Special to the News
“Told from the particular bi-cultural and bilingual perspective of a Rio Grande Valley Native, ‘Memories in Green’ distills the fear, anger, grief, exhilaration and defiance that combatants from across the U.S. experience in Vietnam. There are many excellent books about Vietnam. None that I have read packs so much lived experience in so little space. This slender book will lodge itself permanently into your psyche – by evoking with piercing simplicity, how permanently Vietnam is edged into Beto Conde’s distinctively South-Texas heart, mind, and body.” – Lyon Rathbun, PhD, UTRGV.
The Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center will be hosting a book reading and signing. Local authors Beto Conde and Al Garcia will be reading from their recent books: Where The Mesquite Tree Grows: Growing Up Along the Rio Grande—An Anthology by Garcia and Memories in Green, A Mind’s Fifty Year Journey from Drafted to PTSD: Reflections from Vietnam by Conde.
The event will be held at Getsemani Presbyterian Church on 140 Diaz Street on Thursday, Feb. 28 at 6:45 p.m.
“’Where the Mesquite Grows’ is a poignant and riveting journey through the thoughts and recollections of a Mexican American young man who, like others of his generation, searched for a purpose, meaning, and self-discovery. The journey begins in the cotton fields along the Rio Grande and follows the author through the 1960s cultural revolution, into the jungles of Vietnam, and finally to his return to his roots and his legacy along the Rio Grande.”
Al Garcia and Beto Conde are Vietnam veterans and will read from their recently published books. Garcia was born in Edinburg and is a former military journalist and legal assistant. He served in the U.S. Army from 1968 to 1971 as a combat journalist in Vietnam and as a military journalist at Fort Carson, Colorado. While in Vietnam, he traveled throughout the Mekong Delta, which gave him unfettered access to the realities of the War and the effects it was having on the American men and women in uniform.
Beto Conde was born in San Benito in the barrio of El Jardin. He was drafted in 1967, and after four months of Basic and Advanced Infantry Training in Fort Polk, Louisiana he was sent to Vietnam where he spent thirteen months before being discharged as a Specialist Fourth Class. His military career lasted 19 months. Conde earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Pan American University-Brownsville. He published American Dream by the River (2017) and We Were Raza (2018).
The event is free and open to the public with doors opening at 5:45 p.m.
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