This Week in the Voice: An Immigrant's Heart

In this week's Village Voice, a (literally) bleeding-heart story: Julia Amparo-Alvarado, an illegal Guatemalan immigrant who escaped her country's internal strife for a better life, isn't well. The figurative nature of enlarged and battered heart manifested in the physical form. And now, because she's an immigrant, she's going to die from it. Shefali Kulkarni looks into how one New Yorker's blood moves in this week's Voice cover story, An Immigrant's Heart.

Elsewhere in News, legendary Voice columnist Nat Hentoff writes about the scenario that is police chief Ray "Stop and Frisk" Kelly being a contender of any kind for mayor. Tom Robbins writes about another stripe of shakedown expert: a bar in the East Village getting a full-on old-school mafia extortion. And Michael Musto encourages the shelling out of money uptown hand over fist everywhere from Broadway to Drag Bars. Obviously.

If you've got the cash, there might be better ways to drink (or eat) it, though. This week, in Food: Robert Sietsema puts the figure-four leg lock on the Upper East Side's Mexican wrestling-themed "micro-eatery" Cascabel Taqueria, while Sarah DiGregorio checks out two new Southern-themed restaurants: Seersucker in Carroll Gardens and Peaches HotHouse in Bed-Stuy. On name and location alone, guess which one is better. No, really: Guess.

But you can't judge all books by their covers, or names, or songs, as we learn this week in Film the hard way: pop-music's Wall of Sound maestro Phil Spector produced brilliant, beautiful, poppy love songs. And then killed someone. And did nothing about that hair. J. Hoberman takes in a new documentary about the legendary producer, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector. Elsewhere, Ella Taylor looks at High Art director Lisa Cholodenko's (traditional) lesbian DomCom, The Kids Are All Right, while Aaron Hillis takes in the Japan Society's Japan Cuts, which he considers a "vital" event, and Melissa Anderson gives Walk the Line director Taylor Hackford and wife's new film, Love Ranch, a regrettable visit.

In Music, we learn the lesson not to judge one by their exterior ever more, as Voice music editor Rob Harvilla looks at the "brilliant stupidity" of R&B duo The-Dream. Meanwhile, Jesse Serwer tries to understand the dearth of dancehall in New York right now (shocker: It's because of the volatile political climate in Jamaica) while Theon Weber tries to understand the calculated rebellion of Miley Cyrus and Tom Hull checks out the latest advances (or retrogressing) in jazz.

And finally, in Arts, Martha Schwendener checks out Brooklyn space Smack Mellon's "organic produce of the art world" in their "Condensations of the Social" exhibition, Voice theater critic Michael Feingold checks out Lincoln Center's new A.R. Gurney play, The Grand Manner, Alexis Soloski checks out a rarely mounted Ayn Rand play at 59E59, and Miriam Felton-Dansky gets caught under the emotional whitewater of On the Levee.

All that, plus more Music, Art, Theater, Film, Books, Dance, Restaurants, Michael Musto, Free Will Astrology, and Dan Savage. And then some.

Here at The Village Voice, we understand that a good show and a great extortion are both New York traditions ... we can probably do without. Not only do we try to give you a fair cover for what's inside, but we won't shake you down for it, either.

[fkamer@villagevoice.com]