Registration is STILL open for our Author Talk Series, an event free and open to the public! Our guest, Javier Zamora, will discuss his New York Times best-selling book Solito with moderator, Rutgers English department faculty member, Ben Purkert. Zamora will share his immigration journey with us and explore how identity influences our idea of home and brings humanity and warmth to the figure of the “immigrant.”
¡EVENT RESCHEDULED!
Fact
We are looking forward to the conversation next Wednesday, July 12 with Javier Zamora. Our excitement about the event has been the topic of many Zoom and phone calls and enthusiastically expressed by our blog and social media posts.
Background
A unexpected discovery of this pearl, Solito: A memoir and a subsequent blog post entitled Superheroes Among Us back in November, as Staff Picks.
An invitation sent to Zamora by Rutgers Summer Session to be our next guest in the Author Talk series, following illustrious authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, Carmen Maria Machado, Natalie Díaz, and Julie Otsuka – accepted!
The quest for the perfect moderator, Zamora’s partner in conversation, rather than someone asking random questions – found, in house, at Rutgers, in the person of creative writing professor and author Ben Purkert, who interviewed him in April.
Logistics sorted out, event planned, bureaucratic hurdles overcome, headache gone, event date getting closer, excitement growing.
Pupusa recipes tested and retested. Can you eat pupusas for breakfast? – would be just as rhetorical a question to ask @jzsalvipoet as to ask an Italian poet the same thing about pasta (which I did). Ah, that look!
Reality hits
Event cancelled – classic coping mechanisms kicking in. To each their own. Just like Solito, a book that speaks to the reader at so many levels.
For us – no problem, more time to spend with the book, more time to listen to previous interviews, talks, and podcasts with the author.
A podcast about finding the right therapist – it starts discussing other issues shared by most of us, immigrants, but somehow, with a twist, ends up in Zamora’s deliberate self-disclosure.
Writing as therapy, reflections on texts as they speak to you – reality check.
Happy ending?
Event rescheduled – let’s hope all those who registered can make it! Let’s hope we’ll reach new audiences! I, for one, won’t shut up about the book, Zamora, and the experience, probably for another year.
Books raffle on – books, plural, multiple copies of Javier Zamora’s Solito and Ben Purkert’s debut novel, The men can’t be saved, in the bookstores August 1 for event participants.
Fingers crossed – no more cancellations, flights or events, just pure anticipation of an author talk, when you feel being part of something bigger than yourself, through reading, listening, reflecting, or writing.
On your way to healing. Bibliotherapy, at its best, again.
Related Posts
- Superheroes Among us: Solito by Javier Zamora
- Words that Heal: Solito by Javier Zamora
- Food and Culture in Solito