Award-Winning Author Oscar Cásares Reading at Del Mar College May 30

Article by: Rosa Linda Reynoso

Award-winning author Oscar Cásares will return to Del Mar College Thursday, May 30, to read from his new book, Where We Come From, a stunning and timely novel about a Mexican-American family in Brownsville, Texas, who reluctantly become involved in smuggling immigrants into the United States.

Published by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House, New York, Cásares’ book will be available for purchase and signing after the reading.

The reading begins at 6 p.m. in Room 106 of the Center for Economic Development (3209 S. Staples St.). Sponsored by the Del Mar College Mexican American Studies Program and the Department of English and Philosophy, the event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

For more information, contact Erica Bertero, assistant professor of English and Mexican American Studies Program coordinatorat 698-1433 or ebertero@delmar.edu.

Tackling the crisis of U.S. immigration policy from a deeply human angle, Where We Come From explores through an intimate lens the ways that family history shapes us, how secrets can burden us and how finding compassion and understanding for others can ultimately set us free. The story reflects everyday occurrences in spaces between the Rio Grande and the inland Border Patrol checkpoints. The characters, Daniel, Nina and Orly are the bulk of the narrative with other vignettes of immigrants scattered throughout the novel.

Cásares is the author of two other noted books that earned him fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (2006), the Copernicus Society of America (2002) and the Texas Institute of Letters (2002). The American Library Association selected his collection, Brownsville: Stories, as a Notable Book of 2004 and is now included in the curriculum at several universities throughout the country.

Cásares’ novel, Amigoland, received a “starred review” from Publisher’s Weekly, which called the work “a winning novel” and was selected for the 2010 Austin Mayor’s Book Club, a citywide reading initiative by Austin Public Library.

Cásares earned a bachelor’s degree in advertising from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s degree from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Currently, he teaches creative writing and is director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas at Austin.

Learn more about the author by visiting www.oscarcasares.com.