Carmen Boullosa Livres

An agitated poetry to order from personal experience the chaos of the world which it's fallen to us to inhabit.

The term 'Mexican Drug War' implies that the ongoing bloodbath, which has now killed well over 100,000 people, is an internal Mexican affair. But this diverts attention from the U.S. role in creating and sustaining the carnage. It's not just that Americans buy drugs from, and sell weapons to, Mexico's murderous cartels. It's that ever since the U.S. prohibited the use and sale of drugs in the early 1900s, it has pressured Mexico into acting as its border enforcer-with increasingly deadly consequences. Mexico was not a helpless victim. Powerful forces within the country profited hugely from supplying Americans with what their government forbade them. But the policies that spawned the drug war have proved disastrous for both countries. Written by two award-winning authors, one American and the other Mexican, A Narco History reviews the interlocking twentieth-century histories that produced this twenty-first century calamity, and proposes how to end it.

A historical examination of tension and conflict on the Texas-Mexico border, told from the Mexican perspective, that's especially relevant today.

In this continuation of Anna Karenina's legacy, Russa simmers on the brink of change and the stories long kept secret finally come to light.

Carmen Boullosa is one of Mexico's most acclaimed young writers, and Leaving Tabasco tells of the coming-of-age of Delmira Ulloa, raised in an all-female home in Agustini, in the Mexican province of Tabasco. The Washington Post Book World wrote, "We happily share with [Delmira] ... her life, including the infinitely charming town she inhabits [and] her grandmother's fantastic imagination." In Agustini it is not unusual to see your grandmother float above the bed when she sleeps, or to purchase torrential rains at a traveling fair, or to watch your family's elderly serving woman develop stigmata, then disappear completely, to be canonized as a local saint. As Delmira becomes a woman she will search for her missing father, and will make a choice that will force her to leave home forever. Brimming with the spirit of its irrepressible heroine, Leaving Tabasco is a story of great charm and depth that will remain in its readers' hearts for a long time. "Carmen Boullosa ... immerses us once again in her wickedly funny and imaginative world." -- Dolores Prida, Latina "To flee Agustini is to leave not just a town but the viscerally primal dreamscape it represents." -- Sandra Tsing Loh, The New York Times Book Review "A vibrant coming-of-age tale ... Boullosa [is] a master.... Each chapter is an adventure." -- Monica L. Williams, The Boston Globe

Carmen Boullosa is one of Latin America’s most original voices, and in Cleopatra Dismounts she has written a remarkable imaginary life of one of history's most legendary women. Dying in Marc Antony’s arms, Cleopatra bewails the end of her political career throughout ancient Egypt, Greece, and the Mediterranean. But is this weak woman the true Cleopatra? Through the intervention of Cleopatra's scribe and informer Diomedes, Boullosa creates two deliriously wild other lives for the young monarch—a girl escaping the intrigues of royal society to disguise herself and take up residence with a band of pirates; and the young queen who is carried across the sea on the back of a magical bull, to live among the Amazons. Magical, multifaceted, and rippling with luminous imagination, Cleopatra Dismounts is a work that recalls Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry and confirms Carmen Boullosa as an important international voice.

A brilliant, feminist twist on the Book of Genesis from Carmen Boullosa. What if everything they've told us about the Garden was the other way around? Faced with what appears to be an apocryphal manuscript containing ten books and 91 passages, Eve decides to tell her version: she was neither created from Adam's rib, nor is it exact that she was expelled by the apple and the serpent, nor is story they tell of Abel and Cain true, neither that of the Flood, nor that of the Tower of Babel... With brilliant prose, Carmen Boullosa gives a twist to the Book of Genesis to dismantle the male figure and rebuild the world, the origin of gastronomy, the domestication of animals, the cultivation of land and pleasure, through the feminine gaze. Based on this exploration, sometimes fun and other times painful, The Book of Eve takes a tour through the stories they've told us and which have helped to foster (and cement) the absurd idea that woman is the companion, complement, and even accessory to man, which opens the door to criminal violence against women. Boullosa refutes and breaks them in this feminist novel, foundational and brazen.

Set against the tumultuous backdrop of the seventeenth-century Caribbean, the story follows Jean Smeeks, a young boy kidnapped and sold into indentured servitude. Under the mentorship of an African slave healer and a French surgeon, he becomes a medical officer for a pirate crew. Smeeks navigates the duality of his existence as both a healer and a participant in piracy, exploring themes of identity and morality amidst a chaotic world of outcasts and adventurers.

Seit Jahren berichten wir über die Schrecken des Krieges gegen die Drogen in Mexiko, dessen jüngstes Beispiel das Massaker an 43 Studenten in Guerrero ist. Die Gewalt hat mittlerweile untragbare Ausmaße erreicht. Die Autoren Carmen Boullosa und Mike Wallace beleuchten in dieser Streitschrift die deprimierenden historischen und politischen Fakten. Vor Beginn dieses Krieges war Mexiko eines der sichersten Länder Lateinamerikas, während es heute mit einer komplexen Verflechtung von Drogen, Kriminalität und Gewalt kämpft. Das Massaker an den Studenten stellt einen Wendepunkt in der Geschichte dieses absurden Krieges dar. Große Teile der mexikanischen Gesellschaft protestieren gegen die unhaltbaren Zustände und die gescheiterte Politik der Prohibition und Repression, die seit einem Jahrhundert nicht in der Lage ist, die Probleme zu lösen, sondern die Gewalt nur verstärkt hat. Die Autoren fordern ein Umdenken und eine neue globale Drogenpolitik, um die verfehlte Politik der letzten hundert Jahre zu überwinden. Es ist an der Zeit, die Diskussion über alternative Ansätze zur Bekämpfung der Drogenproblematik zu führen und die dringend benötigten Veränderungen herbeizuführen.