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Monday, June 08, 2015

Portage Library to host readings by Michigan Notable Book author Lolita Hernandez June 9

HOUGHTON -- The Portage Lake District Library invites everyone to an evening of readings and reflections with 2015 Michigan Notable Book author Lolita Hernandez from 6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 9.

Hernandez will read excerpts from her award winning book Making Callaloo in Detroit. As a daughter of parents from Trinidad and Tobago, Hernandez gained a unique perspective on growing up in Detroit. In her book she weaves her memories of food, language, music, and family into twelve stories of outsiders looking at a strange new world, wondering how to fit in, and making it through in their own way. Hernandez's stories reflect the diversity of characters to be found at the intersection between cultures while also offering a window into a very particular and rich Caribbean culture that survives in the deepest recesses of Detroit.

In addition to being a compelling and colorful read, Making Callaloo in Detroit explores questions of how we assimilate and retain identity, how families evolve as generations pass, how memory guides the present, and how the spirit world stays close to the living.

Born and raised in Detroit, Hernandez is the author of Autopsy of an Engine and Other Stories from the Cadillac Plant, a winner of a 2005 PEN Beyond Margins Award. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Quiet Battles and snakecrossing. She is a 2012 Kresge Literary Arts fellow, and her poetry and fiction have appeared in a wide variety of literary publications. After more than thirty-three years as a UAW worker at General Motors, she now teaches in the creative writing department in the University of Michigan Residential College.

A book signing and selling will follow the presentation.

Library programs are free and everyone is welcome. For more information, please call the library at 482-4570 or visit www.pldl.org.

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