The Tranquilo Traveler
The Tranquilo Traveler is a celebration of voluntourism, slow travel, and other interesting ways to see the world. Travel writer and award- winning Moon Handbooks author Joshua Berman created The Tranquilo Travel as a resource for world trippers and international volunteers, a window to the author’s travels in Nicaragua, Belize, and beyond, and an update of his books and articles.
Radio interview with Silvio Sirias, a Nica author living in Panama who writes novels in English about Nicaragua
Silvio Sirias’s first novel, Bernardo and the Virgin (Northwestern University Press, 2007), takes the reader on a phenomenal journey to the village of Cuapa in Chontales, Nicaragua. The book fictionalizes the story of a campesino to whom the Holy Virgin appeared in 1980. Sirias’s new book, MEET ME UNDER THE CEIBA, from Arte Publico Press, which won the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize, is also a work of fiction, but based on a true crime that occurred in 1999 and on the very real intolerance of Nicaraguan culture to homosexuality: “Everyone knew that wealthy land owner Don Roque Ramírez wanted Adela Rugama dead. And on Christmas Day, Adela disappeared. It was two months before her murdered body was found.”
Sirias has a way of bringing everyday Nicaraguan life to Englishs-speaking readers in an easy, accurate way, which is enjoyable—and nostalgic for those of us who have lived there (In fact, CEIBA takes place in and near my Peace Corps training village of Pio XII).
Here is an extended (45 minutes!) radio interview with Silvio Sirias on KUHF about his background, about Nicaraguan life, about gay rights (and lack thereof) in Latin America, and about the characters and story of MEET ME UNDER THE CEIBA. Stay tuned for more about this wonderful book. In the meantime, view the book trailer for CEIBA here, and find it on Amazon.com here.

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Pages
BY JOSHUA BERMAN
Categories
- 0. Volunteering Abroad
- 1. Round-the-World Honeymoon
- Belize
- Book Review
- Colorado
- El Salvador
- Fun with Maps
- Guatemala
- Mexico
- Nicaragua
- Outward Bound Wilderness
- Spanish Language Schools
- Teaching
- Travel
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- Travel Writing: Guidebooks, News, & Resources
- Wildland Fire
- World Music Review
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- Eric Gauger
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- Lee & Sachi
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- Vagablogging
- Thirteen Months
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- World Hum
- Ze Frank: Mind Trips
- Dancin' Matt
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- stories about living abroad