by Julia Alvarez illustrations by Belkis Ramirez Throughout Central America it is a household ritual to offer a cafecito (a small cup of dark - rich - potent coffee) to any visitor - especially a stranger. Now - in a story spanning Nebraska and the Dominican Republic - Julia Alvarez offers us A Cafecito Story. In North America - coffee is the morning lifeline between waking and working. In Central and South America - coffee is an economic lifeline - after oil the most highly traded commodity in the world. Especially when coffee is grown sustainably - it links the First and Third Worlds in ways that are surprising and often delightful. North American songbirds - for instance - winter in habitats where their survival is directly dependent on coffee farming practices. With lyric simplicity - A Cafecito Story tells the complex tale of a social beverage that bridges nations and unites people in trade - in words - in birds - and in love. The story unfolds through the eyes of Joe - a man with farming in his blood but an increasing sense of displacement from the natural world. While on holiday in the Dominican Republic - Joe learns about how coffee is grown and traded from Miguel - a Dominican coffee farmer. It is from Miguel and the other campesinos that Joe comes to understand the role of coffee in global trade - environmental degradation - and endangered songbird habitat. Initially overwhelmed - Joe eventually learns to live compatibly with the natural world. Human communication - in the form of the written word - the spoken word - and the shared cup of coffee gives him the power to face life's challenges one cup at a time. Julia Alvarez was born - as she puts it by accident - in New York City - but shortly thereafter her family moved back to their native Dominican Republic. She spent her childhood there until her family was forced to flee due to political pressure. Her first book of poems - Homecoming - debuted in 1984. Her first novel How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents was published in 1990 - followed four years later by In the Time of the Butterflies which became a National Book Award finalist. Her most recent novel is In the Name of Salomon. She is a writer-in-residence at Middlebury College. She lives with her husband - Bill Eichner - in the Vermont countryside - but maintains ties to her native homeland through their organic coffee farm (Alta Gracia) - established to demonstrate the ideas and principles of sustainable living. Belkis Ramí?rez - who contributed the woodcuts for A Cafecito Story - is one of the Dominican Republic's most celebrated artists. For more information - visit Global Exchange's Fair Trade Coffee campaign.
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