Read Oscar Hijuelos trilogy, co-edited by Barry professor Dr. Alonso-Gallo.

Dr. Laura P. Alonso-Gallo Professor of English at the Department of English and Foreign Languages, co-edited a special volume featuring three novels by the Pulitzer Prize winner Oscar Hijuelos.

The Mambo Kings & Other Novels (2022), published by the prestigious publisher The Library of America, includes Our House in the Last World (1983), The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989), and Mr. Ives’ Christmas (1995). The editors, Dr. Alonso Gallo and author Lori Carlson Hijuelos, the writer’s widow, also contributed a chronology of the renowned Cuban American writer’s life and literary career.

On September 14, 2022, the Library of America hosted an insightful, engaging and loving tribute to Oscar Hijuelos and his writing.

Event description: 

Oscar Hijuelos’s rich and radiant novels bring the Cuban American immigrant experience into the heart of American literature. To celebrate Library of America’s publication of  The Mambo Kings & Other Novels, the Library of America Live convened a starry array of writers and musicians, many of them the Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s personal friends, for an hour of readings, reminiscences, and more. 

Featuring appearances by: Laurie Anderson • Junot Díaz • Laura Alonso-Gallo • Mary Gordon • Lori Carlson-Hijuelos • Arturo O’Farrill • Gay Talese 

Brief vitae of Dr. Alonso-Gallo 

Laura P. Alonso-Gallo became Professor of American Literature in Spain in 1997 and since 2012 she is Professor of English at Barry University in Miami. She taught at Duke University, the Universidad de Sevilla, Spain, the UNC Chapel Hill Program in Seville, Spain, and was Visiting Professor at the University of Miami. Her scholarly work concentrates on Latino/a Literature and Comparative Literature. She received the 2020 Sister Jeanne O’Laughlin Scholarship Award with which Barry University recognized exceptional scholarly achievements. She has published articles and contributions to books in the field of Latino/a, Caribbean, and Cuban-American fiction such as “Deconstructing Mexican Masculinity in Denise Chávez’s Loving Pedro Infante” (Teaching the Narrative of Mexicana and Chicana Writers, MLA 2020), “Postnacionalismo y el sueño americano de Cristina Henríquez” (La tradición cultural hispánica en una sociedad global 2020), “Erotismo y rebeldía en la narrativa cubanoamericana de Jennine Capó Crucet (2019), “Cuerpos perdidos: Violencia y hambre en la joven narrativa femenina cubanoamericana” (Reading Cuba: Discurso literario y geografía transcultural 2018) “Eating Ethnicity in Denise Chávez’s Loving Pedro Infante” (Rethinking Chicano/a Literature through Food: Postnational Appetites 2013), “Cuerpos de Cuba: Alegorías de Cuba a través del cuerpo femenino en la literatura cubano-americana” (Revista Iberoamericana 2005), and “‘Un largo archipiélago de otras incubaciones’: La condición cubana del exilio en la obra de Gustavo Pérez Firmat” (Revista Hispano Cubana 2002). Author of the article “Oscar Hijuelos” for Wiley-Blackwell’s Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction, 1980-2020 (2021), and editor of the collections El sexo en la literature (1997), Evolving Origins, Transplanting Cultures: Literary Legacies of the New Americans (2002), Myth and Ritual in African American and Native American Literatures (2001), Guayaba Sweet: Literatura Cubana en Estados Unidos (2003), American Voices: Interviews with American Writers (2004) and Identidad y postnacionalismo en la cultura cubana (2019)/ She recently co-edited the Library of America special edition of three novels by Oscar Hijuelos, which includes a chronology of Hijuelos’s life and literary career (Oscar Hijuelos: Mambo Kings and Other Novels, 2022; launched Sept 14, 2022 A Celebration of Oscar Hijuelos).