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Beyond Boundaries: Networking and Workshopping in Lake Como, Italy, Part IIGuest post
by Thelma T. Reyna.
Here's a link to Part I of Thelma's Guest post on Melinda Palacio's Friday column. That column opens like this:
I was invited by one of my publishers to attend a national/international conference they co-sponsored at Lake Como last month. This “Abroad Writers Conference” (AWC) was designed as advanced learning for published authors from the U.S. Their “faculty” included 4 Pultizer Prize winners and 2 National Book Award recipients teaching intensive one-week workshops. Embracing this rare opportunity, I headed to Lake Como in my first overseas networking, workshopping, poetry reading experience. . . .
Debut Reading from My New Book
My poetry reading at Lake Como was a highlight for me. How often do we have the opportunity to “debut” a new book in Europe? Instead of reading poems from my two chapbooks (all the poetry readers read from their chapbooks), I chose my new full-length collection—Rising, Falling, All of Us. I also purposely selected poems that my workshop fellows had not seen. It was my way of breaking from the norm.
Comprised of published poets and other authors, it was a tough audience. Pulitzer Prize winning poet Rae Armantrout sat in the front row to my left. Next to her was Paul Harding, a Pulitzer novelist. The famed poet Nikky Finney sat farther back. One of the conference co-sponsors, editor and publisher of Kentucky’s Finishing Line Press, Leah Maines, sat in the front row to my right. For about 20-25 minutes, I shared my poems about famous and infamous people, real and make-believe, dead and alive: my “persona poems,” for this new book is a gallery of snapshots of people we know or wish we did, people we’ve read or heard about. My opening poem was appropriate for being in Italy, I told the audience: “Pope Francis.”
With much relief, I can say that the audience was engaged, kind, and receptive.
 |
Reading in the lovely, architraved room of the Villa Galliata. |
 |
My Poetry Workshop colleagues,
with Rae (in black jacket) in the center. |
The next AWC is scheduled for Spain (
http://abroadwritersconference.com/). Though I had never heard of these AWC’s, I learned that Como was the tenth. Others were held in France, Ireland, Thailand, and other exotic places. Sometimes some of the same top authors (“faculty”) teach the 15 intensive hours of each workshop. There is, thus, a cyclical consistency, with faculty and attendees making repeat appearances.
Regardless of where other AWC’s are held, I hope there will be greater ethnic diversity in attendees as well as faculty. At Como, Nikky Finney, a divine African-American poet and National Book Award winner, taught a workshop. Of approximately 50 attendees, I met 3 African-Americans and the 2 Asian-Americans in my poetry group. As stated before, I never saw other Latinos.
A colleague of mine believes that more ethnic minority authors are not involved in international venues such as AWC primarily for economic reasons. This may be so. AWC presenters, however, are subsidized; and this is where diversity can be injected into AWC as a jumpstart. Imagine if our Latino heavyweights, especially our Pulitzer Prize winners (See
http://hispanicreader.com/2012/04/15/latinos-and-the-pulitzer-prize/) were included as faculty. Or if Asian-Americans, such as Amy Tan, taught workshops along with African-American authors. The more diversity, the better.
Caveats
There are those who’ll say, “If Latinos are not in attendance, interest in them would be moot.” Perhaps. But if it is beneficial for all authors to have visibility in international settings, to build national networks for learning, collegiality, and visibility purposes, then a means must be found for Latino authors to do this. Perhaps this is a discussion for La Bloga or other literary forums. How can authors of color obtain necessary resources for enhancing our work, our careers on a broader stage? Can there be “common pots” of financial support, for example, that are identified, created, and nurtured? Or do these exist already? How can awareness of these be expanded and leveraged?
I know that, personally, going to Lake Como was worth my investment of time, money, and effort. I believe that, for months if not years to come, my experiences there will impact my work somehow. For example, I am still in email contact with several friends I met there, and at least two book projects in which I’ll be involved are under consideration.
Writing—as is true of any other complex, serious undertaking—requires ongoing economic sustenance. True, all authors, except the big names, struggle to an extent. And AWC is not a be-all, end-all resource. But we can see what is and work toward what can be…for greater benefits for greater numbers.
* * *
 |
| Photo by Jesus Treviño |
Thelma T. Reyna, Ph.D., is the author of four books, including
Rising, Falling, All of Us—issued in summer 2014. Reyna’s short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in anthologies, literary journals, textbooks, blogs, and regional print media off and on for over 30 years. Visit www.ThelmaReyna.com
Ten On the Fifth of the Eighth: August On-line FloricantoMark Lipman, Odilia Galván Rodríguez, Devreaux Baker, Ralph Haskins Elizondo, David Romero, Antonio Arenas, Iris De Anda, Josefa Molina, Gerardo Pacheco Matus, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo
Four years ago when La Bloga and the Facebook group, née
Poets Responding to SB1070, launched this ongoing series of On-line Floricanto readings, energies and passions drove hundreds of poets to fashion thousands of poems, giving them an audience via postings on
Poets Responding to SB1070: Poetry of Resistance, the group's current identity. From those, the Moderators nominated five poems to appear in On-line Floricanto.
Moderators of the internet group, founded by Francisco X. Alarcón, nowadays name five exemplary works for monthly publication in La Bloga's On-line Floricanto. The volume of work entering the literary churn had been so ample that On-line Floricanto went weekly.
In recent days, poets' voices rise again. Sparked by world events and increasingly empowered racism at home, a deluge of poetry floods the Moderators. Reflecting the upswell of expression, this month the
Poets Responding Moderators advance ten voices, several of them familiar from those heard in poetry's initial throes of disgust at Arizona's state-sponsored hate.
"The Border Crossed Us" By Mark Lipman
"Collecting Thoughts from the Universe" By Odilia Galván Rodríguez
"Ten Aspects of The World Without War" By Devreaux Baker
"Murrieta’s Morning Sun" by Ralph Haskins Elizondo
"The Ladder - Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas" By David Romero
"Sin Fronteras" By Antonio Arenas
"Here" By Iris De Anda
"La Llorona" By Josefa Molina
"The Children of La Frontera" By Gerardo Pacheco Matus
"The Boys of Summer" By Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo
The Border Crossed Us
By Mark Lipman
I step onto land
where my ancestors
planted our family tree
over 1,000 years ago.
I have known no other sand
between my toes
under my feet
this is my only home.
One day though
a stranger arrived
sat down at our table
drank our wine
ate our bread
raped our women
burnt our village
then declared me illegal.
The color of my skin
the language on my tongue
the god that I chose to believe in
demonized in order to justify their cruelty.
The freedom that I enjoyed
my right to self-determination
gone, victim to yet another
military occupation.
My peace,
simply a broken olive branch
cut from the tree they tore down.
My home,
rubble, beneath the tracks
of their bulldozers.
All I have ever had
all that I’ve ever known
all, taken from me.
My blood,
turned into their gold.
My heart,
broken from generations
of lies and betrayals.
If you cut me, do I not bleed?
Crushed, beneath the boot of technology
by persons with no soul or body to touch
with no heart to feel
eyes, blinded by hatred
ears, closed to any reason
mouths, shut out of fear
comfortably tucked away in their beds
while human beings die in the streets
under the batons and artillery shells
of a militarized police state
Wrapping oneself in a flag
worse yet, a religion
while making excuses for genocide
sanctioning the murder of children.
News actors continue to blame the victims
force feeding us lies, calling us terrorists
because we were born onto the land that they coveted.
Who is the real enemy,
the one who believes in something different than you,
or the one uses what you believe in to change who you are?
There is no escaping the soul staring back in the mirror
regardless of the shifting lines on some map
human rights have no borders.
Collecting Thoughts from the Universe
By Odilia Galván Rodríguez
What do the stars say
about children dying
or is it their spirits
twinkling down
big smiles on their faces
there's no suffering there
At the border
people act less than human
frighten traumatized children
in yellow school buses
their small faces pressed
against the windows
they see
the gnashing of teeth
hear shouts of rage.
What kind of war
is being waged here
these children fleeing war
fleeing death
looking for a place to dream
or looking for what's left
of their family
that's already flown away
for fear or promise
We wage wars
support criminal
heads of State
murderous coups
genocide
the false war on drugs kind
the raining down bombs
on innocents kind
the scaring of innocent children
riding on yellow school buses kind.
And who do we help
does all this war make life better
who is the real enemy
in a land
where one percent of people
owns more wealth
than the rest of us put together and
can we be put together again
Ten Aspects of the World without War
By Devreaux Baker
This is the morning soldiers dismantle guns
And abandoned tanks become nesting grounds
For cranes and starlings
This is the morning that trees are planted in the ruins
Of village streets and bunkers become seed exchange
Stations for non-gmo farmers
This is the morning that prayer flags fly
From the highest buildings in cities
That ring the world with chants or songs
This is the morning that snipers learn
The ancient recipes for baking bread
And distribute their loaves for free
This is the morning long tables are set
In the middle of rubble strewn fields
And musicians gather to welcome everyone
This is the night where stars are recognized
In the deepest recesses of space
As a saving grace
And men, women and children
Drift into sleep where there are no longer
The faces of war…but only the sound of wind
In trees, or water forming waves
Against some forgotten
Shore
Murrieta’s Morning Sun
By Ralph Haskins Elizondo
Murrieta’s morning sun had beamed
with hope for hospitality and shelter.
Greyhound buses filled with teddy bears
and dolls drove into town today.
Little eyes peered out from tinted windows
searching for their welcome party.
Instead the darkened crowds had gathered
blocking out all rays of hope.
Their signs and chants eclipsed
the chance for children.
Buses stopped and turned around,
every child a delicate piñata
filled with fear, ready to be broken
with the stick of hatred.
And as the day wore down
the heavens blushed in shame.
Sickened by the hateful scene below,
the mourning sun plunged off the western sky,
it spilled its darkest red upon the land
and died. There are no children left
to mourn Murrieta’s morning sun.
The Ladder – Anastasio Hernández-Rojas
By David Romero
This poem was written during a session of Last Words: Giving Victims a Voice.
Tijuana
Is a ladder
San Diego
Is a ladder
My name is Anastasio
I know all about climbing ladders
I’m a painter
A roofer
They tell me
Coyotes or police
One day
I will fall off
In screams and shadow
Crash
In bones and blood
I smile
You’ll only fall
If you look down
Will only look down
If you’re too afraid
To climb
I’ve never been afraid
I know all about climbing ladders
I’m a painter
A roofer
This life is a ladder
Tijuana is a ladder
The desert is a rung
Parched lips are a rung
Dry throat is a rung
Blistered feet are a rung
Then
Hours waiting for work are a rung
The bosses are a rung
Cheap pay is a rung
ICE
La migra
La policia
Rungs
But between the cold steel
Is a view
Each view
More beautiful
Than the one before
My kids go to college
They find work
In the shade
Never have to spend a day
Climbing ladders in the sun
I buy my wife a car
One that doesn’t immediately break down
She puts her feet to the pedal to visit her cousin
It runs
A new washing machine
A dryer
They run
For the first time
My wife
Every child
They run
Around
Under one roof
This house
This freshly painted house
Our house
Shines like the afternoon
It rests at the top of the ladder
I can see it
I can breathe it
I can taste it
Like when I rise from my work
And rest on my haunches
Look out over a roof
See the tiles
Near completion
Like a glass jar of money
Almost full
I can see it
I feel it
The border is a ladder
And I am getting closer
With each job
Each crossing
Even at night
I will climb
My hands will grasp each rung
Because I have to
Because I am almost there
My hands
“Hands up!”
Grasp air
“Hands up!”
I fall
“Hands up!”
My hands reach out
"Hands up!"
The ladder is gone
“Hands up!”
I hit
"Hands up!"
They surround
On the desert floor
More than a dozen
Black uniforms
Shouting figures
Malevolent faces
Illuminated by the glow of tasers
Striking like rattlesnakes
They sting and bite
I cringe and cry
Each kick is a rung
Each baton is a rung
Each kick is a rung
Each baton is a rung
Each kick is a rung
Each baton is a rung
So many, many rungs
Bones and blood
Somewhere far in the distance
I see San Diego
But where
Has the ladder gone?
Sin Fronteras
By Antonio Arenas
Sin fronteras caminamos por el mundo,
Gritando a los cuatro vientos,
Que viva la paz entre hermanos,
Y liberando nuestros sentimientos.
Libertad de pensamientos,
Libertad de expresión,
Libertad de correr bien fuerte,
Por la emoción,
Como vuelan libres las aves,
Cantando un estribillo,
De paz y amor,
Y Teniendo de coro a un pueblo,
Que canta con el corazón,
Queremos paz en la tierra,
Sin fronteras en ninguna región,
Sin discriminación de razas,
Ni convicción política, ni religión.
Sin fronteras jugamos al fútbol,
Sin fronteras nos inventamos los juegos,
Sin fronteras escuchamos la música,
Que viva el idioma de los pueblos.
Regresan las aves a sus nidos,
Porque no podemos regresar a nuestra tierra,
Si es una tierra de hombres libres,
Un manantial de paz y belleza,
Donde se respira un aire puro,
Que no tiene fronteras.
Here
By Iris De Anda
here we are
after years
crossing borders
wings & wire
monarch butterfly
flutter over under
forest trees
storm clouds
arid deserts
spring flowers
hope in heart
future in fingertips
truth in tongue
I AM dreaming
this here now
this you I
this us them
we are all together
there was no time
no space
no borders
only jade spirals
obsidian death
coral life
growing blooming
touching creating
sleeping awakening
sighs
luz consciousness
la Mujer
rises morning sun
roja, amarillo, naranja
refleja reflects
a mirror
deep ocean waves
profundo azul
everywhere floating
lotus crying
daughters of desert
Mother Earth drum
mud feet
clay dance
bruja guerrera
lagrimas lapis lazuli
copal fire
overflowing
after years
here we are
La LLorona/ CihuacoatlBy Josefa MolinaLet me drop the withered bodies of my young
at your doorstep, children eaten
by the Beast or left to die in deserts
next to bone dry water tanks shot full
of holes by local cowboys with
delusions they were sheriff.
Let me drop my dying children at your feet,
praying for refuge from the coyotes that follow,
that you've fed, that salivate
over the fear-filled scent of frightened children.
Coyotes call, promising home, then slit
small, smooth, brown throats and devour their prey.
Let me drop my ghost children at your border,
hoping for compassion in a land where full~ bellied,
ranting "Patriots" want to send them back
to the slaughter they've risked life and limb to escape.
"Patriots" cursing and spitting out jagged shards
of hate that dismember with a familiar terror.
I howl with anguished cries as I mourn
my sons and daughters. If only I could feed them
with my withered breast and let them drink salty tears,
I might save them. Instead, I'm left to wail
each dread full night, as I gather up the remnants
of their souls and softly call them each by precious name.
Copyright: 2014
Josefa Molina, PhD
All rights reserved.
The Children of La Frontera
By Gerardo Pacheco Matuswe are the children of la frontera
left to live, to rot and to dream en el desierto
day and night, we follow the old coyote’s shadow
through this dry world of cacti and rattlesnakes
en el desierto, the dead speak to us
disguised with our father and mother’s voices---
we listen to their feeble hearts
beat as soon as they tell us
the old coyote left them to die
alone and thirsty en el desierto
some dead children smile too glad to see us
others cry and shriek like crows
too fearful to see the old coyote
guide us through this wasteland
day and night, we follow the old coyote
through this labyrinth of bones and shadows
hoping we will live
free en el gabacho
we wear La Virgen de Guadalupe’s medal
for protection
so mother Death knows
we are the children of la frontera
day and night, we wait en el desierto
chewing and gnawing at dry cactus roots
until la migra breaks our spell…
day and night, we wait for la chansa
de cruzar la linea, no matter what…
as we are the children of la frontera;
The Boys of Summer
By Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo
In Carpinteria, California a preteen boy in red shorts
runs down a clouded over beach to play at junior lifeguard.
He is lost in a sea of boys and girls just like him
all smiling and learning lessons on how to be safe.
In Brooks County, Texas a boy with a note pinned to his shirt
addressed to an aunt in New Jersey
wrestles with his mother’s hopes pinned to this his shoulders.
Death pins his dehydrated and cramping leg muscles together.
On a beach in Gaza four cousins play soccer.
One calls Messi while another calls Neymar before the injury.
The score is tied. They set up penalty kicks on the edge
0 Comments on Beyond Boundaries Part II. Ten On the 5th of the 8th: On-line Floricanto as of 8/5/2014 3:40:00 AM
Guest columnist
Xicana Travelougue: Week 1
Sarah Rafael García
Ireland was one of Papi’s travel tales. Although Papi himself never traveled beyond Mexico and the United States, he infused my mind with limitless opportunities to cross over different borders.
“Mira mija, you’re American, tu vas tener la oportunidad de conocer ese país. Imagínate, one day you’ll go there!” His ink-stained fingertips tapped on the newspaper page that told of some green countryside in Ireland. Papi worked in the print room of the OC Register for 10 years; along the stories printed he also shared the lives of the other immigrants who worked with him. Needless to say, Vietnam, Samoa and Colombia are also countries on my travel list and he is the reason I share my stories.
Finally, at the age of 40, here I am. Writing in Ireland. “Si Papi, I know, I know you were right. It’s more than I could’ve imagined back then.” But from this point on, I have to learn to live and write for myself. I have chosen to present a final piece to him in a country that struggles with preserving their identity—as many of us do.
I’m in Cork, Ireland on a study abroad experience through early August. I look forward to sharing this country with you in the weeks ahead.
Beyond Timoleague
For Papi
Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
The odor of musk resurrects the past.
I turn my head for an escape,
agony unearthing the stones at my feet.
Wish it away! Wish it away.
Find solace in the damp grass.
Inhale until the malady subsides,
fill all the crevices within.
It’s not even past!
The clucking of life,
Cacrack, cacrack.
Cwaw, cwaw.
Rising, quietly, misty view ahead.
Shiny mudflats adorned with winged spirits,
savoring sweetness of grassy hues.
The buzzing at my head,
the earth pressed in my palms.
In such stillness, life goes on.
Behind me,
silence echoes—swaying to and fro.
Buried crosses,
endless knots,
a whispered name.
Shhh…listen to it again.
Once a prayer, today a reminder.
Peace will never be.
Nor here, nor there,
the past is never dead.
Forever in my thoughts,
“May his soul be at God’s right hand,”
because I know I am not.
(A response to a visit to Timoleague. Inspired by "The past is never dead. It's not even past." -- William Faulkner & "Timoleague Reveries" by Steve Wilson.)
Sarah Rafael García is a writer, community educator and traveler. She has trekked the Great Wall of China sixteen times and backpacked Australia from Melbourne to the Daintree Rainforest. Since publishing her memoir Las Niñas in 2008, she continues to share her passion by founding Barrio Writers and hosting Wild Womyn Writers workshops.
Her writings have been featured in Connotation Press, Label Me Latina/o, Brooklyn & Boyle, LATINO Magazine, Santanero Zine and Flies, Cockroaches and Poets. Sarah Rafael is currently attending Texas State University’s MFA Program in Creative Writing. Her works promote community empowerment, cultural awareness and global sharing.
www.sarahrafaelgarcia.com
Review: Cristina Henríquez. The Book of Unknown Americans. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.
ISBN: 9780385350846 (hardcover : alk. paper).
By Kathy Cano-Murillo
Eloquent melodrama. That is how I describe
The Book of Unknown Americans. At first glance, it seems like another novel about the immigrant experience. While that’s the obvious premise, it takes a backseat to the real meat of the book: young love, family drama and friendships.
The heart of the story is the incandescent Maribel, the 15-year-old daughter of Arturo and Alma Rivera. It’s an injury of hers that brings her family to the United States during the first half of Obama’s presidency. Her overprotective mother, eager to “fix” her, learns of a special needs school in Delaware that can help. Arturo reluctantly agrees and they follow precise and tedious protocol to enter the United States legally. “Because we are not like the others,” Alma says, pridefully.
They arrive to find that their American dream is more of a nightmare. Everything from the living conditions to the food and weather is a downgrade compared to what they had and loved in Mexico. Their saving grace? The friendships they form with their new (also immigrant) neighbors in the rundown apartment complex. Throughout the book, each of their stories are revealed. They are Mexican, Panamanian, Puerto Rican, Venezuelan just to name a few. Their reasons for moving here are just as varied as their charm. While these passages don’t have a direct influence on Maribel’s story, they do add flavor to the book’s message of giving us insight to these “unknown Americans.” Author Henríquez presents them with a string of small moments that add up to big, unforgettable personalities.
The Rivera family makes progress in their new home and their destiny unfolds. On one end is a racist bully who taunts Maribel. And at the other end is the boy, Mayor, who falls in love with her. The two strike up a quiet, tender friendship that eventually blossoms into first love. But eventually all of the factors collide due to misunderstandings, lies, guilt, and secrets. The drama that had slowly unfolded in previous chapters, explodes all at one time... and subsides just as fast. This is my only complaint with The Book of Unknown Americans. Perhaps its the romantic in me, I wish the post-climax ending had a little more room to settle and exhale. But as we all know, real life doesn’t always work out the way we want.
I honestly didn’t expect to love this book. I expected a heavy, serious tale of struggle and I braced myself for some somber reading. I was pleasantly surprised to find the opposite. It is well-written and is bubbling with emotion. It’s a universal story about families working together for the common goal of creating a better life. Supporting one another when the bottom falls out. It captured me within the first few pages, and I put my life on hold for a weekend while I devoured each chapter!
Henríquez did a brilliant job in sharing a glance inside the lives of those normally overlooked and even ignored. I do hope for a sequel! You know you’ve finished a great book when you put it on the shelf and sigh because you’re wondering about what will become of these characters. That’s what this book did for me. It reminded me that every human being has a story, and every one deserves to be acknowledged.
Crristina Henríquez is also the author of
The World in Half and
Come Together, Fall Apart.
She has launched The Unknown Americans Project on Tumblr. Visit the site to to read stories or add your own!
http://unknownamericans.tumblr.com/ See more about Christina Henríquez at her site,
http://www.cristinahenriquez.com/La Bloga welcomes Kathy Cano-Murillo as our guest reviewer. Kathy first visited La Bloga in Daniel Olivas'
Spotlight On back in 2010.
Kathy Cano-Murillo, the Crafty Chica, is an artist and author and third-generation Mexican-American living in Phoenix, Arizona.
She is the author of the novels
Waking Up in the Land of Glitter and
Miss Scarlet’s School of Patternless Sewing.
You can see more about her at her site,
CraftyChica.com.
La Bloga On-line Floricanto: Yago S. CuraOnly the score is even at 91:01:16. Iran outplays, out-thinks a humbled Argentina. Iran’s impenetrable sea of red rejects any challenge to the tie they’ve won today. Univision’s announcers declare Iran the better team, should have won the game. Then a minute and seventeen seconds into stoppage time, Messi gets the ball.
ODE TO LEONEL MESSIBy Yago S. Cura
Oh Messi, the words don’t like to heel;
they rear up like coked-up Clydesdales
to stamp the tales of your devious feet.
It’s just that you’re a meñique Loki—
an algebra prodigy with filthy squaw hair,
a mischief wick, Pre-Cambrian fireworks
display, you’re like nighttime diving from
the Concussion Quarry. Messi, your tech is
so untextbook—I want to stun each cell
of the reel where your feet call the shots.
Faster than fast, surpassing speeding
catalysts of exponential acceleration:
Messi you are like ten ton cubes of pins,
toothpicks, and shattered plate glass
by Tara Donovan.
We expect your currency in malicious slide tackles,
oodles of shin splits, and cleats in muscle’s mignon.
Maybe the growth hormone Barcelona bought for you
held the genetic credit of petite assassin panthers?
Or, the supersonic locura that drives
greyhounds bonkers and makes them chase
lures in fashionable muzzles and pennies.
Read more of Yago S. Cura's fútbol odes in last week's
La Bloga-Jueves Thursday, Lydia Gil's
Libros sobre fútbol y Fútbol Poems.
Michael Sedano
University Conference on Latino Culture and Science Fiction April 30.
The University of California, Riverside hosts a trailblazing academic inquiry into science fiction and speculative fiction written by raza writers in a gathering of casí all the raza writers of science fiction and speculative literature.
The April 30 conference arrives at a time of literary ferment when writers and readers come to the book market with higher expectations than publishers can understand.
The conference explores how six writers get their books to market, the role of sci-fi and speclit genres in United States letters, the nature of literary exclusion, and stories about what each writer brings to readers.
The morning panel joins almost all raza published authors of the genres into the same room at the same time. Hosted by UCR’s Professor of Science Fiction Media Studies, Sherryl Vint, the discussions will be classics among literary conferences. Mario Acevedo’s and Jésus Treviño’s vampire fiction meets Rudy Ch. García’s and Treviño’s dimensional surrealism. Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita’s lunar braceros meet el padrino of Chicano sci-fi Ernest Hogan’s mexicas in outerspace. Y más.
In the afternoon, Michael Sedano and UCR graduate students join the circle to include critical perspectives and readerly responses to these sci-fi and speclit genres, and to join the audience in speculation into what directions each sees raza speculative literature and science-fiction taking.
A grand event in the late afternoon, years in the making, puts a capstone on the conference.
See Rudy Ch. Garcia’s Saturday, April 26 column for building/meeting-room specifics.
The beautiful Riverside campus is freeway convenient off the 60/215, in Susan Straight country.
Conference on Rudolfo Anaya: Tradition, Modernity, and the Literatures of the U.S. Southwest May 2-3.La Bloga friend Roberto Cantú brings the most arrestingly interesting academic conferences to Southern California and the east side of the LA basin. May 2-3, Cantú surpasses himself with a conference dedicated to La Bloga friend Rudolfo Anaya and literature of the US Southwest.
Scholars from New Mexico to old Germany will lecture, moderate, and sit panel presentations.
Four keystone fiction writers take the lectern during the conference, Ana Castillo, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Reyna Grande, and Mario Acevedo, fresh from his stunning appearance UCR's raza in spec lit and sci-fi conference.
The Anaya conference on the campus of California State University Los Angeles in El Sereno is free and open to public visitors for just the cost of parking or a short walk from the bus station. There is no light rail serving this campus directly.
A word of caution: parking rules are posted so you can read them and avoid a ticket. Be assured local regulations are strictly enforced.
The conference is sponsored by Cal State L.A.'s Gigi Gaucher-Morales Memorial Conference Series, the College of Arts and Letters, the College of Natural and Social Sciences, the Department of Chicano Studies, the Department of English, the Barry Munitz Fund, and the Emeriti Association.
See the conference website for details.Writing Workshop With Ana Castillo |
| © foto: workshop at NLWC in 2011 |
Working with a seasoned writer to develop ideas, polish writing, glean insights from conversation often comes with the payoff of better writing, an improved attitude. This happens for beginners as well as polished authors.
The opportunity to work with one of Chicana Chicano Literature's most accomplished talents, Ana Castillo, should quickly fill the handful of seats available on May 3 through auspices of La Bloga friend Iris de Anda and Mujeres de Maíz
. Visit the workshop Facebook page for your invitation. There is a fee for the workshop.
Writing Workshop for Newer Writers in East LosLa Bloga friend Sam Quinones organizes a writing workshop series for those who've never published before,
Tell Your True Tale.Students from recent workshops appear Saturday April 26 at the East L.A. Public Library at 2:30 pm. The East LA Public Library awaits your attendance at 4837 E 3rd St, LA, 323-264-0155.
Quinones' workshops revolve around insisting stories fit in limited space.
Tell Your True Tale approach forces writers to hone their thoughts and imagination, eliminate unnecessary words, make the hard choices that are part of strong writing, no matter the genre.
The Saturday event showcases the students' work with, according to Quinones,
stunning variety and quality of stories: A vet returning home from Vietnam; a janitor in Houston trying to find her children in Mexico; of braceros finding their way north and back home again; a man learning confidence as he woos a woman; a bus rider in Los Angeles; a mariachi singing for a heartbroken family on Christmas Eve.Find details on the workshops here.Free Poetry Column Follow-Up: Veterans Land.I noted in La Bloga's coverage of the
Grand Park Downtown Bookfest that one organization performs Shakespeare with kids on the grounds of the Veteran's Center and elsewhere. The observation draws a response from the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles Associate Director of Veteran Affairs Kellogg Brengel.
I receive Brengel's words with appreciation for his organization's role in the VA's efforts helping GIs. LA is the homeless GI capital of the world. It's a moral outrage that so many of these men and women are walking wounded soldiers not receiving the care we owe them. I am a Veteran of the US Army but no one needs to be a Veteran to be outraged by this crud.
For Veterans and supporters of Veterans, a critical issue simmers just at the surface of efforts like the Shakespeare Center and other companies. Many, if not all, private or non-Veteran users of the
West LA Veterans home lost a federal case and will have to vacate VA land, absent some amicable resolution that benefits Veterans more than others. A commercial laundry, the UCLA baseball team, an exclusive Brentwood girls' school, a theatre, all don't want to leave low-cost Veteran land for market-rate facilities.
Mr. Brengel notes the program goes into its third year on the VA campus, he says,
supported by a veteran workforce. Working with the VA's Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, SCLA has hired a total of 61 veterans over the past two summers and because of our free admission policy for veterans, active military, their families, friends and caregivers/VA employees, SCLA has given away 5,665 tickets to our summer performances.
The veterans we hire are recruited from the VA's Veterans Community Employment Development program which helps find supported employment opportunities for veterans enrolled in VA services who are chronically unemployed, homeless, and/or receiving psycho-social rehabilitative treatment.
Veterans receive paid on-the-job training and work in all aspects of the production including: production and venue crews, audio engineer, wardrobe assistant, ushers, parking attendants, and site-specific marketing. The transitional work experience this program provides has been a great success and we are very much looking forward to being back in the Japanese Garden for the summer of 2014. A ver.
La Bloga Welcomes Guest ColumnistsThank you for reading La Bloga. When you have a comment, a need to enlarge, clarify, or correct La Bloga's coverage of literatura, cultura, arte, o más, don't hide that light of yours under a bushel basket, dale shine.
Contact La Bloga here for particulars of your Guest Column, or email labloga@readraza punto com. Of the eleven daily blogueras blogueros, eight began writing for La Bloga as Guest Columnists.
Late-arriving NewsJust as I was putting La Bloga to bed, this opportunity pulls into sight.
Guest Columnist: Las Comadres Para Las Americas Interviews Lorraine López
Editor's Note: La Bloga receives this interview from Condor Book Tours, an entrepreneurial public relations firm specializing in virtual book tours and Latina Latino authors. Condor's currently representing Las Comadres Para Las Americas' book, Count on Me: Tales of Sisterhoods and Fierce Friendships. Las Comadres Para Las Americas, a 501(c)(3) organization is an informal internet-based group that meets monthly in many US cities to build connections and community with other Latinas.
I'm happy to join Condor and Las Comadres' virtual book tour widening the readership for a book about nurturing.
--Michael Sedano
Las Comadres Interviews Count On Me Author Lorraine López
Las Comadres: How you were first introduced to Las Comadres?
Lorraine: Well – my book, The Gifted Gabaldon Sisters, came out about, I want to say 4 to 5 years ago I’m not sure. And at the time it was selected as a Las Comadres/Borders pick. That’s how I first became aware of Las Comadres. The same thing happened when my second novel came out – The Realm of Hungry Spirits – so I was interviewed on the air by Las Comadres. They publicized the book and it was just a wonderful, wonderful opportunity for me. Since then, I’ve learned about the organization and have been wholly impressed. I especially admire how after Borders® went under, the organization found a way to continue without that support.
Las Comadres: Do you have any favorites in Count on Me?
Lorraine: oh, I love Carolina de Roberti’s piece, which I read again this morning – very moving piece, just… very powerful. Also, Esmeralda Santiago’s piece I admire and Stephanie Elizondo-Greist, who is a contributor for one collection of ours, another anthology. I know her work and I’ve read her books and I loved her piece. I love the humor in it, the wit.
Las Comadres: Is there a character in the book that you most identify with?
Lorraine: That’s hard to say. I think there’re bits and pieces. I think because Carolina’s piece is so fresh in my mind – I would have to say that impetus to finish a book for someone. That resonates with me. I’ve never done that but I can see the feeling behind that, I can really empathize strongly with that; that desire, that motivation.
Las Comadres: Your story is the only story in the collection that addresses the bond, the Comadre connection between the mentor and the mentee. What do you hope readers get out of your expression?
Lorraine: I hope that they realize as the late Dr. Juan Bruce Novoa has said that this a great time to be a writer when we do have mentors, we do have people like Judith Ortiz Cofer, who are in a position to share their wisdom, share their resources, share pragmatic tips with this generation. This second generation and now even a third generation is emerging and so I hope that there is that recognition that yes, I need to avail myself of this resource of the wise women and men who have come before me and take advantage of this and to reach my potential through this help. There is nothing wrong or bad about it. It’s a great tradition, if fact. I hope that there’s that recognition that we are not alone. We are not alone as a Latina writer. You’re not alone. You have people who have found their way, established a path and you can rely on them. Whether it’s just by being in their physical presence- I was lucky enough to be in the physical presence of Judith Ortiz Cofer but you can also do this with books, by reading the works of pre-established writers who forged the way for us.
I hope that there is something that comes of this.
Las Comadres: Do you feel that there is a strong distinction and difference between saying that someone is a friend or saying someone is Comadre? And if so, how do you describe that distinction?
Lorraine: Comadre… The idea of Comadre, to me, suggests layers of mutual benefit; that symbiosis. Friendship is less layered. For me, friendship is… ‘yes, this is my friend. I enjoy this persons company’ but we are not beholden to one another in the way that comadrazgo does make one beholden to the other person. A friend might, for example- just a pragmatic example – a friend might send me an email. I am under no compunction to answer that for 24 hours. But, if my Comadre sends me an email, I need to answer it right away. If my Comadre calls, I always need to take that call. And it works the other way, too. We need to be…know that we can, as the book says, count on one another. There is that element of ‘yes, I depend on you and you depend on me’. We can be reliable to one another- we MUST be.
Las Comadres: What do you see as the reasons that a woman needs a Comadre in her life?
Lorraine: Wow! Well, first I would start with: Just for the purpose of having someone you trust and rely on. I think that is just the basic building block of human relationship that has depth and substance, knowing there is someone there you can trust and someone you can rely on.
Secondly – and I don’t want to say that men don’t need this as well but – I think relationships between men have been really firmly entrenched in professional systems and academic systems and we even have a name for it in the South, ‘The Good Ol’ Boys Club” and I think women have been locked out of that for a very long time. In fact, there is this big bru-ha-ha because the CEO of Yahoo! ® is now pregnant. The first pregnant woman to ever be a CEO of a major corporation and this is so exciting.Okay, this is 2012 but we’re talking it’s taken so long. So it’s evidence that we are not where we should be; we are not represented as we should be. So, I think, for women this kind of relationship is even more important. In my life it has been integral to my success and to my professional advancement, for sure. That is stated plainly in my essay. I think we need help and we need to help each other because we have been disenfranchised, and we have been marginalized so this is critical, ‘critical’ as such a relationship is.
And third, I would say… it’s just plain fun to have Judith in my life. She’s smart, she’s funny and that goes with the element of trust. You can’t relax and joke with someone you cannot trust.
She’s coming to visit in February to give a reading at Vanderbilt and that is getting me through the semester already, which hasn’t started. Just the idea that she will be here soon, and I can laugh and I can relax and I can be with someone that I trust and love and admire.
Those are three reasons. I’m sure I could continue but… It’s a source – almost like refueling. You meet this person who has become an integral part of your life and when you see her you feel invigorated, re-energized – so I guess that’s number four, (laugh).
Las Comadres: What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Lorraine: Well, probably a negative thing. You know, I love my books. I always love my books and I love my writing. My ‘Homicide Survivors Picnic’ was a pen popular finalist and I got to go to D.C. That was a really wonderful day. I feel like that might be the zenith of my writing career and I'm glad to have had that and that’s great. It was also liberating, now I can feel ‘okay, I did that and now I can just write for me.’
So, that was pretty great but I think really, the best accomplishment, the thing I feel proudest about, apart from my children, I'm very proud of my children, is that when I was in a really bad situation, I didn’t do something terrible. I could have done something really, really terrible. I thought about doing something unspeakably terrible that would have changed me forever and I decided not to do it. I'm proud of that. I'm really, really proud at not doing the terrible thing.
Las Comadres: My last question is more like a fill in the blank… I am proud to be a Latina because: ______(fill in the blank).
Lorraine: Because this is the great time to be a Latina, and especially a great time to be a Latina writer. The world is just opening up for us in big and beautiful ways and I feel very lucky to be part of that.
About Lorraine LópezLorraine Lopez’ first book, Soy la Avon Lady, won the inaugural Miguel Marmól Prize. Her novel, Call Me Henri, was awarded the Paterson Prize, and her novel, The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters, was a 2008 Borders/Las Comadres Selection. Lorraine’s short story collection, Homicide Survivors Picnic, was reviewed in La Bloga and was a 2010 Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Prize. She edited a collection of essays titled, An Angle of Vision. Her novel, The Realm of Hungry Spirits, was released in 2011. She has co-edited, with Blas Falconer, The Other Latin@. She teaches fiction writing at Vanderbilt University. Learn more about Lorraine at www.lorrainelopez.net
Arte Publico Announces Secret Discount
It’s a shame brick and mortar booksellers now fade into memory. In ten years, readers are going to recall warmly the golden age of books when most books came printed on paper people shopped for them off physical shelves and if the store didn't have a title you had to order off the internet anyhow. Long before implants, when readers schlepped around iPads.
Until my eyes give out, I'll be one of those tipos insisting on holding the books I read, although I admit to enjoying the swift enlargement of words with the pinch of a finger or a Command + keyboard shortcut, and the space-saving convenience of PDF review copies.
In his column last Friday, Manuel Ramos discerns the existence of a Golden Age for raza writing. Gente are producing increasing numbers of books and related media, there's a universe of literary ephemera like blogs and message board manifestoes. Spoken word art takes on a life of its own in cities across the continent. Writers expand the literary purview into personal essays, travel writing, mystery, speclit, YA, children's picture books.
Who knows what today’s gatekeeping system of east coast publishing houses will look like then, under the competitive onslaught of self-publication and academic and small press?
Gone are the days of driving or walking from bookstore to bookstore, of lingering through the shelves of a friendly bookseller, or leafing through Books in Print for the right edition.
With convenience comes access. Those local bookstores were another gatekeeper. Readers traded immediacy for the bookseller’s inventory policy. With mail-order buying via computer, buyers select from limitless catalogs of new and used books, and see their purchases arrive within a few days of ordering.
Better still, readers can order publisher-direct to gain access to the widest selection of related titles. A recent email from the industry’s premier publisher of latina latino writing, Arte Publico Press, sweetens the prospect. Use the code HOLIDAY12 when checking out and receive 35% discount on titles in Arte Publico’s catalogs.
December 2012 Floricanto to Begin TwelfthmonthArnoldo Garcia, Jabez W. Churchill, Tom Sheldon, Victor Avila, Elizabeth Cazessús
Launching the year's final month is December's first floricanto. This week, the moderators of the Facebook group Poets Responding to SB1070 Poetry of Resistance, nominate seven poems from five poets:"La comuna de la lengua / The commune of the tongue" by Arnoldo Garcia“Credo Particular / My Creed” by Jabez W. Churchill “Petroglyphs” by Tom Sheldon"Grail" by Victor Avila“Desierto en fuga” por Elizabeth Cazessús
La comuna de la lengua | The commune of our tongue [extracts]Arnoldo Garcia
a communionof commotiona commovementof movementswho will revolutionizethe skinof our languagesmakeour tonguesas invisibleas transparentas the most illegal of illegalsas the most undocumented of undocumentedas the most minority of minoritiesas the most queer of the queeras the most visible of the invisibleas the most remembered of the forgottenas the lowest of the lowliestas the most homeless among the homelandlessas the most human of humanitynessso when you put your words in the vibrating airanyone can step into themfeel at hometransliterating freedomsobliterating the mutenessmaking the worldinto jagged piecesthat fit together in their crags and ragged tendernesseseverythingdisperses in orderly chaosorganizes in spontaneous spring-times, whatever the seasonwho dares make the commotion togetherwho dares make the movement differentwho cares about tomorrow, the natural worldwho cares about the land, the communitywho cares about our bones, the windwho dares the sun to return for the sixth time, the continentswho dares to stop timeand return to the starting place?I am a human out of placeI am a human in a country no longer humanI am a human in every road, path, trail, a movementCongealing, coalescing, germinatingon the magnetic waves of tendernesson the gravitational fields of freedomon the bare arms of a campesinaa commotiona communitiona cosmomovement of neighbors.
*
I do not want a revolution of empleadosI want a revolution of emplumados.
*
No quiero una revolución de empleadosQuiero una revolución de emplumados.
Credo Particularpor Jabez W. Curchill
Creo en ambos dioses,el Padre y la Santa Madre,sin nombreen el traqueteo de los otrosy en sus hijos danzarinesengendrados como hojas,como luz,de la misma substanciadiscernible e inimaginablea que todo tiene que sacudir.
Creo que somos encarnadosdel mismo espiritu fotosinteticosin jucio,sin excepcion,destinados todos a la salvación.
Pero no creoque ninguna religióno propio evangeliose aproxime o se acerquesuficiente a la Creaciónpara que justifique criticarmenos condenaro aliviarnosde la responsibilidad particularde florecery en el viento deleitar.
My Creedby Jabez W. Curchill
I believe in both Gods,the Father and the Holy Mother,namelessin the rattle of the rest,and in their sonsand twirling daughtersbegotten as leaves,as light,being of the same substance,seen and unimagined,to which all things must flutter.
I believe we are incarnatewith the same Spirit,photosynthetic,without judgement,without exception.All, destined for salvation.
But I don’t believethat any church,any religious doctrine,approximates Creation,comes close enough to justify opinion, less condemnation,or relieve usfrom our individual responsibilityto fully blossom,revel in the wind.
Petroglyphs ©Tom Sheldon
Clues to the iconic ambiguity
appear like old vines
resting upon eroded hills
dug along the skirt of mesa
the poetic lore.....
tall tales and handed down songs
planted inside children
a shared realm
that live in stone still
faintly etched pictograms
so transparent one can look through
and see the world
Natural luminous things
like tracks in the snow
homecoming myths migrations
of stars ancient origins
of ragged mountains
in deer whose limbs
lie in latent flight
and the suns light
cast and reflected back
Grail for Palestine Victor Avila
A great weight rests on all our tonguesand the barbs around our heartsmakes us barricades of silence.
Tell me then, how can I speak to you if it's not by shouting?
I shout at the hard sky,I shout into the ear of a low hanging star.
I shout when my heart is withering like black fruit-Or when other hearts become brutal hammersof hate and venom.
A bitter knife carves obscenties into my tender stomachand I want to shout to stones,"Please, I am bleeding and my wound is great"-but the stones are pitiless tonight.
So I scream until my voice is filled with hoarse sobs.
And I wait for the wound to heal-I wait for the lost blood to become a great treewhich is heavy with fruit.I wait for lost emeralds to be resetin my God's sick crown.
I become a romantic with ten handsbut am not allowed to use one.
Ultimately, the barricades are not dismantledand the barbs are not pulled free,the weight is not suspended.
Tell me then, how can I speak to you if it's not by shouting?How can my Grail of Hope once again be filled?
DESIERTO EN FUGAElizabeth Cazessús
Salir al camino sin saber a donde ir-porque el saber no está en el mapasi no más adentro de la aventura-descubrir lo semejante,la naturaleza salvaje, lo sagrado desatender la ciudad que vas dejando atrás,sorprenderte como un niñover los campos sembrados, palizadas, osamentas de ballenas, anuncios extemporáneos, largos terrenos de chamizos, palo verde y serpientes extensiones que las nubes bañan de más alládunas en contraste con el mar y ese sentimiento al fondode arenas ensimismadas bajo la luz de sol.hasta que la mirada abarca sabes que son tuyos.Un solitario cactus a contraluz es todo lo que tienesdespués de que has pasado por las ruinas de otro cementerio de piedras y edificios escarpados por el fracaso.Tú, sigues ahí, con tu brazada extendida en el valle de los cirioscon su montaje improvisado y caminos espinosos Todo lo que no verán más tus ojos porque en este instante ya no estamos, ni somos lo que dijimos ser.Seremos otros a contra canto de este aroma del desierto en fuga.
BIOS
"La comuna de la lengua | The commune of the tongue" by Arnoldo Garcia
“Credo Particular / My Creed” by Jabez W. Churchill
“Petroglyphs” by Tom Sheldon
"Grail" by Victor Avila
“Desierto en fuga” por Elizabeth Cazessús
Arnoldo García lives and writes in Oakland, CA. "La comuna de nuestra lengua" is part of a collection of poems and writings called La revolución emplumada (forthcoming). Arnoldo posts poetics, commentary, news & analysis on http://lacarpadelfeo.blogspot.com andhttp://www.twitter.com/arnoldogarcia C/S
Jabez W. Churchill. Born in Northern California, educated in Argentina and California. Single dad, currently teaching Spanish at Santa Rosa Junior College and Mendocino College. (S.R.J.C., since 1986), and California Poet in the Public Schools since 1998. Civilly disobedient since 1969. Submitting poetry for publication since 1979.
Publications:SONG OF SEASONS, Small Poetry Press, 1996CONTROLLED BURN, Small Poetry Press, 1996SLEEPING WITH GHOSTS, Kulupi Press, 1999THE VEIL, Kulupi Press, 2000SANTA CLARA REVIEW, Spring/Summer 2002americas review, 2003languageandculture.net, chapbook series, 2005FIRST LEAVES, Literary and Art Journal, 2009Most currently, in laBloga, Poets Responding to SB1070 and THE ARTS UNITED SAN ANTONIO, May and August, 2012Featured at the Summer Dream Poetry Festival in Vancouver, B.C. 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012. Cuba, 2000. Spain, Summer 1999.
My name is Tom Sheldon and I come from a large Hispanic family with roots in Spain, Mexico and New Mexico. I enjoy writing poetry which allows me connection and a voice and I write daily. I've had a few small successes in having my poems published. Thank you for reading my work.
Victor Avila is an award-winning poet. Two of his poems were recently included in the anthology Occupy SF-Poems from the Movement. Victor is also a graphic artist whose work has been featured in Ghoula Comix.
Elizabeth Cazessús, Tijuana B. C. México, 1960.BLOG: El palpitar de las letras, letronomo.blogspot.com
Es maestra de nivel primaria, egresada de Esc. Normal Benito Juárez.1978/1982.Realizó Periodismo Cultural, 1983 a 1992 en Tijuana. Dirigió el sumplemento cultural Arrecife, de Sol de Tijuana.
Poeta performancera. Es autora de ocho libros de poesía: Ritual y canto,1994, Veinte “Apuntes antes de Dormir, 1995; Mujer de Sal, 2000; Huella en el agua, IMAC 2001; Casa del sueño, Gíglico ediciones, 2006; Razones de la dama infiel, Gíglico ediciones 2008; No es mentira este paraíso, Colección ed,.Cecut/Conaculta.2009.Enediana, Ed. Giglico, 2010.
Ha participado en varios encuentros internacionales de poesía:Los Angeles California, 1991; Phoenix, Arizona, 2003; Mujeres poetas en el país dela Nubes, Oaxaca, Oax.; 2000 y 2001; La Habana, Cuba, 2003, Chile Poesía Santiago de Chile, 2005; Poetas del Mundo Latino Morelia, Mich, México 2010; Puerto Rico, Ferias del Libros 2004 y 2007; Festival de Poesia, Puerto Rico,. 2011, Festival Latinoamericano de Poesía Cd. de Nueva York, Oct. 2012.
Ha participado presentando su obra. FIL de Guadalajara, No es mentira este paraíso y Feria del Libro del Zócalo,Cd. de México D.F. 2010.
Obtuvo la beca del FONCA, 1998.Ha obtenido los premios: Municipal de Poesía, en los Juegos Florales de Tijuana, 1992;Premio de Poesía, Anita Pompa de Trujillo en Hermosillo, Sonora, 1995;
Su obra ha sido traducida a los idiomas inglés y al polaco.
Esta incluida en las siguientes antologías: “Across the Line”, Junction Press, San Diego Ca. 2003; “Trilogía de Poetas de Hispanoamérica: Pícaras, Místicas y Rebeldes”, México D.F. 2004; Memoria del Encuentro Chile- Poesía, 2005; Antología de Poesía Hispanoamericana, “El Rastro de las Mariposas”, Lima, Perú, 2006; Antología de “Voces Sin Fronteras”, Montreal, Canadá, 2006; “Mujeres Poetas de México” (1945-1965), Atemporia, 2008; Revista, La Nueva Región de los poetas (Nowa Okolica Poetow), Varsovia, Polonia, 2008; San Diego Poetry Annual, Ca. E.U.A. 2008; Nectáfora, Antología del Beso en la Poesía Mexicana, México, D.F. 2009, Antologia del Festival Latinoamericano de Poesía, CD. de Nueva York, 2012.
Ha realizado recitales poético/musicales haciendo montajes con su propia obra y de autores hispanoamericanos, titulados:Ritual y Canto, 1995, “Veinte apuntes antes de dormir”, 1998, “Rosario Castellanos, mujer de muchas palabras”; “Voces Irreverentes, ” (Homenaje a Susana Chávez, poeta asesinada en CD. Juárez, 2010). “ Diosas de la Poesía Hispanoamericana”, Centro Cultural y Feria del Libro ,de Tijuana, 2011.
Acompañó alternadamente a Carlos Monsivaís, interpretando voces de la poesía de la popularidad, en la conferencia: Mamá Soy Paquito, Universidad de San Diego, 2009.
Guest Columnist: Sarah Rafael Garcia. "Memorias de Mis Besos Nobel"
As I entered the bookstore, I felt a literary spirit penetrate my skin. My body had an ever so tingling sensation that left my hair electrifying and my toes curled in the most sensual position. I was a bit overpowered and a little uncomfortable with the public experience but I went along with it. It felt so good.
I took each step with pure indulgence. I skimmed the tables for something that caught my eye but all I could think of was how excited I felt and took pleasure in the warmth that was spreading from my feminine spot to my inner thighs.
I slowly made my way through the isles, carefully placing my hands on leather-bound books and vibrant illustrations. I ran my fingers through Isabel Allende, Julia Alvarez, Rudolfo Anaya and Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez. As something called for me to return to the front of the store, I took in a deep breath, attempting to hide my internal moans of pleasure. Then I remembered that Laura Esquivel's Malinche was sitting on the front table and I needed two copies for her autograph that I was there to get.
At that very minute, I saw him enter through the magical doors. A young, handsome man gallantly walked besides him, but my focus was on his distinguished presence and gray hair. He was the one that seemed extremely familiar and whose enlightening works ran through my head: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera and the most notable to me, Memorias de Mis Putas Tristes.
I timidly kept my distance but forced my way to the cashier’s desk where he stood signing a book for the owner. My curiosity led me to study the young sales attendant’s reaction. While blushing, she nodded at me as if yelling out loud "Yes! Oh God, it is him!”
I leaned over to see his face. I needed confirmation. I was there to meet one of my top inspirations to become of writer, but I never in my wildest dreams expected to run into him. ¡Mi numero uno!
El que me hace soñar entre sus manos. El que me toca sensualmente con cada palabra. El único que siempre esta allí cuando lo busco. The one who has touched many lives around the world, with just a stroke of a pen.
There he was with his back turned towards me. He was taking a step farther away from my urges. He had one foot out the door, headed back to the fantasy world that he was in prior to this moment. A place that was so remote to me. Could I actually let him slip out of reach just like that?
As calm as I could possibly be while walking towards him, I stated loudly, "¿Con permiso, lo puedo saludar?"
As charming as he is known to be & before he could turn to see my face, he responded, “Solo si lo hace con un beso." With a mischievous smile, I replied, "¡Si gusta le doy dos!"
Then we casually intertwined into a normal conversation about me living in China, writing a book and reading two of his in the last year and a half. I stated how happy I was to be with him. He told me that our worlds could have crossed at many places, since he too spent time getting lost in the walls of the Forbidden City and his own stories. He was so charming and intriguing. His eyes were mesmerizing. I had no choice but to give myself to him. He had full control of the encounter. He inquired about my life and how I survived through such tough times. He made me laugh like a schoolgirl. He made me feel like I was the only woman and writer in the world, “No te preocupes, ya se que vas a hacer una escritora famosa. ¡Por que siempre comenzamos pobres y con hambre!”
I continued to succumb to his every gesture and hung on to each syllable his lips enunciated. He held my hands tightly and played with words as if he knew he was courting my literary whims to reach their climax. Then just like that; he wished me Buena Suerte and expressed his sincerity with a gentle embrace.
The same instant he walked out the door, he disappeared from my vision and returned to my world of passionate dreams. I was left flushed and wanting more. Immediately afterwards I did what every impressionable young woman would do. I shared my intimate moment with a good girlfriend. While describing each minute detail of my rendezvous with the Nobel Prize winner, I realized I had never even told him my name.
About Sarah Rafael Garcia
Sarah Rafael García was born in Brownsville, Texas and raised in Orange County, California. She started writing after her father's passing in 1988. She obtained a Bachelors of Science in Sociology at Texas State University, is bilingual in Spanish and knows enough Mandarin to speak to pre-k students and taxi drivers in China. She has lived in Beijing and traveled to various countries including a three-month backpacking adventure in Australia. She is an active writer, community educator and published author who strives to advocate for human rights.
Since the publication of Las Niñas, A Collection of Childhood Memories in 2008, García has continued to share her writings and community outreach by founding Barrio Writers in 2009, a reading and writing program aimed to empower youth through creative writing, higher education and the cultural arts and hosting Wild Womyn Writers in 2010, workshops that create neutral spaces which empower womyn to explore their creative spirits, free themselves from societal restrictions and learn to embrace their natural instincts.
García’s essay “Crossing Borders” was published in Connotation Press in April 2011 and her spoken word piece "Without a Name" was aired on the 2012 EXSE Spoken Word Showcase and published in Label Me Latina/o in June 2012. Most recently, she is attending Texas State University’s MFA Program in Creative Writing while working on her next book. García’s writings, workshops and lifestyle promote community empowerment, cultural awareness and global sharing.
Listen to Sarah Rafael Garcia read a story at Latinopia.Banned Books UpdateOn this first Tuesday in the eighth month of the year 2012, Arizona continues to ban books in your name.
After reading last week's
La Bloga Banned Books Update, a University of Nebraska researcher wrote Tucson Unified School District Superintendent of Schools John Pedicone. Pedicone insists he has not banned
The Tempest, nor any other book. Pedicone alludes kids can get the not-banned books by filing approved interlibrary loan paperwork.
The researcher asked if kids would be expelled for bringing in a non-banned banned book. Pedicone wrote back with his claim that nothing has been banned and if a teacher wants to use a book, Shakespeare's
The Tempest, for example, the teacher has that liberty, provided the title is approved for use in that class.
Pedicone refused to answer the question about the kid's liberty. His silence is tacit admission that any kid bringing a non-banned banned book into the classroom will be banned from the classroom, along with that non-banned banned book.
On-Line Floricanto First Tuesday in August 2012Arnoldo Garcia, Elena Díaz Bjorkquist, Alma Luz Villanueva, Alejandro E. Barajas, Iris de Anda
“My land” by Arnoldo Garcia:
"Ode to Teresita" by Elena Díaz Bjorkquist
"Quetzalcoatl's Radiance" by Alma Luz Villanueva
"El Jefe de la pobreza / The Boss of Poverty" by Alejandro E. Barajas
“Read the fine print” by Iris de Anda
My Land by Arnoldo Garciamy country
is the smallest country
in the world.
my country fits
inside one-hundredth
of one molecule
in a touch between one strand of DNA
my country
has room
for everyone
every European
every Chinese
every Mexican
every African
every Indian
every Asian Pacific Islander
every queer
every nomad
of the earth
every two-legged, four-legged,
crawling, burrowing, winged-
beings
fit in my country.
Everyone is welcome, everyone
I'll happily give you
my country
as long as you promise
not just to take care of her
to let everyone
live in her in peace
in garbled flags
in borders without pigment
borders with human pores
to breath freely
to live breathing
My country is everyone, is everywhere
my country is small
bothers no one
invades no one
drones no one
doesn't stamp your passport
doesn't ask for identity documents
my country lets you be
lets you exist as yourself
lets you determine who you are
my country has no borders
other than those of humanity to humanity
my country has no armies
no prisons no police
no homeless no one suffers
at the hands of other humans
my country is all the colors
the clash of colors, the contrast
the muddy blends, the stark yellows
the pink sunrises, the red of your tongue
mu country fits in your veins
fits in the bat of an eye
welcomes you to our bodily paradise
you can have my country, if you want
it's already yours
walk slowly take your time
my country is in no rush
peace and freedom take their time
rest a bit get up work hard, party
in my country
even the dead
get a turn to dance
every now and then
there are no regrets
there is only life
and its mortal pleasures
in my country
oh! in my country
you would be ideal
you would fit right in
like you always lived there
like your ancestors had been buried there
as a matter of fact
I would encourage you
to bury your ancestors here...
to bring your ancestors here
to my country
to bury them here
take care of them here
take care of our country
where everyone
where every living being
fits
my country is so small
that everyone fits.
And in one of her pores
fit all the suns and moon,
my country, you and me...
Ode to Teresitaby Elena Díaz Bjorkquist ©2012Teresita Urrea, Santa de Cabora,
Mexican Joan of Arc,
You, the spiritual curandera
Who dedicated her life to serve others.
You, the illegitimate daughter
Born of an unlikely union between
A fourteen-year-old india, Cayetana Chavez
And wealthy haciendado, Tomas Urrea.
Abandoned by your mother at twelve,
Accepted by your father at fifteen —
You went from poverty to riches
To become a pampered daughter.
You lived with him, his mistress Gabriela,
Your half bothers and sisters, at Cabora—
Learning from Huila, the rancho’s healer
To become a curandera.
One day, you fell into a trance so deep
Your father thought you’d died,
But you survived with a mission from God
To cure, comfort, and console the sick.
Thousands flocked to Cabora,
To receive your touch,
To seek your counsel,
To be healed.
Afraid you’d lead the indios to rebellion,
Presidente Díaz had you arrested,
Offered you prison or exile.
Prison meant death—you chose exile.
With your father also exiled,
You came to Nogales in Arizona Territory
Became a living saint
Adored by los indios of Mexico.
Your heart broke over Tomóchic.
The slaughter of Tomoticheco villagers
The death of 700 soldiers, the destruction
Of a town—all blamed on you.
Santa Teresita, curandera, spiritual healer,
You moved to El Paso with your family,
Continued your healing work,
Wrote about Tomóchic.
You refused to lead a Yaqui rebellion
That led to the death of seven warriors.
Branded “La Bruja de Nogales,”
Three attempts were made on your life.
You settled in Clifton, found peace
Until you married the wrong man,
A spy sent by Presidente Díaz
To take you to Mexico or kill you.
Disowned by your beloved father,
You joined a medical company to tour
The United States starting in San Francisco—
Ending in New York with a new love.
Another heartbreak—tempered
By the birth of your daughter Laura,
The death of your father whom you
Never saw or spoke to again.
Back to California, to Los Angeles
Where you worked with unions
Until your house burned down
And you returned to Arizona.
Another daughter born in Solomon,
Reminded you of family in Clifton.
So you went back, built a house there,
Died at thirty-three years of age.
Your faithful friends and servants
Mariana and her husband Fortunato
Raised your daughters in Mexico
Until they returned to Arizona.
You, dear Santa Teresa, forgotten
By time, your bones moved twice,
So now you rest in an unmarked grave
People claim is yours.
Cabora crumbled into the dirt
That gave birth to its adobes—
Scarcely an outline of its walls remain,
Broken tiles festoon the ground.
Your only monument, a plaque
On a boarding house in El Paso,
Earmarked for destruction
In the name of progress.
Yet the spirit of La Santa de Cabora,
The spirit of Teresita, your holy spirit—
Lives on in the hearts and minds
Of those of us that love you.
QUETZALCOATL'S RADIANCEby Alma Luz VillanuevaI live in Mexico
because festivals wake
me up pre-dawn,
Quetzalcoatl shimmering through
sky window, these
fireworks loud like
gunfire, someone's
died, left the body,
someone beloved, they
explode, they weep
for two hours, through
the day, and no
one calls the police, every
one understands some
one's left their body, some
one beloved is gone. I
dream through explosions,
wake to loud joyous
mariachis in the distance,
a marriage, family gathering,
I live in Mexico
because death and
life hold hands
dancing, singing, exploding
with grief and joy-
I live in Mexico
because every car stops
for the funeral procession,
a singer/guitarist sings
the beloved's favorite
songs on the way to
the cemetery, where the
famiies will gather, Dia
de Los Muertos, to
welcome their tender Spirits
home, from babies to
elders, a feast on the
graves, they decorate,
joy/sorrow equally,
beauty, song, candles,
tiny stars flicker all
night long as Spirits
come to taste tamales,
tacitos, tequila, cerveza,
fresh limes, oranges,
sweet cakes, where
the father of his Spirit
teen, grave decorated with
little cars, dancing
muertos, bottles of
empty Victorias (his
favorite), some full,
proudly shows me his
handsome boy, I can't
weep, his smile of
pure joy-
I drove to Mexico
in spring 2005, the
fear color codes of
my country, endless
wars on some enemy,
my dreams filled with
mourning women, holding
Spirit sons and daughters,
only sorrow, only grief,
no graves of marigolds,
feasts, sorrow/joy,
death holding hands
with life, dancing, singing,
weeping, exploding
pre-dawn journey of
the beloved, all day
into the night, mariachis
leading a wedding party to
more joy, holding hands
with life death life-
I live in Mexico
to remember,
to witness
simple human
joy sorrow joy,
those without my
country's great entitlements,
the leaders, the shameless
1% who would haul
off the mourner with
explosive weeping, singing,
who allow one in five
children in my country to
be hungry, who prefer
the poor to die (very)
quickly, while mouthing
how much they love their
country, care for its people,
send the neediest young to
kill/die for their oil wars,
want to control the
sacred wombs of women,
the constant enemy,
the constant fear,
unhinging our young, our
unbonded to our Mother
Earth young, bring
automatic weapons to
schools, universities,
playgrounds, now
theatres where the masses
go to dream, the manufactured
dream of Holly Wood,
dream, all humans need to
dream, many have forgotten
how to dream, vision-
I live in Mexico
because a Huichol family
in full brilliant rainbow
dress motioned me in front
of them, the market, I
thanked them but no, their
rainbow smiles insisted,
and the woman helped
me unload my full
cart, their few carefully
selected items waited, she
smiled her rainbows, I
smiled mine, "Gracias,
gracias, gracias,"
I kept saying, why
I live in Mexico.
I live in Mexico to feel
full sun on my face,
full moon light/shadow,
Quetzalcoatl's radiance.
San Miguel de Allende, July 2012
El Jefe de la pobreza
por Alejandro E. Barajas
mi gente llegó
a un estado mojado
listos para trabajar
llenos de alegría y paz
listos para hacer
la diferencia y más
de tanto dolor y poca educación
ellos fueron la ternura
de la lumbre en este pecho
por dentro del corazón
vive el hombre
vive la hembra
viven aquellos
que fueron maltratados
en el programa de Los Braceros
uno por uno
por la virtud
de trabajar y amar
cantando con el cielo
soñando con la tierra
un canto lleno de amor
soy un hombre
lleno de amor y ternura
soy más que lo que soy ahora
la pobreza hierve
dentro mi sangre
dentro mi corazón
lleno de menos dolor
lleno de más educación
Pan-America Unida es mi ilusión
The Boss of Poverty
by Alejandro E. Barajas
my people arrived
in a wet state
ready to work
filled with joy and peace
ready to be
the difference and more
from much pain and little education
they were the tenderness
of the fire in my chest
within the heart
lives the man
lives the woman
there lives those
whom were mistreated
in the program of Los Braceros
one by one
for the virtue
to work and love
singing with the sky
ringing with the earth
one song filled with love
I am a man
filled with love and tenderness
I am more than I am now
the poverty boils
inside my blood
inside my heart
filled with less pain
filled with more education
Pan-America United is my illusion
© 2012 Alejandro E. Barajas
Read the fine print...
by Iris De Anda
Handshake sells the contract
Loosing contact
Masterminded at ease
You say thank you & please
As "They" give it to us
Commercialized freedoms
Individualized monotone design
We are to feed on consumer disintegration
With a dis-eased population
Become subdued under sugarcoated ties
Fall asleep under lulluby of lies
Corporate head
Institutionalized
Mind Control
Sell your soul
What is the price to brainwash ideals?
“My land” by Arnoldo Garcia:
"Ode to Teresita" by Elena Díaz Bjorkquist
"Quetzalcoatl's Radiance" by Alma Luz Villanueva
"El Jefe de la pobreza / The Boss of Poverty" by Alejandro E. Barajas
“Read the fine print” by Iris de Anda
Elena has been doing a Chautauqua living history presentation of Teresita Urrea, la santa de Cabora, since 2001. The Arizona Humanities Council pays her honorarium and she travels all over Arizona introducing people to Teresita. She recently performed as Teresita at the National Hispanic Museum in Albuquerque and the Chamizal National Monument in El Paso. She's also performed at UC Davis, Border Book Festival in Las Cruces, Segundo Barrio in El Paso, and UT in San Antonio.
A writer, historian, and artist from Tucson, Elena writes about Morenci, Arizona where she was born. She is the author of two books, Suffer Smoke and Water from the Moon. Elena is co-editor of Sowing the Seeds, una cosecha de recuerdos and Our Spirit, Our Reality; celebrating our stories, anthologies written by her writers collective Sowing the Seeds.
As an Arizona Humanities Council (AHC) Scholar, Elena also does presentations about Morenci, Arizona. She received the 2012 Arizona Commission on the Arts Bill Desmond Writing Award for excelling nonfiction writing and the 2012 Arizona Humanities Council Dan Schilling Public Humanities Scholar Award in recognition of her work to enhance public awareness and understanding of the role that the humanities play in transforming lives and strengthening communities.
Recently, Elena was nominated for Poet Laureate of Tucson. She is one of the poet moderators for the Facebook page “Poets Responding to SB1070” and has written many poems that were published not only on that page but also on La Bloga. Her website is at http://elenadiazbjorkquist.com/.
Alejandro Esiquiel Barajas was born in Sunnyside, Wa. He was born into a hard working farm-working family. Along with 6 siblngs in the family, everyone knew what one dollor's worth meant at an early age. It was in the year of 2007 that Alejandro began to write about this intricate life, but it wasn't until 2009 that he began to create courage to save his thoughts on a piece of paper. This has now evolved into a self-manifestation of several poems that transcend into different realms inside the mind. Alejandro's personal interest include, but are not limited to: strumming the guitar, waking with the sun, neighboring the shores, and skipping rocks endlessly until the arm gives out. Alejandro will be attending Western Washington University's Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies for the next two years, where he intends to dive into Ethnic Studies/Critical Pedagogy. He also intends to further his studies until he recieves a PhD.
Editor's note: La Bloga celebrates literature, belles lettres, the sublime. La Bloga-Tuesday brings the weekly On-Line Floricanto, poetry rising above the dross that is Arizona politics. In other words, as a matter of course, we focus upon the higher and highest achievements people produce. Today's guest column by Jean Gillis celebrates an even higher achievement, a kid's turn-around from going nowhere to going somewhere. ¡Adelante, Ventana! Get that diploma.
michael sedano
Guest Columnist: Jean Gillis
The Questions
"Miss, don't you ever get mad?"
"Miss, does a crime record hurt you for college?"
"Miss, you're wearing different shoes! Does that mean you got a place to live?"
Every day students ask me the unexpected. Every day I answer as honestly as I can.
We're in our fourth week of school. The familiarity of routine is established. We're a lucky school in that we don't have fights; the staff is always vigilant for any signs of tension or dispute between students so that we can glide in and intervene before something gets hot. Because of this vigilance, we all cultivate techniques for keeping kids engaged. We give them the space to ask and express what may be bottled up inside, even if it's "off-topic" or seemingly disconnected from classwork. Usually our adult responses involve mild banter. Effective teachers have learned not to use sarcasm or threats. Students don't take to either, and in fact they will drift out of our orbit of influence if we are not mindful.
Bringing a student closer to graduation is much harder than you would think. Right now I am very excited about the turnaround of one young man who used to bedevil me no end. Last year I could not convince him to sit all period; he hovered by the window "Looking out, Miss," so regularly that I nicknamed him VENTANA. He scowled at me for that, but gradually he began to smile a little. He's the one who called our word game "Scramble" despite my puny insistence that it be Scrabble. His pacing, the intractability, the attempts to slip out of class that colored last year have all vanished this fall. What happened? Because even our summer school time remained a struggle of wills. I wanted this student to work through an English text and he was hellbent on tracking the World Cup. I know we met in the middle and he wrote me an armload of soccer essays while I tried to step back from hovering and micromanaging.
In our school lexicon we have a small category called "Superseniors." These are kids who are in the fifth year of high school, so the stakes are high. It is expensive to keep Superseniors in the system until they can graduate, but it's even costlier to cut over-18s loose without doing everything possible to help them earn diplomas. Superseniors can be tough to work with--some drag it out and some just have had such a tortured school history that it's a slog to the final credit. The happy news is that some Superseniors rekindle the spark they may have felt in kindergarten. This is what happened with my soccer fan. It was not my doing. It lay hidden within him, and in some inexplicable way, we've gotten to witness the change. This boy is my right-hand man right now. One of my coworkers got him to organize, photograph, and issue the school ID cards. We entrusted him with necessary school tasks and gave him the freedom to move about campus to accomplish them. We got the blessing of the school principal to put him to work in an unorthodox way. We listened to his concerns and we accepted his suggestions. During these past four weeks I've checked with his other teachers to see how he's doing. Each teacher has marveled over his ability to knuckle down. One teacher remarked
Summer Road Notes, El Paso, Texas
Cuca Aguirre and Eva Aguirre & the Juarez Border Arts Renaissance of the 30’s
Juan Felipe Herrera
In my brother-in-laws’ X-Terra I head toward El Bronco, an El Paso flea market.
I am in search of “Arriba Juarez,” a tiny clothes booth where Cuca Aguirre, now Cuca Aguirre García, at ninety-two years of age, sells clothes and waits for me, perhaps the one of the last pioneers of the Juarez Border Arts Renaissance of the 30’s that laid down the groundwork for the aesthetic revolution we are still living. José Montoya comes to mind, poeta, muralista and an RCAF general whom I met in the early seventies, back in Logan Heights, San Diego. Then I think of Alma Lopez, Lila Downs and Yolanda Muñoz, a digital artist, a singer and a sculptor – going strong.
My initial interest was to get more info on my own familia – los Quintana – who arrived in Juarez from Mexico City a few years after the Mexican revolution of 1910. And it happened that my uncle Roberto was a leading figure of Juarez’s “El Barco de La Ilusión” radio-theatre cast of XEJ and who worked with Germán Valdez (Tin-Tan), the comedic actor, originally from Guadalajara, Jalisco. After Tin Tan left Juarez to Mexico City in the early 40’s, he became a major movie star of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. An intimate portrait of Tin-Tan lured me too. After meeting Cuca and listening to her stories, songs and poems and returning a month later, things changed.
The more Cuca described her leap, as a teenager, into song, theatre, comedy and dance in the Juarez border Jazz and Ranchera scene from 1932 to 1942, the more I began to realize that she was a seminal part of an explosive site of cultural production.
With her sister, Eva Aguirre, now Eva Aguirre Amezcua, and Elvira Macías, Cuca formed part of “Las Tres Chatitas” singing and dancing and on occasion reading out loud, “declamando,” poetry touring Texas with Tin-Tan, and other artists. Returning to Juarez, she and her sister would delve back into a thriving cadre of radio and teatro artists, including “El Charro” Pancho Avitia, Pepe Gamboa, Meño García, Alfredo Corral and Roberto Quintana. The performance schedule was an intense project of experimental theatre based on improvisation and multiple characters all elaborated through various radio stations and radio shows such as “La Familia Feliz,” “Pablo el Ranchero” and “Pablo Barranquillo y Su Comadre Chencha.” There was no set script other than a last-minute given theme.
Cuca laughs recalling a one-act called, “El Millón,” that La Familia Feliz presented on XEJ. “They told us we had won a “million.” So, we jumped up and cried out our dreams – a palace, a world tour, a mink stole! Then the announcer gave us the leash to a tiny dog called ‘El Millón. We were so disappointed!”
The Juarez arts collective was tireless in production and in mentoring each other. Local singer Miguel Aceves Mejía, who later became a national sensation, stopped Cuca and pointed out various options in singing in harmony. “Once Miguel showed me how to do it, I never changed my style
Amor, Amorphous Amor: On Poems, Sex and Power
In Other Fugitives and Other Strangers by Rigoberto González
Edith M. Vásquez
Editor's note: La Bloga has semi-regularly linked or featured poet and scholar Rigoberto Gonzalez' literary critiques, most recently his review of Calaca Press' Chicas Patas Sci-Fi title, Lunar Braceros (a worthwhile title reviewed in February by Michael Sedano). Today, La Bloga's Guest Columnist, Edith M. Vásquez, conducts a critical tour of Mr. Gonzalez' work. Ms. Vásquez' poem, "To The Poets," was included in a recent On-Line Floricanto.
Disrupting symmetry: the key
to the art of conquering
a lover. Take exactitude and
distort its vain
proportions.
In ancient myth, Chaos and Eros are closely aligned figures. These lines, drawn from the poem, “Vanquishing Act,” by Rigoberto González call for the disordering of an as- seemingly-permanent value as that of symmetry, in an argument of love as agile potency against compulsory and preordained order. Throughout his Other Fugitives and Other Strangers, (Tupelo Press, 2006) González foregrounds male erotica through a lyric expansion leading ever more deeply into newly broached recesses of the loved body; here conquest is a countering of form, and form is a responsive if seduced lover. Cutting, biting, and probing the body of the lover is represented as a breakage of form--the release of order permitted therewith supplies new poetic material, and new shapes can be appraised.
The power of love—as physical pact or emotional bond—may injure and or please. Conquest entails some rearranging of power as the sexual positions do also create a necessary giver and taker often. Remarking on the potential of abusive power in sex, the speaker of the opening poem, “Good Boy” queries his own progression into the darker forces of sexual relations; the poem dramatizes the experienced lover’s inquiring gaze fixed on a photo of him as a ten-year old child. Meditating on his maturation from apparent innocent to practiced lover, the speaker poses a series of questions, among them: “Wasn’t I a good boy once?” and “How do you explain this/ strange ability to inflict pain?”
A juxtaposition of innocence and experience draws a contrast between nascent and certain lover through sound, color, and age. Youth is described as “a laugh/so clean,” is compared to a “white sheet,” and is recorded as “those high-pitched sounds.” On the other hand, maturation is “rust in my throat,” and it signifies that the child he once was “is lost in the stomach” and has dissolved “like any other/color.” These queries and comparisons culminate in one possibility, thus the assertion: “I must have been the changeling
"Lightning On a Black Night Over The Chuska Mountains" by Kristopher Barney
"The Stone Garden" and "I Am" by Luis Ascencio-Cortez
"To the Poets / A los poetas" by Edith Morris-Vásquez
“A.R.I.Z.O.N.A” by José Gutiérrez
"Rubbish" by Luzma Umpierre
“Kokopelli Pauses” by Alma Luz Villanueva
"Prayer For The Civil Disobedient" by Iuri M. Lara
"Rimas contra las cárceles de papel" by Octavio Merecias Cuevas
"Broken"- Rosa Escamilla
---------
LIGHTNING ON A BLACK NIGHT OVER THE CHUSKA MOUNTAINS
By Kristopher Barney
yaaishjaach'ili'.7.10
there’s a part of me that becomes alive
becomes deadly aware of everything
in all the insane moments of my life
in every cloud shape
in the shapes of my homeland
in the faces
in the rough texture of brown bodies
where one can find
trails of beauty
parts of the eternal
passions ignited in the sensuality of the touch
that gives me goose bumps
the magic that happens
too sudden and less often and
yes i miss you and my mind
runs a separate road of longing of
absorbing beauty through silence and the
internal dialogue over the value of life and
words & actions given to
souls lost somewhere between
this world and the next
a dual battle between gods and men & the
gentle children who
walk in the first days of freedom
we still have it inside of us
this sense of freedom
everything before Columbus
before all the bullshit
this fragrance
this look in the eyes
in bodies tanned by desert wind
and blue sunned skies
beautiful brown bodies that
fit right into scenes of
red canyon bottomlands
brown eyes
black hair
the beauty that only Native can appreciate
this spirit that brings songs to me
in this early morning
all that i take in
when i’m on a journey
hell bent on easing the lonesomeness and
momentary heartbreak of coming to terms with
this life
with seeing
the organs of the earth split open
the trembling nature of anger taken hold
when i walk through this land
see coal trains and trucks hauling
coal to power plants and hear the endless rhetoric
and debates of NDN politicians
hear the worthless discussions over
how life contains so little value next to pleasing
the greed of corporations and
the shadows that implode
as shareholders withhold their investments
as the world of Wall St. becomes
covered in seaside oil sludge
when all so called transparency gets fogged
by the smoke stacks of power plants and cities
the death
the black winds that cover us all and yet
all i can think of is you this morning
the restless night
the wrestling to sleep
this wind that surrounds me in this a.m. moment
the images fading through overcast and sun’s
first light and the silent wishing to be
somewhere else
an escape from the torture of this life
the responsibility those like myself face
this road
this song
this act of pure resistance
this dance with eagle plumes and clouds
the lightning that strikes
through a black night over
the Chuskas……..
(c) Kristopher Barney
Review: Stella Pope Duarte. Women Who Live in Coffee Shops. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2010.
ISBN 9781558856004.
Michael Sedano
Stella Pope Duarte's Vietnam war/Chicano movimiento novel,
Let Their Spirits Dance, tells a powerful story that merits reading, both for its view of movimiento organization around the Vietnam war as well as Duarte’s skillful writing.
I know some readers--I among them--were put off by Duarte's stridently nationalistic stance at the conclusion of her Vietnam novel, the roll call of war dead Duarte limits to dead Chicano soldiers, to the exclusion other names. That was her author's prerogative, signalling that Jesse's life and death in
Let Their Spirits Dance was the story of all those dead Chicano soldiers whom history and United States literature would otherwise ignore. All the men I trained with at Ft. Ord—not just raza--who followed orders and went off to die in Vietnam deserved to be noticed, not ignored. To me, the only color that mattered was the green uniform we all wore, hence my discomfort with Duarte's politics.
Ultimately, Duarte’s strategy proves prescient, doesn’t it? PBS’ WWII
series planned to burn us out of our role in that history. Texas pinheaded
textbook writers are erasing us out of US history. In
today's Arizona, its "breathing while brown" law would stand Jesse and all those names up against a wall and demand they prove their citizenship. All those names Duarte omitted could walk past whistling Dixie without a care in the world. My apologies to Stella for resenting her insight.
It’s unlikely Duarte’s work in
Women Who Live in Coffee Shops will engender even a whit of rejection from readers based on their ethnicity or Duarte’s focus. The thirteen stories feature either very young or very old people, and in addition to Chicana Chicano characters, Duarte peoples her tales with Italian, Polish, and Appalachian Anglos.
Here are Arizonans trapped in their own lives by poverty and its pernicious economic culture. But Duarte isn’t writing some bleeding heart tales of woe, but rather how hard scrabble people find ways to earn hope, or just a soupçon of satisfaction.
The title story, which comes fourth in the sequence, for example, has a host of locals—Chicana, black, Anglo--unite to protest the arrest of an Italian coffee shop owner. Duarte suggests Sal is guilty of something, maybe the revenge murder of a jewel thief, or something else. The piggish cops earn no respect from the locals, who relish poking a sharp stick in officialdom’s eye. When the child narrator’s mother hands Sal back the inciminating evidence she’d absconded in advance of the search warrant, it’s a measure of justice.
“Homage” shows how women and men readily close ethnic and class-based gaps. The first-person narrator is a clerical factotum in the county courthouse. Overdrawn and perpetually broke, she’s painfully aware of the fancy cars in prime parking spots, and the expensive consequences from the letters she and her co-worker stuff and put into the mail. She catches the eye and, owing to a studied vocabulary, the ear, of a mid-level manager. They flirt. He turns a cold shoulder to a needy Chicano couple. She nags. He has a change of heart. The couple will profit, and the clerk and the boss will have a date and who knows, a happily ever after future.
Readers will note how efficiently Duarte uses her words and material. In the coffee shop story, for example, a colorful bagwoman called Margaret Queen of Scots, is good for a couple of paragraphs, then forgotten as the plot turns to the central action. But as the collection closes, Margaret�
Review: Bernardo and the Virgin
by La Bloga Guest Columnist Nina Forsythe
Silvia Sirias. Bernardo and the Virgin. Chicago: Northwestern Univ Press, 2007.
ISBN: 9780810124271 0810124270Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and especially since the attack on the Twin Towers by Al Queda in 2001, the attention of Americans has shifted from "Communist threats" to "Islamic fundamentalist threats."
The Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution of the 1970s and the Contra War of the 1980s, including the Iran-Contra scandal, which provoked such alarm about the peril in "our backyard," have receded from memory.
Most of us never had any idea how the events of those turbulent decades were perceived by Nicaraguans, but it's a perspective worth appreciating, both for its own sake and for what it might imply about the complexities of the Islamic world in today's conflicts.
One of the most fascinating news stories that hardly got any ink in the U.S. was a series of visitations by the Virgin Mary reported by a poor tailor and sacristan in the back-of-beyond village of Cuapa. The effects of the apparitions, beginning in May 1980, less than 10 months after the Sandinistas had finally toppled the Somoza dictatorship, reverberated throughout a deeply divided, war-ravaged nation.
This real event is the basis for a novel by Nicaraguan-American Silvio Sirias.
Bernardo and the Virgin tells the tale of the seer, the apparitions, and how they touched the lives of the people of Nicaragua. At the heart of this work of fiction is the real-life tailor Bernardo Martínez, but woven around him are the stories of numerous fictional characters whose lives intersect, in one way or another, with his.
And what a motley crew they are. They run the gamut from a giddy, young girl impatient for love to an abrasive seller of religious supplies and her womanizing partner, from a right-wing crusading priest (and CIA operative) to a hardened Sandinista National Security agent, from a devoted 4’11” nun who carries around a 2” statue of the Virgin to a professor having a devastating mid-life crisis. They even include the ex-pat Nicaraguan community in the U.S. Some try to distort the Virgin’s message in various ways, either to undermine the church or to undermine the government, but most are preoccupied by their personal troubles. The stories range from deeply moving to humorous. One of the most hilarious chapters is, believe it or not, about a self-absorbed literary theorist.
The cast of characters, varied as it is, does not become unwieldy because their stories eventually intertwine. As a result, the reader gets a different perspective on an earlier character. Sometimes a later story undermines a previous interpretation; other stories provide a fuller understanding of an earlier event. Not all the characters are equally fleshed out; Father Damian Innocent MacManus, for example, seems more caricature than real. While there are such seemingly two-dimensional people in life, they don’t seem to fare will in fiction. Nevertheless, what we come away with in the end is an understanding of Nicaraguans during the latter part of the twentieth century: their suffering and longings, their losses and hopes, their mysticism and bawdiness, their idealism and resignation. The author writes that he hopes to “give readers some insight into what it has meant to be Nicaraguan during such tumultuous times.” In this entertaining and moving novel, he has done so splendidly.
This week, La Bloga is happy to share late-breaking news and views from the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Alburquerque NM, site of the NLWC. Click link above for datos.
Margaret Y. Luévano
Forty thousand square feet of vibrant images gazed down upon us. We, artists of words, gathered in the torreon to witness the fresco coming into creation, eight years in the making. We craned our necks upwards to witness the story documented before us -- Arabs, Jews, missionaries, slaves, Spaniards, virgins, indigenous mothers. They looked at us, their descendants, looking at them. Overwhelmed by the beauty, with the magnitude of the work, all we could do was stare.
On the eve of the Latino Writers Conference in Albuquerque we had come together from all over the county, writers in search of community. We were there to learn and share, gain strength to move forward in our writing lives. In this world so attached to labels that divide, the fresco reminded us that we are all a mixture of history, that we are the sum of our past moving forward to create the future.
The next morning Rigoberto Gonzazles echoed this sentiment in his keynote address to open the conference. First we must pay tribute to those who have paved the way, but we must move forward as artists in a time of crisis. We must challenge ourselves to take on the mantle given to us by our antepasados and be agents of change; we must act as role models for the upcoming generations and help develop in them the tools to shape the future; and we must not be afraid to step out of our creative worlds to become literary critics, for it is through literary criticism that we grow as a community in dialogue.
Afterwards, we disperse to our workshops -- memoir, travel writing, news writing, poetry, young adult writing, playwriting, short fiction, comedy, and mystery. For the next two and half days it is our mission to pay homage to our mentors, to learn from each other, and take what we learn here and transform it into wisdom that changes the world.
Sculpture in Toledo of Miguel de Cervantes by Oscar Alvariño.
Photographer: Francisco Javier Martín
La Bloga recently
reviewed Tom Miller's
Revenge of the Saguaro: Offbeat Travels Through America’s Southwest. This is Tom's first guest spot at La Bloga.
Tom Miller
All together now: “En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.” If you don’t recognize those forty-one words, go to the back of the class. The rest of you can identify the opening line from Don Quixote de la Mancha, the world’s best-loved and most translated novel. Since its initial publication in the early seventeenth century (in two parts; 1605 and 1615) the Quixote has been considered the first modern novel and its author Miguel de Cervantes has come to symbolized the Spanish language. If you grew up in a Spanish-speaking country you likely can recite those forty-one words in your sleep.
Ground zero for Cervantes, of course, is Madrid, where he lived off and on, and died April 23, 1616. William Shakespeare, who symbolized another language, died April 23, 1616 as well. In those days Spain followed one calendar while England used another, so although Miguel de Cervantes’ and William Shakespeare died the same date, they did not die the same day. (Or, as I explain to friends in Tucson, one followed the calendar from El Charro, and the other, from Mi Nidito.)
April 23 has evolved into El Día del Libro in Spain, a very literary day on which the King awards the annual Cervantes Prize for outstanding work in the Spanish language, and kiosks and big displays of books line the streets of Madrid, Barcelona, and elsewhere. (In Barcelona, it’s Sant Jordi day, which, in addition to celebrating books, includes giving a rose to a lover or someone you’d like to be a lover. Books and lovers; I ask you, could there be a more fertile combination?)
Madrid’s main activity takes place in the Circulo be Bellas Artes (CBA), a huge building on a broad mid-town boulevard with galleries, rooms for workshops, theater, meetings, and exhibits, as well as a nicely stocked bookstore named for the poet Antonio Machado. And it’s here every year that the Lectura Continuada, the marathon reading, of the thousand-page Don Quixote takes place. The first reader, always, is the winner of the Cervantes Prize, in this case, the Mexican poet José Emilio Pacheco. He’s followed by politicos, actors, high-ranking cultural bureaucrats, and the like. Each reader gets a paragraph or two at most. The CBA has a high-tech approach to the Quixote, and arranged for teleconferencing from readers in cities throughout Africa, the Americas, and Asia. And, it was web-streamed,
Breaking Piñatas Report
William Lansford Poetry Reading
SPIC Out! Triple D’s, Publishers & Lit Journal Lists. What U Don't Know
La Bloga reviewed Mayra Lazara Dole's Young Adult novel, Down to the Bone, last June. This is Mayra's first guest column for La Bloga. Welcome, Mayra.
Mayra Lazara Dole was born in Havana Cuba and raised in Miami. While writing, she worked as a hairstylist, library assistant, dancer, drummer, landscape designer, chef and ESL tutor. Dole's Latina debut novel, Down to the Bone, was nominated for ALA Best Books for YA 2009. Mayra has authored two bilingual strong girl picture books: Drum, Chavi, Drum! and Birthday in the Barrio--the latter is being transformed into a short festival film. Her Cuban dialect poems and short stories have been published by Cipher Journal: A Journal of Literary Translation, Palabra: A magazine of Chicano and Latino literary Art,
La isla bajo el mar
Book Review by Xánath Caraza
La isla bajo el mar
Novel by Isabel Allende
I was on page 335 of La isla bajo el mar when I found out about Haiti’s earthquake on January 12, 2010. Literally my heart collapsed along with the many buildings in Port-au-Prince and my thoughts and prayers are with the many Haitians suffering right now. I personally know a little of what it is to lose a house to a disaster. However, the human losses are definitely out of my spectrum even though I sympathize so much with Haiti. Inner strength comes in unimaginable and literally mysterious ways.
La isla bajo el marr by Isabel Allende was released in August 2009. I learnt about it in September and since then, I had been wanting to submerge myself in the novel. La isla bajo el mar was originally written in Spanish and will hopefully soon be released in its English language translation.
La isla bajo el mar is a novel that takes place in La Hispaniola at the end of the XVIII century. It focuses on the then French colony, now Haiti. I was excited to grow along with the main character, Zarité, and along the way learned about the history of La Hispaniola, especially of what is currently Haiti. For instance, Haiti was the only colony in the Americas where a revolution was carried out by slaves and was successful.
Not only did I learn of a more general historical context of what is today Haiti, but also I explored the personal experiences of the fictitious main character, Zarité Sedella, who no matter what happens in her life, considers herself under the protection of good fortune. Zarité was born a slave and at the age of nine was sold as a domestic slave to a new owner. Early in her life, she was advised by Honoré to dance in the traditional celebration with rhythmic drums of noches de calenda, since a slave who danced was free. “Baila, baila, Zarité, porque esclavo que baile es libre…mientras baila”. She had dreamt of becoming free from an early age, and dancing gave her strength to go on.
Of the historical aspect of Zarité’s experience, during the noches de calenda, the dances turned into Voodoo ceremonies. The Voodoo religion was brought to this continent by African slaves during French and Spanish colonial times and was misinterpreted by many at the time.
In light of Zarité’s more individual character development outside the historical aspect, the description of spiritually strong characters, such as Zatité as well as others could not be missed. I fell in love with Zarité’s spiritual strength. Zarité Sedella is not a flat character. She showed me psychological and geographical changes throughout the novel. Psychologically, I saw her move from fear, love, strength, and freedom. All these psychological changes happened in places such as a slave trade boat, where she was conceived and born, as well as in Haiti, Cuba, and finally New Orleans. Zarité went through different stages, from a slave, lover, mother and finally a free woman. Her strength came from her beliefs and the celebration of her African roots. She never lost the freedom of her own thoughts in spite of being a slave.
Lastly, I want to say that a good book allows me to feel what its characters are experiencing. Some of the feelings I experienced with Zarité Sedella were friendship, love, loss, redemption, bondage, and freedom. I enjoyed the love story of Zarité and Gambo while intermingled in the beginning of the Revolution in Haiti. I also danced with Zarité Sedella during the noches de calenda and celebrated her emancipation. Therefore, I believe you will enjoy La isla bajo el mar by Isabel Allende as much as I did. My explanation of what Honoré says is: Dance, reader, dance with the reading of a book and never lose the
Jean Gillis teaches English in a Continuation High School. 
This is her first guest column at La Bloga. She blogs about her teaching experiences at "Dating Yourself in Pasadena."
Jimmy Santiago Baca .
A Place to Stand. The Making of a Poet. NY: Grove Press, 2002.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-3908-5
Those of you who know me are aware of my challenging and poignant job as a teacher at a continuation high school. My students are mostly boys, not keen on reading, more than disaffected by a whole lot of things in life. But god love them, they are usually fairly tolerant of my attempts to bring academic order to our school lives. (At our school the kids address me by the honorific MISS.) As one fella said, when I was trying to gain his attention, "Oh, go ahead, Miss, teach. Do your little thing."
A couple of years ago I was galvanized by reading a paperback called A PLACE TO STAND, by Jimmy Santiago Baca. This book was the answer to my prayer, because I needed something substantial to read with my kids that would speak to them on a genuine level. The book contains innumerable harsh life experiences, explicit language, and a verity laced with crime and punishment and survival. All this fits my students' milieu. Trouble is, if you are a learner reading at second to fifth grade level, but you are a young adult,even a great book like this might be beyond you. Still, I had to have this book. I wrote a little grant and purchased a class set the first year we tried it.
I have to say that in class I read the entire book out loud, but it is a guided reading. The students read along with me, and we build up our stamina so that we can concentrate on the story for up to 30 minutes a class period. My students may not have experienced that childhood luxury of being read to. In fact, one of them remarked to me, "You know what, Miss? I'm gonna get my diploma and then open an after-school homework center and hire you to read out loud!" I replied that I would dig it and that I might be in the market for some part-time work one of these days. But it is the potency of the narrative that hooks them. How many times have they told me that they have never read a whole book until this one? It's so important to me that they read, that they feel invited to that table of readers and not hang back in the shadows of the excluded. (And it doesn't hurt that A PLACE TO STAND is highly cinematic in spots.)
One of my old teaching chums used to say she reserved time in class for preaching, and I do that too. When I preach, I always tell the kids I am that other mother they never knew they had. This particular book is rife with redemption but never in either a saccharine or lachrymose tone. Instead, this book is about LITERACY--about how we all can release life's pent-up emotion through thinking and reading and writing. I couldn't have asked for better preaching material had I devised it myself.
One small problem is that these books vanish. Everyone asks to take them home and we don't have enough to go around. In fact, I had to order ten more from Amazon for this quarter's go round. But I don't feel like I'm paying fare to Charon to enter the Land of the Dead. Far from it. This is my investment in our vida together.
La Bloga welcomes and actively solicits guest columns
If there is a specific literary volume by a Chicano poet that need stand at attention in any public and/or personal library, it most definitely must be titled, Viaje / Trip, by the late raul r. salinas. Although born in San Antonio, Texas in 1934, salinas was raised in the barrios of East Austin and in following the modus operandi of many a Chicano youth growing up in the barrio, salinas succumbed to la vida loca. He would spend nearly 12 years in the span of two decades at four of the country’s harshest prisons; Soledad, Huntsville, Leavenworth, and Marion. The poetry and prose that make up Viaje / Trip led me to ponder whether or not prison life was responsible for crafting such a power house of a human voice. And if so, is it immoral to thank salinas for choosing the life of crime as a young man.
As early as 1964 salinas began producing poetry and prose for The Echo, a prison periodical published at the Texas State Prison of Huntsville. Despite the fact that they were obviously writings of a novice poet, salinas’s words shone bright and speckled with verses of brilliance. It would be on the heels of 1970 while serving a stint at the Kansas Federal Penitentiary of Leavenworth that a group of inmates self-published a prison magazine called New Era. In the heart of the magazine appeared a five page Whitmanesque poem titled, “A Trip Through The Mind Jail,” penned by a pinto named raul r. salinas. A 35 year old poet preferring the lowercase lettering of his name in honor of and inspired by e. e. cummings.
In a written dedication to Black Panther member, Eldridge Cleaver, “A Trip Through The Mind Jail,” would reappear as the introductory poem in the 1973 publication of salinas’s first book, Viaje / Trip. So begins the viaje, “LA LOMA / Neighborhood of my youth / demolished, erased forever from / the universe. / You live on, captive, in the lonely / cellblocks of my mind,” writes salinas. “Neighborhood of endless hills / muddied streets – all chuckhole lined – / that never drank asphalt. / Kids barefoot/snotty-nosed / playing marbles/munching on bean tacos / (the kind you’ll never find in a café) / 2 peaceful generations removed from / their abuelos’ revolution.” With escalated cadence the viaje continues through the poeta’s mind, all at the same time realizing and not realizing solace in its closing words, “Flats, Los Marcos, Maravilla, Calle Guadalupe, / Magnolia / Buena Vista, Mateo, La Seis, Chiquis, / El Sur and all the Chicano neighborhoods that / now exist and once existed; / somewhere…someone remembers…” Seguro que si, we remember. Que Viva the Cockroach Poet!
Viaje / Trip by raul r. salinas published by Hellcoal Press, June 1973
As a second year assitant principal, Jesse Tijerina spends his waking days and seemingly endless nights with children; 377 which attend Maplewood Middle School and 2 beautiful children of his own; his son Nicholas and daughter Sophia, both of them still in diapers. And through all of the changes from literature teacher to adminstrator, Jesse has been able to sustain his love for palabras fuertes, el amor of powerful words. Whether he is reading or doing a little writing of his own, it is a sure thing that you will find Tijerina with a book in hand.
Something Old
Published in 1975, “Chicano Poems: for the Barrio,” is the first of only a handful of books by Angela De Hoyos. While reading “Chicano Poems,” the voice and image of the late great Abelardo “Lalo” Delgado reverberated and appeared throughout my mind. The coraje, mañas, costumbres, y callejeras of her barrrios de San Anto mirrored Lalo’s El Paso and Lalo’s Denver.
In, “Who Killed Brown Love?” De Hoyos responds, “I did/ - dijo el hombre blanco -/ with my little knife/ cuchillito de palo/ slowly but surely/ magullando. My personal favorite is the simply titled, “Chicano:” “How to paint/ on this page/ the enigma/ that furrows/ your sensitive/ brown face/ - a sadness,” writes De Hoyos. “Porque te llamas/ Juan, y no John/ as the laws/ of assimilation/ dictate.
When reading De Hoyos you will find that her every poem is a barrio in itself, populated with rage, habits, customs, and troubled streets. Que Viva De Hoyos!
Chicano Poems: for the Barrio. By Angela De Hoyos. M&A Editions, 1975
Something New
Not that it matters, but my vote for Latino Lit’s freshest prospect is the young Boricua from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Kevin A. Gonzalez’s, “The Night Tito Trindad KO’ed Ricardo Mayorga,” is a knockout of a first book. Cono, each poem hit me like Tito’s legendary left hook. No doubt the accolades for this young poeta are well deserved.
What Gonzalez does best is what I love the most about Latino writers, they write what they know by infusing culture. “…you wrote about the kioskos/ in Luquillo, Puerto Rico,” writes Gonzalez in his poem titled “Cultural Sellout.” The fritoleras’ hands scarred/ by the bursting pounce of oil, / coconuts like green bowling balls on ice.” And later in the verse, his beloved Neruda makes an appearance, “Gold wounds/ & reigns over the wounded, / & can you borrow that Neruda line/ & still call this your poem?”
Of all the reasons I believe Gonzalez is a champ in the making, it is the manner in which he vicariously exposes himself through his influences. With the awe and embarrassment of a child, he finds himself exchanging punches with Tito Trinidad, playing catch with Roberto Clemente, and having a café con leche with Neruda. Gonzalez Bumaye!
The Night Tito Trinidad KO’ed Ricardo Mayorga. By Kevin A Gonzalez. Momotombo Press, 2007.
Something Borrowed y tambien BlueThe following poem was written five years ago by a student in my creative writing class during his freshman year in high school. Anthony Dominguez is now married and a soldier in Iraq.
Only 4 years oldI was in 7th hour of my 8th grade year
I heard my name over the speaker
They said it was an emergency
My heart dropped as I ran through the hall
When I get to the car, they say it is your brother
He’s hurt
We don’t know much
But he’s at Arvada hospital now
As we rush to the hospital
I think sad thoughts
How I was mean and yelled at him
I sat there thinking
How was he
Was he hurt, sad, lonely?
How was he feeling?
I saw my mom and Chuy outside his room
The father from church and other family too
They didn’t want me to see him
But I pushed my way through
I saw little Adam
He was attached with tubes
And wires and things
My heart fell slowly
A part of me died
I lost all the love and the feelings inside
I didn’t think I’d ever see them again
I lost it
Outside the room
The cops asked me questions
I answered none
Father Fox said please stop son
They wanna help
But I left in a fury
Cops right behind
I run outside
While I’m burning inside
Feels like fire runs through my veins
The doctor says we’ll air lift him, we don’t have the medical attention he needs
When I get in the car
I feel the pain
As if I was there with him
But I don’t now if he’s hurt dead or alive
Why and how did this happen
I don’t understand
I pray to the lord please help
Take me instead
I asked why you let him
Why didn’t you protect him?
Then I run up to his room
I see my critical brother
He is lying in the bed
He is limp
Not moving
Hooked up to machines
I feel his heartbeat slow
The anger towards life begins to grow
Then I swallow my tongue
Try not to cry
I need emotion to get out
I just wanna die
I go to my family
They see I wanna cry
They try and try to comfort me
Then without notice
I leave in a fury
I can’t slow down
I wanna stop but I can’t
But I feel in control
With tears streaming down my face
I hit the wall
I smash the picture and frames
Glass on my fists
The pain starts to ease
When I see the blood flow
I know I’m in control
I see the puto Chuy
Who sits there alone
Guilt on his face
I ask him if he did it
He says no, “te lo curo”
I say, ok, I believe you
Then shake his hand
But in my heart
I don’t believe him
Then the doctor comes in
Cops right by his side
Tell Chuy you’re comin’ with us
Let’s go for a ride
My mother asks, why
The doctor says, Adam has trauma to
To the back of the head
Impact equivalent to a 4 story drop
They take Chuy away
All I feel is hurt
How he lied to me
My best friend
Hurting Adam
My blood
I see him, no movement
I tell him, I’m sorry
For not being there to help
I want him to be ok
My life has fell down
On top of my head
I pray and pray to Jesus
But he gives me no response
The doctor says he is brain dead
He has no chance at life
I close my eyes and see his soul float up to the light
Doctor says we have to pull the plug
Then we all begin to cry
They gather us in a little room
To get the damn thing done
As we wait for the doctor to come in
He breaks down, starts balling in the hall
He doesn’t’ want to do it
Then he is finally able to overcome
When he comes to the room
He pulls the tube from his throat
My hand on his chest
His heart beats fast
And then becomes very slow
As I feel the last beat
I kiss him goodbye
I feel he is free up in the sky
When I left the room
I left part of my heart
I am closed like a safe without a key
Nothing goes in, nothing goes out
My mom tells me funeral’s Monday
Time seems to stop
As for Chuy, he’s doing 38 years
Child abuse resulting in death
I don’t think he’ll get out
I think he’ll go mad
But I got no feelings for a killing man
Adam only 4 years old, barely started his life
His life died. I love him.
Why’d Chuy got to take his life?
Biodanza: Rx for the Soul.
You know that thing they say about love being like a butterfly that will unexpectedly land on your shoulder when you least expect it? That’s what happened to me one day in Buenos Aires while I was stomping the streets in my perennial search for books, cafés and cultura. I got zapped, not by the valentine version of love, but by Biodanza, the dance of life. And biodanza, which I stumbled upon in the back room of that women’s bookstore on Hipolito Yrigoyen, took me directly to universal love, freedom, and happiness. Yes, all that, one dance at a time.
BIODANZA—I’d seen the word plastered on posters for cultural happenings in Bogotá but I didn’t know what it was and I was too chicken to go and find out. I had reason to be scared. Because biodanza is not a set of choreographed dance moves—it’s a way to find yourself in your body in the presence of others, with music and with purpose. It’s like being intimate with your self in public. Yet it’s also fun, playful, and creative. Imagine being a five year-old spinning in a playground. Or strutting around at home, uninhibited, to a sensual salsa tune. But you’re not alone—you’re in a circle with strangers, dancing, at times holding hands, swaying hips, or looking into their eyes.
Rooted in anthropology, psychology, shamanism, biology and philosophy, biodanza originated in Chile in the 1960s as a result of Rolando Toro’s studies on the effect that dance and movement have on the human psyche. Toro found that the mixture of music, movement, and expressed emotions stirs the human potential and connects individuals to each other. The magic happens within classes called vivencias, on-the-spot life experiences orchestrated by biodanza instructors who come to class with a lesson plan and a CD of carefully selected music cued up.
It’s really hard to describe biodanza because you have to experience it to get it. I’ll try, nonetheless, but be forewarned. It’s like trying to tell someone what it feels like to peel a ripe mango and become briefly intoxicated with that scent.
Each vivencia has its own flavor. As a whole, the class may have a pre-selected theme, such as the yin-yang archetype, angels, totem animals, gods and goddesses, or one of the four elements. Each dance has a specific intention, such as connecting to mother earth, breathing in beauty, feeling the heart center, or flirting with desire. Biodanceros give in to the moment and to the rhythm at hand—samba, salsa, classical, rock, pop, flamenco. The music is critical and as a true melomaniac, I appreciate that the music is real and organic, as opposed to computerized techno types of tunes.
The biodanza instructor leads the way and demonstrates an interpretation of the dance at hand. She sets the tone, often with a poetic script: Dance your pleasure… Dance like now or never… Walk the walk of your life… Feel a oneness with all that is connected to the universe… Dive into the sea of humanity.
But the rest of us are without words. We dance in silence, listening inward. We do as we are told: Hold hands and dance in a circle to the rhythm of samba and greet each other with the eyes. Let go and walk tall, happy and proud to Queen’s “I Want to Break Free.” Breathe in universal love and float with the sounds of Enya. Reach into the root of the earth with the beat of African drums. Dance and touch each other with the fingertips. Caress the hair of the person in front of you.
We go inside, quiet down, even as Kitaro’s “Sundance” is pulsing inside our bodies. That is the beauty of biodanza.
I sought out biodanza in Los Angeles after that fated encounter in Buenos Aires and found
Jaquelin Levin, who had just relocated here after being invited to teach a biodanza seminar at Esalen. A native of South Africa, Jaqueline trained with Carolina Churba in Johannesburg and later apprenticed with
Patricia Martello in the United Kingdom. She recalls her first vivencia in Cape Town. “I was so disconnected from my body, I questioned being in that first class,” she said, adding that she masked her embarrassment with giggles. “But I went back the next week and something shifted in me psychologically and physically.” Soon after, she was hooked. “The woman [instructor] from Brasil demonstrated the dances and moved with such comfort and sensuality. I wanted to be like her.”
I do too. Not that I want to be exactly like anyone, but I want to be in my body in a happy, expressive and fluid sort of way. Like swimming, but on land.
Here in Los Angeles, Jaquelin offers a series of vivencias (weekly classes resume on September 24). She has an intensive workshop coming up at the
Goddess Temple of Orange County (October 3), a workshop at the
Esalen Institute in Big Sur (January 5-10, 2010) and a Caribbean cruise for International Women’s Week (February 28-March 10). Graduates from the
San Francisco School of Biodanza may also offer vivencias in California. And if you google around, you can find biodanza in many cities in the U.S.
A few nights ago, I joined Jaqueline and her group of biodanceros on the beach for a vivencia beneath a full moon in Aquarius. I don’t know if it was the soft sand and ocean breeze or the intimacy with strangers mixed up with lunar magic, but something clicked all over again. I woke up, ever so briefly, in the pleasure of the moment. Even now, I close my eyes and sway in the circle of communion, arms wrapped around fellow biodanceros in our safe nest of humanity. I can still hear the chorus of Deva Premal’s “So Much Magnificence”: “There is so much magnificence near the ocean, waves are coming in, waves are coming in.”
Yes, they are. And it’s just so damn cool.
***
For additional information about biodanza, see:
***
Totó la Momposina in Los Angeles
And if you’re in Los Angeles, don’t miss your chance to experience the fabulous
Totó la Momposina on Friday, August 14
th in downtown at the California Plaza for Grand Performances.
The shows (at 12 PM and 8 PM) are free. Totó is a talented and dynamic traditional Afro-Colombian singer and she’ll be swinging it with some top-notch Colombian drummers.
For colored boys who speak softly
I would sacrifice my tongue
Make an offering to the Gods
I first saw Yosimar Reyes perform his work at Highways in Santa Monica as part of the show 4X4: New Works by 4 Latino Artists. My two goddaughters were with me--Gladys in her early 20’s and Leonor, a teenager. Despite the fact that each of 
us represents a distinct generation, all three of us were enthralled with Reyes. As he casually entered the stage, he drew us in with his youthfulness, his spiked edgy hair, his openness, and the command with which he began to expel palabra and energía.
A native of Guerrero, Mexico and currently a student at Evergreen Valley Community College in San Jose, Yosimar Reyes transcends borders. He isn’t even old enough to legally buy a beer, yet he holds the title for the 2005 and 2006 South Bay Teen Grand SLAM Championship. He is also the author of the chapbook for colored boys who speak softly.
Photo: Erin Beach
Reyes’ title is a spin on Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. In the 1970’s, Shange’s unique collection brought forth a much-needed feminist black perspective. Her choreopoems also validated the experiences of poor black women generally ignored in literature. Similarly, Reyes’ collection is bringing to the stage an essential colored and queer voice.
Caged birds that sing, missing fathers, the count down of a hate crime, and queer love as an act of resistance—these are some of the motifs in Reyes’ for colored boys who speak softly. Full of raw, youthful, spoken-word vigor and vulnerability, Reyes’ poetry testifies and free-flows:
Yo soy el fuego y tierra
de mares que liberan
de muertes silenciosas
Yo soy la muerte que me deseas
I am of destruction and reparations
of freedom in cages
yo soy the bird that still sings praises
y con todas mis fuerzas
te digo que tu odio me libera
porque más que Joto enjaulado
¡Soy el poder de la Conciencia!
Reyes’ conciencia is personal and political, cultural and sexual. In his poem “Queer Aztlán” he deconstructs and reconstructs the mythical land of origins, reminding us that his village has long denied him, labeling him a “rare breed of sin.” It is the hard-shelled hypocrisy of tradition that Reyes wants to crack open and expose with his words. Interestingly, however, while he breaks with oppressive heterosexual traditions, he also adopts old motifs that have been part of that discourse, such as Aztlán. The poet has one foot in new territory and another in the old world, and he’s dancing to redefine those worlds and himself.
There is conviction and anger spewing throughout Reyes’ pages, and clearly his spoken word background has shaped his poetic style. At times, the politics of class, race, gender, and sexuality become somewhat didactic. And yes, Reyes has got a bit of a rant in him, but when least expected, this poet peels back the skin of el Joto Enjaulado and intimately reveals. He is strongest in these places where he sheds all that has been imposed, whether they are mainstream or queer-stream paradigms. In “Sometimes,” for example, he confesses his inner fears and struggles, stating that he does not know what freedom looks like:
Because just like everyone else I am a coward;
Afraid to speak,
Because I know I wouldn’t be reading this
If my mother was in front of me…
Sometimes I wish I were nothing,
Invisible like breath, like wind
Just spirit, no body, no head
Sometimes I wish I were nothing…
Nothing…
But
VOICE.
The fuel in Reyes’ work is Love with a capital “L.” Love of self. Love for the Black bisexual who wants to join the army to kill “the BAD people.” Love for Lawrence King, the 15-year-old gay boy who was tragically shot in Oxnard by a fellow student. In “Hate Crime,” a tribute to King, Reyes shows even his love for the perpetrators of violence and hate.
…I wonder about this boy in front of me. The one holding the gun to my head calling me names. I wonder how the world will treat him. If they will understand that it is not his fault, this is bigger than his desire to see me dead…beyond the name-calling and his shattered spirit, he is a product of…his parents.
The entire collection is a love letter to colored queer men and the extended community. This love is Reyes’ rebellion encarnado, lodged in the body, made of flesh and bone.
This is resistance
Your hand pressed upon my chest
the way your lips feel on mine
…
I open the doors of my body to you
No longer afraid
Of the ghosts that haunt me
…
This is resistance
Because brown boys are not supposed to love like this
Yet they do love like this, and Reyes wants the world to hear and know this truth. At 20, Yosimar Reyes is a raw poetic gem stone. I can’t wait to see this author evolve, for as other queer colored writers of our time (Cherríe Moraga, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, John Rechy, Gil Cuadros, Luis Alfaro, and Essex Hemphill to name a few), Reyes is rupturing old literary canons, forging nuevos caminos, and shift-shaping like a two-spirited shaman inside the queer continuum. This is one young man not to be missed. Here he is sharing a little bit more about himself in his own words.
YOSIMAR REYES
When did you begin to write?I began documenting my thoughts in middle school because at the time I was too shy to share them with anyone. Going through old journals I get all embarrassed because I was such a tragic little kid.
What role did books play in your literary and personal development?As I entered High School I became more aware that I was different, something that can be very dangerous in an atmosphere where individuality is not celebrated. I found comfort in books. It was around this time that I became familiar with James Baldwin. As I read
Go Tell it On the Mountain somehow I felt that Baldwin had written that book for me. So I became interested in reading all the queer people of color books I could find. It was because of writers like Baldwin, Cherríe Moraga, La Gloria Anzaldúa, Nikki Giovanni and Manuel Muñoz that I began to see myself in a different light.
You’re a two-time champion of the South Bay Teen Grand SLAM (2005 & 2006). What drew you into slam poetry?
I began slamming in high school. Initially this was because my teachers thought it would be a good way for me to step out of my shell. Slam was my first introduction to the world of performance poetry. I competed in venues throughout the bay area and slowly people began connecting with my work. Pretty soon I was being featured at local poetry readings and open mics. That’s how I slowly drifted away from the world of competitive poetry to where I am now.
Your queerness is expressed in different ways in your writing. Can you comment on your queer identity in relation to your writing?
I choose to write from a queer pen because this has been the identity many have tried to make me feel ashamed of. When I write about growing up as a queer boy, I do so to spread understanding that my queerness is not a simple act of the flesh but of my spirit. My queerness is in my skin, my voice, in my touch; it is the duality of my spirit.
When someone reads or hears your work, what are you hoping they get out of it?
More than anything I want people to get a real sense of who I am and the factors that have made me such a complex being. In my writing I expose a world that has become detached from the core. My poems are attempts to find humanity within myself. That is the message I want to spread to people; we need to find the humanity within each and every one of us in order to recognize that no one is expendable.
What are you currently working on and do you have any upcoming events?
Recently, I became one of three members of LA MARICOLECTIVA: a group of Mexicano/Chicano Queer Immigrant Poets. We will be presenting our official launching in September of this year. I am really excited about this. I am also conceptualizing a poetry CD which, god willing, will come soon. For the L.A. folks, I will be performing at Tia Chucha’s in Sylmar on August 22, 2009.
To learn more about Yosimar Reyes and his work visit http://yosimarreyes.com or http://myspace.com/yosimarreyes. For a copy of his book email him directly at [email protected].
La Bloga is happy to introduce a three-woman guest column today,
Olga Garcia, tatiana de la tierra, Liz Vega. As you'll see from their biographical sketches following, they are an accomplished team of poets, educators, mujeres chingonas. It's a genuine honor they have chosen to join us today as La Bloga guests. For today's post--which La Bloga hopes will be the first of many-- they share a bit about themselves and their relationship to writing and art.
El Blogmeister: Michael Sedano
My Life as a Beet by tatiana de la tierra
I’d like to say that I’m rooted like a red beet with my head in the earth and my feet in the sky, that I am always in the land of metáforas and dramatic structure. But in reality, most of the time that I’m upright you’ll see me as a car potato, sitting in the driver’s side of my little blue Yaris, zooming along the 405 with the music blasting. Or I’m a wedge of hard aging cheese plopped in front of a computer monitor at home or at work.
You get the picture: I am a beet stuck in the body of a cheese-stuffed baked potato. I feel for my transgender brothers and sisters, as I know what its like to be one thing on the inside (a writer and creatrix) and another on the outside (a professional something-or-other).
But back to the roots. My mom handed me over to a world of words when she read me poetry as a child. She read me children’s poems and prose by the brilliant Colombian author Rafael Pombo, and she also read me Neruda and Benedetti. She blasted music and sang along while doing housework, knitting and reading, introducing me to bambucos, boleros, and baladas, gifting me with music and melody. I took it from there. I was a budding writer in junior high, when I published my first haiku in the school’s literary newsletter. By high school I was writing feature articles and editing the school paper. I discovered the power of the word by listening, reading, and finally, writing.
I have been writing, editing, and publishing in multiple genres for the longest time—from poetry and songs to encyclopedia entries—and I’m nowhere near done. I really resonate with creative non fiction, with the rough, the raw, and the real. My bloga space will be filled with reflections of writing, music, and the arts. I can’t give too many details now because first I have to stick my beet-head back in the earth and plant my feet firmly in the sky. Until next time, I send everyone lots of beet luv.
Self-Proclaimed Poetry Prodigy by Liz Vega
One of my earliest memories is of me sitting around the kitchen while my mom cooked and recited poems. I grew up listening and reciting Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Amado Nervo and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
At family gatherings I was always part of the entertainment. For some time, it was adorable to watch a five-year old tackle the philosophical musings of older, depressed men and intellectual reclusive nuns. The adorableness quotient faded when I became a tall, budding fifteen-year old reciting traditional verse among my more animated competition—boisterous, bratty kids lip-syncing and dancing to Menudo, a band so alluring even I, the self-proclaimed poetry prodigy, had to worship them. Despite the ridicule and yawning adults, I held on steadfast to my poetry. I was enchanted with the beauty of words, the strength of metaphors, the swirling sounds of alliteration.
My love for the arts includes films, outsider art, contemporary art and reading good literature. Writing has also always been a hobby of mine. Fifteen years ago in D.C, a psychic named Fatima told me that I would become insanely wealthy through writing. I am still waiting. Until that happens I am excited about sharing my passion for what I find beautiful with La Bloga readers. I seek to review books, films, events and venues where children and families can develop and nourish their relationship with art and literature. I believe that through art and literature we transcend, evolve, and bridge seemingly different worlds. Art is essential to the nourishment of our souls; it is as essential as relationships and love. Al rato!
I Don’t Need No Stinking Roses by Olga García Echeverría
My writing roots stretch back to a tiny one-bedroom apartment that I shared with six siblings in East Los Angeles. Our home stood a few yards from the edge of the 710 freeway, where the never-ending roar of the speeding cars was our perpetual soundtrack. In our tight living quarters where hand-me-downs were the norm, there were few things I could claim as my own--writing was one of them.
As an adolescent, I created my first journal by stapling a stack of papers together with a title page that meant to say “Diary,” but since I was a terrible speller it read “Dairy.” Despite my rancho spelling errors, words on paper gave me then what they still give me now—testimony. I write, therefore I know I’m here.
We had few books at home when I was growing up, so my “literary classics” were telenovelas, ghost stories, El Cucui, La Llorona, and the family drama that never ceased to unfold. There were also the robust sensory details of barrio life--fearless cucarachas, chickens in the backyard, a Nina Simone record stolen from the local library (sorry!), Funky Town grooves blasting on an old record player, and the occasional slaughtered pig being dragged into the kitchen by my father who made and sold homemade chorizo. Poetry was everywhere—in the thundering freeway roar that I pretended was an ocean, in the mish-mash of English and Spanish, in the smell of frying tripas, in the eyes of the severed pig that greeted us when we opened the refrigerator door. These are the things that rooted me in poetry, instilling in me a love of language, details, and stories.
I look forward to sharing many words and thoughts with La Bloga. In particular I’m interested in seeking beauty and art in obscure places and exploring creative topics that may otherwise go under the radar. Hasta la próxima, I bid you all peace and poetry.
Olga Garcia
Astrological Sign: Ultra Libra
Zodiac Year: Qui Quiri Quiiiii!
Olga García Echeverría was born and raised in East Los Angeles, California. She has a BA in Ethnic Studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso. Currently, she teaches ESL to adult immigrants in Koreatown and English to high students via the Upward Bound Program. Her first book, Falling Angels: Cuentos y Poemas, was published by Calaca Press and Chibcha Press in September of 2008.
foto: Weenobee.com
Tatiana de la Tierra
Astrological sign: Tauro (Sun & Moon)
Zodiac year: Ox
Occupation: librarian and writer
Location: Long Beach, California
Born in Villavicencio, Colombia and raised in Miami, Florida, tatiana de la tierra is a bicultural writer whose work focuses on identity, sexuality, and South American memory and reality. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso and a Master of Library Science from University at Buffalo. She is author of For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology / Para las duras: Una fenomenología lesbiana and the chapbooks Porcupine Love and Other Tales from My Papaya and Píntame Una Mujer Peligrosa. http://delatierra.net foto: Hillary Crook.
Liz Vega
Astrological Sign: Scorpio
Zodiac Year: Rooster
Liz Vega works in education and is an avid supporter of the arts. When she is not juggling students or her two daughters, she is immersed in poetry, prose, or film. She was born and raised in East L.A., but in typical Mexican migratory fashion she moved back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico while growing up. Her formal education was marked by marijuana-growing nuns in Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico, bilingual classrooms in East Los Angeles, the sink or swim methods of a New England preppy boarding high school, and finally Cornell University, where she earned a degree in Human Development and Family Studies with a concentration in gerontology. Liz is currently putting her degree and concentration to good use as she is sandwiched between the needs of her aging parents and raising a family.
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Leonardo Padura. Translated by Peter Bush. Havana Fever. London (UK): Bitter Lemon Press, 2009.
ISBN: 978-1-904738-36-7
Michael Sedano
Havana Fever burns with resentment that Cuba’s ruined culture shows itself in every vestige of its modern form. Whole barrios given over to crime and desperation, a city whose collapsed and patchwork buildings reflect society’s structural failure that began with Batista’s overthrow. Decaying mansions are little different from outrageous underclass brothels, the one stripped of anything saleable, the other sold out by the revolution. There’s no love lost between Leonardo Padura and official Cuba. But these things have become commonplaces of Cuban exile writers.
What sets
Havana Fever apart from other Cuban exile novels is Padura’s absence of malice. His lead character, Mario Conde, isn’t looking to clean up crime, corruption, morality. He’s been retired from the police for ten years now. Conde’s retirement, in his late 40s, has come about because his old boss was railroaded into retirement and Conde acted to protest the injustice. Padura shares this information in a small plot divagation. Conde doesn’t regret the history, he wastes no emotion in lamentation, not for the public, commodity shortages, blackmarketeering, nor police corruption.
Today, the Count sells books and leaves the world as he finds it, to its own devices. But out of the blue, a gut feeling burns through his chest when he stumbles upon a Cuban equivalent of the ancient Library of Alexandria.
The novel will delight bibliophiles with its description of the Montes de Oca library: the earliest book published in Cuba, nineteenth century treatises featuring hand colored engraved plates, first editions of laureates of Cuban poetry—autographed. Conde could defraud the clueless owners but instead gives them a fair price, and points out the rarest volumes that must not be sold.
Such nobility cannot go unpunished. Leafing through a cookbook filled with impossible recipes, Conde finds a folded rotogravure photo from the 1950s of a gorgeous nightclub singer wrapped in gold lamé, Violeta del Rio. Conde falls in love not solely owing to her allure but because the photo awakens a dim memory and that nagging gut feeling that something is not right.
The magazine page leads Conde on the trail of a cold case murder dating back to the heydey of Havana nightlife. Batista gets the boot, sending his gangster business partners, along with rich Cubanos, in headlong flight with whatever dollars remain of their riches, leaving behind their mansions to fall into rot. One such Cubano, Alcides Montes de Oca, scion of a respected family de nombre, had fallen head over heels with the alluring Lady of the Night, bolero singer Violeta del Rio. The rich man flees in 1960, without Violeta del Rio. Because police have their hands full investigating counterrevolutionary terrorist violence, the singer’s death by cyanide remains an open case.
Montes de Oca leaves behind the fabulous library, the devastated mansion, and three caretakers, his dedicated personal assistant and her two children—Montes de Oca’s children carrying the surname of a chauffeur to keep up appearances. The novel follows Conde from sympathy for the emaciated brother and sister to suspicion that one of them withholds secrets to unlock the mysterious death of the almost forgotten singer. On the trail, the detective tracks down a musiciologist who identifies the single recording of Violeta del Rio, the singer’s top rival--a once-ravishing beauty now a sadly vain old woman holding in bitterness at her fifty year old feud, and another wizened body formerly known as Lotus Flower--a sensational nude dancer and high-class madam, who gladly shows off a portrait of her young self in costume.
The mystified Conde calls upon all his resources to resolve events the reader already knows from letters interjected into the narrative. Mysterious love letters by Nena to her Love parallel Conde’s investigation. Love is definitely Montes de Oca. Nena is not a character in the story and there’s some fun to be had in guessing her name. The letters allude to the events Conde has not yet tracked, filling in some details, offering misinformation here and there, but eventually spelling out the killer’s identity, and Nena’s. It’s a fun bit of dramatic irony, with added irony, Conde will never read the letters, the poisoner having destroyed them.
Beyond weaving an engaging mystery, crafting vivid tours of battered barrios, sentimental interviews that evoke that earlier hustle and bustle, Havana Fever reminds a reader of the inevitability of getting old. And its consequences. Conde has lost a step, in fact gets his ass kicked viciously because he loses focus. Conde’s best friend, Skinny Carlos, is killing himself with food, alcohol, and as much excess as a paraplegic shot in Angola can muster. Carlos deserves a happy ending, Conde reasons, and spends lavishly to bring rich food and quality rum to regular late night bullsessions.
Cuba is aging too, but not as well. The old are starving to death and when they’re gone, memories of the old days will be gone with them. While the old order changes it yields place to ever more bullshit, corruption, drugs. The gaps grow between then and now. And what can one do about it? Make compromises, survive, hold to your principles. They are their own reward. Or, one can leave, disappear from involvement in whatever comes next. Or, one can give in.
A final thought on publishing emerges in the British English of the translation. Cars have boots and bonnets, an envelope contains a pair of black and white winkle-pickers, and several colloquialisms drive my curiosity what Padura’s Spanish actually read. These linguistic lacunae aside, Peter Bush offers a masterful completely readable text that flows with a beautiful vocabulary and a clean sense of authenticity. Readers who have enjoyed Conde’s earlier stories, notably the Havana color series, Black, Red, Blue, and Gold novels, will find this story of the aging Conde a capstone to the series. In an afterword, Padura reveals he’s been working on movie versions of his work, and that is fabulous news. Read the books, read Havana Fever, and you can join those discussions one day, “it didn’t happen like that in the book, but…”
And that's the penultimate Tuesday in July, 2009, a Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except You Are Here. Thank you for visiting La Bloga.
mvs
La Bloga welcomes your comments on this and all columns. Click the comments counter below to share your views. La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. If you have alternative views to this or another column, or a cultural/arts event to report, perhaps something from your writer's notebook, click here to discuss your invitation to be our guest.
Be sure to visit La Bloga this Sunday, July 26, when our Guest Columnists will be poets Olga Garcia, Tatiana de la Tierra, and making her writing debut, Liz Vega.
Latino Writers Collective. Cuentos Del Centro. Stories From The Latino Heartland. Scapegoat Press, Kansas City MO, 2009.
ISBN 13: 978-0-9791291-2-4
Michael Sedano
Among the diverse pleasures of writing regular book reviews is the chance to discover the work of small press enterprises such as Scapegoat Press out of Kansas City, Missouri. My usual fare comes from big publishing concerns out of New York or other metropolises, and what serendipity brings me off the New Books shelves of the Pasadena Public Library. There's a lot to be said for the output from well-funded ventures, editors, and agents. Quality, however, is not exclusive to the big bucks process. Case in point, Kansas City's Latino Writers Collective and its recent anthology of local writers, Cuentos Del Centro.
Cuentros Del Centro features twenty-four stories from fifteen writers. Three of the stories, by Xánath Caraza, come in Spanish, the others más o menos puro Inglés. Caraza translates hers into English--or is it the other way around? The English language versions come to you smoothly, absent the cultural lacunae found in some translated work, as if the writer works in English then converts to Castellano. Language students will enjoy the simultaneously translated work as a way to challenge their eye and ear for the one or the other idioma. More interesting, especially in the writer's first two pairs of stories, is her surrealist bent. "Scofield 207"--same title in both languages--sees a schoolteacher lose her identity to the glyphs on a page when her ink pen takes over from her hand. "I was the character of the story; that was my hand. I did not exist there, outside. I now only existed on paper. I had been born with that story and now it was time to go back home." In this ultimate of pathetic fallacy, the story ends with the beautiful metaphor of being swallowed by one's work, "the arrival of the white night."
Latino writing, from wherever it emanates, will share experiences, such as the child farmworkers of Miguel M. Morales' "Hijo con Filo", or the lovely irony fashioned around a rural quinceañera in Juanita Salazar Lamb's "El Vestido Colora'o." The hot sun, chorizo and egg tacos, getting cropdusted by asshole farmers could happen in a peach orchard in Bakersfield Califas as in Under the Feet of Jesus, or the soybean field of the boy with a hoe. "The Farmhouse," on the other hand, captures the relentless fear that grips a picnicking familia unwisely trying to outrun weather unique to the heartland--a threatened tornado and killer hail. Nor is the racism of an anglo farmer something unique to Kingman County, Kansas, but when it drives the gente back into the maw of the storm, Morales gives the commonplace its uniquely local color.
It is the heartland also that helps these writers avoid a pet peeve of mine, appositional translation. Writing a Spanish phrase, immediately translating it into English. The technique, perhaps an editor's pique, conveys an artificiality to a story that is tough to overcome. Cuentos Del Centro's characters, and titles, use Spanish sparingly, avoid translation, or do so skilfully. A masterful instance comes in "El Regreso." The whole of José Faus' story translates that. A worker on este lado reminisces in a sentimental funk about the day he left, about his children calling him papá and expressing their love, despite their being too young to remember him at all. The man has been a success en el Norte because he is an honorable person, not "a thief, a ladron" (no italics). Plus, "His English gives him an edge over the others that refuse to learn it or choose not to speak, fearing how they sound." He's earning good money cooking his mother's recipes, but toned down to the local tastebuds. So back home he regresars. He kisses the wife who makes him promise never to leave again. "'I won't,' he whispers back and whispers it again and again throughout the day and night and the many years that follow." And that is what "El Regreso" means in English.
It is a pleasure for this Bloguero to connect with an old blogfriend, Juanita Salazar Lamb, who back in 2008 was a La Bloga guest Bloguera. Juanita is one of those Spanish-language sans translation writers who trusts her readers, so she lets the speeches stand on their own, or skilfully does the English in effective context:
"'Entonces, conoces nuevas amigas, y ¿cómo sabes? En tu vestido nuevo te vas a ver tan bonita, que todos van a querer bailar contigo.'
I gave her the look that spoke what I didn't dare say to my mom, 'What planet are you from? Girls like me don't get asked to dance.'
'Alístate antes que le diga a tu papá.'
The threat that always brought me back to my sense--my mom would tell my dad."
Lamb's story of the red dress will bring a smile to your face, even though the ironic finis is predictable. It's a happy ending that a decent child deserves.
Speaking of happy endings, I wish the Latino Writers Collective had wrapped up its outstanding set with Gloria Martinez Adams' "The Wager." Here is a brilliantly romantic story--genuine love growing old together--that offers sweet contrast to the crappy treatment women receive from worthless men in the anthology's closing offering, Linda Rodriguez' "Why I Can't Draw." Rodriguez' capstone, at least, closes with a note of hopefulness borne of self-reliance, and that's a good thing, exactly as the self-reliance of this writers collective from the Unitedstatesian heartland proves valuable to readers of Chicana Chicano Latina Latino writing.
You can read these stories only if you can get your hands on a copy of the book. Your independent bookseller can order it, or you can email the collective at [email protected]. Unfortunately, the URL for the collective either is broken or lapsed, another hazard of the indie press, I suppose. Ni modo. You owe yourself and friends the opportunity to enjoy these stories and writers. Click, buy, read. You are welcome de antemano.
PALABRA @ The REDCAT Lounge presents
(Press release text follows)
William Archila reading from his debut book of poetry THE ART OF EXILE Sunday, July 26 at 3:00 pm
In a powerful collection of poetry, poet William Archila takes the reader on a poignant emigrant's journey from the war-ravaged El Salvador of the 1980s to Los Angeles. The poet's grief is unapologetically set before us in clear yet lyrical terms. The art of his voice compels the reader to acknowledge the brutality of war and the struggle of the disenfranchised. The sense of loss is palpable, but so are tenderness, humor and love.
". . . William Archila is the reigning master of some breathtaking imagery that encompasses a practiced, lyrical certainty. There's a deep singing at the center of Archila's world, a calling to everything that says home is where the heart is." —Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize winner
"[Archila's] voice is not only an important addition to the chorus of Latino/a poetry, but a necessary one in the vast landscape of belles lettres in the United States. To say he sings like an angel is an understatement. He is possessed of brilliance and what Lorca called `duende.' The Art of Exile joins the ranks of the best poetry published this year." —Virgil Suárez, author of 90 Miles: Selected and New(2005)
William Archila holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Oregon. His poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, AGNl, Poetry International, The Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Obsidian III, Notre Dame Review, Puerto del Sol, Rattle andBlue Mesa Review, among others.
The REDCAT Lounge
631 W. 2nd Street (@ Hope)
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex)
Contact: elena minor • [email protected] • 1 800 282 5608
PALABRA @ The REDCAT Lounge is a new series of occasional readings presented by PALABRA A Magazine of Chicano & Latino Literary Art. Website: www.palabralitmag.com
And that's the first Tuesday of the seventh month of the year 2009. A Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except You Are Here. Thank you for visiting La Bloga.
La Bloga welcomes your comments on this and any daily column. Just click on the comments counter below to update information, reflect on something, or add your most welcome views.
La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. It's a pleasure to welcome Lydia Gil, a former Guest Bloguera, as a new member of La Bloga's daily team. Lydia and Lisa Alvarado will share Thursday columns. If you'd like to be our guest, click here and let us know your column idea.
Here's hoping we all feel independent. The answer to last week's query, "How many other nations have a fourth of July?" is All of them.
hay les wachamos.
atentamente,
mvs
La Bloga welcomes journalist Lydia Gil to our roster of guest 
columnists. Ms. Gil teaches Spanish and Latin American literature at the University of Denver. She reports on cultural and literary news for the Hispanic News Services of EFE and is the author of Mimí's Parranda/La parranda de Mimí, a bilingual children's book.
Luis Alberto Urrea stopped in Denver last Tuesday to present his new novel Into the Beautiful North at the Tattered Cover, as part of an extensive book tour, which started in Kankakee, IL on the 20th. Urrea has been on the run since, reading in Denver, Tempe, Philadelphia, NYC, DC; tomorrow in Portland; the 4th in Seattle... You get the picture.
The reading was great, mostly because the actual reading was minimal and it was more like a long, chilled conversation with the audience. And also because he brought goodies: cardboard abanicos and postcards with the logo of Tacho's "La Mano Caída" restaurant and internet café... Yes, not only is he a wonderfully skilled writer, with 14 books and tons of awards to his name, but also a marketing wiz. And you thought multi-city book tours were dead...
Urrea seems super dedicated to his fans... To those unhappy with the lighter tone of Into The Beautiful North "because it's not The Hummingbird's Daughter " he promises a sequel of the latter for next year and this, in addition to the film version, directed by Luis Mandoki and starring Antonio Banderas and Ivana Barquero. And, to those who think that The Hummingbird's Daughter should be considered typical of his writing, he insists that it was, indeed, the exception.
He said that after Hummingbird and The Devil's Highway, writing his latest novel was a treat. He wanted to have a good time, a sort of literary holiday... And from what he told us, a very well deserved holiday. It turns out that his previous work was a long, introspective look at growing up in the Barrio and at breaking what he calls "the secret codes of machismo"... It was rejected by his publisher. So you see, even writers with long lists of awards and Hollywood credits get their manuscripts rejected. So, gente, keep writing!
Several of the many anecdotes Urrea shared with the audience were not surprisingly about the writing life. How, for instance, he's a long-distance writer, going pretty much from the computer to the chiropractor... Readers seem forever curious about these things: when do you write, what's your favorite poem, they ask, as if the answer could shed light on a coded passage of fiction or revive a moribund writing routine... So while answering one of those questions, Urrea explained that many of his ideas for narrative have actually come from poetry. When he's in between writing projects, he says, "that's when stacks of poetry books start to take over the house..." What a nice image.
Estoy leyendo... Purgatorio by Tomás Eloy Martínez. Not your typical story about desaparecidos during the Dirty War in Argentina. In 1976, Simón Cardoso, a cartographer, is detained by the military and never seen again. His wife, Emilia Dupuy, unconvinced of his death, awaits his return amidst the predictability of her suburban life in New Jersey. Three decades after his disappearance, Emilia, now a middle-aged woman with distant memories of her youth, runs into Simón in her neighborhood and recognizes him instantly, as he seems oddly to be frozen in time... A good read, so far.
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"This is the great time to be a Latina, and especially a great time to be a Latina writer," says Lorraine Lopez. I whole-heartedly agree! Growing up, I always somehow felt ashamed of my heritage, even though my parents always wanted me to be proud. I'd felt that growing up in a working class Mexican-American neighborhood had somehow been a hindrance.
Now even though I don't necessarily walk around waving a Latina flag, I completely embrace that it is part of who I am, and I let it come out in my writing, my music playing, my mannerisms... no one ever leaves my house without being well-fed and a big abrazo.
It's important to be optimistic; but let's keep in mind that writers need to do more than writing. We need to buy & read each others books, participate in and be supportive of groups like Las Comadres Para Las Americas who pave the way for many of us to become visible. (I'm giving "Count on Me" as Xmas gifts this year.) We need to step out to create and nurture an audience; and most important, our writing must excel. It is up to each individual writer to be prepared to take advantage of this wonderful moment.
I love Lorraine Lopez' work, so I was excited to read her interview. I definitely enjoyed reading about what her greatest achievement was and also what the word 'comadre' means to her. I've always thought that it referred to someone who was a godparent - as I was taught that within my own Chicano household. I had no idea it moved beyond that single relationship and included female friendships in general. I love knowing this now and will most definitely be employing that term when I refer to my friends and family. Count on Me sounds like a great book that I need to read ASAP!