RALEIGH, NC January 2007
Imagine feeling like you're from another planet and no one understands you. We all went through that, but what if you really were different? Like if you came from another country and no one understood you because you speak a different language?

That's what Wanda Richards, a local writer has written about. In her first Young Adult novel, the main character, Dolores, a girl born in Guatemala does a lot of growing up in her 'summer of dolores'. 'Dolores' in Spanish means 'pain', the author reminds us. With Wanda's years as an English as a Second Language teacher, she imparts to her readers a very unique perspective into the lives of her students.

And Wanda should know. She is fluent in Spanish, has a Masters in Linguistics, and received a Fulbright Grant to teach English in Peru. Excerpts of 'summer of dolores' also can be found in the Linguistics textbook: Telling Tongues: New Perspectives on Language, Identity, and Power in America Latina.

Wanda says Dolores, the main character in "summer of dolores", is a combination of so many female students from Mexico and Central America. "When I was teaching these kids," Wanda says, "I felt they were the strongest people in the world. As children, they walked across deserts, swam fierce rivers, then entered a country that didn't want them. And whether they wanted to or not, they became American."

"My own feelings of inadequacy I experienced as a teenager were nothing compared to what these kids go through on a daily basis." The character, Dolores Gutierrez's birth mother, who she's never met, decides to pay a visit from Guatemala.

"Remember," the author says, "Guatemala is really a world away from the American life Dolores knows."

Link to publication: Get 'summer of dolores' at Amazon.com

Contact Name: Wanda Richards
Contact E-mail: wandaseaman27@yahoo.com