Try To Remember - An evening with Iris Gomez

Please join us in welcoming award-winning author and nationally respected immigration lawyer Iris Gomez for a reading as she discusses her new highly acclaimed novel Try to Remember, as well as some of the pressing challenges that face high-achieving Latina immigrants in the U.S. today and recent actions to address them - such the DREAM Act. Book signing and reception to follow.

Try to Remember brings together the heartbreaking story of a Colombian immigrant girl’s coming of age experience while her father is descending into a frightening and confusing mental illness with the larger story of the complexities and challenges that define the immigrant experience in the U.S. today. Ms. Gomez has drawn on her substantial expertise in the immigration field to produce a novel that has been called “powerful,” “enthralling,” and “impossible to forget.” Like many classic literary coming of age tales, Try to Remember has “crossover YA appeal” (Publisher’s Weekly) as well as interesting a diverse adult audience.

Poetry and immigration law are an unlikely combination, but a highly successful one nevertheless for Iris Gomez. Born in Cartagena, Colombia, Gomez grew up in Miami. In addition to many professional publications, she is the author of a new, highly acclaimed novel, Try to Remember, which has won praise from such prominent national magazines such as O, The Oprah Magazine and Latina, among others, and is listed by the Association of American Publishers among its Recommended Latino Books of 2010. 

Ms. Gomez has been honored with such prestigious professional and community awards as the Las Primeras Award for Latina trailblazers from the Massachusetts Association of Hispanic Attorneys, a Women of Justice award from the two leading Massachusetts women’s bar organizations, and the Access to Justice Award from the Massachusetts Bar Association, as well as others from the Boston Bar Association, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. She is frequently called upon to speak as an expert on immigration law matters in public, including on the nationally-televised Cristina show; and interviews with Ms. Gomez about her novel and its immigrant themes can found in such varied national and local media as National Public Radio’s The Roundtable and BU Today. Her literary accomplishments also include two poetry collections, one about the native history and nature of Massachusetts’ own Blue Hills Reservation and another that received a national literary prize for Latino poetry in 2001.

This evening is co-sponsored by Food For Thought Books, The Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies at UMASS-Amherst and LACLOF.