John Phillip Santos
May 5 2010 7:00 pm
May 5 2010 8:30 pm
John Phillip Santos
John Phillip Santos returned to 
his hometown of San
Antonio, Texas, after twenty-one years in New York. He was (and
remains) a freelance filmmaker, producer, journalist and writer whose
work focuses on issues of media, culture and ethnic identity. His
articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times,
among numerous other publications. A former executive producer and
director of new program development for Thirteen/WNET, Santos also
produced over 40 documentaries for CBS and PBS, two of them nominated
for Emmy Awards.
In 1997, Santos joined the Ford Foundation as an officer in the Media, Arts and Culture Program, where he handled the Media Projects Fund and worked with new media technologies, especially as they pertain to developing countries.
Santos was the first Mexican-American Rhodes scholar to study at
Oxford. He holds degrees in English Literature and Language from Oxford
University and in Philosophy and Literature from the University of
Notre Dame. He is a recipient of the Academy of American Poets' Prize
at Notre Dame and the Oxford Prize for fiction. Santos is currently a
Visiting Fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at
Brown University. Santos' 1999 family memoir, Places Left Unfinished at
the Time of Creation (Viking / Penguin) was a finalist for the National
Book Award. In it, Santos told the story of one Mexican family -- his father's -- set within the
larger story of Mexico itself. In his beautifully written new book, The Farthest Home Is In An Empire of Fire he
tells of how another family -- this time, his mother's -- erased and forgot
over time their ancient origins in Spain.
Weaving together a highly original mix of autobiography, conquest
history, elegy, travel, family remembrance, and time travelling
narration, Santos offers an unforgettable testimony to this calling and
describes a lifelong quest to find the missing chronicle of his
mother's family, one that takes him to various locations in South Texas
and Mexico, to New York City, to Spain, and ultimately to the Middle
East. Blending genres brilliantly, Santos raises profound questions
about whether we can ever find our true homeland and what we can learn
from our treasured, shared cultural legacies.
Listen to Santos read from his memoir on KSTX 89.1 San Antonio.
Location:
- Street:
- Brazos Bookstore
- Additional:
- 2421 Bissonnet St
- City:
- Houston ,
- Province:
- Texas
- Postal Code:
- 77005-1451
- Country:
- United States
