;12 - 00;17;31;26
And it was
it was really just a beautiful read,

00;17;31;26 - 00;17;36;12
less like a series book than a really nice
middle grade fiction book, I feel like.

00;17;36;12 - 00;17;41;22
But it's shorter, so it's fun and they're
since they're printed in series,

00;17;41;22 - 00;17;44;25
I think they roll around a little roll
a little faster that way.

00;17;45;10 - 00;17;48;29
But there's also a beautiful, feisty
thoroughbreds.

00;17;48;29 - 00;17;52;13
There has to be
a thoroughbred named Velvet,

00;17;52;23 - 00;17;56;21
and she's owned by Chelsea, not Carolina,

00;17;56;25 - 00;17;59;25
but they work together
to try to figure out how to help this

00;17;59;26 - 00;18;03;14
this kind of traumatized off the track
thoroughbred.

00;18;04;03 - 00;18;06;24
So just an absolutely wonderful
book, Can't Be Tamed.

00;18;07;06 - 00;18;08;13
Okay, very cool.

00;18;08;13 - 00;18;16;04
Yep. Horses.

00;18;16;04 - 00;18;21;01
So I'm going to take a hard turn and

00;18;22;22 - 00;18;26;06
so it's actually also Deaf Awareness
Month.

00;18;26;06 - 00;18;28;05
And I thought

00;18;28;05 - 00;18;31;16
as I was scrambling for another book
that I wanted to talk about, there's

00;18;31;16 - 00;18;34;06
so many that I want to talk about,
but there's different reasons for a lot.

00;18;34;29 - 00;18;38;26
Anyway, what I decided on
was that I really wanted to

00;18;40;02 - 00;18;41;22
put a spotlight on Darfur.

00;18;41;22 - 00;18;44;27
And this month and I'm reading
currently Deaf Utopia,

00;18;44;28 - 00;18;48;10
a memoir and a Love Letter
to A Way of Life by Nyle DiMarco.

00;18;48;24 - 00;18;53;09
So Nyle DiMarco you may
or may not know who now DiMarco is.

00;18;53;20 - 00;18;56;24
He came to my attention
because he was a contestant

00;18;56;24 - 00;19;00;14
on Dancing with the Stars,
and he is a beautiful dancer.

00;19;00;14 - 00;19;02;10
He is also deaf.

00;19;02;10 - 00;19;06;22
That's a really amazing, neat feat

00;19;06;22 - 00;19;12;00
to be able to not only compete, but
he won Dancing with the Stars that season.

00;19;12;17 - 00;19;15;02
He's a really beautiful dancer.

00;19;15;25 - 00;19;19;07
Other people may be America's
Next Top model fans.

00;19;19;07 - 00;19;21;21
That's
actually where he first came to fame.

00;19;21;21 - 00;19;25;17
He won his season of that.

00;19;25;17 - 00;19;27;27
But he is he's

00;19;28;29 - 00;19;31;24
half of a twin pair who grew up in Queens

00;19;32;21 - 00;19;35;29
from a multigenerational deaf family.

00;19;35;29 - 00;19;39;09
He so this book talks about his early life

00;19;41;05 - 00;19;42;23
in Queens moving,

00;19;42;23 - 00;19;45;01
you know,
going through high school, going to

00;19;46;06 - 00;19;50;18
he has a degree in math
from Gallaudet in D.C.

00;19;51;04 - 00;19;53;29
Along the way, he fell in love
with the idea of modeling and acting.

00;19;53;29 - 00;19;57;16
And he's just sort of
fought his way through

00;19;57;16 - 00;20;01;04
and made a career of this.

00;20;02;05 - 00;20;04;12
He is a major advocate for deaf culture.

00;20;04;12 - 00;20;07;18
He's not recognizing his
it as a handicap, but

00;20;07;22 - 00;20;11;11
a culture that needs to be respected
and understood.

00;20;11;11 - 00;20;14;08
And he is an activist.

00;20;14;08 - 00;20;15;17
He's a producer.

00;20;15;17 - 00;20;17;21
He's still a model, an actor.

00;20;17;26 - 00;20;22;23
You know, he's he's just an very
interesting family, very interesting view.

00;20;23;01 - 00;20;26;17
And it's really his goal is to just sort
of get people to understand the culture.

00;20;27;26 - 00;20;30;13
So that's it's it's a really interesting
story.

00;20;30;13 - 00;20;34;06
It's really he's
a very interesting presenter

00;20;34;22 - 00;20;37;12
and I just want people to know about it.

00;20;38;17 - 00;20;41;08
So that's Deaf Utopia by now.

00;20;41;08 - 00;20;43;12
DiMarco It sounds great.

00;20;43;12 - 00;20;45;11
It's a good preview to our titles
for next month.

00;20;45;11 - 00;20;46;14
It is actually.

00;20;46;14 - 00;20;49;07
That's a good way of putting it.
Thank you.

00;20;49;07 - 00;20;50;25
So, yeah, that's what we have this month.

00;20;50;25 - 00;20;52;28
Yeah. Excellent. Thank you.

00;20;53;01 - 00;20;53;14
All right.

00;20;53;14 - 00;21;02;07
Nice talking to you.