Sunday Salon: June 2, 2013

This has been quite a week - I was fortunate enough to attend Book Expo America (BEA) which was here in NYC from Wed through Sat. It was a great week of books, authors, bloggers and readers.  Did I mention books?

I LOVE totes and BEA delivered!

I need to creatively stash these throughout the apartment

 I need to go through all this and sort out how I will best feature it all on the blog (if you have suggestions on how you would like to hear about these books, please leave them in the comments). I want to bring these books to you because I am excited about them and also want to make sure I feature them relative to when they publish since I don't read quickly enough to read all this in time! 


Here are some highlights of my week:

 - great book blogger events thrown by Harper Collins, Atria and Penguin which included blogger friends Kathy, Diane, Gayle, Nicole, Candace, Alison, Jenn, Elizabeth and Julie

 - meeting amazing authors including Joshilyn Jackson, Joseph Kanon, Sue Grafton, Kimberly McCreight, Amy Hill Hearth, Koethi Zan (check out her bio on the website - I think it is so well written!), Elizabeth Gilbert and Wally Lamb

 - having breakfast with other bloggers at the home of author Adriana Trigiani (!!) - this was such a lovely morning. Her home is beautiful and she was such a gracious host to us all. She is also invited authors John Searles, Bruce Feiler and Susan Fales-Hill. It was great to meet and talk books, etc with them too!

- cocktails with author Dorothea Benton Frank where we chatted about her road to becoming an author, the city of Charleston, and her latest novel The Last Original Wife. I also discovered a great little place in the city - The Tipsy Parson - they had a wonderful menu of drinks and eats (even though the pepper jelly on the biscuits almost choked poor Dottie - it was so spicy!)

Ok - off to settle in with a book - hope you all have a great week!

Author Event: Pete Hamill

Author Pete Hamill is the child of immigrants from Northern Ireland whose parents arrived in New York City in the late 1920's.  He was raised in Brooklyn in an ethnically diverse neighborhood among a variety of immigrant families.  Immigration and New York  City feature in many of his books including Snow in August and Forever: A Novel.  I have enjoyed both of these books and was excited to see he would be speaking at the Tenement Museum on the topic of immigration and New York City in December.

Hamill began the night by talking about why his parents came to New York and his experience growing up in Brooklyn in a working class, immigrant neighborhood.  He spoke about the community of immigrants and how their differences in religion and culture mattered little- they were united as new arrivals to this country and did not toss ethnic slurs at each other as many of their parents had endured in the countries from which they emigrated.

His talk then moved into his experience living in Mexico and what it has taught him about the Mexican people. This exposure to the Mexican culture coupled with his own immigrant history has obviously influenced his point of view on the immigration debate that rages across the country.  It was interesting to hear him link the current immigrant experience with that of those featured in the museum, his parents, my parents and the current immigrants from places such as Mexico, Eastern Europe and South America.  Much of that debate hinges on  the difference between legal and illegal immigration but I thought Hamill made good points about the humanity of these immigrants and their ability to contribute to our economy. 

Perhaps my favorite part of his talk was when he said "I hate the phrase the American Dream.  A Dream is unwilled . . . . I prefer the American vision . . . you want to  do something with the only life you have and you marshall education, will, ambition . . . everything you need to achieve this vision".  I think this beautifully summarizes the American but also the immigrant experience.

It was a pleasure to hear the author speak  - I felt as if I was sitting across the table from him at dinner.  He has an easy way about him but speaks with a wealth of facts and authority on a subject he both knows a lot about but also cares about deeply.  You can listen to the talk in its entirety on the Tenement Museum website in the Tenement Talks section. 

JoAnn of Lakeside Musing also posted about a lecture by Pete Hamill which she attended and her reactions to his  North River: A Novel and the audiobook Downtown: My Manhattan written and read by Hamill. 

As part of my Immigrant Stories Challenge, I will feature a post on the last day of each month which focuses on immigrant literature or the immigrant experience.