PHILIPSBURG:---‘Finally, Overseas Bloodline is published in Spanish, the language of the main character in the book, Adelaida Morales, my beloved grandmother’, says Loekie Morales, author of this book. The title in Spanish is ‘La Sangre Llama’ and I am most proud to have it published as a hardcover version, useful for comprehensive reading in Spanish.
Overseas Bloodline was originally published in 2002 in Dutch as ‘Bloedlijn Overzee’ and was for years on the B-list for Dutch literature in high schools in Holland. In 2012 it was translated into English and published together with an Audiobook. Just recently it was also translated and published by the Aruban department of Culture and Education into Papiamento as ‘Sanger ta Yama’, the local language in Aruba. The Papiamento version is only available in Aruba. The English version is available at the Shipwreck shops and at Beyond Kultura Events Foundation.
Overseas Bloodline is the real-life story of three sisters who found each other again after seventy years. Morales did what several family members told her not to do in 1990. She packed her things and travelled to the western edge of Venezuela, a country she only knew from tales, to find her roots. Mainly siblings of her grandmother, whom her granny had lost in life for 70 years. Morales ended up with several surprises on her quest for the past.
The story is a powerful passionate one of the quest to find not only her roots but join a family separated by poverty and lack of communication, that drove them apart. The author describes the ups and downs during her search for her grandmother’s family and the moments of hope and fear in her book. Those are interwoven with letters, flashbacks, socio-cultural stories, wherein the Dutch, Venezuelans and Curaçao-Caribbean culture are being compared from the people’s point of view. Overseas Bloodline and its Spanish version La Sangre Llama are available at Shipwreck shops and at Beyond Kultura Events Foundation at 5271223. For the listeners, there is an audiobook of the English version Overseas Bloodline available.
Morales ‘I intend to launch this Spanish version in Curaçao and Cuba upcoming February. Later this year, Morales said. She will also start soon with the production of an Audiobook project of La Sangre Llama, in Spanish as well.
In the meantime, Gina Ramsbottom of Aruba’s Department of Education and the Designer of the book cover, Bethsarim Briñez Albertsz, have gotten their copies of La Sangre Llama.