Jasminne Mendez is the author of Alaiyo
Websites
Poetry by Jasminne Mendez
On the Shelf at CCBC Libraries
A Raisin in the Sun by
"Never before, the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of black people's lives been seen on the stage," observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959. Indeed Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of black America--and changed American theater forever.nbsp;nbsp;The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun." "The events of every passing year add resonance to A Raisin in the Sun," said The New York Times.nbsp;nbsp;"It is as if history is conspiring to make the play a classic."nbsp;nbsp;This Modern Library edition presents the fully restored, uncut version of Hansberry's landmark work with an introduction by Robert Nemiroff.
Call Number: PS3515.A515 R3 1995
Interviews
- Inking Well: An Interview With Jasminne Mendez
Ploughshares at Emerson College, April 2, 2018
Books by Jasminne Mendez
Aniana Del Mar Jumps In by
** Four starred reviews!** A powerful and expertly told novel-in-verse by about a 12-year-old Dominican American swimmer who is diagnosed with Juvenile Arthritis by an award-winning poet. Aniana del Mar belongs in the water like a dolphin belongs to the sea. But she and Papi keep her swim practices and meets hidden from Mami, who has never recovered from losing someone she loves to the water years ago. That is, until the day Ani's stiffness and swollen joints mean she can no longer get out of bed, and Ani is forced to reveal just how important swimming is to her. Mami forbids her from returning to the water but Ani and her doctor believe that swimming along with medication will help Ani manage her disease. What follows is the journey of a girl who must grieve who she once was in order to rise like the tide and become the young woman she is meant to be. Aniana Del Mar Jumps In is a poignant story about chronic illness and disability, the secrets between mothers and daughters, the harm we do to the ones we love the most--and all the triumphs, big and small, that keep us afloat. "Beautiful in its honesty and vulnerability, this is a powerful story about dreams and bodily agency that sings from the heart."--Natalia Sylvester, award-winning author of Breathe and Count Back From Ten
ISBN: 9780593531815Publication Date: 2023-03-14
City Without Altar by
CITY WITHOUT ALTAR is a poetry collection and play in verse that explores what it means to live, love, heal and experience violence as a Black person in the world. The titular play in verse that sits at the center of the book seeks to amplify the voices and experiences of victims, survivors and living ancestors of the 1937 Haitian Massacre that occurred along the northwest Dominican/Haitian border during the Trujillo Era. Between the scenes of the play are "interludes" that explore a different kind of "cutting" and what it means to feel othered because of illness, disability and blackness. Ultimately, Machete is a meditation on being/feeling "blacked out" by the archive, on the world stage and in one's daily life. Poetry. Drama. African & African American Studies. Latinx Studies. Women's Studies.
ISBN: 1934819158Publication Date: 2022-08-15
Islands Apart by
"Jasminne Mendez didn't speak English when she started kindergarten, and her young, white teacher thought the girl was deaf because in Louisiana, you were either black or white. She had no idea that a black girl could be a Spanish speaker. In this memoir for teens about growing up Afro Latina in the Deep South, Jasminne writes about feeling torn between her Dominican, Spanish-speaking culture at home and the American, English-speaking one around her. She desperately wanted to fit in, to be seen as American, and she realized early on that language mattered. Learning to read and write English well was the road to acceptance. Mendez shares typical childhood experiences such as having an imaginary friend, boys and puberty, but she also exposes the anti-black racism within her own family and the conflict created by her family's conservative traditions. She was not allowed to do things other girls could, like date boys, shave her legs or wear heels. "I wanted us to find some common ground," she writes about her parents, "but it seemed like we were from two different worlds, and our islands kept drifting farther and farther apart." Despite her father's old-style approach to raising girls, he valued education and insisted his daughters do well in school and maintain their native language. He took his children to hear Maya Angelou speak, and hearing the poet read was a defining moment for the black Dominican girl who struggled to fit in. "I decided that if Maya Angelou could be the author of her own story and rewrite her destiny to become a phenomenal woman, then somehow, so could I." Teens-and adults too-will appreciate reading about Mendez's experiences coming of age in the United States as both black and Latina."
ISBN: 9781558859449Publication Date: 2022-05-31
Night-Blooming Jasmin(n)e by
Jasminne M#65533;ndez, a Dominican American educator, performance artist and writer, reveals her experiences with chronic illness and infertility in these moving essays and poems.
ISBN: 9781558858619Publication Date: 2018-04-30
Websites on Dominican Americans
- Dominicans in the United States: A Socioeconomic Profile 2022
CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Research Monograph - Facts on Hispanics of Dominican origin in the United States, 2021
from Pew Research - Immigrants from the Dominican Republic in the United States
from Migration Policy Institute