Tendedero: Clothesline
Tengo hoflash: I get the hot flashes; menopause
Timbales: Latin percussion drums
Tostones: Fried bananas
Tráeme el mentolato: Bring me the mentholatum, Vicks
Tripas: Guts
Trulla: Traditional Puerto Rican birthday fiesta
Un flete: An apartment floor; a flat
Vámonos pues: Let’s go!
Velas, veladoras: Candles
Venga aquí mi güapa: Come here, my beautiful
Wula: Really; improvised word
Acknowledgments
For Felipe Emilio Herrera and Luz Quintana, my parents, in memory
Margarita Luna Robles, my soul partner, for her love, poetry and art
I would like to thank all my angels:
Joanna Cotler, my publisher, for giving me an open road
Justin Chanda, my editor, for showing me the way
Kendra Marcus, my agent, for asking me to be patient
Harriet Rohmer, for asking me to write for children
Marlene René Segura, my stepdaughter, for introducing me to Sky
Dearly Amara, my student, for her stories
Marvin Bell and Gerald Stern, for the poetry instruments
Ina Cumpiano and Gladys O’Brian, for language and editing suggestions
Alicia Mikles, for the colors and styles
For Almasol, Joaquín, Joshua, Marlene and Robert—my children
Jeremiah, Rainsong, Ethan and Isabella Yazmin—my grandchildren
For George Robles and Harold Kirkpatrick,
for always having a place for me
Klarissa, JR, BJ, Junior Melendez, Yvette, Catherine, Frankie,
Emilio, Becky, Michael and Nicole, nieces and nephews.
Pilo and Gloria Herrera and my long lost Herrera family.
“Albina’s Kids,” my great Quintana cousins,
for the early San Francisco days.
For Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Lalo Delgado, Ricardo Aguilar-Melantzon, RIP.
And for Puerto Rico, our dear 9/11 families, New York City—for all your endurance, compassion and spirit.
About the Author
Photo by Randy Vaughn-Dotta
JUAN FELIPE HERRERA is the U.S. Poet Laureate and was inspired by the early Chicano Movement and by heavy exposure to various poetry, jazz, and blues performance streams. His published works include 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971–2007; Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream; Mayan Drifter: Chicano Poet in the Lowlands of America; Thunderweavers; Laughing Out Loud, I Fly, a Pura Belpré Honor Book; Américas Award winners CrashBoomLove and Cinnamon Girl; Calling the Doves, which won the Ezra Jack Keats Award; SkateFate; and The Upside Down Boy, which was adapted into a musical. He has received the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship, and previously served as California Poet Laureate. He has taught at both California State University, Fresno, and University of California, Riverside, and held the Tomás Rivera endowed chair in creative writing. He lives in Fresno, California. You can visit him online at www.juanfelipepoet.com.
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Credits
Cover art © 2005 by Ali Smith
Cover design by Kathleen Duncan
Books by Juan Felipe Herrera
SkateFate
Laughing Out Loud, I Fly
Cinnamon Girl
Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
CINNAMON GIRL: Letters Found Inside a Cereal Box. Copyright © 2005 by Juan Felipe Herrera. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.epicreads.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Herrera, Juan Felipe.
Cinnamon girl : letters found inside a cereal box / Juan Felipe Herrera.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“Joanna Cotler Books.”
Summary: Yolanda, a Puerto Rican girl, tries to come to terms with her painful past as she waits to see if her uncle recovers from injuries he suffered when the towers collapsed on September 11, 2001.
ISBN 978-0-06-244759-3
EPub Edition © February 2016 ISBN 9780062447609
1. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001—Juvenile fiction. [1. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001—Fiction. 2. Uncles—Fiction. 3. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. 4. Puerto Ricans—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.H432135Ci 2005 2004026185
[Fic]—dc22
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16 17 18 19 20 PC/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Revised paperback edition, 2016
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