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It's the year 2015, and looking back at 2014, some interesting stuff has happened, and it has to do with the core Chicanonautic concerns. Seems that science fiction and fantasy – or at least the offical stuff from big time publishers – has discovered diversity, and is giving awards to women of color. Big news! The future and the universe are diverse!
Since I've been doing this for decades, and jumping up and down screaming to get people to notice, I have mixed feelings about it. I was diverse before diversity was cool.
I remember when all science fiction was considered trashy, and fantasy didn't quite get picked up on the radar. Getting published was considered a minor miracle, and if you made any real money, maybe you weren't really sci-fi after all.
Add the fact that you might be a Chicano or something weird like that -- well, I had a lot of people look at me like I was crazy and try to talk me out of it. I guess I got used to it. I never did expect much acceptance or cooperation. I figure I'm like movie monster, running amok until the authorities bring in the heavy firepower.
I was out to see if I could get away with things, and I managed to do it.
But the times have changed. Magazines like The Atlanticand The New Yorkerare publishing articles that would have been the stuff of fanzines when I was getting started. The masses eat up sci-fi franchises brought to them by multinational corporations that they know and trust.
Maybe a book or two gets bought now and then, but I don't see my writer friends and acquaintances getting rich.
I'm not getting rich either, but 2014 was a successful year for me. My multi-book deal with Digial Parchment Services' Strange Particle Press is going well. Editors doing “diverse” antholgies are getting in touch with me for stories. And academia has discovered me, so if I play my cards right, my books will taught on campuses all over. My readers, who have been called a “noisy minority” have grown up to be editors, publishers, and professors.
Seems like all the hard work I've been doing for decades is paying off, but I do wonder. I've been right here all along, stomping the terra, and it took this long to discover me. Haven't I been visible or noisy enough?
Maybe it's because I've always been an outsider, waging a guerrilla war for my own existence, that I'm uneasy about diversity in science fiction and fantasy being the coming thing. I don't know how to be in. I don't trust the Establisment. What if they decide that it's just a fad: “Diversity? That so 2014!”
But then, what if writers like me are the coming thing? Science fiction is busting out all over the place, in real life, with changes happening faster and faster. Is it more than a coincidence that this is happening simultaneously with the post-Ferguson racial strife?
The future is coming, and it's looking scary. It'll cause some freak-outs. People are going to need new visions to help them sort it out. Diverse writers with wild imaginations can do that.
Ernest Hogan is the author of the novels Cortez on Jupiter, High Aztech, and Smoking Mirror Blues. Watch for his story collection, Pancho Villa's Flying Circus.
by Ernest HoganSeems I can’t do anything without it causing controversy. Though the overwhelming reaction to the cover of Digital Parchment’s new edition of Cortez on Jupiter had been positive, there has been some objection to Pablo Cortez being depicted as a futuristic conquistador.
I understand people’s reaction to the symbolism. The conquistador in his helmet is seen as a villain while the “pioneer” (originally from the French for “foot soldier” as in “peon”) in his coonskin cap is idolized a hero. But as my great-grandfather Hogan said about the Wild West, who the good guys and bad guys are depends on who’s in charge at the time.
I like the cover. It's similar to an idea I had when the first edition was in the planning stages. The conquistador I envisioned was more of an H.R. Giger monster, but this new one is more commercial -- doing the important job of catching the eye of cybershoppers and getting them to read the synopsis.
A good book cover makes people think, “What the hell?”
Also, in way, Pablo Cortez is a conquistador. He conquers, not Jupiter, but the society he lives in.
Like it or not, as Hispanics/Latinos/Chicanos/Nican Tlaca we carry conquistador DNA. Otherwise we’d be Indians. It’s our whole hijo de la chingada thing, or as my grandmother once so delicately put it:
“The soldiers would come into the villages, and take the girls away on their horses . . . and then they would be their wives!”
We live in a world they made -- especially here in Aztlán, where we walk in their footsteps, and the extermination of the natives was not complete, the difference between Nueva Hispana and New England.
As I wander like Don Quixote seeking adventures or like the Aztecs searching for the place to build their metropolis, I often feel like a doomed warrior on an absurd mission in an alien land. Though I do identify more with Cabeza de Vaca and Estevanico than Cortés, Pizarro or Aguirre.
Hmm . . . Was Columbus a conquistador? He was working for the same bosses.
It’s given me ideas that I may never get around to writing:
What if space explorers acted like conquistadors rather than idealistic bureaucrats?
What about a badass mestizo gunslinger who wears a conquistador helmet?
Or an Aztec anti-conquistador, going to Europe to deconstruct their culture?
Ernest Hogan’s Cortez on Jupiter is available for pre-order for a new Kindle edition with new cover and introduction. There will be a softcover edition, too. Stay tuned for details as they develop.
The Desmadreization of Xólotl Zapata
Review: Ernest Hogan. High Aztech. Smashwords, 2013. Link here.
Michael Sedano
While it’s trite to call a novel “unique” you’d have to go all the way back to 1962’s A Clockwork Orange to read a novel anywhere similar to Ernest Hogan’s 2013 High Aztech. There’s certainly nothing like High Aztech in Chicano Literature, nor the broader U.S. science fiction genre.
Fans of
A Clockwork Orange are sure to enjoy
High Aztech’s multicultural dystopia and distinctive Españahuatl dialect. There’s horrowshow ultra-violence but the sharp edges are taken off by absurdist humor and the hapless first person voice of thirty year-old Xólotl Zapata.
Hogan jumps the reader into the middle of a xixatl storm, no preamble. Xólotl is tied to a table drugged by an (at this point) unseen inquisitor. The all-seeing government may be Zapata's iniquisitor. Then again, it might be one of the other organizations vying to control Tenochtitlán: The mafia. Or the Iyakuza. Or the Neliyacme. Or the Pepenadores. Or High Aztech itself.
The economical plot effectively incorporates backgrounds and definitions as the narrative unfolds, Hogan rarely stops the action to explain something. The pepenadores, for example, are ubiquitous hazmat-suited ciphers. They recycle trash into useful materials but also phantasmagoric vehicles that give them a fighting chance against their similarly heavily-armed rivals.
Hogan understates the grand irony that los pepenadores, like service workers everywhere, grow invisible to hoity-toity tipas tipos who spill secrets around the help. They make perfect spies and a formidable insurgency. Each of Hogan's thugitome combatants has their quirks and capacities for trouble.
Zapata’s girlfriend, Cóatliquita, infects him with a virus. It gives him a compulsion to go around in crowds, like the metro, and touch people, passing along the virus. The government and the rival groups know and want to capture Xólotl.
What ails Zapata is not some Ebola-like plague that kills, but a faith virus developed in Africa, where the world's best science is, that spreads by touch. The virus genetically modifies the brain. Give a Catholic a Catholic virus they ardently reaffirm their faith. Give that virus to a Muslim and you have a troubled convert.
The virus Zapata is spreading reaffirms or converts gente to the neo-Aztec religion that already has an upper hand among the gente. Clearly, the Catholic government wants Zapata off the streets. The other organizations want Zapata, to study and make their own viruses. And kill Zapata.
Zapata as the story begins, lives a semi-famous comic book writer and "a rare literate expert on Españáhuatl." As the virus grows in him he begins thinking of himself as an Aztec warrior and seeks a flowery death every time it looks like he’s about to bite the dust. And that happens a lot in ways that bring smiles of a reader’s face.
Chaos, riots, sex (but only a hint), surprise, treachery, philosophy, surreality push the plot along. Your head will spin. Zapata is captured, escapes, is captured, escapes, is captured. He’s injected with all the religion-inducing viruses in the world. He escapes to spread the resulting virus.
Hogan’s writing is at its best in Xólotl’s hallucination when all the gods and Gods and goddesses come together during a wild virus-induced religious bacchanal. Readers will find their own favorites.
High Aztech hits readers with page after page of memorable inspirations from the author’s fevered imagination.
The Españahuatl is lots of fun. As a Chicano writer, Hogan has a good feel for code-switching etiquette and uses that in building his extensive Nahuatl Spanish vocabulary. Fortunately, the author abandons appositional translation early on, allowing the code-switched idiom to stand on its own.
Not that gente will have much difficulty with easy cognates like
mamatl, or
radioactivotl “hot,” horny, or
chilangome Tenochtitlán inhabitants, pl.
chilangotl sing. Applying phonetics to other terms will make them readily accessible, like
quixtianome non-Aztecan religionist, Christian, or
xixatl for shit. Some words might be decipherable, but real pronunciation challenges, making reading a tongue-twisting “A” ticket ride like the key term, t
icmotraspasarhuililis.Hogan provides a useful glossary at the back, but leave it for later.
As with any successful science fiction,
High Aztech provides food for thought, perhaps advocacy, on the roles critical thinking, belief, and syncretism play out in people’s contentment with one another. Above all,
High Aztech is a good-humored story that pushes the boundaries both of science fiction and Chicano Literature and, until more raza start writing genre literature,
High Aztech is sui generis and merits broad readership.
High Aztech comes to you as a
publishing initiative by the author’s effort. Click the link for Ernest Hogan's La Bloga column on the venture. Various booksellers distribute the work in these formats: epub, mobi, pdf, rtf, lrf, pdb, txt.
My reading was of the
Smashwords edition of
High Aztech,
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/321713.
Mailbag, News 'n NotesIt's Happening at a Frontera Near YouArtesia NM • 9/14 - 21 |
| Tara Evonne Trudell |
Alas is a
Border Beads poetry project that La Bloga friend Tara Evonne Trudell (featured in this week's On-line Floricanto) launches to bring awareness to unconscionable treatment of women and children immigrants detained in Artesia, NM.
Trudell has issued a call for poetry that deals directly with the current immigration and detention travesty.
Trudell and friends fashion prayer beads from the printed poems. They will roll the submitted during a weeklong fast in solidarity with the mothers and children, the week of September 14 through 21.
Submissions are open now. Please submit to
[email protected]Austin • 9/21San Benito, TX • 10/4Date: Saturday, Oct. 4th
Time: 10 am - 6 pm
Location: Narciso Martinez Cultural Center, San Benito, TX
Event Description: This is the first book festival of South Texas which is a collaboration between UT-Brownsville, Mexican American Studies at UTPA, and the Coalition of New Chican@ Artists (CONCA). This space is to reserve a table for small presses, independent bookstores, libraries, etc. The first table is free but if you wish to rent a 2nd table the fee is $50. We have limited space, so this will be handled on a first come, first serve basis.
For more information, contact Christopher Carmona at
[email protected] or call at 956-854-1717.
Deadline for Submission is September 22nd by midnight.
Guerrero MX • 12/24From La Bloga friend Reyna Grande:This December 2014, I will be going to my hometown in Guerrero, Mexico to host a Christmas event known as a "Posada", where I will be giving free toys to all the neighborhood kids! When I lived there in poverty, the posadas were something to look forward to. I have never forgotten the poverty I came from, and how the simplest acts of kindness can change a child's life.
Please help me make this Christmas season special for the children living in my hometown. Starting today, I will be doing a sixty day fundraiser campaign for my Christmas toy giveaway. Be part of the Grande Posada by contributing to my fundraiser!
Please consider donating today or tell a friend! Thank you so much!
Click here for the IndieGoGo campaign.https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/grande-posada-toy-drive
On-line Floricanto September 9, 2014Tara Evonne Trudell, Sonia Gutiérrez, Jorge Tetl Argueta, Eva Chávez, Raúl Sánchez, Tom Sheldon"This Round" by Tara Evonne Trudell
"Grandchildren of the United Fruit Company/Nietos de la United Fruit Company" by Sonia Gutiérrez
"Nuestros niños y niñas / Our Children" by Jorge Tetl Argueta
"Faces Under the Shadows / Rostros bajo las sombras" by Eva Chávez; edited by Raúl Sánchez
"Poetry Is" by Tom Sheldon
This Roundby Tara Evonne Trudellthis round
will go
to mother earth
she who
prevails
and survives
pain
she who
takes destruction
and rebuilds
finding her
way to grow
continually
defying
all odds
against her
she not trying
to hide
her beauty
pure
in nature
giver of life
battling
jealous gods
and bible words
forever
captured in
man's greed
and corruption
the pain
of persecution
inflicted
never leaving
her awareness
in layers
of the not caring
upon ground
she provides
a place
for humanity
to stand
over and over
again
all source
of inspiration
her gift
of being
unconditional
and providing
life
for all those
around her
raising fists
in the air
earth wins
this round.
Copyright © 2014 Tara Evonne Trudell.
Tara Evonne Trudell studied film, audio, and photography while in college at New Mexico Highlands University. She is a recent graduate with her BFA in Media Arts. As a poet and artist raising f four children, it has become her purpose to represent humanity, compassion, and action in all her work.
Incorporating poetry with visuals, she addresses the many troubling issues that are ongoing in society and hopes that her work will create an emotional impact that inspires others to act. Tara has started a life long project, Border Beads, that takes poetry off the page and transfers it into energy in action by making beads out of the poems. She uses her own poetry as well as other poets to address the crisis on the border.
Grandchildren of the United Fruit Companyby Sonia Gutiérrez for Claudia GonzálezKnock, knock, knock.
America, there are children
knocking at your door.
Can you hear their soft
knocks like conch
shells, whispering
in your ears?
Weep, weep, weep.
Can you hear
the children whimpering?
Their moist eyes
yearning to see friendly TV-gringo-houses
swing their front doors
wide open.
America, America, America!
The children are here;
they have arrived
to your Promise Land,
sprinkled with pixie dust,
paved with happiness
and freedom.
America, why do these children
overflow your limbo rooms?
Why are the children corralled
in chain-link fences,
sleeping on floors
and benches?
America, did you forget
your ties dressed in camouflage
and suits in that place
called The Banana Republic?
What say you, America?
Please speak. And speak
loud and clear—
so the brown pilgrim
children never forget
the doings
of your forked tongue
and their color schemed
prison's-eye-view.
Nietos de la United Fruit Companypor Sonia Gutiérrez
para Claudia GonzálezTan, tan, tan.
América, hay niños
tocando tu puerta.
¿Puedes escuchar los golpes
suaves como conchas,
susurrando tus oídos?
Llorar, llorar, llorar.
¿Puedes escuchar
a los niños quejarse?
Sus ojos humedecidos
anhelando ver las puertas amistosas
de Tele-casas-gringas que se abran
de par en par.
América, América, América!
Los niños llegaron;
han llegado a tu Tierra Prometida,
espolvoreada con polvo de hada,
pavimentada con felicidad
y libertad.
América, ¿por qué estos niños
desbordan tus cuartos limbo?
¿Por qué hay niños acorralados
en bardas de alambre,
durmiendo en pisos
y bancas?
América, ¿acaso olvidaste
tus lazos vestidos de camuflaje
y trajes en ese lugar
llamado La República Platanera?
¿Qué dices tú, América?
Por favor habla. Y habla
fuerte y claro—
para que los niños peregrinos
morenos nunca olviden
las acciones de tu lengua viperina
y las esquemas de colores
de sus vistas prisioneras.
Sonia Gutiérrez is a poet professor, who promotes social justice and human dignity.
She teaches English Composition and Critical Thinking and Writing at Palomar College. La Bloga is home to her Poets Responding SB 1070 poems, including “Best Poems 2011” and “Best Poems 2012.” Sonia recently joined the moderators of Poets Responding to SB 1070.
Her vignettes have appeared in AlternaCtive PublicaCtions, Mujeres de Maíz, City Works Literary Journal, Hinchas de Poesía, Café Enchilado, Storyacious and forthcoming in Huizache. Her bilingual poetry collection, Spider Woman/La Mujer Araña is her debut publication. To listen to “Grandchildren of the United Fruit Company,” visit Poets Cafe on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles’s PodOmatic.
Nuestros niños / Our Childrenpor Jorge ArguetaNuestros niñosJuegan con trocitos de madera
llevan mariposas en las manos
se levantan con los pájaros
Nuestras niñas cantan
a la ronda
le hablan a las nubes
un día se van siguiendo sus sueños
Nuestros niños y niñas
vuelan
nadan
no le temen a la bestia
Nuestros niños y niñas
son guerreros
son gorriones
tienen vocales y coraje en sus corazones
Nuestros niños y niñas
no son extraterrestres o ilegales
son como los niños y niñas
de todo el mundo
Hermosos como el agua
como el viento
como el fuego
como el amanecer
©Jorge Argueta 2014
Our Childrenby Jorge ArguetaPlay with small pieces of wood
They carry butterflies in their hands
They rise with the birds
Our children sing
Round and round
They speak to the clouds
One day the go follow their dreams
Our children
Fly
Swim
They do not fear “The Beast”*
Our children
Are warriors
Are hummingbirds
They have voice and courage in their hearts
Our children
Are not aliens or illegal
They are like all children
Of the world
Beautiful
Like the water
Like the wind
Like the fire
Like the sunrise
*The Beast: the train that travels through Mexico to the border.© Jorge Argueta 2014
Jorge Argueta is an award-winning author of picture books and poetry for young children.He has won the International Latino Book Award, The lion and the Unicorn Award, The Américas Book Award, the NAPPA Gold Award and the Independent Publisher Book Award for Multicultural Fiction for Juveniles. His books have also been named to the Américas Award Commended List, the USBBY Outstanding International Books Honor List, Kirkus Reviews Best Children’s Books and the Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choices. His new book, Salsa, A Cooking Poem is due for publication in Spring 2015. He also is the founder of two popular poetry festivals, Manyula Children's Poetry Festival and Flor y Canto Para Nuestros Niños y Niñas. A native Salvadoran and Pipil Nahua Indian, Jorge spent much of his life in rural El Salvador. He now lives in San Francisco.
FACES UNDER THE SHADOWSby Eva Chávez, edited by Raúl SánchezWe are the bronze skinned people
whose shoulders bear the burden
heavy bags sweet harvest grown
on fertile land
we climb up and down
ten or twelve foot ladders
eight, nine or more than ten hours
our feet know the weight
cold dawn our dry skin cracked
raising sun travels west
to burn our skins
at dusk we count our full bins
our backs bent all day
we work under our own shadow
picking asparagus onions
everyday we take that soil on our skin
orchards full a table full
bounty of the earth
your family and mine partake
the sweat, and sweetness of our labor
we are not afraid of hard work
others avoid
they prefer to criticize us
we take care of the land
we tend this American soil
where we live and grow
under the shadows proud and brown
as the soil, the land watching us grow
ROSTROS BAJO LAS SOMBRASpor Eva Chávez, editado por Raúl SánchezSomos gente de bronce
cuyos hombros soportan la carga
bolsas pesadas, llenas de fruta dulce
cosechada en tierra fértil
subimos y bajamos escaleras
escaleras de diez o doce escalones
ocho, nueve o más de diez horas por día
nuestros pies y hombros conocen la carga
el amanecer frío seca nuestra piel ya agrietada
el sol créce en su camino hacia el Oeste
para quemar nuestra piel
al atardecer contamos cuantas cajas cosechamos
durante el día, nuestras espaldas permanecen dobladas
trabajamos bajo nuestra propia sombra
piscando cebollas, esparragos
todos los días la tierra se queda en nuestra piel
huertos llenos una mesa llena
generosidad de la tierra
para tu familia y la mía
disfrutando el sudor y la dulzura de nuestra labor
no tenemos miedo al trabajo duro
lo cual otros evitan
y prefieren criticarnos
nosotros cuidamos de nuestra madre tierra
cuidamos esta tierra americana
donde vivimos y crecemos
con mucho orgullo bajo nuestras sombras de bronce
tal como la tierra que me ve crecer
Eva Chavez. I arrived to the USA in 2005, at the age of 18. I worked for five consecutive years picking fruit in Washington State. This was my first job in the United States after emigrating from Mexico. On average, I worked eight to ten hours per day, six to seven days a week. All that hard work in the fields taught me all the value that immigrants bring to this country. This hard work also taught me the importance of education.
My educational journey started about four years ago at Yakima Valley Community College (YVCC). In those four years I progressed from the ESL program, to Adult Basic Education (ABE), to completing my GED, to enrolling in the DTA in Business Administration in YVCC and CWU. My experiences working in agriculture are motivating me to reach my educational goals, but also they inspired me to show to others the importance of the immigrant workers in the USA.
Therefore, one of the fuels that moves my art expression comes from the sweat that immigrants workers leave on this American soil. This is also part of the fuel and motivation that keep me involved in the activism for immigration.
Raúl Sánchez comes from a place south where the sun shines fiercely. He is a translator currently working on the Spanish version of his inaugural collection "All Our Brown-Skinned Angels" that was nominated for the 2013 Washington State Book Award in Poetry. He is also working on a Long Poem Memoir a project for the 2014 Jack Straw Writers. He is a mentor for the 2014 Poetry on Buses program sponsored by Metro King County and 4 Culture. http://beyondaztlan.com and http://moonpathpress.com
Poetry isby Tom SheldonPoetry is a cold wind on an
empty street.
Its a symphony of broken glass
with letters falling.
Poetry is open doors,and open hearts.
Its the smell of blood on
home ground.
Poetry is the song of a thousand birds
in color.
It is the first born,the first kiss
and the first tree.
Poetry is the smell of fresh paint
on a sagging wall.
Poetry is tears ,and ink
blended.
A communion of thought form,
and mystery.
Poetry is a law that reaches deep
inside.
It is the light in the dark
a breathing prayer.
Poetry is winter dust sparked
by a spring rain.
Poetry is.
My name is Tom Sheldon and I was born and raised in New Mexico and come from a large Hispanic family. I have always loved and appreciated the gift of creating in various forms. Southwestern themes and landscapes are among my favorites and the wonder and beauty of the the history her and my surroundings here continually inspires my artwork. Thank you greatly for considering my words. Mil gracias.
Once upon a time, before the Internet, I was turning in episodes of Brainpan Fallout on a floppy disc (remember them?) in a Mexican restaurant. I was careful not to get salsa on them. “This is like one of your stories,” someone said.
As a science fiction writer, I don’t try to predict the future. I just have a feeling for changes I see happening and wonder What If, and If This Goes On. When I first started projecting Aztec and other preColumbian cultures into the future, it was seen as far-out and esoteric. Cortez on Jupiter, High Aztech, and Smoking Mirror Blues weren’t considered to be very bloody likely.
Now, in Silgo XXI, people keep telling me that the news seems like my stories, especially when things preColumbian manifest.
Officials in Mexico City's governing body estimate that a decade ago there were about 50 Aztec revivalist groups in the capital. Today there are closer to 300, all part of a movement calling itself La Mexhicanidad, one of the fastest-growing urban subcultures around. Mexico City mayor Marcelo Ebrard wants all city employees, from hospital workers to bus drivers, to learn the Aztec language Nahuatl in an effort to revive the ancient tongue, the city government said.
And more recently, in a piece that compared the Aztecs to the Nazis, and criticized multiculturalism: Imagine an alternative history where the Aztecs sail across the Atlantic Ocean to set up their pyramids of sacrifice in Paris.
And there are those who have given the Aztecs a New Age makeover, convinced that they were all really peaceful vegetarians, and all that talk about war and human sacrifice is just racist propaganda. You can see them climbing Teotihuacán and Mayan pyramids to recharge their energy on the Equinox.
More akin to my NeoAztecs and Aztecans is the Mexica Movement. Mexica being what the Aztecs called themselves. Their website is interesting, going beyond the Chicano Movement’s visions of Aztlán. All the native peoples of the Américas including the mestizos (a word they don’t like) are one people, the Nican Tlaca, and their nation is Anahuac.
The United States of Anahuac . . . hmm . . .
Other words they reject are Hispanic and Latino, which they consider racist nods to European cultures.I’d quote from them, but their homepage warns, in bigger letter than these:
ALL MATERIALS
COPYRIGHTED
DO NOT STEAL
They also have a page to help those who want adopt Nahuatl names. I remember how thirty years ago, I was excited at meeting girls named Xochitl. These days I run into a lot of Nahuatl and Mayan names on Twitter and Facebook. Welcome to my world.
Meanwhile, our culture here in Anahuac is going Aztecan. Young people are being sacrificed, by each other, and by militarized law enforcement agencies. I wonder what gods they are being sacrificed to.
Ernest Hogan is addicted to getting published and to committing acts of creative blasphemy. He’s found people who think it's amusing, and who help him. He has made sacrifices over the years, and now there’s no stopping him.
A while back, the subject of why there aren’t more Latino science fiction/speculative ficton/fantasy writers came up, and I don’t think we found a clear reason. It’s probably the same reason that we don’t see more Latino writers in general -- it’s usually not profitable, and we tend to end up doing other things just to survive. My father wrote, even published a few articles, but he had to work, keeping Flying Tiger Airlines’ planes flying to get the money to support his family. I imagine all Latino families have stories like that.
Another reason is that being a writer is something you are doomed to, like bearing the Mark of the Beast. I disagree with the cottage industry that claims anyone can be a writer if you just take their classes, go to their seminars and workshops, follow their rules and instructions. I don’t think that everyone should be a writer any more than we should all be bullfighters or astronauts. You gotta have the right stuff, cabrónes!
My idea of mentoring an aspiring writer is to say, “Okay! You wanna be a writer? Be a writer! Go do it!” Some of them do. Others need more help from me. If you need more help from me, you don’t have it. I feel like an old junkie listing to young hipsters saying, “I really want to get hooked, but I keep forgetting to take my shots . . .”
Encouraging people to be become writers is like helping them to become drug addicts -- a sort of Twelve-Step program in reverse.
I ended up a writer because I couldn’t quit. At age thirteen, I published a few letters in comic books, and I was hooked. From my typewriter to the world! What a thrill!
Lately I realize that I’m one of the most successful Chicano writers of my generation. If we narrow it down to science fiction, I’m number one!
It’s a cheap thrill I chuckle at as I work at my day job.
If I hadn’t had that taste of publication, I probably would have just done my creative stuff in private, like most Latinos. I ain’t no humble campesino toiling away in dignified anonymity -- if too long goes by without my being published, I get really depressed. And without thinking about it, I’m scanning for opportunities.
And I feel bad about my unpublished novels and stories.
Like Frankenstein’s monster, my career has a life of its own. It does things out in the world without my supervision. And these days, I spend more time managing it than writing.
And to think, once I believed I was a failure, after not being published in Nueva York, and only getting into print a few times a year (and not making much dinero at it). I got a full time job and slowed down -- or at least thought I was slowing down. Turns out I kept on publishing at the same rate as when I was knocking myself out.Also, it turned out that people actually read my novels and the weird, obscure magazines where my stories appeared. Some of them went on to become editors and publishers.
Now I’m working with a newfangled publisher in San Francisco, getting my novels ready for rerelease, and putting together a collection my short fiction.
All because I didn’t, and couldn’t, give up.
Still, I wish I was writing new stuff more of the time.
While going over my notes from my latest road trip with my wife, I felt good. Damn, I almost said aloud, I’m really good at Americana.
But then, when I do it, and put it out for the world to see, it becomes Chicanonautica. Even when readers don’t now anything about me, my point of view comes through loud and clear. I can’t help it.
In a motel in Flagstaff, I channel surfed through an alarming number of TV news stories about racism. An election is coming, and The Border is becoming an issue again. Rumors of cannibalism, human sacrifice, and Aztlán secessionistas are being dusted off, and thrown into the hysteria mills. As one of the anti-immigration protestors in Murrieta, California said, “We want to be safe.”
I’ve seen it happen in Arizona . . . a few Spanish words, some brown skin, and -- PANIC ATTACK!
And with the gradual militarization of The Border, who knows what kind of back up would be called?
So I shouldn’t be surprised when someone finds it odd that I’d write about America as an American, even though I was born in East L.A., but I’ve always resented it when someone decided that I didn’t look “American” enough for them.
I had mixed feelings when I saw Oscar Zeta Acosta in an anthology of “Latin American” writers. It was nice to see him with all those classy foreigners, but doesn’t he get to be considered an American writer?
Do I get to be considered an American writer?
Acosta had to sue Hunter S. Thompson to get his books published. It’s still not easy for a Chicano to break into the white man’s publishing industry.
What would happen if a Chicano wrote the Great American Novel? Our families have incredible stories of the American Dream.
Hmm . . . Could the Great American Novel be about an illegal alien? Because, aren’t we all illegal aliens under the skin, kemosabe?
Naw, better let it drop. New York wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. Another one of those brilliant ideas that “they” don’t know how to market.
Or are they just afraid?
Or maybe it’s just nostalgia for when American literature was hammered out by heroic, white, male alcoholics on manual typewriters, and U.S. immigration policies inspired the Nazis.
People wonder why I stick to surreal, pulpy sci-fi instead of going for proper literature . . .
Meanwhile, it’s time to check out the online coverage of La Fiesta de San Fermín AKA “The Running of the Bulls” in Pamplona. Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises doesn’t do justice to what the Fiesta has evolved into. I’ve really got to get back to work on my futuristic bullfighting novel.
Ernest Hogan wishes a rapid and successful recovery to Bill Hillman, the American writer who was gored in Pamplona this week.
By: Contributing Bloguistas:,
on 6/20/2014
Blog:
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Latinos and other People of Color (PoC) are expanding their presence into more than the White House. The last frontier, what might prove to be the most resistant to our inclusion is speculative literature [fantasy, magical realism, science fiction, horror, fables and myth, and alternate histories]. Por qué?
 |
| author N.K. Jemisin |
Among others, two important, interplaying factors might explain the resistance to our inclusion.
Spec lit is BIG money for those within certain cliques
Sci-fi, fantasy and horror are all over the American screens of cable, network TV and movie houses. Good or bad, blockbusters or not, apocalypse or dystopia, a lot of stories are making chingos of dinero, and in certain cases, the road begins in spec-lit short stories or novels. For writers of those stories, the lucrative film-rights would have to be spread around, if POC enter this arena.
The young, including whites, are attracted to the cultures of POC
Forget about backwards caps and low-hanging baggies, reggae and reggaetón--if the spec stories of POC reach the screen, Anglo kids might find more to love than just wearing J-Lo T-shirts.
POC stories can include themes sympathetic towards immigrants, the Chicano Movement, monetary retribution to Native Americans and descendants of slaves, Puerto Rican independence, the Cuban Revolution, the disenfranchisement of mexicanos after Texas's secession and the Mexican American War, families' communal values (instead of Western-ethic individualism), pride in ancient indigenous cultures like the Aztec and Maya (Matt de la Peña's Maya character, Sera, not the savagery of Apocalypto). And that's not a complete list.
If such ideals and beliefs from the novels of POC reach the screen in the most popular genres of speculative fiction, imagine what rebellious, white (and other) teenagers might adopt as their own values. Like, Amy Tintera's Callum Reyes character--"the perfect solider who's done taking orders!" Or, to plug my work, what if teens identify with my fantasy novel's Chicano hero who won't accept "assimilation" and joins others to save and change their world? Nomás diciendo....
It's no longer fantasy to imagine a Latino in the White House (although it's harder to imagine he would be sympathetic toward immigrants, workers' rights and stopping military invasions.) A more frightening possibility to the white-male-dominated establishment is the horror of their children accepting and even advocating for POC in EVERYTHING!
To look at it from the perspective of the white male, spec-lit establishment, as hot as spec lit is now, the old writers feel like they are finally being recognized and rewarded, as never before. For POC to demand entry into this monetary wonderland at this point is just the WORST time!
Hollywood and its young audiences may not agree. Sci-fi, as well as other spec lit, needs new blood, themes and direction, which is what Project Hieroglyph is attempting. Change will come and Latino writers entering these genres can have a great effect on its direction. Vamos a ver.
This Friday, I'll be on NPR, expounding on Latino writers and Sci-Fi, courtesy of Producer Daisy Rosario, Latino USA. I'll let you know info as it comes in.
For that broadcast, here are cites I used:
Will there be Latino authors in Big Book of Sci-Fi?
Jeff and Ann VanderMeer will be editing The Big Book of Science Fiction for Vintage, an 800-page, time capsule of the last 100 years of sci-fi. They will have an open reading period for reprints when you can submit links or electronic manuscripts of your own work or recommendations of rare or often overlooked stories you think deserve their attention.
Clearly, to cover a century, they can't just focus on the contemporary scene. They say, "As ever, we’re committed to including work from a diverse array of sources." It may be a few months before setting up the submission process, but they'll make sure it’s widely publicized. It will be up to Latino authors and fans to submit material so this doesn't become another Big White Book of Sci-Fi. Connect with Jeff to make your literary contribution, when it's time.
Es todo, hoy, (but wait to see what mañana brings)
The real question about Santa Barbara killings?
About the shootings, here's Chauncey DeVega:"As I often ask, what shall we do with the white people? When an entire social structure has been erected to reinforce the lie that white folks are "normal", and those "Others" are "deviant" or "defective," it can be very difficult to break out of that haze of denial. Such an act requires a commitment to truth-telling and personal, critical, self-reflection that Whiteness, by definition, denies to most of its owners
"White privilege and Whiteness hurts white people. Aggrieved white male entitlement syndrome is killing white folks' children, wives, daughters, sons, fathers, and mothers. Yet, White America stands mute. Again, what shall we do with the white people...especially if they are so unwilling to help themselves?"
Chauncey might also have asked, when will the white people start taking care of themselves? If you have an answer for her, let her know.
Diversity breaking into more lit cons
Author Matt de la Peña put out a call for people attending BookCon to join a discussion today, Saturday. Your voice and input are needed.
Saturday, May 31, 10:00 am - 11:00 am, Room 1E02
Speakers: Aisha Saeed, Ellen Oh, Grace Lin, I.W. Gregorio, Jacqueline Woodson, Lamar Giles, Marieke Nijkamp, Matt de la Peña, Mike Jung
Description: After taking the Internet by storm, the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign is moving forward with brand new initiatives to continue the call for diversity in children’s literature. Join the WNDB team as they share highlights of their campaign, discuss the success of grassroots activism, highlight diverse books and how everyone can diversify their shelves and talk next steps for the campaign.
Speaking of #WeNeedDiverseBooks, the postings of Cultivating Invisibility: Chipotle's Missing Mexicans are still cooking plenty of menudo picoso. Read and join them.
Damien Walter puts it to the SciFi/Fantasy moguls
 |
| How some feel about diversity entering the SF/F world |
Latino and other voices in SciFi and fantasy lit raising questions of white privilege, exclusion of minorities and an end to non-diversity seem to be gaining ground. So much so, that a backlash arose around the Hugo awards for best fantasy and sci-fi this year. Here's some of Damien Walter's explanation about this in his piece, Science fiction's real-life war of the worlds.
"For many years, a very particular and very narrow set of authors has dominated SF. But battle for a broader fictional universe is under way. It is no coincidence that, just as it outgrows its limiting cultural biases, science fiction should also face protests from some members of the predominantly white male audience who believed it to be their rightful domain. What the conservative authors protesting the Hugo awards perceive as a liberal clique is simply science fiction outgrowing them, and their narrow conception of the genre's worth.
"The real prize for science fiction is not diversity for diversity's sake (although I happen to believe that would be prize enough). We live in a world of seven billion human beings, whose culture has not been reflected or rewarded in 'the mainstream'. Science fiction – from cult novels that reach a few thousand readers, to blockbuster movies and video games that dominate contemporary culture – has the potential to talk across every remaining boundary in our modern world. That makes it, in my opinion, potentially the most important cultural form of the 21st century. To claim that potential, it cannot afford to give way to the petulant protests of boys who do not like to share their toys."
Only 1 of a new species
By age 12, Roske-Martinez had organized more than 35 rallies and protests. He helped stop the use of pesticides in city parks, and was among the fiercest advocates for a fee on plastic bags. His was a key voice in a project to contain coal ash, and to end a 20-year contract with Xcel Energy, allowing the city to pursue renewable energy as its primary resource.
His passions include hip-hop, participating in the annual sacred running relay from the Hopi reservation to Mexico, the current Earth Guardian campaign (a tree-planting project in 20 countries) and the summer Earth Guardian campaign to clean and protect potable water.
"This year, we're focusing on protecting one of the four elements every three months. The first quarter, it was Earth, and we did tree-planting. This summer, it will be water, and a group of 500-plus kids in Togo, Africa, will focus on that. This is about us saving the world for ourselves. I share facts about our environmental and climate- change crises. We are fighting for the survival of our generation and the health of the waters, the air, our community. We are fighting for kids everywhere."
HINT: To read the Denver Post article, as soon as the title appears, click the Stop Loading button. They want you to pay a buck, and will block you from it.
Es todo, hoy,
RudyG
a.k.a. Rudy Ch. Garcia
http://www.discarded-dreams.com/
The Cultura wars are always going on in the twilight zone between the Anglo and Latino Americas. The latest has to do with Chipotle, a corporate chain with a Nahuatl name that is trying to make Mexican food classy, so that folks who suck down Starbucks coffee all day can feel superior to the gente who like home-style cooking. Post-Ethnic America wants classy, upscale taco stands, culture, rather than Cultura, which is why they had bestselling-author Jonathan Safran Foer come up with a “branding campaign” called Cultivating Thought.
People need to have their thoughts cultivated? I though they came naturally. What kind of dystopian mind-control is this?
Cultivating Thought will put short stories by “award-winning authors, as well as celebrities” on cups and bags. Unfortunately they did not include any Latino authors, which of course has caused a backlash.
La Bloga’s own Rudy Ch. Garcia got into the act. he posted this on Facebook:
LatinoStory4Chipotle
What we can do to answer Chipotles' exclusion of latino writers--
1. Make up our own story (250 words, max)
2. Use your favorite LOCAL latino restaurant's logo or slogan
3. Identify your city, and share your piece across the country.
4. You can use the LatinoStory4Chipotle tag
I'm working on mine. Even if you're not, spread the word, por favor.
I was amused. I usually don’t participate in things like this, especially if they have a list of requirements, but inspiration hit me like sniper’s bullet, and the following story squirted out of my scrambled brain:
A SLICE OF MY LIFE AS A CHICANO STATE OF SCI-FI
© Ernest Hogan 2014
Got a message from Victor Theremin: MEET ME AT EL BRAVO, MUY PRONTO!
I rushed to mi troque and zig-zagged through Phoenix. I hadn’t heard from Victor in years. And I needed no excuse to indulge in El Bravos’s red meat burritos.
I passed a burning Chipotle on the way.
At the restaurant, I looked around. No Victor. But I saw someone dressed as a saguaro cactus at a table, sitting next to a brain in a plexiglass box.
“Ernie, I’d like you to meet Flash Gomez,” the brain said in Victor’s voice.
“Flash! I haven’t seen you since you disappeared back in the Nineties --”
“Yes. A lot has happened since then.”
Then agents in FBI-ish suits and sunglasses burst in, brandishing sparking stun guns.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of this,” said Victor’s brain. It began to glow with a pulsating yellow light, accompanied by an electronic whine. They pulsed and throbbed faster and faster.
Soon I was dizzy and couldn’t see.
The next thing I knew I was in my backyard, seated in full-lotus position facing the big cow skull. I had the aftertaste of salsa in my mouth and a tingling in my inner ears. When I got up and peered over the fence, everything looked wrong.
Instead of our neighborhood, I saw a Martian landscape, just like the NASA photos. Except there was a Chipotle on nearby hill. It was burning.
I asked my wife, “Did we always live on Mars?”
It’s my usual schtick -- surreal imagery hung on a pulp framework. The word “sci-fi” is in the title, but it’s not really science fiction, probably more like speculative fiction, magic realism, or some such conceit, but we’ll let future generations figure that out.
You can enjoy the quick weird jolt without knowing whothehell Victor Theremin or Flash Gomez are, but if you’re curious you can investigate.
I do like the idea of putting stories on cups, bags, T-shirts, the social media and such. We writers are going to need to get creative as big time publishing heads for disaster.
Review: Water & Power. Written and Directed by Richard Montoya. Opened May 2 in limited release.
Michael Sedano
Spider Man outdraws the Water & Power twins ten-to-one. In 16 theaters over opening weekend, the Richard Montoya written and directed independent film pulls in 2350 ticket buyers per house, weekend gross $40,000. The big-budget arachnid plays 4300 screens filling 21,000 seats over Cinco de Mayo weekend, pulling in millions. The numbers are mediocre. I’m sure Spider Man’s marketers would prefer to have sold more tickets. They should have made a better movie and people wouldn't be bad-mouthing it.
Richard Montoya has made a superior film, and it’s time more people bought tickets to see Water & Power and get their friends into seats. Audiences will see every dime of the producer’s minuscule budget on screen. Dine on a visual feast of Los Angeles imagery, get pulled along by a compelling script. All in all, Water and Power is the best film gente aren’t seeing.
Should Chicanas Chicanos go see Water & Power because it's a Chicano film, or because of Richard Montoya? No, but there's that. Mejor, go see Water & Power because it's genuinely worthwhile, thoughtful entertainment. Lots of raza in-jokes but an informed audience will find Water & Power completely accessible, funny, and respectful of the audience's intelligence.
I saw Water & Power on a Monday morning in Arcadia, with maybe six movie-goers. That’s a tough thing, to be in an empty auditorium with a good flick. Water & Power comes at the viewer in fast, rough-and-tumble bits that overflow with wit and intensity. Explosive laughs and surreal surprises are so much better when a full house lets loose a Montoya-inspired belly laugh.
The story of two brothers nicknamed
Power and
Water, comes together in fragments, with childhood flashbacks adding depth to the tragedy unfolding in the lives of a pair of high-achievers. Both have contracts on their lives. The cop brother for assassinating a criminal shot-caller. The politician brother for insisting on planting a million trees along the LA River without cutting in condo developers.
With cinematographer Claudio Chea, Montoya creates visual poetry with Los Angeles its persona. The filmmakers enchant with lush night scenes, aerial shots looking down, traveling shots crossing the river channel. Chea and Montoya define “noir” by the look and feel they achieve in the play of light against blackness. Le noir, darkness, permeates places the brothers take refuge, and the choices the carnales face. Then Chea and Montoya create wonderful contrast in the bright overexposure of scenes with the ice cream-suited downtown fixer embodied by Clancy Brown. The Devil.
The fixer scenes become visual metaphors for invincible power and evil. "Come into the light," the scenes scream, echoing a biblical line “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” In the hard glare, Water learns his eastside connectas produce nothing but an opportunity to kneel at the devil’s feet. It's a savage moment leaving a viewer shifting uncomfortably in the seat.
Emilio Rivera as Norte/Sur carries the film, not solely owing to his pivotal role between the two brothers but because the script gives him all the best lines. The audience watches mystified as Water acts like a vencido, treating a respectful Norte/Sur like shit. We’re on Norte/Sur’s side now, ambivalent about the good guy. Surprise and hilarity grow from a dance scene where Norte/Sur echoes Mae West, climaxing an arrestingly surreal scene that, more than any in the film, illustrates Montoya’s diabolical wit and his careful structuring of the film to arrive at this insightful moment completely disarmed.
Norte/Sur gets the best lines in the script, and the biggest laughs. For instance, climactic desperation builds life or death tension. Various barrios up in arms are out to revenge or protect, depends on whose side they’re with. Water, Power, and Norte/Sur sort out the alliances, strategizing whom to call upon from a roll call dozens of barrios and their muscle: San Pedro muscle, and Dog Town muscle, but not Frog Town muscle because of they're hooked up with Cypress Park muscle. Then how about Los Feliz muscle? A “who’s on first-“style double take, “Los Feliz has muscle?” Los Feliz is a mostly tony neighborhood bordering on Elysian Valley, the official name of Frog Town.
Local color is a constant feature of Montoya/Culture Clash scripts.
Water & Power continues the technique, spreading the joy to the greater Los Angeles region. Out-of-towners will get most of the jokes. For sure, everyone’s going to enjoy the backhand Edward James Olmos takes when the characters are listing big Chicano stars. “Not Olmos” they declare unanimously, and Olmos—who produced the film—is crossed off the list, “no Eddie.”
Some of the juiciest, and inadvertently sentimental, local color occurs during a police line-up. Lupe Ontiveros, after a lifetime of playing house maids, steals her scenes as a brassy foul-mouthed cop. Ontiveros sounds completely convincing as an angry, empty-headed yes-woman cop acting tougher than any of the men around her. QEPD, Lupe Ontiveros.
While writer Richard Montoya is generous with the big laughs, he’s also incisive with a spectrum of lessons. Brotherhood and carnalismo come as a pair. Water and Power are little brother and big brother, but Norte/Sur is Power’s carnal. He gradually earns Water’s respect. Power and Norte/Sur’s intimacy comes with several surprises. Norte/Sur is paraplegic because Power shot him years ago. Norte/Sur is Power’s long-time snitch whose encyclopedic barrio knowledge makes Norte/Sur a kind of Greek chorus impelling the story along. I sense a sly homage to the shoeshine tipster in Baretta and Police Story.
No one will come to
Water & Power seeking stereotypes or archetypes, and those who enter the auditorium with preconceived notions about gangs, cholos, cops, and chicanos will exit shaken. Maybe not about cops. The film opens with a speeding black and white, a uniformed officer enthusiastically hitting a bong.
The film doesn’t glorify gangsters nor offer an iconic nobility. For the most part, gang bangers exist as punchlines or puppets. Cholos, on the other hand, come with a look and a sense of humor. As personified in Norte/Sur, the cholo repels the straight Water vato but adds a different dimension to the hard ass cop persona of Power.
Water & Power, for all its chicana chicano characters is not about chicanismo. The film is about power, corruption, and moral expediency. The best lack all conviction, corruption infects all over, the cops, the fixers, the gangsters, the politicians, raza, Asian, anglo alike. They all come to a line, many cross it.
It’s not a chicano question it’s multi-ethnic: When opportunity conflicts with expediency, does a moral person do the right thing, even if life depends on it?
Water & Power is puro noir. The characters do the right thing and get the bloody end of the stick anyhow. Evil walks away with clean feet, the audience walks away stunned, entertained, moved, informed. And eager to tell their friends, go see
Water & Power.How you got there, to be the one holding the stick, there’s a story in that. Told in Richard Montoya’s unique voice, it’s a story worth taking friends to see,
Water & Power.UCR Latinos in Sci-Fi Conference On-line at LatinopiaInterest among sci-fi writers and readers continues to grow around the idea to hold a science-fiction writers conference modeled on the National Latino Writers Conference once held on the National Hispanic Cultural Center's state-of-the-art campus in old Alburquerque.
Blogueros Ernest Hogan and Rudy Ch. García sat on the author panel at the recently concluded first-ever Latinos in Sci-Fi Conference hosted by the University of California, Riverside.
Jésus Treviño, a spec lit writer himself, filmed the panel and features it this week at
Latinopia.http://latinopia.com/latino-literature/latinopia-word-latino-science-fiction-1/
The Gluten-free ChicanoPeeling Nopales the No-Espina WaySadly, the title misleads a bit. Any time a cook prepares fresh nopalito pencas, an espina or two is sure to find a finger or palm. Así es, the romance of el nopal.
A sharp paring knife and careful finger placement between the espina carbuncles are two secrets to preparing nopales.
Use a washable cutting board or work on newspaper. Draw the knife around the spiny perimeter of the cactus paddle, cutting away the outer ¼ inch of spininess.
Hold the penca flat and draw the knife across the face of the penca nearly horizonally. Most espina nubs cut right off. Dip the blade in a glass of water to wash away espinitas.
Steel the blade frequently to keep the edge slicing effortlessly.
Wash the pencas. There's a white espina in the top middle of the foto below.
Slice the pencas into ¼" strips. Draw the blade at a diagonal through the strips.
The nopalitos are ready to use in a salad, a stew, with scrambled eggs. Below, nopales simmer with carne de puerco. Later, the cook will add una torta de camarón.
The Papers That He Kept
Michael Sedano
Wednesday morning select television viewers will wake with knowledge and rekindled interest in Ruben Salazar’s role in U.S. history. That’s the morning after tonight’s PBS showcase of “Ruben Salazar: Man in the Middle—A Voces Special Presentation.”
PBS promises the film “removes Salazar from the glare of myth and martyrdom and offers a clear-eyed look at the man and his times. The film, produced and directed by Phillip Rodriguez, includes interviews with Salazar’s friends, colleagues and family members, and Salazar’s own words culled from personal writings” that included a private journal."
USC’s Boeckmann Center for Iberian & Latin American Studies holds Salazar’s personal papers. Doheny Memorial Library catalogs the trove as Correspondence,
Newspapers,
Photographs, Realia.
Researchers can cull through the literary and printed ephemera that a man like Ruben Salazar chooses to accumulate, stuff important for a reason--that moment, a smile, a reverie.
The papers tell their own Salazar documentary. There’s the newspaperman’s string book; of hundreds of bylines he keeps a select few, by himself, by other writers.
He keeps his parents’ passports, his high school diploma, a warm letter from Otis Chandler. The family includes something Ruben Salazar never saw, a surveillance frame of the target walking along Whittier Blvd. on August 29, 1970 toward the Silver Dollar Cafe.
Salazar was one of three chicanos killed during a day of police rioting (Lyn Ward and Angel Diaz died in separate incidents). Until that day, Ruben Salazar served as a one-man information resource about chicanos in the sixties. He informed a cross-section of Angelenos while empowering his subject matter.
Salazar introduced chicanos to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, authoring Stranger in One’s Land.
As a Los Angeles
Times reporter, Salazar's beat revolved around the region’s growing raza presence.
When Salazar took over the television news operation for KMEX, Salazar brought informed journalism to the region’s millions of Spanish-speakers.
Some think encouraging the movimiento through fair reporting, and riling up the Mexicans with unbiased news, made Ruben Salazar dangerous. And that got him killed.
 |
Aztlán and Viet Nam:
Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War.
Ed. George Mariscal pp199-200 |
That "US" in front of the serial number means Draftee. Here 23-year old Ruben Salazar demonstrates superior proficiency in military correspondence over a 35 hour course he completed on December 21, 1951. Pre-information age, every form was typed by hand. The Army churned out so many Military Correspondence students the Certificate is torn from a perforated roll just large enough to contain the words.
The typist—likely Salazar himself—makes a typo, Supeiior, that he overstrikes with an “r.” He's a bit sloppy with his shift key causing some capital letters to jump up off the baseline. Good enough for government work.
Barbara Robinson, who manages the Boeckmann collections, leafs through a binder. The Salazar collection isn’t large, a few lineal feet of shelf space in the vast archives of USC’s Doheny Memorial Library. For me, there’s sweet coincidence—not an irony—Doheny library lies only a few miles south of the places where Salazar spent much of his work life, the Times and KMEX.
A handful of cardboard boxes, some clear plastic bins, a Samsonite briefcase. This is not the stuff generally found in the public records of Salazar’s accomplishments and memorials. These are Ruben Salazar’s personal papers, the mementoes he kept for himself, his private persona. Here’s his stringbook, his birth certificate, his Army MOS qualification. His parents’ Mexican passports. His high school diploma from El Paso High, jumbled together, each document tells its own story.
El Paso High School diploma, January 1946. His birth registry places that event in Juarez. He enrolls in El Paso public schools. He keeps an elementary school achievement, and his diplomas.
Felix Gutíerrez and Barbara Robinson inspect the Mexican passorts in Salazar's parents names. Gutíerrez, a professor at USC, worked with Los Salazar to bring the papers to the Boeckmann Center.
Doheny Library's ever-growing Chicana Chicano and Latin American Literature collection offers formidable resources for scholarly researchers. Robinson's stewardship of the Boeckmann collection ensures solid holdings of Chicana Chicano titles, as well as a rich store of Spanish language resources.
Samsonite attaché cases were a useful fashion rage in the late 1960s. Hard shell case and roomy insides protected files, loose change, flat materials. Salazar's was empty.
Salazar's career was reaching apogee in 1970, as this Newsweek magazine article, "Chicano Columnist," indicates. The caption below the foto reads Shake the Establishment, a reputation Salazar earned not as a campaigner but as a working journalist who reported what he saw.
Everyday ephemera includes notes, postcards, business cards, manila envelopes with folded anonymous papers the journalist and private man kept with him.
One file folder holds a b&w glossy with Salazar, Otis Chandler, and Marilyn Brant, along with a letter from Otis. There's also a snapshot portrait of Salazar at his typewriter.
In his holiday letter, publisher Otis Chandler congratulates employee Salazar on a string of successes, including returning from Saigon.
Chandler probably enclosed a check, given the publisher's bonhomie and allusion to Salazar's importance to the paper. The postscript alludes to something Salazar published that drew some judge's ire. Just reporting what's there to report, the p.s. affirms, "Hell, all you did was cut him up beautifully!"
Included in the documents Salazar kept are a receipt for registry of his birth in Juarez, his Army MOS certificate, a draft of one of his final bylined columns, a 1939 elementary school certification for reading 20 books, a portrait of teenager Ruben Salazar.
The published version of this draft ran in the Times on July 17, 1970. A month later, Salazar will become a hero malgre lui.
Gutíerrez touches Salazar's figure. In the police surveillance photo, Salazar walks from Laguna Park to the Silver Dollar Cafe.
Water&Power Opens May 2The fourth chicanarte film of 2014 debuts in selected AMC theaters May 2, Richard Montoya's screen adaptation of his taut stage drama
Water&Power.
Water&Power comes in the wake of three razacentric offerings,
Cesar Chavez,
Cesar's Last Fast, and the Ruben Salazar documentary PBS aired last night.
Montoya's project comes with high hopes of setting attendance records for an indie project. Based on the theatrical trailer below, Montoya's noir drama comes with highly stylized cinematography and directorial vision that should be a visual and narrative delight.
La Bloga looks forward to hearing your views, and those of your friends, on
Water&Power. Why not Organize a big group of friends to celebrate Cinco de Mayo weekend by taking in dinner and a movie?
Mail bagUC Riverside Hosts Latinos in Sci-Fi Wednesday April 30.Science fiction and speculative fiction writers and readers will convene in room INTS 1113 on the UCRiverside campus for a 10 a.m. panel featuring trailblazing writers of speculative and science fiction.
Following lunch and informal discussion, a short film screening and panel titled “Latinos in Hollywood and Beyond” will take place, featuring Jesús Treviño, writer and director of “Star Trek: Voyager,” “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” “SeaQuest DSV,” and “Babylon 5”; Michael Sedano, La Bloga Latino literature blogger; and UCR Ph.D. candidates Danny Valencia, Rubén Mendoza and Paris Brown, who will address the topics of Latino science fiction, SF as pedagogy in Latino communities, and Mexican dystopias and religion, respectively.
The all day event enjoys sponsorship from Department of English CHASS Tomás Rivera Chair Eaton Collection, UCR Libraries Department of Comparative Literature Department of Media and Cultural Studies Mellon Science Fiction Group, Center for Ideas and Society.
The event is open to the public and is free, other than campus parking fees, and meals.
The Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies (SFTS) program at UC Riverside began in 2007 when College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Studies Dean Stephen Cullenberg decided that the college should have an academic unit to complement the strength of the Eaton Science Fiction Collection in the UCR Libraries, Vint said.
Drawing on faculty from across the college, the SFTS program enables students to develop a critical understanding of the cultures of science and their dialectical exchanges with contemporary popular culture. The program currently offers a designated emphasis at the Ph.D. level and soon will offer an undergraduate minor. The curriculum encompasses courses in the social study of science and medicine, the history of technology, creative expression addressing relevant themes, cultural analysis of print and media texts dealing with science and technology, and the cultural differences in technology, including non-western scientific practices.
Mail bagCal State LA Hosts Anaya Conference Friday and Saturday May 2 and 3On Friday and Saturday, May 2-3, Cal State L.A. will host a free scholarly and literary forum focusing on well-known Chicano writer Rudolfo Anaya and his literary work, which spans more than 40 years. Anaya belongs to the first generation of Chicano writers who pioneered and charted one of the most vigorous and theoretically-grounded ethnic literatures in the United States.
Featuring scholars representing Asia, Germany, Mexico and the United States, the 2014 Conference on Rudolfo Anaya: Tradition, Modernity, and the Literatures of the U.S. Southwest includes two plenary sessions on topics ranging from Anaya's novels to Mesoamerica and the U.S. Southwest.
"This conference proposes a re-examination of Anaya's work according to the several phases of his writing, from the early New Mexico trilogy that began with
Bless Me, Ultima (1972), to his most recent novels, such as
Randy López Goes Home (2011), and
The Old Man's Love Story (2013)," explained Professor Roberto Cantú, who is the conference organizer.
The conference opens on Friday, May 2, at 8:30 a.m. with hospitality coffee and pastry, followed by a powerful day of lecture and discussion by a cast of international scholars. Saturday's events likewise commence at 8:30.
 |
Rudolfo Anaya donates two cases to the Librotraficantes who smuggled the books
into Arizona, where Bless Me, Ultima was banned and removed from classrooms |
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Border Patrol Nation
Most U.S. citizens tend to think stopping undocumented workers at the border is a good thing that won't affect them. They should check out Todd Miller's new book about what militarization has done to the Land of the Free. It's entitled Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security and here's some facts from it.
"The U.S. borders have long been Constitution-free zones where more or less anything goes, including warrantless searches of various sorts. In the twenty-first century, however, the border itself, north as well as south, has not only been increasingly up-armored, but redefined as a 100-mile-wide strip around the country.
"Our “borders” now cover an expanse in which nearly 200 million Americans, or two-thirds of the U.S. population, live. Included are nine of the 10 largest metropolitan areas. If you live in Florida, Maine, or Michigan, for example, no matter how far inland you may be, you are “on the border.” You can be stopped, interrogated, and searched “on an everyday basis with absolutely no suspicion of wrongdoing.”
Omnidawn Fabulist Fiction Chapbook Contest
I own a copy of a previous winner, In A Town Called Mundomuerto, and love the magical realist writing of author Randall Silvis. Anyway, the submission period for this contest doesn't begin until August, but this posting will give you speculative fiction writers time to get manuscripts prepared. There is a reading fee.
From the Omnidawnwebsite:
The winner of the annual Omnidawn Fabulist Fiction Chapbook Competition receives a $1,000 prize, publication of their chapbook with full-color cover, 100 copies, and display advertising and publicity.Fabulist Fiction includes magic realism and literary forms of fantasy, science fiction, horror, fable, and myth. Stories can be primarily realistic, with elements of non-realism, or primarily, or entirely non-realistic.
Open to all writers. All stories must be original, in English, and unpublished. 5,000 to 12,000 words, consisting of either one story or multiple stories. Online entries must be received between Aug. 1 and Oct. 22, 2014. Reading fee $18. We expect to publish the winning chapbook in August of 2015.
About Omnidawn: "Since 2001, we publish writing that opens us anew to the myriad ways that language may bring new light, new awareness to us.
We began Omnidawn because of our belief that lively, culturally pertinent, emotionally and intellectually engaging literature can be of great value, and we wanted to participate in the dissemination of such work. We believe our society needs small presses so that widely diverse ideas and points-of-view are easily accessible to everyone.”
Issues Science Fiction Contest
If you're more into writing "hard" sci-fi, here's a contest with a $1500 honorarium and only requires one-page about what you would write! No reading fee.
"Authors should submit a précis or brief treatment (no more than 250 words) of a science fiction story idea that explores themes in science, technology, and society. Submissions must be received by June 1, 2014.
"Stories should fall into one of the following five theme areas: Big data / artificial intelligence / brain science; Education / jobs / future of the economy; Defense / security / privacy / freedom; Biomedicine / genetics / health / future of the human; Future of scientific research / automation of research & discovery. IST will select up to five semi-finalists for each category. Authors will have 3 months to submit their story, between 2,500 and 5,000 words. Winning stories will be published in IST, and authors awarded a $1,500 honorarium. Read all the details."
Issues in Science and Technology (IST), a quarterly journal that explores the intersections of science, technology, society, and policy. The editors of IST believe science fiction (SF) can help to bring key challenges and dilemmas in science and technology to an influential readership in new and compelling ways. Scientists, engineers, researchers, and policymakers often only see small pieces of an issue. SF writers can imagine entire worlds. By fully thinking through how today’s critical issues will play out, science fiction inspires, cautions, and guides those shaping our future. Throughout 2015, IST will publish one SF story per issue, on topics of broad societal interest.
Denver Museo's children's summer camp
Latino Science Fiction Explored
And if you haven't heard yet, I'll be in L.A. next week and hope to meet and talk with everyone who can attend. This is a precedent-setting gathering of 6 Latino sci-fi authors! What could happen? Quién sabe, pero vamos a ver.
The Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies Program at University of California, Riverside will host “A Day of Latino Science Fiction” next Wednesday, April 30, to be held in the Interdisciplinary Symposium Room (INTS 1113). Free and open to the public.
The morning author panel will feature 1. Mario Acevedo, author of the bestselling Felix Gomez detective-vampire series (The Nymphos of Rocky Flats, chosen by Barnes & Noble as one of the best Paranormal Fantasy Novels of the Decade, and finalist in the Colorado Book Awards and the International Latino Book Awards.
2. Science-fiction and cyberpunk novelist Ernesto Hogan (Cortez on Jupiter); the co-authors of Lunar Braceros 2125-2148, 3. Rosaura Sánchez and 4. Beatrice Pita. The afternoon panel features writer and director 5. Jesús Treviño (Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Babylon 5 and the book The Fabulous Sinkhole); and Michael Sedano, La Bloga Latino lit blogger; as well as Ph.D. candidates Danny Valencia, Rubén Mendoza and Paris Brown.
6. I'll be there talking about my alternate-world fantasy novel The Closet of Discarded Dreams (and about sci-fi stories) that took honorable mention in the International Latino Book Awards’ Fantasy/Sci-Fi, last year.
Come and find out about getting your spec lit published, the market for Latino sci-fi, the state of Latino spec lit and what the future might hold for our obras. It should be a chingón time, and we hope you come to add your voice and opinions. Check the details, especially about parking.
Es todo, hoy,
RudyG
La Bloga readers may find my Mondo Ernesto serialization of Brainpan Fallout -- a Nineties experiment that went from the Phoenix area coffee house giveaway Red Dog Journal to the infant internet and gained me fans in strange places -- of interest. The main character/narrator/hero is a young Chicano.
And I think I’ve finally gotten rid of all those pesky typos and mistakes that often ruined the jokes. Not that anybody’s complained, or even noticed them all these years.
I didn’t really think much about sneaking in a Chicano -- I had done it in Cortez on Jupiter. I had also researched The Red Dog Journal’s audience, going to the coffee shops, poetry slams, marijuana-choked parties, listening to their conversations. I was trying to create pulp fiction for them. They were predominately white, but considered themselves to be anti-racist, so why not?
I believe that audiences need to be challenged. Since then, as a bookstore clerk I’ve seen how genre readers get bored with the same old routine. They have their habits, but need things stirred up now and then. Maybe the adventures of Flash Gomez in the 20th century would do the trick.
With 20/20 hindsight, Flash was the prototype for the Chicanonaut: A Chicano going out of bounds, crossing the borders of his barrio into strange new worlds.
He wasn’t based on anybody in particular, but after it was going for a while, I saw a Univision news story about young Nueva York bike messengers. One of them said, “Llámame Flash.”
Brainpan Fallout is also an example of my groping for Afrofuturism, or at least an alternative to the all-white future that was still the default setting for most sci-fi. There are black characters involved in cyberpunkish activities, but with their own agendas. This was long before the current postcolonial trends.
I’m glad I had the chance to go mad scientist after things crashed for me, and like Henry Miller in Tropic of Cancer, that “Everything that was literature has fallen from me.” I recreated myself in my own image, and took the chance to offer some advice to the younger generation as a vato who’d been around on the countercultural merry-go-round a few times on what to watch out for when they finally get flung into the gaping jaws of their future.
It’s also good for some laughs.
Ernest Hogan is busy drawing and writing about luchadores, and preparing to talk about Chicano sci-fi at the University of California Riverside for their Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies program.
Years ago at my first writing conference (99%+ Anglo), I read the opening of my still-unpublished, SW dragon epic to a literary agent and some writers, all Anglo. Those who read before me received same-ole questions or comments about their stories. After reading mine, instead I heard, "Did you write that?"
That made as much sense as, "Are you really an earthling?" It was a writers' workshop, not a read-your-favorite-author workshop! For reading your own, not someone else's MS. Plus, all educated, responsible adults know about plagiarism, thus I assumed my integrity wasn't in question, maybe. So, why was I asked the question? Because my opening flowed like A Hundred Years of Solitude? No, since several publishers, agents rejected that novel; they would've recognized that, right? Take your own guess.
I don't know that my prose approached greatness, but I do believe my Anglo audience's underlying doubt amounted to: "How is it possible for a Chicano to write so well?" (If you have another interpretation, share it.) I had encountered a Closed Con of the Third--Anglo--Kind. Where we're expected to be the Con's janitors, cooks and waitresses, not its writers.
Last week I headed for LoneStarCon3 (this year's WorldCon in San Anto), one of the three largest sci-fi/fantasy (SF/F) conventions in the world. It was my first big one and first WorldCon. I didn't know what to expect--a neophyte, Chicano novelist prowling in the shadows of veteran, award-winning authors, famous and godlike residents of the speculative lit world.
Would this brown author survive or "make bad show?" How "white" would the meals and environment be? (Luckily, I took serrano chiles from my garden.) Would I find an agent or editor for my new MSS? And because the Con was also a possible first for SF/F by including a "Spanish strand," how would that turn out for "us?"
This column is intended for Anglos who want to know more about why some Latinos get so "sensitive and uppity"about U.S. publishing. From knowledge can come affinity.
It also provides non-SF/F readers and writers with material for promoting their art. Esas y eses, we need mucho más, to educate others.
I can't cover all the panel topics relevant to other genres: Anglos writing about Chicanos, bilinguals writing for monolinguals, a list of Chicano sci-fi, magic realism, how hard it is for Chicanos to be published and political messages in fiction. And due to length, this must appear in two installments. The links and information here verify points raised, or books and authors mentioned. Sections begin with descriptions of some of my panels, taken from the Con program.
Panel – Latino Characters by Mainstream Authors, Diversity or Cultural Appropriation? "Non-Latino authors have been more successful publishing Latino SF than Latino writers. What role have agents and publishers played in this and why? When do non-Latino authors go too far--cultural misappropriation--assuming we can define too far? The panel will explore these issues from a variety of perspectives."
Fellow authors warned me to keep my bronze nalgasout of this. Before the Con, two panelists did. I was advised, "Anglos don't like hearing about white privilege or cultural appropriation; they get defensive." But if I didn't raise those questions, maybe no one would. I should be ashamed, scared or avoid discussing the fact that I was born brown, the prejudice we face, or the privilege-myopia that Anglo writers and publishers need to overcome to create better American literature? Ni. Modo.
First, a "proof" that Anglo writers do better in publishing than Latinos.Here's data about two mid-list publishers whose goals include finding and publishing more Latino authors. The slogan of the Tu Books' imprint (Lee & Low Books) is: "Fantasy/SciFi Diversity for Children and YA." Books they released in the last 3 years include Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe Garcia McCall (as well as her new Under the Mesquite). The other authors are Karen Sandler, Shana Mlawski, Kimberly Pauley,Bryce Moore, Joseph Bruchac, Greg R. Fishbone, whom I'm assuming are not Latinos. You do the math about who's more successful.
The 11 latest books published by Cinco Puntos Press ("With roots on the U.S./Mexico border")start with author Don Henry Ford Jr., the remaining are Larry Goodell, Gene Frumkin, Pat Carr, J.L. Powers, Lisa Sandlin, Douglas Gunn, Shirley Reva Vernick, Ambar Past (who did co-author with Xalik Guzmán Bakbolom and Xpetra Ernandes) and finish with Revenge of the Saguaroby my good gringo friend Tom Miller. There's only one Latino name, Joseph Somoza. They also published Maximilian & the Mystery of the Guardian Angel by Xavier Garza and Six Kinds of Sky by Luis Alberto Urrea, which, to my knowledge, aren't SF/F.
Tu Books and Cinco Puntos have told La Bloga they'd love to receive more submissions from Latinos. The reasons they don't have historical and economic roots I won't go into here. But what's true for Latinos with these two receptivepublishers is worse elsewhere for SciFi/Fantasy. When I asked the audience to hold up fingers for SF/F Latino authors they had read, a handful raised one or a few fingers.
Prior to the Con, I asked a few published, Latino novelists about their difficulties getting published:
"All of my novels and book proposals for the last couple of decades were rejected because they were 'not commercial enough.' They didn't go into details. Reminds me of when I first sold the novel Cortez on Jupiter. I was told how brave I was, writing about minorities, because 'They get offended, you know.' They even suggested I use a 'slightly Hispanic' pseudonym. I kept saying I was a Chicano. When word got around that I was one, they started treating me like an illegal alien. Maybe I should have tried to 'pass for white' and told them the novel was the result of research trips into the barrio. Ay! That's so absurd! Good luck at the con. I'm not sure if a lot of these Anglo-Americano sci-fi folks are ready for you, but el futuro beckons." - Ernest Hogan, Chicano author with a New Mexico Irish/Mexican immigrant father and mexicanamother
"All publishers my agent submitted to, except the one Latina, complimented the writing in my novel, but still said no. They used the word marketability, a catch-all term indicating that, while individual editors might like the book, the sales and marketing teams didn't know how to classify it. I pressured my agent to dig deeper and the response could be summed up like this: 'Santa Fe, New Mexico . . . is that in Mexico?' or 'The Mexican-American War? Is this about drug cartels?'
"Mine wasn't an immigrant story, nor did it concern the American Revolution or Civil War, the historical periods most Americans are familiar.After my book got published, one reviewer dinged me for 'too much Spanish.' My thinking at this juncture is that genre is important when dealing with Latina/o characters. Chick Lit will work, as will categories of immigrant story, mystery, thrillers and humor. But I hate following the rules. - Sandra Ramos O'Briant
"Spanish-language publishing is almost devoted to books by and about celebrities, and translations of a book published in English. If a book falls outside this, it almost always has to prove itself marketable beforehand--not by its own merits--but by a great sales record on a previous book or of the same book in English. Options have shrunk considerably." - name withheld by request
"When I was trying to sell my first book, I submitted it for a first-page critique by an agent from a major, NY publishing house. After the first page, she took a deep breath and said a loud 'Woow!' I thought it was a good sign until she said she liked it, but it was not marketable for her publisher. She recommended I submit to a small publisher. "The manuscript was accepted by Arte Publico Press and became my first picture book. I discovered small publishers were more open to my manuscripts, and I was fortunate to publish many picture books with Arte Publico, Children Book Press and Luna Rising. Now with the help of my agent, I am publishing books with major publishers." - René Colato Laínez
"My agent and editor liked that I included cultural references germane to the story or characters. They appreciated learning about la Llorona, la Malinche and el cucui. The former head of the now-extinct Rayo HarperCollins told me that US-based Spanish language publishing didn't pan out. US readers would only read books in Spanish from overseas. Books in Spanish from US authors didn't sell." - Mario Acevedo
Sci-fi buff Junot Díaz--despite his characters' mujeriego failings--blew the frackin' lid off the marketability coffin of white privilege. But, the glass ceiling--more like a brick techo--won't disappear. I felt lucky to panel with Guadalupe Garcia Mccall, whose books have earned 25 literary recognitions. Has one macho NY publisher ever shown interest in her work? No, the big-publisher bar is raised higher for some. Lower, if you're not Spanish-surnamed.
Others, like black novelist Samuel Delany in his famous essay Racism and Science Fiction [that mentions Robert Silverberg, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein] () have faced the same, even when successful. Delaney talks about a short story rejected by a famous (and notoriously bigoted) editor because his protagonist is black. "As long as there are only one, two, or a handful of us, prejudice will remain a force—until, say, black writers start to number twenty percent of the total. When he submitted his novel Nova for serialization to the famous SF editor of Analog magazine, John W. Campbell, Jr., Campbell rejected it with a note and phone call to my agent explaining that he didn’t feel his readership would be able to relate to a black main character."
Those serious about literature should read N.K Jemison's Continuum GoH Speech. An intelligent voice for progress and diversity that I might quote from next week. Check her writing, too.
The panel could have focused just on one aspect of cultural appropriation. It's hard reality in our supposedly advanced culture. Clothing company Urban Outfitters "willfully and bald-facedly swiping the iconic and pride-inducing United Farm Workers Union eagle logo to transform it into crap denim shirt fodder for their slave-made clothing." [They dropped that.] Disney Corp attempted to trademark Día de los Muertos for a movie title. [They were forced to drop that idea.] Gary Jennings of Aztec novel fame spent years researching our heritage and raked it in. After he died, his notes were turned over to Robert Gleason to continue the series. Piers Anthony's novel Tatham Moundalso fits where our heritage is commodified, but without "our" having equitable access.
I can't not mention one of the worst historical examples. In 1984 the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters awarded one of its distinguished fiction prizes to a new and presumably young Chicano writer named Danny Santiago, for his first novel, Famous All Over Town, actually written by Danny James who pretended to be a Chicano. It's still in print under the same name! (See Manuel Ramos's post below for more.)
During this panel, Mexica author Norm Spinrad said something like: "I’ve used Latino characters in Little Heroes [1987], and there’s more. I will throw out one thought: Turn this around and ask this rhetorical question: Is it OK and not politically incorrect for a non-American [I believe he meant U.S. Latino] writer to use American characters? ‘Nuff said!"
Here's an appropriate response from indio Sherman Alexie (told to Bill Moyers this year), “I know a lot more about being white than you know about being Indian.” http://billmoyers.com/segment/sherman-alexie-on-living-outside-borders/ Chicanos are in that same boat. We're surrounded by an Anglo majority at the workplace, in the hood--almost anywhere we go in the U.S. And we're told to write about what we know. However, not every Anglo author lives in a corresponding Latino environment. Which maybe means they research. How have non-Anglos responded to that?
From Latino Junot Diaz comes this: "We're in a country where white is considered normative; it's a country where white writers are simply writers, and writers of Latino descent are Latino writers. This is an issue whose roots are deeper than just the publishing community or how an artist wants to self-designate. It's about the way the U.S. wants to view itself and how it engineers otherness in people of color and, by doing so, props up white privilege. I try to battle the forces that seek to "other" people of color and that promote white supremacy. But I also have no interest in being a "writer," either, shorn from all my connections and communities. I'm a Dominican writer, a writer of African descent, and whether or not anyone else wants to admit it, I know also that Stephen King and Jonathan Franzen are white writers. The problem isn't in labeling writers by their color or their ethnic group; the problem is that one group organizes things so that everyone else gets these labels but not it. No, not it."
Poet Dr. Ricardo Sánchez's rules that "Chicano literature can only be written by Chicanos" and that "only Chicanos understand the nuance of the Chicano way of life" is somewhat similar to Alexie's. It's a matter of verisimilitude, no?
From La Bloga novelist Manuel Ramos: "My own view is that anyone can write anything he or she wants. Go ahead and include ethnic characters in your book so that it has the feel of authenticity. Throw in Spanish swear words. Make your protagonist a single, Latina female because your agent assures you that is what the NY editors are looking for, but be ready for heat if you get it wrong. Stereotypes, subtle racism, paternalism, and naiveté are products of bad writing. Call the bad writing cultural appropriation or exploitation or simply another rip off artist passing himself as brown and trying to be just as greasy as us regular meskins."
Again from Sherman Alexie: "Yes, there are white folks who write well about Indians. . . But let me draw a parallel: When white South Africans write about black South Africans, it is called colonial literature, right? It can be incredible, centuries-lasting, genius colonial literature, but it's still colonial. Hmmmm. Here's my official statement on the matter: White folks, I don't care if you write about Indians. You don't need my approval, advice or opinion. Do your thing. Put that wise old grandfather in it. And maybe some talking animals and a very concerned white person who wants to save the Indians. Just don't expect me to read it." Read more here. Frackin' Alexie's funny.
At the panel, I proposed that opposite cultural appropriation, on the spectrum's other end lies diversity. "Movies Independence Day, Armageddonand Deep Impact are offensive in their exclusion of diversity. In these films the American military is depicted with no Latino characters. Indeed, Latinos depicted in Independence Day and Deep Impact are Mexican farm workers (one of three Latino stereotypes in TV and Hollywood, like the gang-banger and "illegal alien"). In L.A. where the majority of America's motion pictures and TV programs are produced, the population is 44%+ Latino, almost every other person in So. California!" (info from here.)
If the span between appropriation and diversifying equals that of a rock and hard place, blame whoever made slaves of Blacks, stole half of Mexico, invaded Cuba and Puerto Rico (bastardizing their path to independence) and continues depriving us darks of voting rights, subjects them to stop-n-frisk and keeps access to publishing, a privileged path. If you think it's tough being Anglo, try Mexican, but just for a day.
At the end, I suggested that the Spanish dicho, Amor de lejos, amor de pendejos, applied to Anglo writers wanting to honestly portray minority characters. The saying translates as, love at a distance is the love of fools. If you'd loveto include a Chicano, puertoriqueño, dominicana or mexicana character, don't depend on Google and Wikipedia. Let your daughter marry one, get boracho with your gardener, invite the family across the alley, who have no papers, to your next barbecue. Or, díos mío, ignore an author's Spanish surname and read or consider publishing the writing on its own merits. Marketability? How about literary worth, period?
Whatever was or wasn't resolved and answered at this panel, I sensed the dialogue can be taken to a higher level by us and others, not by "respecting" all opinions (especially "wrong" ones), but by grounding ourselves in history, facts, logic and persuasion. How well I did, I leave to others. For more from La Bloga on appropriation, see a Manuel Ramos post, a gonzo journalism post, one by Greg Barrios, and also see director/writer Jesus Treviño's interview at Latinopia.
I meet but never get to talk long enough to Chris N. Brown (who edited the must-read Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic), Darlene Marshall, Derek Kunsken, Jim Fiscus (my incredible guide), Guadalupe Garcia McCall (whom I hope to interview), Gay Haldeman, Stina Leicht (who maybe fears I'm caustic, unsocialized; see Warren Hammond about that), Ben Olguin (UTSA), Harry Turtledove (when I was too frazzled to seem interesting), drink and charla with poeta Reyes Cárdenas and Juan Tejeda (sí,vatos, the gringo at our bar table beat us fair and square), and muchosothers. I never got to talk at length with Helen Umberger who laid groundwork for the Con's Spanish strand, found Gardner Dozois and was greatly disappointed John Phillip Santos couldn't attend.
Vignettes:
• I get up from my computer and ask the dude next to me to watch my computer while I take a break. I come back and check his nametag--SF/F demigod David Brin! I ask his advice about how I should work my panel with Con special guest, novelist Norman Spinard, who's reputed to have opinions. He advises me, well.
• A white-haired guy and his wife stop me in the hall, and he says he liked what I said on a panel. "Which panel, what did I say, and why did you like it?" It's another demigod, Ben Bova, Ernest Hogan's discoverer. I shop for a button with, "BB likes some things RChG says" on it.
• I do autographs, seated next to author Gail Carriger. She makes me feel I time-transported to a previous century where strange attire and weird personalities are the norm. Worse, her line's a hundred times longer than mine. But she didn't make fun of me.
• I read a passage from my new, teen fantasy MS to a small audience. I think they loved(?) it!
My suggestions about the "Spanish strand." The concept was great and could use adjusting for any event seeking to increase Chicano, mexicanoor Latino participation. (I failed to seek out avenues to share this at the Con.) Come to think of it, Latino strandmight make more sentido; it's inherently associated with Spanish.
• Longer lead times for inviting Latinoamericanosare necessary. Homeland security is to blame for excluding our continental brethren, as well as the visa process of their country.
• Economic reality means we are privileged to have Con spending-money. Those peoples lowly paid by us for our gardens and restaurant kitchens, for cleaning our hotel rooms, growing our produce, and suffering violence in their countries to ship us our illegal drugs, have no such funds, except for narcos. To include the previously excluded, someone has to pay. Guess which end often doesn't have such resources.
• If high school and college Latinos are desirable at such strands and cons, more day passes need to be made available to nearby communities. Attendance could turn significant and be a good investment where it is normally not available. Con organizers did what they could; perhaps the Latino community, as well, could jump sooner at the opportunity.
• All leading con organizers should allow for one very famous gringo author on everyone of these panels, to attract sufficient, Anglo attendees. Small audiences for such big questions can be interpreted as belittlement. By now, you might guess why.
Two other notes: SciFiLatino.com, a wonderful and vast resource. "SciFiLatino covers English and Spanish language media (books, movies, TV and more) from the U.S. and abroad. By Sophia Flores, whom I believe is puertoriqueña.
Al final, feedback received for this column will be used next week to give opposing or simply, other views an opportunity for input. Even on our websites, us Chicanos enjoy the mi-casa-es-su paradigm.
The second parte of this will cover panels on Magic Realism, Chicano Science Fiction, and SF/F as Covert Commentary on Current Social Issues. Promise: you'll hear things you never realized, as I did.
Pero es todo, hoy,
So here we are. 2012, and the Mayan Calendar -- that may actually be the Olmec Calendar -- are coming to an end. October’s coming to an end too. And you know what that means . . . Halloween . . . then los Días de los Muertos . . . put them together, and you’ve got Dead Daze!
And these are going to be extra special Dead Daze, because my novel, Smoking Mirror Blues, will be FREE from the Amazon Kindle store from October 31st to November 4th. That’s Halloween, both Days of the Dead, and an extra Saturday!
Sunday, it goes back up to $2.99. There are those who would say that continuing this to Sunday would be blasphemy. Then there are others who would relish the blasphemy of buying Smoking Mirror Blues on the Sunday after Dead Daze.
I’m also offering snippets from the novel and its reviews, as well as suggestions for music to read it by on Facebook, Twitter, and my blog. Come on down, and join the party!
Like I’ve said before, I think that Dead Daze is a good idea. Let's make it a real transborder event, taking it beyond the hipster holiday that it has become.
Can we remember our dead loved ones, celebrate our cultures, and let loose our imaginations all at the same time for three fantastic days? I think we can, and should.
Or as President Malcolm Jones says in Smoking Mirror Blues:
I think it's a very American phenomenon -- the creation of a new culture and new traditions out of those that are coming together in Southern California.
And we’re seeing interesting developments in Mexico with megaofrendas becoming larger than life walk-thru environments. What will happen when cyber and robotic technologies are plugged in? I can hardly wait!
Who knows? Maybe some recombocultural celebrating can help solve our border conflicts?
Welcome to the Global Barrio! Next stop, the Galactic Barrio!
Ernest Hogan’s novels Smoking Mirror Blues and Cortez on Jupiter are back from limbo as ebooks. His recombocultural classic High Aztech will be ebookized soon. Tezcatlipoca whispers into his ear.
A critic once described my style as “shakycam” -- as in low-budget documentaries shot with hand-held cameras in close, dangerous quarters. It wasn’t intended as a compliment, but does describe what I do as well as how I write.
I know I have a writing career because, like Frankenstein’s monster, it has taken on a life of its own. I keep losing track of it. I have to check my blog to make sure. Keeping up with it gets shakycam.
Take these items from my to-do list:
I’ve been (with the help of my wife) getting my novel Smoking Mirror Blues ready to become an ebook. We finally got through the final go-over and sent it off to the formatter. Tezcatlipoca willing, it may be available around Día de los Muertos.
That done, I started the tedious task of scanning my novel High Aztech -- like Cortez on Jupiter, it was written back in the Ninteen-Hundreds on an ancient mechanism called a typewriter. Not only that, but because of the Españahuatl slang, I’m probably the only human being on the planet who can do the necessary proofreading. I’m in for some fun times in the next few months!
I’m also working on a science fiction short story and a novel about bullfighting. The short story may end up as part of the novel in the end, but it actually creates more work for me.
I’ve decided to put my fantasy novel about the preColumbian ball game aside for a while because, if you haven’t guessed, I’m kind of busy. And I can’t let that cam get too shaky.
And I finally got a chance to do a collection of my short fiction. This is going to one desmadre of a project! It will include works from the typewriter era that will have to be scanned, and will be a twisted thirty-year journey through the strange things that grew in my mind, and the strange places where they got published. Trying to read it in one sitting will probably cause hallucinations and brain damage.
Imagine what putting together that document will be like!
When going over my list of published stories, I realized that there were some that will have to go in other volumes. “The Frankenstein Penis” and its sequel have a still-growing number of true stories connected to them. Paco Cohen, Mariachi of Mars, and Victor Theremin, the science fiction writer who has lost track of where science fiction ends and his life begins, also demand their own books.
And after crossing a few things off my to-do list, I remembered something I had to add to it. Better get to work.
Ernest Hogan really is doing all that stuff. Being a Chicano makes it more complicated and exciting. It’s also very shakycam.
such a packed-with-stuff-to-talk-about column! spinrad sounds like one of those deliberately obtuse tipos whose reductio ad absurdum needed to be juxtaposed with alexie's explanation. my friend magu (qepd) used to ask "can anglos do chicano art?" and the answer was, "why not? we've been doing anglo art our whole lives!" as i say, lots of stuff but that enough.
mvs
Great reporting there, Rudy. I shoulda been there, if only Yacatecuhtli could have provided funding. Maybe a blood sacrifice would have been necessary. I think the "Spanish strand" has had an effect -- Anglo scifiistas have been chattering about "diversity" in the social media for the past week! And for the record, my father was New Mexico Irish/Mexican, not a German immigrant. It's so hard to keep my family history straight . . . it keeps turning into weird legend and myth . . .
Thx, Sedano y Nesto. Your lineage correct, now.
RudyG
I absolutely do not fear you are 'caustic and unsocialized.' As I percieve it, you are jusifiably frustrated and angry. Please do not assign motivations to my behavior without consulting me first. I would do the same for you because I'm terrible at mind-reading. I suspect others are too. This is exactly the kind of thing that takes things in bad directions. I hear that you are frustrated. I hear that you feel you are not being heard. Those are very valid concerns.
My goal is to be an ally. My experiences of writing about Ireland's Troubles were an amazing education in how to do that. I'm learning more as I go, and while I can't promise I won't make mistakes--mistakes are how human beings learn best--I will promise to try my best not to repeat the same mistakes.
Now. The Magical Realism panel. I was uncomfortable because I felt the moderator's opening remarks as well as a number of her questions bordered on the inapropriate and were sometimes flat out insulting, and I was struggling with a way to respond to that without making an even bigger mess than it already was. As it turned out, I didn't say anything at all and I apologize for that. No excuses. I should've said something.
Excellent post, Rudy. I learned a lot on our two panels and also from this post. Thank you!
Derek
Thanks for the correction, Rudy.
If I may add to the reference to Cinco Punto Press "With roots on the U.S./Mexico border."
I eventually contacted a representative after having made several long distance calls in that effort. I was hoping to get my novel published in print. The representative answered the telephone with “Seen-ko Poon-toe Press.” I knew I was in trouble. She has not even bothered to pronounce the name of her outfit correctly.
Anyway, I began to tell her about my great Chicano novel with natural references to Méjico. She immediately interrupted the pitch of my synopsis with “no chance,” y “no chance.” y otro “no chance.” I did not get to finish by twenty-five-odd-word presentation. She ended the conversation by rudely telling me that I should mail her the first 10 pages, even though, she again added, “there is no chance.”
I then merely affirmed her instructions by stating, “First ten pages my mail?” Her response: “YES, WITH 45 CENT POSTAGE IN AN ENVELOPE!”
Why is this outfit called Cinco Punto Press? Heck, one book it promotes is a White-Black buddy story. Gee, this must be the one millionth time this plot has been used, ifn’ you count movies, TV, and books. And, as pointed out in the article, most of this outfit’s books are by Euro-Americans.
That’s why I won’t shed a tear for the end of the elitist publishing business as it now exists. E-Book publishing is hastening the demise.
Frankly, I found the representative at Seen-ko Poon-toe Press obnoxious and exceptionally discouraging.
And I ain’t sending her nothin’.
Correction: "YES, WITH 45 CENT POSTAGE ON AN ENVELOPE."
Un pasito at a time, that is how change will come...Here's an interesting article on a writer who took a huge leap and crossed that huge chasm... a Person of Color writing about another culture!
Interesting read http://www.policymic.com/articles/61987/the-one-thing-white-writers-get-away-with-but-authors-of-color-don-t
Rudy, thanks for sharing your blog, which I found very interesting. I well understand that your struggles and endeavors can be frustrating and that ethnic considerations may be adding to the usual torment of starting up (and maintaining) a writing career. I admire your steady perseverance!
Do try to keep it in perspective, though. Don't forget that Robert Silverberg entered publishing in an era of discrimination against Jews. And Jack Williamson was diagnosed as mentally ill for liking sci fi. And the women... I need only mention Alice Sheldon who had to publish as Jame Tiptree. And Delany and the gays. The most successful of these were the ones who learned to shrug a lot, to thicken the skin and to overwhelm others with the quality of their ideas and their stories and their prose.
I do not say this to minimize but to encourage! Science fiction has always been at the edge, exploring and tweaking assumptions. It is a source of solace to know that you WILL win. In some fields, quality overcomes preconceptions and SF is one of those. Alas, you never can predict how efficiently it will happen and sometimes bad luck or fashion can be harsh friction. But SF means well and has a conscience.
Tell great stories. Good luck and persevere! And glad to meet you.
With cordial regards,
David Brin
http://www.davidbrin.com
blog: http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/
twitter: https://twitter.com/DavidBrin
Thanks for the interesting post, Rudy.
You've done an excellent job showing there's a problem in the publishing industry.
What's the solution?
On a more personal level, as an author I think about this issue a lot. Authors are told to 'write what we know' and I live in Colorado and do a lot of work with folks from 'under-represented groups.' So, my fiction has a lot of educated, brilliant, talented people of many different backgrounds. Are my Chicanos 'Chicano' enough? I don't know. Am I misappropriating? I don't know.
But what's the alternative? White female middle-aged authors can only write about white female middle-aged characters?
I have to believe we're all essentially the same on the inside: we want to live and love and make a positive impact on the world...
Good luck with your quest.
Great issue!--Francisco
Rudy,your enthusiasm for writing and writers is inspiring, not jaded and totally youthful. Never lose that! Correction: the Latina editor said nothing about my writing, but said literary fiction was a hard sell and advised me to include more romance, which was her sense of what Latinas want to read. Like Ernest Hogan, my dad brought the O'Briant to the nuptials w/my Mexican mom. I suffered for that last name and threw in the Ramos to make my heritage clear w/o fear of bruising.
Thank you for taking the time to share your experiences and perspective. Made me feel a little downcast at the difficulties, but those obstacles aren't new to me or other Chicano/as. We press on.
Anon: I laughed about Cinco Puntos press in the comments, and scratched that place off my list.
Terrific experience, Rudy. I attended my first con, and my first WorldCon, in Denver in the 1970s. I received registration as a first place prize for a science fiction story I wrote, "Midnight at the Lariat Lounge."
As with every other aquarium, you have to look for inspiration where you can find it. I will write more after I read your second post.