Posthumous Novel Gives Immigrant’s View of California’s Dairy Farms
Twenty-eight years after his death, Alfred Lewis’ newly-published novel, Sixty Acres and a Barn, will be presented to the public at a series of lectures in California. Dr. Frank Sousa, director of the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and editor of the book will explain the importance of Lewis’ work and how Sixty Acres and a Barn came to be published.
(PRWEB) March 13, 2005 -- Twenty-eight years after his death, Alfred Lewis’
newly-published novel, Sixty Acres and a Barn, will be presented to the public
at a series of lectures in California. Dr. Frank Sousa, director of the Center
for Portuguese Studies and Culture of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
and editor of the book will explain the importance of Lewis’ work and how Sixty
Acres and a Barn came to be published.
Sixty Acres and a Barn tells the
coming-of-age story of Luis Sarmento, an immigrant who finds in America a place
of tolerance, prosperity and emotional fulfillment. This slice of immigrant life
in California dairy farming is rendered memorably in prose at once insightful,
lyrical and realistic in its representation of obstacles faced by those who live
in insular enclaves between cultures. Sixty Acres constitutes a serious
contribution to postwar ethnic literature, and makes Lewis the precursor of
acclaimed Portuguese-American writers like Katherine Vaz and Frank X. Gaspar.
Sixty Acres and a Barn is available through the distributor on the Internet at
http://www.lusobraz.com or
by phone at (800) 727-LUSO.
Alfred Lewis (1902-1977), the son of a
nineteenth-century immigrant who had been a whaleman and a gold miner in
California before returning to his homeland, was born in the mid-Atlantic island
of Flores, in the archipelago of the Azores, Portugal. Lewis himself immigrated
to California in 1922. Having learned English only after arriving in America, he
nevertheless went on to study law, and rose to become a municipal judge in the
San Joaquin Valley town of Los Baños.
Lewis was the first
Portuguese-American writer to claim the attention of the English-speaking
public. His first published book, Home is an Island (Random House, 1951), is an
autobiographical novel about boyhood in the Azores. According to the New York
Times, “Lewis’ style and quality of the narrative is most refreshing. Some of
his descriptive passages, in the pellucid simplicity and rich imagery, ring with
the lyricism of poetry.”
Lewis is also the author of short stories. Two
of these were referenced in Best American Short Stories (Houghton Mifflin) for
1949 and 1950. Lewis was a prolific and accomplished poet in both English and
Portuguese. His poems, often published in English- and Portuguese-language
magazines and newspapers, were collected posthumously under the title Aguarelas
Florentinas e Outras Poesias (1986).
Sixty Acres and a Barn was edited
by Prof. Frank F. Sousa, director of the UMD Center for Portuguese Studies and
Culture and general editor of the Portuguese in the Americas Series, a
publication of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
Dr. Sousa’s
lectures will be held:
Tuesday, March 15, 2005 at 5:00 pm
California State
University, Stanislaus
Classroom Building, Room C-208
Wednesday, March
16, 2004 at Noon
University of California, Berkeley
Moses Hall, Room
201
Friday, March 18, 2005 at 6:30 pm
Emerton Club (corner of Tulare
Avenue and K Street in Tulare, CA)
The book may also be purchased through
Luso-Brazilian Books (tel. 1-800-727-LUSO; fax: 212-568-0147; http://www.lusobraz.com).
The Publication of Sixty
Acres and a Barn was made possible in part by a grant from the Government of the
Autonomous Region of the Azores.
Sixty Acres and a Barn
by Alfred
Lewis
Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture at the University of
Massachusetts Dartmouth
Distributed by Luso-Brazilian Books
ISBN:
0-972256-15-6 (Paper)$20.00
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/3/prweb217634.htm