Cuban-American author Oscar Hijuelos, best known for his Pulitzer-prize winning novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, died in New York at 62, his agent said.
Hijuelos collapsed on a tennis court in Manhattan on Saturday and never regained conciousness, his widow Lori Marie Carlson told the New York Times. Hijuelos’ literary agent, Jennifer Lyons, confirmed the report.
Hijuelos was born in 1951 in New York of Cuban immigrant parents. He was the first Hispanic to win the Pulitzer in 1990 for the Mambo Kings, his second novel.
Photo: EPA
The book, translated into 25 languages, was made into a 1992 Hollywood movie starring Antonio Banderas and Armand Assante.
Mambo Kings is about the adventures of Cuban brothers Cesar and Nestor Castillo, who moved to the US in the 1950s at the height of the Mambo craze. Hijuelos’ other books often focused on the lives of Cuban-Americans. They included The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O’Brien (1993), A Simple Habana Melody (2002) and Beautiful Maria of my Soul (2010).
“When I was a little kid, I went to Cuba. I got very sick, I spent a year [in the hospital] away from my family and the culture... My mother said I went in speaking Spanish and came out speaking English,” Hijuelos said in a 2011 interview with the PBS News Hour as he was promoting his memoir Thoughts Without Cigarettes.
“I never thought I would be a writer growing up. I certainly never thought that as a kid. And even when a lot of people around me expressed strong confidence in what they saw as my gifts or emerging gifts, I always doubted them,” he said.
“A lot of people take reading and writing and being good at something for granted, but if you come up in a certain way, without a lot of positive reinforcement, it takes a lot, like Pulitzer Prizes and being published all over the world, to make you feel pretty good about yourself,” he told PBS.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was