Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing up Latino in the United States
by L. M. Carlson
Carlson, M. (1994 ). Cool salsa: bilingual poems on growing up Latino in the United States. New York: H. Holt and Co.
L. M. Carlson’s Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing up Latino in the United States was a surprisingly small paperback book of 136 pages, but it had a lot of features I really liked. The contributing poets should collectively appeal to a broad range of Latino teenage readers since they come from a wide range of geographic backgrounds including: U.S., Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Argentina, Guatemala, Bolivia, Salvador, Chile and Columbia. It was interesting that some of the poems rhymed, like “Abuelito Who” while other were blank verse, like “Home and Homeland.” Some of the poems were in English, some were in Spanish, and some, like “El Monstrous” were translated from English into Spanish.
One element of Cool Salsa that I especially liked was a glossary at the back that mentioned each poem and gave footnote-style explanations of certain things within each piece that students might need explained. I think this made the book much more kid-friendly and accessible to teenage readers. However, I felt my age when I saw a note for “A Puerto Rican Girl’s Sentimental Education” that felt it necessary to explain who Cantinflas was. I remember, as a little boy, seeing him in movies and marveling at the comedic genius of the man known as Mexico’s Charlie Chaplin.
Google Images: cchispanic.blogspot.com
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