"We live in a world where many live by the “what have you done for me lately?” philosophy. Love, care, and concern is based on what a person has done for them, who that person is, or for what they can get out of a situation. We are self-centered in our love as a society. Against this kind of love comes unconditional love. It is the kind of love that expresses itself to everyone, no matter who they are, no matter what they have done, and expects nothing in return. When Jesus Christ walked the earth as the God/man this was the kind of love he exhibited to others. His death on the cross is God’s ultimate expression of unconditional love. As we live Christian lives, the call is upon us to practice unconditional love just as God does. This generation desperately needs to experience genuine, unselfish, Godly love. In UNCONDITIONAL, the author chronicles his journey seeking to practice unconditional love, sometimes successfully, sometimes struggling. May his journey inspire the reader to be God’s example of His unconditional love.

Winner of the MLA's Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for an outstanding book published in English in the field of Latin American and Spanish literatures and culture (1999) For Anglos, the pulsing beats of salsa, merengue, and bolero are a compelling expression of Latino/a culture, but few outsiders comprehend the music's implications in larger social terms. Frances R. Aparicio places this music in context by combining the approaches of musicology and sociology with literary, cultural, Latino, and women's studies. She offers a detailed genealogy of Afro-Caribbean music in Puerto Rico, comparing it to selected Puerto Rican literary texts, then looks both at how Latinos/as in the US have used salsa to reaffirm their cultural identities and how Anglos have eroticized and depoliticized it in their adaptations. Aparicio's detailed examination of lyrics shows how these songs articulate issues of gender, desire, and conflict, and her interviews with Latinas/os reveal how they listen to salsa and the meanings they find in it. What results is a comprehensive view "that deploys both musical and literary texts as equally significant cultural voices in exploring larger questions about the power of discourse, gender relations, intercultural desire, race, ethnicity, and class."

This book provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art account of the field, reaffirming Iberian Studies as a dynamic and evolving discipline offering promising areas of future research. It is an essential tool for research in Iberian Studies.

There follows an up-to-date bibliography of the plays, from editions contemporary with the author through those published posthumously; it includes translations of the dramas into many languages, as well as a selection of critical studies worldwide."--Jacket.