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Item Information
Edition: Paperback
Format: woodcuts, resources
Pages: 6 x 9, 80 pages
ISBN: 9781931498067
Old ISBN: 1-931498-06-7
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Release Date: 2002-05-01
A Cafecito Story | El Cuento del Cafecito
Julia Alvarez; Illustrations by Belkis Ramírez, Foreword by Bill Eichner, M.D.
It is amazing how much better coffee grows when sung to by birds or when through an opened window comes the sound of a human voice reading words on paper that still holds the memory of the tree it used to be.
from A Cafecito Story
A Cafecito Story is a story of love, coffee, birds and hope. It is a beautifully written eco-fable by best-selling author Julia Alvarez. Based on her and her husband's experiences trying to reclaim a small coffee farm in her native Dominican Republic, A Cafecito Story shows how the return to the traditional methods of shade-grown coffee can rehabilitate and rejuvenate the landscape and human culture, while at the same time preserving vital winter habitat for threatened songbirds.
Not a political or environmental polemic, A Cafecito Story is instead a poetic, modern fable about human beings at their best. The challenge of producing coffee is a remarkable test of our ability to live more sustainably, caring for the land, growers, and consumers in an enlightened and just way. Written with Julia Alvarez's deft touch, this is a story that stimulates while it comforts, waking the mind and warming the soul like the first cup of morning coffee. Indeed, this story is best read with a strong cup of organic, shade-grown, fresh-brewed coffee.
Julia Alvarez
About the Author
Julia Alvarez has bridged the Americas many times. Born in New York and raised in
the Dominican Republic, she is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist, author of
world-renowned books in each of the genres, including How the García
Girls Lost their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, and
Something to Declare. She lives on a farmstead outside Middlebury,
Vermont, with her husband Bill Eichner. Visit Julia's Web site www.alvarezjulia.com to find
out more about her writing.
Julia and Bill own an organic coffee farm called Alta Gracia in her native country of the Dominican Republic. Their specialty coffee is grown high in the mountains on what was once depleted pastureland. Not only do they grow coffee at Alta Gracia, but they also work to bring social, environmental, spiritual, and political change for the families who work on their farm. They use the traditional methods of shad-grown coffee farming in order to protect the environment, they pay their farmers a fair and living wage, and they have a school on their farm where children and adults learn to read and write. For more information about Alta Gracia, visit www.cafealtagracia.com.
Belkis Ramírez, who created the woodcuts for A Cafecito Story, is one of the most celebrated artrists in the Dominican Republic. Visit Belkis' web site.
Daisy Cocco de Filippis, who translated A Cafecito Story into Spanish, is originally from the Dominican Republic. Since 1978 has taught Hispanic literature and culture at York College of The City University of New York, where she directs the Department on Foreign Languages, ESL and Humanitites.
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