Angelo Solera

The Baltimore Sun

Liz Atwood

[ June 1, 2008]

Angelo Solera was born in Spain and immigrated to the United States at the age of 17 in search of the American Dream. What he found instead were low-paying and dangerous jobs, a failed marriage and cocaine addiction. While in drug treatment, he became aware of the lack of services for Latinos in Baltimore, prompting him to become a community activist and a health-care advocate and to make a run for City Council. His struggles culminated in a return to Spain, a 400-mile pilgrimage and now a new book and CD, The Journey. There will be a book signing and video presentation at 6 p.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday at Creative Alliance in East Baltimore. Additional information can be found at his Web site: angelosjourney.com.

His three favorite books were those given to him by friends. "The Greatest Salesman in the World" by Og Mandino

This was given to me by my first sponsor in recovery. ... It has a powerful message about life and what it is to be human.

"El Soldado de la Luz" (The Warrior of the Light)
by Paulo Coelho (Spanish Edition)

This book showed me that I was not crazy or alone; it showed me that what I was doing needed to be done. It also gave me valuable information that helped me to prepare myself for the many battles I had to face.

"The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle Given to me by my good friend Kristin Ortiz, at a time in my life where I was dealing with some emotional issues caused by a bad intimate relationship.

Immigrant embracing America: ‘It’s a tough journey for all of us’

The Examiner

Michael Olesker

[June 2, 2008]

I’m waiting for the next misguided patriot to tell me about keeping immigrants out of America, and the pressing need to make English the official American language because these modern foreigners for some reason don’t want to embrace the English language the way our own immigrant grandparents did.

And then I want to introduce them to my friend Angelo Solera, who took a one-way street from a boyhood in Spain to the streets of East Baltimore and has a newly published autobiography — in English — that makes its debut this week at the Creative Alliance on Eastern Avenue.

And then I want to introduce them to a bunch of American kids who just marched across my television screen. Their names are Hernandez and Deng, and Grimaldo and Gunawan, and Ursua and Shekhar and Aouad.

Their parents arrived here from every distant corner of the Earth. You think these families aren’t interested in learning English? You think they don’t want to embrace the full American experience? Then tell me why these are the kids, with all these funny-sounding last names, who marched across our TV screens last week as finalists in the National Spelling Bee.

But first let’s talk about my friend Angelo, who arrived here 28 years ago, when he was 17, from Salamanca, Spain. Angelo spoke no English. He did housework for $2 an hour for German immigrants who spoke only broken English. They spoke with hand gestures and nods and mutual patience. They were all inching their way toward America.

Angelo lived in a friend’s apartment in the 2900 block of St. Paul Street and one day took the wrong bus home. He was lost and didn’t know how to ask where he was. He saw a sign. It said “One Way.” He thought it was the name of the street.

“I thought, ‘All the streets got the same name here?’ ” he said.

Now he thinks of it as a metaphor: his eagerness to take the most direct route toward a sense of belonging.

Every newcomer wants to belong. You look at those kids in the spelling bee last week and know it right away. The names alone tell you: Quezada and Kao, Caballes and Tsai, Malayappan and Janhari, Kangeyan and Nakamoto, whose families embraced the language a syllable at a time and passed this on to their children.

And you listen to Solera, who learned the language bit by bit, and found a little work here and a little there, until he became a community activist, and then a liaison between City Hall and Baltimore’s growing Latino population. He was vice chairman of the Mayor’s Committee on Hispanic Affairs under Kurt Schmoke, and Hispanic liaison for the health commissioner under Martin O’Malley.

A few years ago, he ran for a City Council seat out of East Baltimore. Some would call it an unsuccessful campaign, because he lost. They miss the point. It was part of the journey toward the full America.

His new book is about some of this. It’s a 245-page autobiography called “The Journey: El Camino.” (Visit angelosjourney.com.) It’s about a literal journey Solera took in 2005, when he returned to Spain to see his family. While there, he walked a 400-mile pilgrimage across the country.

The book is about that journey — and about the larger journeys, from Spain to America, and the journey to find himself.

“Translating emotions from Spanish to English gave me language and cultural challenges,” he was saying the other day, lunching at Jimmy’s Restaurant in Fells Point. “I just held the pen and listened through my soul.”

His son, Juan Antonio Solera, 22, who just graduated Howard University’s journalism program, edited the manuscript. Yeah, Juan must be one more child of an immigrant who doesn’t care about the English language, and doesn’t care about embracing the full America.

Like those kids in the final round of the National Spelling Bee last week, with the names Pineda and Zung, and Janhari and Malayappan, and Grimaldo and Vavilala.

“It’s a tough journey for all of us,” Solera said. “We’re all human, and we all want to be somebody and feel like we belong.” He comes from Spain, but now he belongs to America. He’s written the whole story in the English language he has embraced.

Just like those American kids in the finals of the national spelling bee, whose names are Tsai and Guzman, and Chung and Nawaz, and Chatrath and Ursua. They come from families that embraced the language a syllable at a time, and America was embraced simultaneously.

Angelo Solera cuenta su vida Activista comunitario hace realidad su sueño de escribir un libro

Washington Hispanic

Mitzi Macias

[06/06/08]

Con una historia de vida llena de aventuras, el activista comunitario de origen español Angelo Solera, contra toda adversidad, logró hacer realidad su sueño de escribir un libro en inglés.
De esta manera acaba de sacar a la luz la publicación titulada “The Journey” (“El camino”), en la cual no sólo cuenta su vida sino, todas las experiencias que tuvo que vivir como inmigrante en Estados Unidos y como adicto a las drogas, así como también su viaje de regreso a su tierra natal. Con toda esta gama de experiencias, Angelo Solera reflexiona en su libro y compara las diferentes situaciones que le tocaron vivir y cómo influenciaron en su forma de ver el mundo.

Fue después de vivir por más de 23 años en Estados Unidos que Solera decide tomarse un año sabático para reflexionar, y en ese momento decide escribir un libro sobre su vida. Las circunstancias sin embargo, lo hicieron emprender un peregrinaje de 400 millas camino a Santiago de Compostela en España, durante el cual recorrió pueblos, montañas y ciudades. Este “camino” también es relatado en el libro que le tomó tres años para finalizarlo. A pesar de que el inglés no es el primer idioma de Solera, escribió el libro en ese idioma y próximamente presentará la versión en español.

Solera llegó a Estados Unidos a la edad de 17 años y estableció su residencia en Baltimore. Como todo inmigrante realizó todos los trabajos que pudo para poder sobrevivir; desde construcción hasta ayudante de cocina. Con el trascurrir del tiempo empezó a andar por malos caminos, pero con la ayuda de su familia y fuerza de voluntad, logró superar esa etapa de su vida. Fue durante ese periodo que Solera se dio cuenta de la gran cantidad de barreras que tenían los inmigrantes para obtener servicios. Por tal razón se convirtió en un activista comunitario defensor de los derechos de los inmigrantes en el área de Baltimore.
Para una copia del libro ingresar a www.angelosjourney.com

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