Spotlight on Sheryl Luna

Sheryl Luna was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. Her collection of poetry Pity the Drowned Horses won the first Andres Montoya Poetry Prize sponsored by the Institute of Latino Studies and the creative writing department of the University of Notre Dame. The judge was Robert Vasquez. The collection was profiled in "18 Debut Poets who Made their Mark in 2005" by Poets and Writers Magazine. A graduate of Texas Tech University, she earned a doctorate in contemporary literature from the University of North Texas and a M.F.A. from the University of Texas at El Paso. She also holds a M.A. in English from Texas Woman's University. Her work has appeared in Feminist Studies, Notre Dame Review, Georgia Review, American Literary Review, and many other nationally acclaimed journals. She's received scholarships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the Napa Valley Writer's Conference. Pity the Drowned Horses was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and the 2006 Colorado Book awards. Her second manuscript of poems, titled 7, was recently runner-up for the Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize sponsored by University of Notre Dame. She currently teaches at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado.

Bones

Once, as a girl, she saw a woman shrink

inside herself, gray-headed and dwarf-sized,

as if her small spine collapsed. Age

and collapse were something unreal, like war

and loss. That image of an old woman sitting

in a café booth, folding in on herself, was forgotten

until her own bones thinned and hollowed,

music-less, un-fluted, empty.

She says she takes shark cartilage before she sleeps,

a tablet or two to secure flexibility and forgets

that pain is living and living is pain.

And time moves like a slow rusty train

through the desert of weeds, and the low-riders

bounce like teenagers young and forgiving

in her night’s dream. She was sleek in a red dress

with red pumps, the boys with slick hair, tight jeans.

She tells me about 100-pound canisters of lard

and beans, how she could dance despite her fifth

child, despite being beaten and left

in the desert for days, how she saw an angel

or saint glimmer blonde above her, how she rose

and walked into the red horizon despite

her husband’s sin.

I’m thinking how the women

in my family move with a sway, with a hip

ache, and how they each have a disk

slip. The sky seems sullen, gray, and few birds

whisk. It’s how the muse is lost

in an endless stream of commercials, how people

forget to speak to one another as our ending skulks

arthritically into our bones, and the dust

of a thousand years blows across the plain,

and the last few hares sprint across a bloodied

highway. Here in the desert southwest, loss

is living and it comes with chapped lips,

long bumpy bus rides and the smog of some man’s

factory trap. And there are women everywhere

who have half-lost their souls

in sewing needles and vacuum- cleaner parts.

In maquiladoras there grows a slow poem,

a poem that may only live a moment sharply

in an old woman’s soul, like a sudden broken hip.

And yet, each October, this old woman rises

like the blue sky, rises like the fat turkey vultures

that make death something beautiful, something

towards flight, something that circles in a group

and knows it is best not to approach death alone.

Each October she dances, the mariachis yelp

and holler her back to that strange, flexible youth,

back to smoky rancheras and cumbias, songs

rolling in the shadows along the bare Mexican hills.

She tells me, “It’s in the music, where I’ll always

live.” And somehow, I see her jaw relax,

her eyes squint to a slow blindness

as if she can see something I can’t.

And I remember that it is good to be born of dust,

born amid cardboard shanties of sweet gloom.

I remember that the bare cemetery stones

in El Paso and Juarez hold the music, and each spring

when the winds carry the dust of loss there is a howl,

a surge of something unbelievable, like death,

like the collapse of language, like the frail bones

of Mexican grandmothers singing.

Ambition

Danny Lopez was so dark that some thought he was black.

His eyes were wide and wild.

When he ran, his short frame’s stride heated the streets.

Sweat trickled down his bony face, and his throat

lumped with desire, the race, the win.

We used to sit on the hood of my parents’ car,

gaze at the stars. He would win state,

dash through the flagged shoot in Austin,

get a scholarship to Auburn, escape the tumbleweeds,

the dirt floors of his pink adobe home, his father’s rage.

We were runners.

Our thin bodies warmed with sweat, and the moon round

with dreams of release. We lived a mile from the border;

the Tigua Indian drums could be heard in the cool evenings.

Our rhythmic hopes pounded dusty roads, and cholos

with slicked hair, low-riders, were only a mirage.

We drove across the border, heavy voices, drunk

with dreams, tequila, and hollow fears. We ran

trans-mountain road, shadows cast cold shivers

down our backs in the hundred-degree sun.

Danny ran twenty miles, finished, arms raised

with manic exultation.

The grassy course felt different beneath his spikes,

and the gun’s smoke forgotten in the rampage of runners,

his gold cross pounding his chest to triumph, his legs

heedless to pain, his guts burning.

Neither of us return to the cement underpasses,

graffiti, and dry grass, though I know

the drums still beat when we look at the stars,

and our eyes flicker with ambition.

Brown children in tattered shorts still beg for pesos,

steal pomegranates and melons.

Young men with sweaty chests and muddy pants

ask my mother for work, food,

passage to that distant win

somewhere on the other side of Texas.

Today the green trees are wet with rain,

and I am too lazy to run. The desire to run my fingers

down an abdomen tight with ambition, is shaky, starved.

It’s been too long since I’ve crossed that border,

drunk tequila, screamed victorious

at the mountain. The stars seem small tonight,

they don’t burst over the sky like they did back then.

These poems, these books don’t ravish me

the way Danny could, the way the race could.

His accented English, broken on the wind, and his run,

his lean darkness, drove exhaustion to consummation.

The wind seems too humid in this preferred place,

and when I hear throaty Spanish spoken in the lushness,

I long for the grimy heat,

the Rio Grande’s shallow passage,

the blue desert, and the slick legs of runners

along the smoggy highway.

The Cordova Bridge

I’m not writing delicate silver birds or some Southwest

aubade. I am rough in a pebbled and stickered dead sea.

And here, crazy-sad among the flowerless places

I sweat my way through the dirge of horns and radio

blues. Smog- filled air. Sweaty dark-dirty children hang

on my car. Their paper cups hold out a coinless surrender.

El Pasoan’s call them scam-gangs. Bumper to bumper

as a rainbow smears the sky, window-washers beg for dimes.

The streets narrow in Juarez. Gaudy green hand-painted

school buses block signs. The poor wait. A bright scholar

described las ciudades hermanas as unmoving. Blue hills,

the river’s banks deceiving us to see one-sided, blind. Juarez,

me later driving in circles, cursing the mad stops, the move-over

hurriedness. El Paso’s streets are wide, people erect chain-

link fences, bars over windows. They love their small plots

of land, their jalopy cars. A poet once sang a maid’s daily

dread over Cordova. I think I see her sweating away.

I once drew a breath of lush serenity, words danced

as small breaths, gilded beads. But you see, I was cursed

in this dust, crystallized among charcoal frowns and smiles.

At times, anger is an unnamed cry. Must one sing lichen,

lagoons, a glint of sky, creamy white breasts? Here, men

and women living bare dance among crumbling things. A man

without a leg has hopped that bridge for thirty years eyeing

shiny red Firebirds. What was a bird of red-fire to him?

Do we all rise phoenix-like from our tumbleweeds? Rain-

wash twirls about brown knees, rolled jeans, bare feet.

Popsicle-sellers close tiny carts, cigarette boys cover

damp cartons. And I am dry as an American can be.

• ISBN-10: 0268033749
• ISBN-13: 978-0268033743

Lisa Alvarado

How I Became a Teacher

By René Colato Laínez


Every time I read my books to elementary students, I always give them a message of perseverance.

When I came from El Salvador to the United States, I brought with me a backpack full of dreams. I dreamed of being a good student, becoming a teacher, and writing a book. As an immigrant child, many times these dreams can be hard to reach. But they are not impossible if you fight for them. Yes! Dreams can be accomplished. I did well in school. I was an ESL student but I graduated with honors from High School and college. I became a teacher and now I am an author.

"Never give up. Do your best," I say and the children clap.

I wrote Dear Journal for a class I took with Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy. This journal is about me and my journey from kindergarten to my own classroom as a teacher. It is full of ganas and perseverance. Isabel told me, "this is a powerful story." Many teachers have also told me, "Our students need to read your journal."

Now amigos from La Bloga, I want to present this humble but sincere message of hope to all of you. Let's start with kindergarten.

Copyright © by René Colato Laínez

Kindergarten

Dear Journal:

Mamá got a job in the detergent factory where papá works. Papá’s salary is not enough. I have always been with mamá during the day but I won’t be with her anymore. I need to go to “Kinder Garden”. I was excited.

“I will play and run in the “Garden,” I said to mamá. “I love birds and butterflies!”

Soon we came to a big house without flowers, birds nor butterflies.

“This is not a Garden! I don’t like this place!” I said I as stomped my feet.

Mamá gave me a big hug and left. I tried to run but one of the teachers closed the gate.

“Mamá don’t leave me here! I’m scared!” I said with tears in my eyes.

Today was my first day and it was awful. I don’t like the teachers. I want to stay with mamá.

Review: Tell Borges If You See Him.

Tales of Contemporary Somnambulism. Athens, U of GA press 2007. By Peter LaSalle.
ISBN 0820329983

Michael Sedano

Peter LaSalle’s chosen a provocative subtitle for his volume of eleven very modern short fiction. Is there a traditional somnambulism? Idle speculation it turns out, for the “contemporary” refers to the writing itself, and “somnambulism” for the nightmarish reality LaSalle’s narrators treat so matter-of-factly.

It’s a pretty joyless reality for these characters. LaSalle’s male narrators form an unprepossessing lump, not a winner in the lot. Women characters come in for short shrift as frail, hapless victim or self-destructive loser.

The most interesting story is the title piece, fifth in the middle of the book. It’s written mostly as one long sentence that LaSalle breaks up by inserting ellipses here and there to incomplete a thought and move along its 25 page length. The broke, down-on-his-luck Vietnam vet has been lured into laundering Argentine cash for a taste of the action. The scheme blows up and the narrator escapes back to the States, leaving behind an Australian fitness instructor whose jealous stalker turned in the plot.

The opening story, “Where We Last Saw Time”, sets the tone for the book as it jumps around from time to time. The middle-aged narrator was a Harvard student with a term paper due in the morning and date with his girlfried. The first person narrator talks about wandering the streets avoiding the meeting as if that would prevent what eventually befalls the dreamy coed, death from amoebic infection in Cameroon.

LaSalle pulls the wool over his reader’s eyes in The Actor’s Face. The writer makes the petty narrator just mild enough that we’re pulling for him to get the girl despite the obvious bias in the narrator’s description of his rival’s faded presence. When the girl gushes that she’s just read the review of a fabulous novel, and the rival just happens to be the author of that novel, the narrator doesn’t realize she’s just exposed the depths of his own pettiness.

The one sore spot I had in going through the stories is the Mexico set “The Christmas Bus.” I hope the broad portrayals are meant as counter-stereotypy that didn’t work—the piece reeks of ethnic stereotypes such as the bus driver who daydreams of the teenaged prostitutes waiting for him at the turn-around, or the bicultural chicano who loves the colorful antics of his Mexican gente.

In “French Sleeping Pills” the self-destructive waif is a Seven Sisters student on the Paris semester abroad. She’s abandoned her classes, her boyfriend, her contact with reality. Her film professor asks if he can take advantage of her and she meekly says “OK”. When things turn kinky she says meekly, “OK”. The medicine starts to wear off and she panics.

“The Spaces Inside Sleep” reads like a conventional moment of truth story. A failing bookseller has a chance to make a windfall but won’t sell to a drug dealer. Later, he has a chance to help a decent but eccentric friend take advantage of a woman, but doesn’t. The somnambulism for this tale is its Austin setting, an imputed surreal political landscape controlled by a corrupt dictator, and routine armed attacks by Barnes & Noble destroying high profile Borders stores.

Some stories finish themselves, even if LaSalle doesn’t finish the stories. Instead he suggests alternatives and leaves it to someone else to work things out. The sleeping pill story, for example, when the woman realizes the depravity she’s about to wallow in, she knows it’s too late to get dressed and just leave this man’s bedroom, go find some more pills. She instead imagines she’s just stepping onto campus that morning, she takes a different turn, life is different…

I found Peter LaSalle interesting yet so taxing I renewed the volume twice and have it now overdue from the Pasadena Public Library. I’ll return it, pay my fines, and hope the new titles shelf has something.

That’s the Tuesday word at La Bloga! The last Tuesday of January 2008. Interestingly, it’s the first Tuesday of my retirement. Monday marked the beginning of Friday every day for me. All those projects I’ve been touting now have no impediments.

Mexico in the Heartland

New Madrid, the official journal of the low-residency Master of Fine Arts program at Murray State University, announces the publication of its Winter 2008 issue, dedicated to the theme of “Mexico in the Heartland.”

The issue features artwork by Mexican muralist José Luis Soto González and includes literary works by nationally and internationally recognized writers such as Philip Garrison, Socorro Venegas and Daniel Olivas. Through an interview with Fred de Rosset, it also highlights the contributions of the Kentucky Institute of International Studies (KIIS) in fostering relationships between Kentuckians and Mexican nationals.

The issue also features “The Mexican Mural Project,” a series of oral histories inspired by the growing Mexican population in western Kentucky.

Copies of the “Mexico in the Heartland” issue are $8.00. They may be purchased from Pamela Miller, Secretary, MFA Program, Department of English and Philosophy, Murray State University, 7C Faculty Hall, Murray, KY 42071-3341. For further information, e-mail Pamela Miller. Annual subscriptions to New Madrid are $15.00.

New Madrid is edited by Ann Neelon. Advisory and Contributing Editors are Squire Babcock, Brian Barker, Dale Ray Phillips and Holly Goddard Jones. The next issue will appear in July, 2008, with Nicky Beer as Guest Editor. New Madrid accepts on-line submissions only. Check the New Madrid website for submission guidelines and announcements of future issues.

[New Madrid front and back cover art by José Luis Soto González.]

◙ Kathleen Alcalá’s The Desert Remembers My Name: On Family and Writing (University of Arizona Press) was recently selected as one of Margaret Guerrero's "Top Picks" in the 2007 Southwest Books of the Year competition. Southwest Books of the Year is a prestigious award in Southern Arizona sponsored by the Pima County Public Library, Friends of the Pima County Public Library, Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records, and the Arizona Historical Society.

◙ PALABRA ISSUE 3 RELEASED: Just released and ready for the reading, the new issue of PALABRA: A Magazine of Chicano & Latino Literary Art, is filled with a diverse assortment of fiction, poetry and drama that is wistful, intense, contemplative, searing, fresh-eyed, muscular, surprising and funny.

The latest issue features new poetry by Margarita Engle, Carolina Monsiváis, María Luis Arroyo, Alfaro, Damacio García and Marielena O. Gómez. Also included are a novel excerpt by Richard Yañez, a new play by Caridad Svich and short fiction from Marisela Norte, Louis Reyna, Nick Padron and Daniel Chacón.

With the release of its third issue, PALABRA continues its quest to showcase an eclectic array of new and established Chicano and Latino literary voices speaking in a wide range of styles—writing as distinct and varied as the experiences that created them.

PALABRA is available through its website and at:

Imix Bookstore - Los Angeles, CA

Tianguis - Chicago, IL

Trópico de Nopal Gallery - Los Angeles, CA

REDCAT - Los Angeles, CA

Over at the Letras Latinas blog, you can read an enlightening interview with elena minor, the editor and founder of PALABRA.

◙ We received this call for assistance from Thania Muñoz concerning her project on the late Mexican novelist, Jorge Ibargüengoitia (pictured below):

My name is Thania Muñoz and I’m a master student of Latin American literature at Cal State Los Angeles. I’m doing a research paper that I will be presenting at the Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies conference in November, 2008. I’m interested in Mexican detective fiction and my research will focus on Jorge Ibargüengoitia’s novels, The Dead Girls (1977) and Two Crimes (1979). I intend to analyze how Ibargüengoitia utilizes detective fiction to expose, through his portrait of provincial Mexico, the reality of a nation. Below is a short summary of what I’m focusing on; if any La Bloga readers have done research on Mexican detective fiction, the hard-boiled genre or is just interested in knowing more about these genres and helping me out, I would love to hear from you. My email is: tmunoz5@calstatela.edu. Thanks.

Here is Muñoz's formal abstract of her project: “In Jorge Ibargüengoitia’s novels, The Dead Girls (1977), and Two Crimes (1979) the settings are not the enormous and dark cities, such as the D.F., but the little provincial towns of the Mexican republic. The intuitive and cool detective is Don Pepe, an old pharmacist. Prostitution is legal, until the authorities stop accepting briberies and as a result many prostitutes are found dead. In these two novels, the author ventures, in a literary way, out of Mexico’s urban centers, not to show the variety of nuances in Mexican culture, but to show that its vices are the same. As in the cities, the police are corrupt, families are greedy and their greed for power even greater. Jorge Ibargüengoitia transforms the genre of detective fiction and adjusts it to the Mexican reality. This not only proves the genre’s adaptability to other realities, but it also turns it into the writer’s criticism tool. His criticism, in the two aforementioned novels, unravels Mexico’s imperfections and its pursuit for the idealized modernity.”

◙ Scott Jaschik, editor of Inside Higher Ed, tells us of an interview/Podcast with the leading scholar on Américo Paredes, Ramón Saldívar, a professor of English and comparative literature at Stanford University. You may access the piece here. Last month, the Modern Language Association gave its Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies to Saldívar for his monograph on the work of Américo Paredes, The Borderlands of Culture (University of Duke Press). The article, by Scott McLemee, notes that the “podcast offers a good introduction to Paredes’s own life and work, and expresses some of Saldívar’s deep engagement with them. It could be time for others to start sharing that interest: a local ballad from the Tex-Mex borderland might yet be on the soundtrack of 21st century American politics.”

◙ Don’t forget to visit The Mark on the Wall, the blog created by Lisa Alvarez (aka Rebel Girl). She has a recent post on many interesting items including Cheech Marin’s book signing to launch the Chicano Art and Soul Exhibition at the MUZEO. Alvarez is the co-author of Writer's Workshop in a Book: The Squaw Valley Community of Writers on the Art of Fiction (Chronicle Books), and a contributor to the forthcoming Latinos in Lotusland : An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature (Bilingual Press).

◙ Rigoberto González reviews in the El Paso Times Juan Felipe Herrera's 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971 - 2007 (City Lights Books) observing that “Herrera has combed through no fewer than nine of his previously published books and chapbooks to map out nearly 40 years of political writings and to celebrate a lifelong commitment to literary activism.” González states that this book “is a momentous achievement for this activist writer…”

◙ All done. So, until next Monday, enjoy the intervening posts from my compadres y comadres at La Bloga. ¡Lea un libro!

Calendario Romano: Priestcake 2008

Now I have to admit, I have always been obsessed with religious paraphernalia, as a recovering Catholic I look at the more gaudy of accoutrement with fascination, like my Tío Victor who, when he stopped drinking forever kept the assortment of variously filled booze bottles around his office as a reminder. Among my most prized possessions are a Pope John Paul the II snowglobe that I purchased in Pisa (which upon unpacking I discovered to my delight glowed in the dark) and a revolving Virgen de Guadalupe picture, complete with flashing eternity lights and gold plastic frame. And I am the office keeper of the hot pink Jesus, a Pepto-Bismol colored

statue of the son of God himself, that when you ask him a yes/no question, you can turn him over and find a religious-themed magic eight ball prognostication tool that says things like, “Pray Harder” and “No Chance in Hell.” But even to my hardened, Kitsch-collecting self, the newest addition to my collection takes the cake.

“I got something for you Ann, I won it at a Yankee gift exchange and I just know you’re the only one who’ll appreciate it” my friend Tom told me earlier this month. “My brother got it at the Vatican.” He set it down in front of me, a 2008 calendar featuring black and white photographs of thirteen handsome young priests, one for each month and the best looking for the cover. And it is “con cenni storico artistici sul Vaticano.” With historic notes about the Vatican! Yeah! As I flipped through the pages, each month boasting another dark-haired, dark-eyed young man in vestmental garb, my jaw was on my chest. “It’s a priestcake calendar!” I exclaimed. “This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen!” Tom’s smile couldn’t have been wider: he had found the calendar the perfect home. As I left his office—did I mention he’s our college president?—I decided I just had to know more about the calendar’s history.

Upon doing some web research I came to discover that the 2008 edition is in fact the fifth one that was produced (how could I have not heard of this? I’ve been in the dark for five long years). I couldn’t find any official quote from the Vatican as to their position on this calendar (if you find one, let me know) however since it is sold all over Rome and around the Vatican (not to mention worldwide on amazon.com) it is highly unlikely that they are unaware of it. I would imagine that the publicity around these hunky men of the cloth ensures a steady stream of young women—and men—in the pews every Sunday.

My mind was, and still is, a vortex of questions. Since when is Catholic church touting it’s men of God as pinups? Is this really Vatican-approved? And why the hell did Father May pose with a lit cigarette and a bottle of Jägermeister? The photographs border (and perhaps plunge right into) homo-eroticism—particularly Father March who is poised with eyes closed and lips parted as a woman’s hand feeds him a piece of bread, the Eucharist I imagine. I mean, come on! The best part is that according to the British publication The Guardian, Father March isn’t even a priest, but rather a Spanish real estate agent who was eating cake during an Easter procession.

Hey look, I love me a good beefcake calendar—my office wall has been blessed with the image of Hugh Jackman all year (of course I ripped out the other X-Men pics so he could remain)—but I was under the impression that the Catholic church had to maintain a level of decorum, to be an example to the sheep in its fold. And given all the sexually related scandals that surround the church of late, this could not be more ill-timed. But still, it fascinates me.
My fascinations are sacrilegious, you say? I don’t think so. You see, my mother brought me up to believe that the church is the people, not the clergy, and like the good mangia preti she was, she went to mass, prayed her rosary and argued with the priests about the ERA. But all those in my family seem to share a fascination with kitsch (is there a Spanish word for this? Some things just must be said in Yiddish), and I can’t help but think she would have loved the Calendario Romano. So though I am appalled, it is like a New York City car wreck: I find I can’t look away. I wish I could totally condemn this calendar, to warn my beloved La Bloga readers to not purchase one if they wish to preserve their immortal souls. But alas, I can’t. For whatever reason, things such as the Calendario Romano captivate me, remind me that though the nuns at Corpus Christi grammar school told me different, the clergy make bad choices…they are indeed, human.

So, will I be logging on to amazon.com next year to get my 2009 edition? As we say in Vermont, you betcha!

Pedacitos

Bits and pieces of cultural news, and one more march for peace.

SHERYL LUNA, GABE GOMEZ, ERIKA T. WURTH AT KGB BAR IN NYC
Saturday, January 26 7:00 PM to Sunday, January 27 12:00 AM
85 E. 4th Street, NYC

Lisa Alvarado mentioned on La Bloga earlier this week that Sheryl Luna was in New York City on Friday night. Here's info about a Saturday event with more poets.

"Erika T Wurth (Indian Trains), Sheryl Luna (Pity the Drowned Horses),
and Gabe Gomez (The Outer Bands) represent a fresh perspective not only in ethnic writing, but in poetry. Rather than attach themselves to a particular school of writing, their work is about people, and landscapes and works on more than a purely intellectual level. Although none of them would do well in a hallmark, all of them express themselves in ways that are new and unique but that still speak to people not just below the waist, but more importantly, below the neck."

The KGB's website says this about itself: "In the years since it opened in 1993, KGB has become something of a New York literary institution. Writers hooked up in the publishing world read here with pleasure and without pay to an adoring public over drinks almost every Sunday evening (fiction), Monday evening (poetry), and most Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. The crowd loves it. Admission is free, drinks are cheap and strong, and the level of excellence is such that KGB has been named best literary venue in New York City by New York Magazine, the Village Voice, and everyone else who bestows these awards of recognition."
Read more here.

Sounds like a great place to listen to some great poetry.

OLLIN

El Centro Su Teatro will proudly present the regional premiere of world-renowned composer Daniel Valdez’s stunning original play, Ollin, February 21 – March 29, 2007 at El Centro Su Teatro, 4725 High Street, Denver.

Ollin is a spectacular recreation of one of the most profound cultural collisions in human history—the conquest of Mexico by Spain. The poetic interpretation of the meeting of these two great empires was something Valdez felt drawn to create as a symbol of both his cultural and personal identity, as the Conquest marks the birth of the Mestizo—the mixed blood race to whom most Mexicans and Mexican Americans trace their heritage.

Valdez has included elements from multiple disciplines to tell this dramatic tale, including theater, dance, music, and visual art. Distinguished painter Carlos Frésquez, local musician Tony Silva, and Boulder choreographer Concetta Troskie are working with Su Teatro actors to augment the artistic layering of the play. Add in Valdez’s original music and the result should be, as Valdez describes it, a sort of modern codices—a stunning visual and musical tablet.

Originally developed by Valdez as a radio play, Ollin was given a workshop production in San Diego and a full student production at Stanford University. Valdez is excited to work with Su Teatro in bringing the final evolution of this remarkable piece to Denver.

Valdez was an instrumental figure in the birth of Chicano Theater—working alongside his brother, the famed writer/director Luis Valdez, in the agitprop California theater group Teatro Campesino. Valdez went on to make a name for himself as a brilliant songwriter with the release of his solo album Mestizo. Valdez also worked alongside Linda Ronstadt on her album Canciones de mi Padre.

Su Teatro has enjoyed a longstanding relationship with Valdez, beginning in 1975 when he and El Centro Su Teatro Artistic Director Tony Garcia met and exchanged ideas at a theater workshop in Denver. More recently, the two teamed up to create the original Su Teatro productions The Westside Oratorio and El Sol Que Tu Eres. Ollin marks their third collaboration.

Ollin, written and directed by Daniel Valdez, February 21 – March 29 at El Centro Su Teatro, 4725 High Street. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, curtain at 8:05 PM. Tickets are $18, $15 students/seniors, with special group discounts available. Call (303) 296-0219 for tickets and information.

NATIONAL LATINO WRITERS CONFERENCE
Albuquerque, New Mexico
May 21–24, 2008

Nationally known authors, agents, and editors will present in workshops and panel discussions. All attendees will have the opportunity to have three one-on-one appointments with an agent, author, and editor. Accepting a total of 50 fiction and nonfiction writers. If submitted early authors will read a sample of your work. Workshops will include hands-on exercises.

2008 Literary Genres
Novel • Short story (fiction/non-fiction)
Screenwriting • Playwriting • Poetry
Mystery/Detective • Comics • Special features

2008 Faculty
Martín Espada - Helena María Viramontes - Javier Grillo-Marxuach - Frank Zuñiga - Benjamin Alire Sáenz - Alfredo Corchado - Kathleen de Azevedo - Rolando Hinojosa-Smith

For information and to register contact Katie Trujillo 505.246.2261, x148 • katie.trujillo@state.nm.us
nhccnm.org • NHCC 1701 4th Street SW • Albuquerque, NM 87102

MILAGROS DEL CORAZON
Chicano Humanities & Arts Council’s (CHAC) 9th annual silent auction and fundraiser - Friday, Feb 8, 2008 6-10 PM - Space Gallery
765 Santa Fe Drive, Denver

Celebrate Valentines and help support CHAC's cultural art and community outreach programs with an evening of live music and hors d'oeuvres. Place bids on a wide variety of unique hearts, gift baskets, services and original artwork, created and donated by members and guest artists, local schools, business and community supporters.

Music provided by Latin Fusion Band Debajo Del Aqua
Cocktail attire optional.
CHAC Gallery (see below) will be open during the event.

Tickets are available for $7.00 each or $12.00 per couple at the event or in advance by calling CHAC at 303-571-0440.

WINTER SOLDIER: IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
From the Vietnam Veterans Against the War website:

From March 13-16th 2008, Iraq Veterans Against the War will gather in Washington D.C. to "break the silence and hold our leaders accountable for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars."

This spring, the largest gathering of veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan will share their experiences in a public investigation called Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan. Providing testimonies to war crimes the United States perpetuates with the ongoing wars and occupations as well as the increasingly poor treatment of returning veterans by US government agencies here at home. Vietnam Veterans Against the War are seeking members and friends to host fundraisers, provide monetary donations, personal support and spread the word about Winter Soldier Investigation.


Later.

The Bearable Lightness of Being

In Being Bodies, Lenore Friedman and Susan Moon offer the perspectives of a variety of women with varying Buddhist practices. The result is a contemplative and compelling work dealing with what it means to be female, what it means to fully and consciously inhabit the female body.

The last wave of the Western women’s movement critiqued the idea that a women was her body. In fact, a major focus of that movement was the position that biology was not destiny. This was primarily a response to the social construction of women’s identity, the objectification of a women as nothing more than physical self. However, there was little offered to support women in learning to fully live in that physicality, to know it as both vessel and endpoint. Being Bodies offers a view that a woman’s self-knowledge is rooted in the flesh. Women’s awareness is based in surrendering to the body’s impermanence, its joy, its suffering, and its death. One of the most thought-provoking essays is Linda Chrisman’s "Birth".

In it, she describes the process of labor, and giving birth to her son. What's striking about this experience was how Chrisman was both deeply enmeshed in that process and separate from it. The most telling lesson, for both Chrisman and the reader, occurred at the height of labor. Here she realizes that all her physical conditioning, all her contemplative practice would not save her from pain. This selection beautifully illustrates the message of Being Bodies. There may be another path for women, rooted in surrender to the fullness and limits of the body. Through that choice, a woman may find self-knowledge and ultimately, freedom. While the focus of Being Bodies is the female experience, it is a universal and object lesson about Buddhist ideas of impermanence, and becoming fully present in every moment by letting go. I was moved to tears reading this book. It reminds me that true beauty is the sum of both pleasing things as well the scars.

I feel such a strong, visceral connection to the stories of the women profiled in this anthology. (Interesting that "visceral" is the only word that comes to mind in reviewing a book dealing with the experience of being grounded in the body and the odyssey of transcendence.) This book is a pivotal one as I try to develop a deeper spiritual practice - moving East in order to come West, hoping to re-encounter and reinterpret my own ideas of embodiment, spirituality and existence.

ISBN-10: 1570623244 ISBN-13: 978-157062324

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Acentos and AWP Conference News

On Tuesday, January 29th at 7pm, we break from our normal schedule to bring you ACENTOS on a FIFTH TUESDAY, in conjunction with the Bay Area's own Craig Perez and Achiote Press.

The featured poets that night will be two amazing young writers:

Marina Garcia-Vasquez, acontributor to the press' ACHIOTE SEEDS, Volume 2, and Javier O. Huerta, author of the acclaimed debut collection, SOME CLARIFICATIONS Y OTROS POEMAS. As always, the Uptown's best open mic will precede the festivities, and your host will be John Rodriguez.

On Thursday, January 31st at 6pm, the Con Tinta collective presents its annual awards dinner and reading.

Lifetime achievement awards are to be presented to Nuyorican writers Sandra Maria Esteves and Tato Laviera. The dinner will take place at Mojitos', located at 227 E. 116th Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenue. The reading will be held in conjunction with PALABRA, a journal of Chicano and Latino literary arts. Your hosts for the evening will be Urayoan Noel and Rich Villar.

Finally, on Friday, February 1st at 6:30pm, El Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños presents ACENTOS: A Gathering of Latino and Latina Poets.

The event is slated to take place at the School of Social Work at Hunter College, 129 E. 79th Street, at the corner of 79th and Lexington. A lineup of more than 20 emerging and nationally recognized Latino and Latina poets are set to take the stage, including Martin Espada, Sandra Maria Esteves, Brenda Cardenas, Aracelis Girmay, Willie Perdomo, and many more.

It's going to be a busy January for your crew at Acentos, and we wouldn't have it any other way. Keep an eye on this list for further updates, news, features and even more poetry events for the '08, as well as information about our fifth anniversary show in March.

Details for all our January events are listed below. See you all there!

Peaces,
Rich Villar
for the Acentos crew.

Tuesday, January 29th @ 7pm ACENTOS Bronx Poetry Showcase A reading in collaboration with Achiote Press featuring JAVIER O. HUERTA and MARINA GARCIA-VASQUEZ plus the Uptown's Best Open Mic

The Bruckner Bar and Grill One Bruckner Blvd. (corner of Third Ave. and Bruckner Blvd.) 6 Train to 138th Street Station Hosted by John Rodriguez FREE! ($5 suggested donation) Thursday, January 31st @ 6pm Con Tinta's Annual Award Ceremony and Reading Honoring the work of Nuyorican poets SANDRA MARIA ESTEVES and TATO LAVIERA Mojitos' Bar 227 E. 116th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Ave.) 6 Train to 116th Street Station Hosted by Urayoan Noel, Rich Villar, and the Con Tinta collective FREE and open to the public.

Friday, February 1st @ 6:30pm ACENTOS: A Gathering and Celebration of Latino and Latina Poets Presented by El Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños at Hunter College and Acentos Bronx Poetry Showcase

Featuring over twenty emerging and nationally recognized Latino and Latina poets:

The School of Social Work @ Hunter College 129 E. 79th Street (corner of 79th and Lexington) 6 Train to 77th Street Station, two blocks north to 79th and Lex. FREE and open to the public.

Acentos: The Bronx's Premiere Spot for Poetry

http://www.louderarts.com/acentos

"Acentos is one of the best audiences, one of the best venues, I've ever seen. The organizers do a great job, not only in terms of spreading the word, but also in terms of creating anticipation. I feel like I'm part of a community, part of a movement. Aquí estamos y no nos vamos." Martín Espada

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GREAT TEATRO LUNA NEWS!

CURRENTLY PLAYING:

MACHOS

After a sold out run at Chicago Dramatists, MACHOS is moving to the 16th Street Theater in Berwyn, IL, conveniently located near the CTA/Blue Line Austin stop.

Tickets are already on sale, and I hope you will help spread the word!

Here's the scoop:
MACHOS At 16th Street Theater 4 weeks only! January 25 through – February 17, 2008

Fridays at 7:30 PM Saturdays at 5:00 PM Saturdays at 8:00 PM Sundays at 6:00 PM

BUY TICKETS ONLINE at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/25539


Lisa Alvarado

Sheryl Luna reads in NYC, Friday 1/25!

Sheryl Luna, author of Pity the Drowned Horses, an award-winning book of poetry, will grace the NY poetry scene this Friday, January 25:


Here's the info....Bluestockings

Finding Us

Bluestockings is located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan at 172 Allen Street between Stanton and Rivington - which means that we are 1 block south of Houston and 1st Avenue.

By train: We are 1 block south of the F train's 2nd Avenue stop and just 5 blocks from the JMZ-line's Essex / Delancey Street stop.

By car: If you take the Houston exit off of the FDR, then turn left onto Essex (aka Avenue A), then right on Rivington, and finally right on Allen, you will be very, very close.....

Children's Writers Workshop at Chautauqua

René Colato Laínez

Chautauqua offers many quiet places. Dayton O. Hyde (right) and Rene
Colato find such a place to discuss Rene's writing.

highlightsfoundation.org

In my classroom, I loved to tell funny, scary, sad, happy and adventurous stories. One day, one of my students asked me, "Can you write that story and draw the pictures?"

"What a wonderful idea!" I told him.

That night, I wrote and illustrated my first picture book- "El numero 1/ The Number 1."

I finished the book at 1:00 A.M. and I was thrilled.

Then, I wrote and illustrated more books. Soon, I had a box labeled “Mr. Colato’s Books”. I discovered that during independent and silent reading, this box was empty. All around the classroom, my students were reading my books. I was so excited and decided to write more and more books.

After presenting a new book, Elvis told me, “You are the teacher full of stories.”

“Sí, yes! He is the teacher full of stories,” all the children said at the same time.

And I became the teacher full of stories at Fernangeles Elementary.

One morning, children’s book authors Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy visited my school and told me, “You have to send this wonderful books to publishers.”

Then I met Amada Irma Perez at CABE, California Association for Bilingual Education. Amada inspired me with her workshop about writing your own stories and get them published.

On March 2001, I was ready to drive the bumpy road to publication. I signed up for the Chautauqua Workshop in New York. Highlights for Children was one of my favorite magazine. I wanted to learn from their creators. This could be a great workshop for my writing career.

By July 2001, I had written two manuscripts and had rejection letters for both of them. I took the manuscripts to Chautauqua.

Patricia Lee Gauch, editor at Philomel Books, read my first manuscript and told me, “Good writing but I have seen many picture books about this topic. Do you have another manuscript?”

“Yes,” I told her. “It is in my room.”

That afternoon, I gave her my manuscript “Waiting for Papá.” Something magical happened. Patricia did not like my manuscript, SHE LOVED IT. Patricia sat with me and with her pen, wrote suggestions all over the manuscript. At the end of the workshop, she gave me a big hug and told me, “We can do this book together.”

Four months later, I received a lovely rejection letter for Patricia. She still loved the manuscript but the acquisition table did not select the manuscript. However, Patricia had more suggestions for me. I followed them and submitted my manuscript to Piñata Books/ Arte Publico Press.

On January 2002, my dream became a reality; my manuscript was selected for publication by Piñata Books. Bravo! Ahora era un autor, I was an author.

Yes, the Chautauqua Workshop changed my life and now it can change your life too.

Kent Brown, the executive director of the Highlights Foundation, is offering scholarships to Latino writers to attend the conference this summer. The funds are there but you need to apply before February 15, 2008. Get in contact with Kent Brown.

This is info about the scholarship:

Since the Highlights Foundation Scholarship Program was first established in 1988, more than 250 scholarships have been awarded to applicants who wish to attend the Foundation's Annual Children's Writers Workshop at Chautauqua, New York. These scholarships make the experience of Chautauqua possible for many individuals who might otherwise not have the opportunity or the resources to participate.

Individuals with a serious interest in writing for children and who have an established financial need are invited to apply. Scholarship applications are evaluated on an ongoing basis by the Highlights Foundation Scholarship Committee. Scholarships vary in the stipend awarded depending on an applicant's requirements and the funds available. Funds for scholarships come from two sources: a Foundation Endowment Fund or scholarships that are funded annually by donors.

This year the scholarship committee will be considering applications in two groups. It works in your favor if we receive your application early. The early group of applications is reviewed on December 1, and you are encouraged to apply BEFORE that date. The final deadline is February 15, 2008.

For more information on the Foundation Scholarship Program or to receive an application form, please contact:
Kent L. Brown Jr.
Executive Director
The Highlights Foundation
570-253-1192
klbrown@highlightsfoundation.org

La Bloga's Triple Threat!!!!!!!

Garcia and Ramos Appear in Anthology edited by Daniel Olivas

Rudy Ch. Garcia y Manuel Ramos have short stories coming up in Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature from Bilingual Press, edited by Daniel Olivas! BTW-- I also understand that Daniel is a contributor....Andale, hermanos!

Look for it on February 15, 2008. Rudy is a bilingual teacher in Denver and wrote "LAX Confidential" while Manuel Ramos, author of several crime-fiction novels and the Director of Advocacy for Colorado Legal Services, wrote "The 405 is Locked Down." The anthology can be pre-ordered from Tattered Cover, et al., in hardcover or trade paperback.

Morro Bay birding / book project

Michael Sedano

"It's the poor workman who blames his tools," I've heard said, and I totally agree. There's a corollary to this, "With the right tools, you can do anything."

The image of the blackbirds on the wing illustrates the truth of that corollary. I stood at the edge of a cow pasture watching two flights of birds sweeping through the air in a shiny black arc that turns in my direction and in a few moments hundreds of birds fly past me.

I have rented a tool. An automatic focus telephoto lens with a fast 2.8 aperture. I set the tripod solidly, lock the head to point straight across into the space where the birds will buzz the cows. As the birds circle past, twenty feet away, I press the shutter button on the digital camera half down. The lens whirls and sharpens on the moving mass of wings and movement. I press all the way down and the shutter flies open to capture the moment at 1/2000th of a second. It's not a bad shot but must be viewed in large print size or scaled up on the computer. So it's not a good shot, either. It was the birds' fault for not spreading out.

That's OK. I can take that picture again. All I need is the time and the right tools.

The right tools are trop cher. This lens sells for more than $4000! Hence the wisdom of renting it for $150 a week. The camera body was over nine hundred a few years ago; now it's selling for seven with two lenses. Canon has several feature-laden cameras on the market that far surpass what I own now. Maybe I can rent the whole modern outfit next time out.

The Morro Bay birding weekend offers brisk hikes in rugged to easy strolls. The boatride is de rigueur, as is the drive up the cost to the Elephant Seal birthing beach north of San Simeon. I hope you'll take a look at this selection of bird images. I am going to use those that fit in an A to Z alphabet photo book featuring birds.

Absolutely--make that absochingaolutely--stunning that January 2008 nears its final days. I'll see you the 29th day thereof, a day which will be quite special. A ver.

mvs

La Bloga welcomes your comments, questions, ideas. We welcome guest columnists! To be one you need only have something interesting to add, click here, or email one of the daily La Bloga blogueras blogueros. Tan facíl I'm surprised you haven't done it yet.

The Meaning of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday

By Coretta Scott King

[from The King Center website.]

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday celebrates the life and legacy of a man who brought hope and healing to America. We commemorate as well the timeless values he taught us through his example -- the values of courage, truth, justice, compassion, dignity, humility and service that so radiantly defined Dr. King’s character and empowered his leadership. On this holiday, we commemorate the universal, unconditional love, forgiveness and nonviolence that empowered his revolutionary spirit.

We commemorate Dr. King’s inspiring words, because his voice and his vision filled a great void in our nation, and answered our collective longing to become a country that truly lived by its noblest principles. Yet, Dr. King knew that it wasn’t enough just to talk the talk, that he had to walk the walk for his words to be credible. And so we commemorate on this holiday the man of action, who put his life on the line for freedom and justice every day, the man who braved threats and jail and beatings and who ultimately paid the highest price to make democracy a reality for all Americans.

The King Holiday honors the life and contributions of America’s greatest champion of racial justice and equality, the leader who not only dreamed of a color-blind society, but who also lead a movement that achieved historic reforms to help make it a reality.

On this day we commemorate Dr. King’s great dream of a vibrant, multiracial nation united in justice, peace and reconciliation; a nation that has a place at the table for children of every race and room at the inn for every needy child. We are called on this holiday, not merely to honor, but to celebrate the values of equality, tolerance and interracial sister and brotherhood he so compellingly expressed in his great dream for America.

It is a day of interracial and intercultural cooperation and sharing. No other day of the year brings so many peoples from different cultural backgrounds together in such a vibrant spirit of brother and sisterhood. Whether you are African-American, Hispanic or Native American, whether you are Caucasian or Asian-American, you are part of the great dream Martin Luther King, Jr. had for America. This is not a black holiday; it is a peoples' holiday. And it is the young people of all races and religions who hold the keys to the fulfillment of his dream.

We commemorate on this holiday the ecumenical leader and visionary who embraced the unity of all faiths in love and truth. And though we take patriotic pride that Dr. King was an American, on this holiday we must also commemorate the global leader who inspired nonviolent liberation movements around the world. Indeed, on this day, programs commemorating my husband’s birthday are being observed in more than 100 nations.

The King Holiday celebrates Dr. King’s global vision of the world house, a world whose people and nations had triumphed over poverty, racism, war and violence. The holiday celebrates his vision of ecumenical solidarity, his insistence that all faiths had something meaningful to contribute to building the beloved community.

The Holiday commemorates America’s pre-eminent advocate of nonviolence --- the man who taught by his example that nonviolent action is the most powerful, revolutionary force for social change available to oppressed people in their struggles for liberation.

This holiday honors the courage of a man who endured harassment, threats and beatings, and even bombings. We commemorate the man who went to jail 29 times to achieve freedom for others, and who knew he would pay the ultimate price for his leadership, but kept on marching and protesting and organizing anyway.

Every King holiday has been a national "teach-in" on the values of nonviolence, including unconditional love, tolerance, forgiveness and reconciliation, which are so desperately-needed to unify America. It is a day of intensive education and training in Martin’s philosophy and methods of nonviolent social change and conflict-reconciliation. The Holiday provides a unique opportunity to teach young people to fight evil, not people, to get in the habit of asking themselves, "what is the most loving way I can resolve this conflict?"

On the King holiday, young people learn about the power of unconditional love even for one's adversaries as a way to fight injustice and defuse violent disputes. It is a time to show them the power of forgiveness in the healing process at the interpersonal as well as international levels.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is not only for celebration and remembrance, education and tribute, but above all a day of service. All across America on the Holiday, his followers perform service in hospitals and shelters and prisons and wherever people need some help. It is a day of volunteering to feed the hungry, rehabilitate housing, tutoring those who can't read, mentoring at-risk youngsters, consoling the broken-hearted and a thousand other projects for building the beloved community of his dream.

Dr. King once said that we all have to decide whether we "will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. Life's most persistent and nagging question, he said, is `what are you doing for others?'" he would quote Mark 9:35, the scripture in which Jesus of Nazareth tells James and John "...whosoever will be great among you shall be your servant; and whosoever among you will be the first shall be the servant of all." And when Martin talked about the end of his mortal life in one of his last sermons, on February 4, 1968 in the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church, even then he lifted up the value of service as the hallmark of a full life. "I'd like somebody to mention on that day Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to give his life serving others," he said. "I want you to say on that day, that I did try in my life...to love and serve humanity.

We call you to commemorate this Holiday by making your personal commitment to serve humanity with the vibrant spirit of unconditional love that was his greatest strength, and which empowered all of the great victories of his leadership. And with our hearts open to this spirit of unconditional love, we can indeed achieve the Beloved Community of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream.

May we who follow Martin now pledge to serve humanity, promote his teachings and carry forward his legacy into the 21st Century.

Charlie’s Angels to Coretta Scott King: Children’s Book Author Sundee Frazier’s World and How She Got There

The day I sat down to write this blog entry—an interview with fabulous new children’s author Sundee Frazier—was the day it was announced that her first middle grade novel Brendan Buckley’s Universe and Everything In It had won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Author Award. I was thrilled and couldn’t imagine a more deserving book. The annual Coretta Scott King Award—presented by the American Library Association—recognizes outstanding African American authors and illustrators. Congratulations to Sundee and we are honored to have her interview appearing on La Bloga the week she received such an exciting and well-deserved honor.

Now, on to Sundee’s story.

Born in Seattle, WA, in 1968 to interracial parents, Sundee’s mother was told by a doctor that the child must be eating too many carrots because her skin was so much tanner than her mom’s. As Sundee put it, “It being the South in the late 60s, Mom decided not to enlighten him” As a child she wanted to be a detective, radio broadcaster, singer, magician, writer and geologist. Oh, and my personal favorite: one of Charlie’s Angels.

As it turns out her actual careers have been almost as varied. She has worked as a spiritual director for college students, a public relations person for the Easter Seal Society, and a director of admissions for an adult education university. Sundee has conducted seminars and conferences around the country and in South Africa on the relationship between music and faith, and co-led a musical team for a 20,000-person international convention focused on mobilizing college students to serve in the world. She is also the author of Check All That Apply: Finding Wholeness as a Multiracial Person (InterVarsity Press 2002).

But it is about her award-winning book that we talked about this week. This middle-grade novel is about Brendan Buckley, a bi-racial, ten-year-old scientist who studies Tae Kwon Do and keeps a top-secret notebook filled with questions he intends to spend the summer answering. He has adventures with his good friend, Khalfani, and spends time with his feisty paternal grandmother, Gladys. When he unexpectedly encounters his white grandfather, Ed DeBose, for the first time at a rock collector’s event, many of the questions begin to revolve around this man his mother refuses to speak about. The biggest mystery, one that he feels very deeply, is why Ed turned his back on his daughter and the grandson he never met.

It is an important and entertaining book that has that rare combination of a character kids will relate to, a story that will keep them engaged, and an important message that doesn’t come across as preachy. I was delighted to have the chance to ask Sundee some questions about this extraordinary novel.

In a recent conversation you told me that you discovered your desire to be a writer goes back to when you were even younger than your protagonist…can you tell us about that?

According to a family Christmas update letter from 1977 that I recently unearthed, I declared my intention to be a writer that year (when I was nine) and set about trying to figure out how to get a book published. It only took me 30 years!

Brendan is such a wonderful character, a smart, realistic boy with integrity. Can you tell me about the genesis of his creation?

First, thanks for the huge compliment. My greatest desire is to create characters readers want to read about – characters readers feel like they have come to know and love by the end of the story. Believe it or not, Brendan Buckley was originally Brenda Buckley (and no, my story was not an “edgy” middle grade about a girl who undergoes a sex change operation). Brenda, however, was elusive. I just couldn’t figure out who this girl was and the story wasn’t really going anywhere. Then one morning I woke up and out of my grogginess popped the clear thought, “My main character is supposed to be a boy. Brenda is actually Brendan!”

It still took me some time and much effort to get to know Brendan. He started as a very quiet, serious, thoughtful boy with several collections (not just rocks), and an urgent need to find the white grandparents he’d never met. Eventually I decided that Brendan needed to have just one collection, a scientific disposition, and a strong, inquisitive impulse that wouldn’t let him stop seeking an answer once he’d landed on a question. So when he realizes he’s discovered the grandpa he’s never met, and all the questions surrounding his absence are stirred up, the search for answers is on!

Brendan’s the kind of kid who wants to be noble and self-controlled, like his dad expects him to be, but whose commitment to the truth is even greater. This commitment sometimes compels him to do things he knows may get him in trouble, but the price is worth it in his mind.

I’m definitely inquisitive like Brendan, so that part of his personality didn’t really surprise me. But I’m nowhere near as courageous or dogged as he was in his pursuit of the truth and for that I admire him greatly.

It’s hard enough to write realistically in a ten-year-old voice (which you do SO authentically, I know I have a ten year old at home) but how was the experience of writing in the point of view of the other gender?

It was actually quite fun, and I think somewhat freeing. When I was trying to create Brenda, I just kept seeing myself as a girl, and I didn’t want to write about myself. I wanted to create someone new, someone from my imagination.

For my master’s critical thesis (I completed my MFA in Writing at Vermont College), I explored the portrayal of boys’ emotional lives in fiction – how it’s been done, how to do it authentically. I read a lot of child development and psychology books specifically about boys. I had read so much about boys that I was convinced when I got pregnant that I would have one! I don’t have a son (I have a lovely daughter), but after creating Brendan, I kind of feel like I do!

Ultimately what I discovered about creating an authentic boy character is that it’s not much different from creating an authentic girl character. Yes, there are generalities that we can observe in boys’ versus girls’ behaviors, but when you are creating a character, you’re not dealing in generalities. You must deal in specifics – at least if you want to create a compelling character. If a behavior does not ring true for the individual boy you have created, readers won’t buy it, regardless of how boys “generally” behave.

The theme of the struggles and blessings of growing up biracial is an important one, and one that many kids—and adults—will relate to. Do you see that as becoming a recurring theme in your future work?

My mission is to write the most heartfelt, truest stories that I can write. By “truest” I mean stories that ring true, in which readers see themselves, regardless of race, because they relate to the characters’ emotions. With that said, I’ve found that the truest stories I can write, at least so far, are ones with multiracial point-of-view characters, because that’s who I am and being mixed race has deeply shaped my identity and experience.

So yes, it will undoubtedly be a recurring theme in my work, and I’m fine with that because it’s a perspective that more and more people share and it needs to be included and reflected in the arts.

I can’t help but hope, is Brendan going to come back in another book?

Hmmm . . . you’re not the first to ask (including my editor). I’m starting to wonder if I should be considering it! But no current plans to write another Brendan story. I have considered letting Brendan’s best buddy Khalfani have his own book since he burst onto the scene after the manuscript was sold (neither he nor Brendan’s interest in Tae Kwon Do were anywhere in the story until after I sold the book to Delacorte). The scenes I wrote that involved Khalfani were some of the most fun to write.

What is your next project?

I’m working on another middle grade novel. This one features biracial twin sisters – one white-appearing, the other black-appearing – who go to stay with their black grandmother in the South. She wants them to compete in a pageant for young black girls. That’s all I really know so far in this treasure hunt without a map!

Tell us something that’s not on the official bio:

Well, speaking of pageants, I was Miss Pullman Jr. Miss 1985, in spite of scandalizing the town with my strapless gown, and was once crowned a county fair queen, in spite of never having lassoed a calf and all my previous horse-riding experiences having ended in disaster.

New Books, Award Winners, Opportunities

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA PRESS
New books for Spring, 2008, from UA Press
Blurbs from the UA Press Catalog

If I Die in Juárez
Stella Pope Duarte
(March)
"From the red-light districts in Ciudad Juárez to remote villages hidden away in the mountains of Chihuahua comes a tale of one of the darkest crimes to be recorded in the history of humankind. If I Die in Juárez traces the lives of three young women -- Evita, a street child; Petra, a maquiladora worker; and Mayela, a Tarahumara Indian girl -- who together uncover Juárez's forbidden secret: the abduction and murder of young women. Bound together by blood, honor, an ancient chant, and a mysterious photo, the girls bring the murderous streets of Juárez to life. Based on the author's interviews with relatives of murdered women, If I Die in Juárez is brilliantly crafted to give readers the experience of walking in the shoes of women who daily risk being abducted and murdered in the capital city of murdered women, joining thousands of others who for more than a decade have disappeared from Juárez, las desaparecidas, brutally murdered by assassins who have gone unpunished. The agony of one of the darkest tales in human history brings to light a strange hope, illusive yet constant, resisting lies, betrayal, and the desert's silent sentence of death."


The Last Supper of Chicano Heroes: Selected Works of José Antonio Burciaga
Edited by Mimi R. Gladstein and Daniel Chacón
(May)
"Widely considered one of the most important voices in the Chicano literary canon, José Antonio Burciaga was a pioneer who exposed inequities and cultural difficulties through humor, art, and prose. In this anthology and tribute, Mimi Gladstein and Daniel Chacón bring together dozens of remarkable examples of Burciaga's work. His work never demonstrates machismo or sexism, as he believed strongly that all Chicano voices are equally valuable. Best known for his books Weedee Peepo, Drink Cultura, and Undocumented Love, Burciaga was also a poet, cartoonist, founding member of the comedy troupe Cultura Clash, and a talented muralist whose well-known work became almost more famous than the man. This first and only collection of Burciaga's work features thirty-eight illustrations and incorporates previously unpublished essays and drawings, including selections from his manuscript The Temple Gang, a memoir he was writing at the time of his death. In addition, Gladstein and Chacón address Burciaga's importance to Chicano letters. A joy to read, this rich compendium is an important contribution not only to Chicano literature but also to the preservation of the creative, spiritual, and political voice of a talented and passionate man."


Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems
Juan Felipe Herrera
Foreword by Francisco A. Lomelí
(April)
"For nearly nearly four decades, Juan Felipe Herrera has documented his experience as a Chicano in the United States and Latin America through stunning, memorable poetry that is both personal and universal in its impact, themes, and approach. Often political, never fainthearted, his career has been marked by tremendous virtuosity and a unique sensibility for uncovering the unknown and the unexpected. Through a variety of stages and transformations, Herrera has evolved more than almost any other Chicano poet, always re-inventing himself into a more mature and seasoned voice. Now, in this unprecedented collection, we encounter the trajectory of this highly innovative and original writer, bringing the full scope of his singular vision into view. Beginning with early material from A Certain Man and moving through thirteen of his collections into new, previously unpublished work, this assemblage also includes an audio CD of the author reading twenty-four selected poems aloud. Serious scholars and readers alike will now have available to them a representative set of glimpses into his production as well as his origins and personal development. The ultimate value of bringing together such a collection, however, is that it will allow us to better understand and appreciate the complexity of what this major American poet is all about."

Lisa Alvarado did a recent Bloga column on Juan Felipe Herrera, which you can find here. That post includes Herrera's classic piece, 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross The Border.



The Region of Lost Names
Fred Arroyo
(March)
"Remember that the dream of one is the dream of everyone. Ernest is searching for a place where he can live beyond his past. His family has returned to Puerto Rico, and Ernest remains in the States, desiring only distance from his memories of childhood displacement and work, his parents' tumultuous relationship, and his own love for Magdalene. Magdalene, too, looks to move beyond her memories as she follows Ernest's family home, seeking resolution to her mother's hurtful secrets, her father's unknown identity, and her love for Ernest. As Ernest moves through the fields of Michigan, as Magdalene traverses the jungles of Puerto Rico and the shores of the Caribbean, they discover that their dreams and identities are linked within the framework of their families and their pasts. Together, Ernest and Magdalene must come to terms with the secrets and mistakes made by the previous generation, the histories of disloyalty and abandonment, of secrecy and sorrow. Their struggles take place in a region of lost names, where loves and memories are banished and found. Fred Arroyo writes a story in two voices, following Ernest and Magdalene by turns in prose that is elegant and lyrical. His words evoke another world lush with the scent of salt spray, the taste of mangoes, and the rush of leaves, alive with characters whose ardors and pathos are achingly real. Arroyo explores the ebb and flow between past and present and themes that are enduring. Ultimately, Ernest and Magdalene must live with more than their memories; they must rediscover the intimacies of the region of lost names.'

MORE NEW STUFF
New World/New Words: Recent Writing from the Americas, A Bilingual Anthology
Edited by Thomas Christensen
Foreword by Gregory Rabassa
(University of Washington Press, 2007)
From the publisher: "This fully bilingual (Spanish/English) anthology of Latin American literature showcases the region's enormous vitality and variety of writing. New World / New Words includes selections by widely celebrated writers such as Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, and Senel Paz, as well as work by emerging authors just beginning to make their mark in the English-speaking world. The collection features many of today's leading translators, several of whom are also distinguished poets and writers.

"New World / New Words makes the literature of Latin America available to those who want to sample its scope and depth, and includes works published for the first time in English. With original introductions by the translators that focus on voice, tone, rhythm, context, and the role of the translator, New World / New Words offers a unique window on the translator's art while presenting an exciting cross-section of the latest Latin American writing. "

How I Learned English
Edited by Tom Miller
Foreword by Ray Suarezt
Afterword by Frank McCourt
(National Geographic Society, 2007)
From the publisher: "All over the world there are people struggling to master the quirks and challenges of English. In today's America, many millions of them are Latino—and in this eloquent collection, nearly 60 of the best known contribute fascinating, revealing, often touching essays on the very personal process each went through to achieve this common end. Their successes are inspiring. Their pieces, engaging and entertaining all, express the whole range of emotions that learning any new language entails.

"Congressman José Serrano, for example, describes learning English from Frank Sinatra records. Cuban-American author Oscar Hijuelos picked it up as a sick little boy in an American hospital bed. Many find it a daunting ordeal; for others English came easily. But from TV personality Cristina Saralegui to Hall of Fame baseball player Orlando Cepeda, every last one remembers what it felt like to do battle with bizarre idioms, irregular verbs, and all the other incomprehensible intricacies that tangle the tongue.

"And of course, every new English-speaker has a tale to tell: an immigrant yearning to assimilate and achieve, or a political exile suddenly far from home and alone, or a child who just wants to fit in. Their fears and triumphs will resonate with everyone who has shared this exasperating, exhilarating experience, whether last year or a lifetime ago. This wonderful, eclectic, inviting collection speaks to—and for—all of them, and goes directly to the heart of the national debate on language and immigration."

PURA BELPRÉ AWARD
The following is from the ALA website:

The Pura Belpré Award, established in 1996, is presented to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth. It is co-sponsored by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), and the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking (REFORMA), an ALA Affiliate.

The award is named after Pura Belpré, the first Latina librarian at the New York Public Library. As a children's librarian, storyteller, and author, she enriched the lives of Puerto Rican children in the U.S.A. through her pioneering work of preserving and disseminating Puerto Rican folklore.

Beginning with the 2009 award, it will be given annually.

The 2008 Award winners, announced on January 14, are:


The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano written by Margarita Engle, illustrated by Sean Qualls (Holt)

The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano, a collection of haunting poems, uses multiple voices to illuminate the daily terror and hypocrisy of the slave system. Celebrating Manzano's irrepressible spirit and creativity, this book is based on Manzano's autobiographical notes and poems. After witnessing young Manzano's harsh punishments for reading and writing, readers will marvel at his enduring strength and persistence to attain freedom.

“The Poet Slave of Cuba is a heartbreaking, memorable story of love, determination and hope. The stark language and vivid imagery provide a sensory experience that allows the reader to enter another time and place,” said Award Committee Chair Jean Hatfield.

For illustration:

Los Gatos Black on Halloween, illustrated by Yuyi Morales, written by Marisa Montes (Holt)

“A rhyming text describes spooky monsters of many types gathering for a ball in Los Gatos Black on Halloween. However, the rollicking fun is interrupted by the scariest creatures of all in a surprise ending that will delight readers of all ages. Morales' eerily glowing illustrations capture the blend of traditional Halloween and Día de los Muertos symbols, matching the humorous interplay of Spanish and English in the text. Historical allusions and whimsical figures delight the eye in this timeless story,” said Hatfield.

READ ACROSS AMERICA FEATURES THE NAVAJO YEAR
Salina Bookshelf announced that its 2007 children’s book, The Navajo Year, Walk Through Many Seasons, is featured in the National Education Association’s Read Across America’s 2008 Resource Calendar. The Navajo Year, written by award-winning author Nancy Bo Flood and illustrated by Billy Whitethorne, is the featured book for the month of November, which is National Indian Heritage Month.

The 2008 Resource Calendar is part of NEA’s year-long promotion of its Read Across America campaign, which is dedicated to building a nation of avid readers. The 2008 calendar is filled with art by well-known children’s illustrators, and each month highlights fun books along with book tips, links, activities, and events. Although Read Across America Day officially takes place March 3, 2008, the celebration extends throughout the entire year.

OPPORTUNITIES

APRIL POETRY EVENTS CALENDAR
To celebrate Poetry Month, the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs, UC-Denver's Copper Nickel, and the Colorado Center for the Book at Colorado Humanities are compiling and printing a community calendar of April poetry events for all ages in the Denver metro area. Send news of your April 2008 poetry events to Josephine Jones, jones@coloradohumanities.org, by mid-February. If you have distribution lists or locations for the Poetry Month calendars after they are printed, let her know that, too.

Josephine Jones
Director of Programs
Colorado Humanities & Center for the Book
1490 Lafayette Street Suite 101
Denver CO 80218
303 894 7951 x15
jones@coloradohumanities.org

Fourth Annual Writers Studio Literary Contest
The Writers Studio will award cash prizes for the best unpublished work
by Colorado writers in Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction.
Submissions are accepted from January 1 through March 1, 2008. Winners
will be honored at the Writers Studio Annual Literary Festival
April 2008. For submission guidelines, go to the Writers Studio Web site.

Denver Women's Press Club Unknown Writer's Contest
Both men and women are eligible to enter in the categories of fiction, nonfiction or poetry. Cash prizes for winners! Deadline is February 23. Download contest rules and entry form here.

Indian Country Anthology
A call for submissions has been issued for an Indian Country Anthology to be released next year. I don't know much about this anthology except that the editors seek stories that take place in Indian Country, including Canadian reserves, U.S. reservations, Alaska, Hawaii and Mexican Indian land, and/or stories that revolve around Native characters. Stories may be historical, literary, or crime fiction, as long as they are previously unpublished. Writers of First Nation ancestry are especially invited to submit. Stories should be 3,000 - 6,000 words; deadline is May 15, 2008. Direct questions or send stories to IndianCountryAnthology@gmail.com. As I said, I don't know much about this, so please investigate thoroughly before submitting any work.


A word of congratulations to old pal Gary Phillips, who has started an online, serialized political thriller on The Nation's website. The series is entitled Citizen Kang, and Episode 1 is A Wide Stance. Just in time for the 2008 politics. Yeah. Those of you who are familiar with Gary's work will rush over to read the series, I'm sure. Those who have yet to catch up with the man, should get to it.

Later.

Michele Serros: Scandalosa y Fabulosa!

Michele Serros and Scandalosa

Named by Newsweek as "One of the Top Young Women to Watch for in the New Century" and by Tu Ciudad magazine as one of Los Angeles’ “Hip, Hot and Now” artists, Michele Serros is the author of Chicana Falsa and other stories of death, identity and Oxnard, How to be a Chicana Role Model, Honey Blonde Chica and her newest young adult novel, Scandalosa! In addition to being an award-winning poet, Serros has been a featured contributor for the Los Angeles Times' children's fiction section and a commentator for National Public Radio (Morning Edition, Weekend All Things Considered, Anthem, Along for the Ride, Latino USA). She has read her poems to stadium crowds of 25,000+ for Lollapalooza, recorded Selected Stories from Chicana Falsa for Mercury Records and was selected by the Poetry Society of America to have her poetry placed on MTA buses throughout Los Angeles County.

While still a student at Santa Monica City College, Michele’s first book of poetry and short stories, Chicana Falsa, was published. When the original publisher of Chicana Falsa went out of business, Michele continued to sell copies from her garage until Riverhead Books reissued Chicana Falsa and as well as a collection of short stories, How to be a Chicana Role Model. The latter instantly placed 5th on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list.

In 2002, Michele wrote for the ABC television sitcom, The George Lopez Show. "An opportunity," she says, "that hopefully with my contribution opens the door for a wider representation of Latinos in the mass media."

Serros’ work is required reading in U.S. high schools and universities and garners a diverse fan base ranging from Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers ("Michele is the great Californian writer who makes me proud of my state. When I read her books I cry and laugh.") to author Sandra Cisneros ("Michele Serros is the young, sassy writer whose brilliant weapon is her humor.”) The New York Public Library recommends Honey Blonde Chica as a “Book for the Teen Age 2007. Originally from Oxnard, California, Michele is currently working on a new novel, An Unmarried Mexican.

1. Scandalosa is a sequel to Honey Blonde Chica, with Evie a little bit further down the road of adolescence. Without giving too much away, what's going on with Evie?

In Scandalosa, Evie is now two months older than she was in HBC. She has also entered a new semester of school. In teenage years, such changes are paramount! She is excited to celebrate her Sweet Sixteen era and envisions her party to be similar to MTV's Sweet Sixteen but with all the traditional trappings (and birthday checks) of a quinceañera. BUT she is facing an obstacle. Will this obstacle interfere with her party... the pachanga of the school year? You'll have to read to find out!

2. You avoid a romantic portrayal of teens, yet Honey Blonde Chica isn't about the gang girl stereotype offered up as the YA Chicano/a experience. Can you also talk about the decision to write YA and it's significance to you, and your choice of
characters?

YA books saved me as a preteen. I grew up reading Judy Blume, Beverly Clearie, S. E. Hinton, and Louise Fitzhough. My first attempt at YA is an unpublished manuscript under my bed back home in NYC. It's titled Notes from a Medium Brown Girl. My agent has deemed it "took dark" and suggests that maybe I should focus on other projects but I haven't given up on Notes...just yet. The role of Evie is pretty much myself as a teenager. I dressed like a surfer but never flopped my belly on a board, ever. So the next best thing, of course, was dating a surfer. At 17, it was a dream for me to be the girlfriend of the tri-county (Ventura, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria) surf champion -- who was also Mexican (American) like me!

3. You seem to love and have a sense of playfulness concerning our pop icons and pop culture in general...I noticed on your site the gamine pose, where you're covered with chicharrones, as well as having seen a promos for Scandalosa where it looks like you're having fun with charreada and Flor Silvestre. Where does that love and that irreverence come from? How important an element is it for you in how you look at the world and how you approach writing?

Yes! The photo shoot with the chicharrones was for Estylo magazine. The editors had brought up Salma Hayek's Los Angeles magazine cover's version of Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream and other Delights. They suggested we push it a little further and had me wear a dress of pork rinds, rather than whipped cream. It was pretty funny. The photographer's assistant's sole job was to fan flies away and after the shoot, my skin was so greasy. My only regret is that too many people think I'm completely naked under the skins!

4. Who are the writers/artists that move you and how do you think they've influenced you and your work?

Oscar Zeta Acosta made a big impression on my while I was a college student. And Lester Bangs. I have more records and CDs than books and when I was younger I was always trying to write record or show reviews for underground fanzines and rags. One book I loved was I'm with the Band, by Pamela de Barres.

5. Where do you think the challenges lie for you as a creative person?

Discipline! It's challenging to pays bills based on your creativity.

Also, I tend to over think too much. It drives my friends and family crazy.

6. Are there people that act as mentors/sounding boards for you? If so, how does that mesh into how you work?

Oh yeah. I'm afraid that a current boyfriend is always put in the position of being the unexpected sounding board. I pity the man who is dating me in the middle or start of a new manuscript or project. They have to hear me whine about every little sentence that isn't going well. I'm really attracted to men who hold blue collar type jobs -- carpenters, contractors, UPS delivery guys -- men (in my experience) who don't typically read fiction a lot. So it's really good for me to share my work with them, because if they aren't "getting it" it's a sign for me to work a bit harder. Not saying that blue collar men are my entire "demographic" but I definitely don't want to write for other writers or, say, for the editors of The New Yorker. For me, the biggest compliment is from someone who admits that they don't like to read but confess that they actually read one of my books and liked it!

7. Where would you like to see yourself personally and creatively in ten years? In twenty?

I'd like to see Notes from a Medium Brown Girl published. I'm currently working on two manuscripts -- one of them is An Unmarried Mexican. It's about my first year in New York City after being newly separated from my ex-husband.

8. What something not the official bio?

That I was once married to the drummer of the heavy rock Queens of the Stone Age. It's something being a musician's wife. You're like in a little club with all the other band member's wives who can be really catty and extremely insecure. And you know if your man is getting kicked out of the band soon...because little by little all the wives stop inviting you to shop Melrose. This experience, of course, has inspired yet another manuscript I've been working on -- The Hair Club for Men.


Scandalosa
ISBN-10: 1416915931
ISBN-13: 978-1416915935

Michele's MySpace page

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GREAT TEATRO LUNA NEWS!

CURRENTLY PLAYING:

MACHOS

After a sold out run at Chicago Dramatists, MACHOS is moving to the 16th Street Theater in Berwyn, IL, conveniently located near the CTA/Blue Line Austin stop.

Tickets are already on sale, and I hope you will help spread the word!

Here's the scoop:
MACHOS At 16th Street Theater 4 weeks only! January 25 through – February 17, 2008

Fridays at 7:30 PM Saturdays at 5:00 PM Saturdays at 8:00 PM Sundays at 6:00 PM

BUY TICKETS ONLINE at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/25539


Lisa Alvarado

Celebrate Proyecto Latina's 2nd Anniversary!

It's a night to put your pen and papelitos away, and instead whip out your dancing shoes, and open up to inspiration. Proyecto Latina invites you to join us and celebrate our 2nd Anniversary Soiree Saturday, January 19th @ 7 p.m. to ?

Junior's Sports Bar (In Pilsen)
2058 W. Cermak Road.

No cover. Antojitos for the early arrivals. The spoken word artists will start at about 7:30 and the band should kick in by 8:00...y despues el baile. The afterparty will have a Morrisey Tribute night.

SPOTLIGHT ON AZTLAN BOOKS Y MAS

By Marilu Rodriguez

www.aztlanbookslv.com

Aztlan Books Y Mas is the brain child of Marilu and Tony Rodriguez. This is a family run business centered on both the educational and real world experiences of the Latin American culture they have encountered. Being a mix of Cuban/Mexican, Marilu graduated from Cal State Northridge with a degree in Chicano Studies. It is here that her mind was exposed to many of the great authors and products they offer. She went on to the University of New Mexico where she earned her Master’s in Elementary Education. She has been in the classroom for over ten years and is currently teaching Spanish to kindergartners in Henderson, Nevada. It was here that her on-going search for authentic, culturally relevant literature for her students began and was not satiated with what the mainstream bookstores in Southern Nevada had to offer.

After much thought, planning, and business related research conducted by Tony, so came about the first Latin American themed bookstore in Las Vegas. Their location, close to downtown, has to offer books in English, Spanish, and bilingual editions by Chicano/a and Latin American writers for adults, young adults, and children. The “Más” in the shop’s name refers to post cards, hand bags, teacher resources, music, art, jewelry, candles, and other trinkets. The store strives to provide that which educates, enlightens, or just satisfies any need for Latin American literature and goods. Since their opening in August of 2006, they have had three author events, a book club which meets regularly, one poetry night, an artist reception/exhibition, and several children craft events.

Aztlan Books Y Mas extends an invitation to all interested authors that when in Vegas, consider doing a reading in their space and treating la gente of Sin City with a gift of your palabras.

***

Next Author's Visit

Beto Gutierrez presents & signs his book:

When: Saturday, Januarty 26th
Time:2pm
Place: Aztlan Books Y Mas

1014 E. Charleston Blvd #102
Las Vegas,NV89104
702-242-2626

www.aztlanbookslv.com

Counting picture book DIY

Michael Sedano

Digital cameras, personal computers, good images, and the internet puts everyone in the publisher's chair of luxurious coffee table quality photo books. Unlike the bargain table photo books you pick up here and there to feed the hungry minds of children, do-it-yourself photobooks will be personalized to the reader and enjoy a more cherished spot on a young reader's shelves.

Services like iPhoto or Shutterfly are still in their infancy--no corinthian leather bound volumes yet--but the page layout tools let you find the right placement for as many images as you want. Using mouse and keyboard you can fill a page with a single image, drop two side by side, laydown a four-by, or toy with multiple other design choices.

Cost is a major drawback. You can calculate thirty bucks per book landed in your hands after you click the "buy" button. But because the results tend to be spectacular--a hardbound book, 8 3/4" x 11 1/4", printed on shiny heavy stock paper, "bled" to the edge--the value will exceed its cost.

Right now's the time to start planning your own Photobooks for the 2008 holiday season, or a notable occasion. I have a one year old granddaughter who loves books and birds. I've assigned myself two book projects: counting and alphabet books.

Here is a counting from 1 to 10 photo book I put together using one image, Photoshop, a Macintosh and iPhoto's publishing service. Photoshop is the sine qua non of image processing. Your digital camera probably came with a "lite" version of a photoprocessing software. Hopefully, it will be enough software to let you shrink and crop, rotate and flop, adjust contrast and color, and superimpose images atop one another.

I planned the book to have a counting page on the right hand side, a "blank" or activity space on the left hand page.

1. Make the background. I started with a good image of a peacock shot against a neutral background. Using Photoshop's Magic Wand tool, I select the neutral background, then Select Inverse and copy. This copies the silhouette of the peacock to the clipboard. I create a new 8.5 x 11" document and paste the clipboard. Colorize the image to a light blue derived from the peacock's hue. Copy this tattoo six times onto the page. Flatten the image and save as bg.

2. Make the icon. My page design calls for the numeral and that number of tiny peacocks in the lower right hand corner. The "nine" page has nine images of the same peacock, the number "9" and nine tiny peacocks. Going back to the original image, I crop it tightly and save as image. This will be the "how many do you count" image. To make the page counter, scale the cropped image to 1/2" high print size. Save as icon. Build a row of ten 1/2" high icons. Flatten and save as 10icons.

3. Build the page. As you build the counting pages use the ten icons and eraser tool to reduce the count. Lay them in the corner, type the new count number, flatten, save as that page number.

Decide how you want the headcount to appear and lay them in place. Flatten and save. You can see how I used some eccentric alignments. I think it'll be fun to read this book with the kid and talk about all the differents ways one can count to ten.

4. Build the "blank" page. I laid down a progression of icons from 1 to 10 and copied it twice onto the bg page. Since I couldn't figure out how to use the same image multiple times in my iPhoto purchase, I copied the "blank" page enough times to use a different file between each page to the last inside page.

5. Design a cover image. You can order a cover with a cut-away that frames the image on the first page. If you prefer, and the vendor offers the option, you can have a different image glued onto the hard cover, and have the vendor print additional text like the child's name. Lots of cover possibilities here. In fact, a relative requested one for her boys, so I'll reorder and have their name printed on the cover. Tan fancy, que no?

6. Design your book. Since I Photoshopped everything to be print size 8 1/2" x 11" images, I laid out the book with 1 image only per page. After completing the Photoshop work--several hours--I imported them to iPhoto, built an Album, opened the buy a book menu, and trust to firewalls and crossed fingers.

My current project is an A to Z book illustrated with birds of the same letter. A Albatross, B Blue Heron . . . . for "Z" maybe it'll have to be a zebra with a feathered friend. This week I'm off to the annual Winter Bird Festival at California's Morro Bay, tripod and rental long lens in hand. Hope I can find something good to read during those long, cold nights.

See you next week.

mvs

SPOTLIGHT ON RAY ELIZONDO

Ray Elizondo was born in 1937 in Brownsville, Texas to a Mexican-American family. His father died when he was 4 years old. At 15, he was sent to reform school after a violent altercation at a football game. There he suffered an injury which would further complicate his life and produce the basis for his memoir, The Last Pachuco (Autumn Leaf Press, 2007). Elizondo served in the United States Army from 1954 to 1958. After a tragic experience with his son, he fathered five lovely daughters. Most of his higher education was earned in several Universities in Southern California. His writings skills were developed in recent years.

Elizondo will be reading from The Last Pachuco on Saturday, January 19, 2008, at 2 p.m., at Tía Chucha’s, 10258 Foothill Blvd., Lake View Terrace, CA 91342; (818) 896-1479; info@tiachucha.com.

The following is an excerpt from The Last Pachuco:

This hole was a little different than the one at the county jail. This one was outside, next to the infirmary. It was cold in the winter and hot in the summer. I was given a large set of overalls to wear and nothing else. There was a thin mattress on the floor. Some daylight slipped through the cracks, but not enough to read by, even if I had a book. Aside from that, holes have a standard design. At that point, my plan didn’t seem to be working very well.

Breakfast came early. The local rooster hadn’t finished the song of the day. Breakfast was an edited preview of what the rest of the kids were having. The metal tray carried a metal bowl. A small amount of milk soaked a dash of the morning cereal covered by an almost-buttered piece of toast. I could drink all the water I wanted from the washbasin. Several hours later, lunch arrived. The metal tray was standard. This time there was no bowl, only a medium-size potato and a slice of bread. Dinner tray was the same as lunch. The county jail had been a little more generous with the food.

I recognized their program. Their intentions were obvious. They were going to break my will through my stomach. They wanted me to get so hungry that I would beg to go back to that lousy assignment and never ask for another break. I was furious. All night I dreamed of Rutledge cheeseburgers, my favorite burgers. That’s the burger stand we used to frequent on Fridays before going to the post office to watch the girls go by. Hunger was attacking me by morning. I was so hungry I could have eaten a raw mouse. Nonetheless, my determination was set. I was prepared to butt heads with the establishment.

The rooster was in the middle of his fifth serenade when the tray slid under the trapdoor at the bottom of the threshold, and for the first time, I shoved it back out as hard as I could.

Through the steel door I heard the guard say, “I’m going to put you on report, you son of a bitch.”

◙ Public radio station KPFK (90.7 FM in Los Angeles/98.7 FM in Santa Barbara and live streaming online at http://www.kpfk.org/), introduces a new book show today, Bibliocracy. Bibliocracy will broadcast each Monday at noon. Hosted by Andrew Tonkovich (editor of the Santa Monica Review), the debut show will feature the poetry of multi-talented Al Young (novelist, memoirist, poet, and essayist).

If you're too far to pick it up on the radio, you'll be able to listen live online; once archived, you will be able to visit the shows you've missed.

Andrew is eager to receive suggestions, advice, ideas for guests and books. And if you like the show, drop a comment via KPFK's comment form.

Note that Bibliocracy will focus largely on literary fiction and nonfiction though, as you can see from Al Young's booking, poets are welcome.

Upcoming programs:

Judith Freeman, author of The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved.

Editor and contributors to Latinos in Lotusland: Daniel Olivas (Devil Talk), Reyna Grande (Across a Hundred Mountains) and Michael Jaime-Becerra (Every Night is Ladies Night).

Terese Svoboda, author of the Graywolf Prize-winning Black Glasses Like Clark Kent: A GI’s Secret from Postwar Japan.

Toni Mirosevich, author of Pink Harvest: Tales of Happenstance, a collection of personal and political essays which won the "First Series: Creative Nonfiction” Prize from Mid-List Press.

Immigrants, Chicas, Silk Screen and Banned Books

A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS
John F. Kennedy
Introduction by Edward M. Kennedy
Foreword by Abraham H. Foxman
Harper Perennial, January, 2008

Harper Perennial has announced the publication of John Kennedy's important essay about the immigrant core of the U.S. Here's the publisher's blurb:

"At a time when the issue of immigration and immigrants has taken center stage in this country, the message of President John F. Kennedy’s classic essay A Nation of Immigrants is as relevant today as it was 50 years ago. That is why the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and publisher Harper Perennial have reissued this landmark essay on the contribution of immigrants to American society.

"With a new introduction by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants (Harper Perennial) offers inspiring suggestions for immigration policy and presents a chronology of the main events in the history of immigration in America.

"Written by Kennedy in 1958 after ADL reached out to the then-junior senator from Massachusetts asking him to highlight the contribution of immigrants at a time when the country was locked in a debate about the direction its policy should take, it is the last manuscript President Kennedy ever wrote, and the book was first published posthumously.

"Throughout his presidency, John F. Kennedy was passionate about the issue of immigration reform. He believed that America is a nation of people who value both tradition and the exploration of new frontiers, people who deserve the freedom to build better lives for themselves in their adopted homeland. This modern edition of his posthumously published, timeless work -- with a new introduction by Senator Edward M. Kennedy and a foreword by Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director -- offers the late president’s inspiring suggestions for immigration policy and presents a chronology of the main events in the history of immigration in America.

"As continued debates on immigration engulf the nation, this paean to the importance of immigrants to our nation's prominence and success is as timely as ever."


LAS CHICAS DEL 3.5" FLOPPIES



Our friends at Su Teatro sent us the following notice about an upcoming theatrical event that sounds exciting and too good to pass up.

"El Centro Su Teatro proudly presents an innovative new work from Mexico City: Las Chicas del 3.5" Floppies, one weekend only, February 14, 15, and 16. The Las Chicas production represents a unique opportunity for Denver audiences to experience original and exciting international theater right in their own backyard.

"Written by acclaimed young playwright Luis Enrique Gutiérrez Ortiz Monasterio (LEGOM)—dubbed by the press as the enfant terrible of contemporary Mexican theater, Las Chicas del 3.5" Floppies is a funny, edgy, and slightly unsettling story in which traditional mores meet the modern age. Dangerously skirting the boundaries between existential comedy, Mexican telenovela, and social documentary, this play exposes the human repercussions of globalization and poverty with incisive humor and relentless honesty.

"Su Teatro brings Las Chicas to Denver as part of the Performing Americas program of the National Performance Network (NPN) with additional support from the Western States Arts Federation. El Centro Su Teatro is one of six NPN partner organizations chosen as curators for the program, whose aim is to encourage interaction between U.S. and Latin American theaters. Su Teatro Organizational Manager Mica Garcia de Benavidez has traveled to Brazil, Venezuela, and Uruguay as part of the Performing Americas program, meeting with other theater professionals and targeting the strongest performances for international exchange.

"The Mexico City theater company DramaFest, featuring actors Aída Lopez and Gabriela Murray, will take Las Chicas from Denver to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and then on to 7 Stages in Atlanta on this NPN sponsored tour.

"Performed in Spanish with English surtitles, Las Chicas del 3.5" Floppies is accessible to Spanish-speaking, English-speaking and bilingual audiences—particularly those interested in an exclusive and contemporary slice of life from one of the world’s largest urban communities.

"This production marks Su Teatro’s second international collaboration in a year and a half (Grupo Zero, June 2006), and is part of the organization’s ongoing commitment to bring Denver audiences the most innovative cultural performances—from the local Chicano community to the Latino world.

"Las Chicas del 3.5" Floppies, February 14 – 16 at El Centro Su Teatro, 4725 High Street. Tickets are $18 general and $15 students/seniors. Special comadre group rates are available. The Saturday, February 16 performance is featured as part of Su Teatro’s annual Dia de San Valentin dinner. For tickets and information call El Centro Su Teatro at (303) 296-0219 and visit www.suteatro.org and www.myspace.com/elcentrosuteatro.

NORTH CAROLINA SCHOOL DISTRICT BANS HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS
Julia Alvarez's highly acclaimed and universally respected novel, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents ((Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1991)), has been banned by the Johnston School District in North Carolina. According to an article at mydailyrecord.com, by Leslie Parnell, the book was "taken out of the school district after a West Johnston High School student's parents challenged its sexual content and profane language to the school board. The county schools staff has now launched a district-wide book title review." The same article includes Ms. Alvarez's response: "Alvarez said she is dismayed over the banning of her book in Johnston County schools. Literature is about story telling to human beings and story telling is rich because humans come from many different tribes, she said.

...
"Johnston County probably made its decision to ban the book based on selected passages, Mrs. Alvarez said, and as a result, the school system may have deprived all students of a positive learning experience.

"'(Parents) have their concerns. I do think they are misguided. I think they are out of context,' Mrs. Alvarez said.

"The National Coalition Against Censorship sent a letter to the Johnston County Board of Education dated Dec. 21, 2007, expressing concern about the ban and that school administrators are now checking commonly challenged books.

"'This isn't just an issue of my particular novel's merit, but a bigger one about the curtailment of civil liberties and an erosion of the best values and principles of this free country,' Mrs. Alvarez said."

There's also an article by Lisa Sorg about the ban at the Independent Weekly entitled Banned Books, Blank Minds.

THE SERIE PROJECT AT REGIS UNIVERSITY
The Serie Project, Inc., of Austin, Texas is a 501(c)(3) non-profit Latino arts organization that produces, promotes, and exhibits serigraph (silk screen) prints created by established and emerging artists.

A collaborative workshop format is the setting used to foster diverse artists’ development and creativity through exposure to the serigraph technique. Each participating artist creates a limited edition serigraph print and The Serie Project, in turn, is able to make the fine art available to the public through these affordable, signed and numbered prints.

The prints are also exhibited throughout the year at various museums and galleries in and outside of Texas. All of this is accomplished at no cost to the artist.

Such an exhibit is scheduled for Denver from January 15 - February 22 at the O'Sullivan Art Gallery on the campus of Regis University. The Opening Reception is set for January 24, 4:30 - 7:00 PM and a gallery talk by George Rivera, Ph.D. on the topic of Deconstructing the Chicano Visual Experience, will take place on February 7 at 7:00 PM.

Regis University is on West 50th Avenue between Federal Boulevard and Lowell Boulevard. For information: 303-964-3634 or this website.

Image: Gravity by Jimmy Peña.

Later.

Palabra Pura Kicks Off Its Third Year

ariel robello and Juan Manuel Sánchez

Gente! Exciting poetry news here in Chicago...Palabra Pura kicks off their third year January 16th, 8:30 PM, at their usual local, California Clipper, 1002 N California Ave.

For those of you unfamiliar with this superb salon of Latino poetry, here's an interview I did with one of its founders, La Bloga friend and excellent poet in his own right, Francisco Aragón. Believe me, a Palabra Pura experience is NOT to be missed, and it's been my pleasure to be part of the local steering committee, especially in the company of the likes of Ellen Placey Wadey, Mike Puican, Mary Hawley, y La Divina, Johanny Vazquez. Below is the first line up of what promises to be a stellar year of local Chicago poets paired with poets who've made their mark on the national scene.

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In her debut collection of poems, My Sweet Unconditional, ariel robello meets us at the horizon, where worlds blend in the blush of sunrise and sunset, where land meets sea, air – earth, and where man and machine interrupt the natural ebb and flow of life. Unapologetic, she declares her faith in a love that defies borders and with each poem she weds herself to a belief that unconditional love can still be found in the cracks of a urban sidewalk, dancing above puffing smoke stacks, behind a guerrilla’s mask, in the worn paint brush of an island love, blundering below a street lamp in Ensenada, spelled out in daisies on a Veteran’s tombstone, in the stitch of a huipil and most importantly—deep inside one’s own reflection. With language as radiant and dangerous as broken glass ariel robello cuts away at the political dogma and superficial beauty of a world unhinged to reveal a bloody but dignified glimpse of love in the hands of a New World survivor.

Having earned her chops on both the stage and the page, ariel robello represents a generation of poets as concerned with performance as they are with line breaks. ariel robello received a PEN West Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship in 2002 and published her first collection of poems, My Sweet Unconditional in 2005 with Tia Chucha Press. The inspiration for her poetry stems from her work as a poet-in-residence and mentor to teens, advocate for immigrants’ rights, and teacher of English in schools, sweatshops, juvenile detention centers, and most recently at the community college where she now lives with her hijito in Tampa, Florida.

“Effortlessly, swimmingly, yet every line a ‘florescent ember’, seething and praying, these poems mark the debut of a powerful woman of letters; young yet wise, weary yet hopeful. ariel robello is the revolution in verse we’ve been waiting for – the spoken unspoken, the dreaded effervescence of truth conspiring with our souls. Chicana voices have always pushed deeper into the emotional terrain of conscience and witness, ‘My Sweet Unconditional’ does what poetry collections should always do – pull us into a universe so familiar yet frighteningly unknown with poems that awaken us to the political and personal traumas of our times, yet sweetened by the beauty of word and verse.

—Luis J. Rodriguez is an award-winning poet, journalist, memoirist, children’s book writer, essayist and fiction writer. He is author of the critically acclaimed “Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.”

"Ariel Robello's My Sweet Unconditional is never insincere or sentimental. This first collection of point-blank narratives of the heart never misses. Playful and reasoned, witty and serious, My Sweet Unconditional's insinuation beckons and disarms. Ariel Robello's voice is one of a kind."—Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

"Poetry Lover, beware the fire-and-ice urban joys of Ariel Robello! These are brutally savvy and deliciously vicious paeans to life, relentless in their celebrations of love, sacrifice and sex--and once beheld by the eyeheart, humbles rescues redeems."
—Wanda Coleman, poet, Los Angeles

"Ariel Robello has crafted remarkable poems that demand no less than a pure appreciation of art from you, even as they break your heart. There is nothing easy here: the music is grafted from a painful if illuminating life, but they shimmer with a rage that is transformative.
A voice to watch for." —Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and Dog Woman.

www.nupress.northwestern.edu

Paper -1-882688-29-5 $13.95

Available for sale on www.amazon.com

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Juan Manuel Sánchez was born and raised on the US side of the San Diego/Tijuana border. He holds an MA in Literature from UC San Diego and is currently in the final throes of his MFA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has worked as an assistant editor for Ninth Letter, has lectured at various universities and is now Lecturer of Spanish at the University of Chicago. His work is forthcoming in Pembroke and in the anthology Junta: Avant-Garde Latino/a Writing.

Lisa Alvarado

Reading the World X and Border Book Festival

Reading the World X
A Conference Celebrating Multicultural
Literature for Children and Young Adults

February 16 & 17, 2008

Guest Speakers | Alma Flor Ada, Ashley Bryan, Sarah Ellis, Naomi Shihab Nye, Doris Orgel, Peter Sís, Leslie Tryon, Rita Williams Garcia, Laurence Yep, and Jack Zipes!

There will also be workshops by educators, librarians, authors, illustrators, and scholars in the field of children's literature, not to mention the Book Market and scheduled book signings with guest authors and artists!

Location | University of San Francisco, Presentation Theatre, School of Education Building, 2350 Turk Boulevard, San Francisco, California.


The Story of Reading the World

The story of Reading the World begins with the late Dr. Marilyn Nye, head of the Teacher Education Department at California State University, Hayward. She developed a Certificate in Children’s Literature and originated a “Celebrating Children’s Literature Conference.” It was a unique, one-day event. It ran for nine years, featuring one author, one illustrator, a storyteller, and 25 workshops.

Beverly Hock, then a graduate student at the University of San Francisco was a presenter at that conference and a former student of Dr. Nye. After the last CSUH conference, a group of students at the University of San Francisco were disappointed that such a worthwhile event was ending. Agreeing it was a loss to see the cancellation of such an enriching experience, six graduate students, in a class taught by Dr. Alma Flor Ada, determined to work together to create a similar conference. They decided to build on the CSUH tradition and make it grow. Dr. Nye agreed to help them get started on the planning. This new conference would be entirely organized by students under the guidance of Dr. Ada. The conference name comes from the writings of Paolo Freire, the great Brazilian educator and philosopher, who encouraged learners to challenge and change the world.

Reading the World I took place in 1998. It ran for two days, featured seven keynote speakers and 40 workshops. Reading the World II added an art show of children’s book illustration. A Celebration Dinner was added to Reading the World III. Reading the World IV, “Global Connections,” was a joint venture between USF and the International Board on Books for Young People. This conference again featured seven keynote speakers. All participants had the opportunity to be present at each of the major talks and enjoy three breakout sessions for the workshops. Once again the committee hosted a welcome reception on Friday evening and a dinner on Saturday evening in which the main speakers tell stories and read poetry.

Reading the World V, in March 2003 had an increased number of keynote speakers, four breakout sessions, and was honored to have the representatives of the International Children’s Digital Library send representatives for their meeting and participation.

This conference is a significant contribution to the Bay Area, as there are currently only one or two children’s literature conferences west of the Mississippi and none focus on the multicultural aspects of the field. The goal is to invite speakers of all ethnicities and nationalities and to acquaint our audience with the rich materials available. The conference committee is very proud that all the artists, authors, and presenters stay for the two days to converse and interact with the participants, a feature unknown at other conferences.

Presented by the International and Multicultural Education department at the USF School of Education, Reading the World is a creative and imaginative addition to the goal of seeking to develop critical literacy geared to promote social justice, equality, inclusion and peace, objectives in line with the mission statement of the University.

We strive to enhance the “magical encounter” between children and books -- our hope for all children.


What does Return mean? In Spanish the word is Retorno. Or Regresar. It could also be Devolver, to give back. Or Volver, to come back. What does the word Return mean to you? Maybe there is an object that you need to return to someone or is there something that needs to be returned to you? Have you lost something that can never be returned? How does that make you feel? Maybe it's a book you borrowed or something you've been meaning to give someone for a long time. Or maybe something or someone so meaningful and indispensable has been lost and you wonder how it can ever be returned? Should some things never return or be returned? What is it that needs to be "returned" in a very physical and actual sense? What can never be returned?

Libros y Más, the festival Trade show will take place on the historic Mesilla Plaza and features local, regional, national and international authors, presses and artists. Other festival highlights include al fresco readings and music on the Mesilla Plaza, a children’s storytelling tent, and the 3rd annual Children’s Book and Pet Parade. The School Outreach Program’s “Visit with An Artist” is an important and vital component of the festival and allows visiting authors to visit local and area schools during the festival week.

2008 Invited writers and artists include:
• Cristina García, author of Dreaming In Cuban/Soñar en Cubano and A Handbook to Luck
• Quincy Troupe, jazz poet, author of Miles and Me and The Architecture of Language
• Perla Batalla Grammy nominated vocalist, composer, and arranger, CD’s include Mestiza, Discoteca Batalla, What I Did On My Summer Vacation and Bird on a Wire (Perla’s tribute to Leonard Cohen),
• Amy Costales, author of Abuelita Full of Life/Abuelita Llena de Vida and Hello Night/Hola Noche
• Xavier Garza, author of Lucha Libre, the Man in the Silver Mask and Juan and the Chupacabras
• Susan Lowell Humphries, author of Josefina Javelina and Little Red Cowboy Hat, as well as various cookbooks and art books
• Alex Espinosa, author of Stillwater Saints/Los Santos de Agua Mansa, California
• Don Usner, photographer and author of Benigna’s Chimayó and Sabino’s Map: Life in Chimayó’s Old Plaza
• Adalucia Quan, potter and author of The Magic of Clay and La Chica de Mendiburo
• La Familia Vigil, featuring Cipriano Vigil, New Mexican folk singing legend, American treasure
• Other local, regional and national writers and storytellers who will offer panels, workshops and readings throughout the festival
Interested in volunteering? Let us know. We will find a fun and exciting job for you to do. Come by the Cultural Center to look over the job list.

We ask you also to reflect on the 2008 festival theme “Return” and let us know in a short essay what it means to you as a writer and artist. Our festival is a familia/family dedicated to bring transformative and healing work to the community. As such, if you are selected to be part of the festival, you become part of this global connection that works toward goals of peace and understanding among all sentient beings. All festival authors are selected because their work reflects in some way the festival theme.

The Border Book Festival (BBF), founder of the Cultural Center of Mesilla is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit literary, literacy and storytelling organization based in Mesilla, New Mexico. Founded in 1995 by a group of writers, artists, and community people committed to celebrating literature and the art of storytelling in the southern United States-Northern México border region, the BBF believes that literature and the arts can transcend the many perceived orders—racial, ethnic, generational, cultural, socio-economic, and gender-based—that divide our communities. We are a grass roots organization that impacts our local, regional and global community by offering programs that are blueprints of positive communication, interaction, connection and healing between people.

The Border Book Festival, Inc.
P.O. Drawer T
Mesilla, NM 88046.

Review: My Daughter's Eyes.

Annecy Báez. My Daughter’s Eyes and Other Stories. Willimantic CT: 2007.

Such a tightly knit story, I wonder what leads Annecy Báez to her subtitle for her 2007 “My Daughter’s Eyes and Other Stories”? Maybe a woman's life is an assemblage of chapters that, put together, eventually form a coherent body, but one at a time, each event is what it is.

Covering the period between 1972 when the narrator, Mia, is thirteen, and 2000, when Mia’s own daughter is thirteen and a half, seventeen stories trace her life as Mia stumbles her way to sexuality and coming of age, loving her child’s father, and watching her own daughter approach the age when Mia’s life bent its way.

Little Mia has no strong reason to resist the impassioned entreaties of teenaged lothario, Pito. But for at least one story, Mia doesn’t yield to her own curiosity nor Pito’s sales pitch. A few years later, Mia and her mother suffer a huge public blowout over a pair of sexy shoes for Mia’s 15th birthday. Báez begins to weave a cyclic theme here suggested in the title, the world as seen by the daughter through her mother’s eyes. Vice versa can prove as devastating to reader comfort with such intimate looks into this girl's growing up. The mother genuinely fears red shoes will lead to a daughter’s downfall to sins of the flesh. Much of her fear grows from frenzied coital flashbacks competing for the mother’s attention while she’s coming to terms with her daughter’s emergence. The dissonance between the daughter’s hopeful innocence and the heat of the mother's recent passion grows so tremendous, the woman faints. This story closes with a dapper Samaritan closing in on mother and her lithe daughter.

I tell a more lurid version, perhaps it’s the male reader of me. Annecy Báez develops the story of the women in Mia’s family with more subtlety, and a deft woman’s touch. These are the types of stories little girls should read as cautionary tales for certain inevitabilities of their next few years development as women. These are the types of stories little boys should read to walk away with keener insight into the way girls think. Some lessons here would be excellent preparation for the hurdles of courtship rituals. Then there are the assholes. Mix in the efforts of a good class discussion, and reading My Daughter’s Eyes might be one of the best reading experiences in a middle school or high school kid’s so-called life.

Báez’ compelling collection ends on a hopeful note, thankfully. Parental and sexual abuse permeate the story and there’s a suggestion of a ceaseless pattern and ritualized ignorance. But by 2000, a mother has learned her lessons. Her choices have been her choices; leave it to the reader to say they were bad ones. This mother has determined to deal levelheaded with her daughter, aware that a mother’s past need not define the changes a daughter must go through. This mother welcomes such changes, not shuns them. At only 176 pages, some readers will want to read it twice to let some of the points sink in.

My Daughter’s Eyes and Other Stories won the 2007 Marmol Award for First Fiction. Publication of this work, and a cash advance against royalties, recognize Annecy Báez’ accomplishment in joining previous winners include Sylvia Torti - The Scorpion's Tail, 2005, 2004: Mary Helen Lagasse - The Fifth Sun; 2003: Carla Trujillo - What Night Brings; 2002: Lorraine Lopez - Soy La Avon Lady and Other Stories. Marmol did not have a 2006 winner.


Sun., Jan. 13, 2008 2:30 pm
Griots in the Gallery: Aztec Stories
Experience the world of the Mexica/Aztecs through poetry, oral tradition stories, and ballads. Storyteller Michael Heralda shares the history, language, foods, and arts from an indigenous perspective. His performance is enhanced by traditional instruments made by hand, including Mayan Bubalek Gourd Water Drums and numerous flutes, shakers, and rattles,
offering plenty of opportunities for audience participation.

New Review in El Paso paper.
La Bloga friend, poet and critic Rigoberto Gonzalez reviews Grove Press' new release of Francisco Goldman's political title, The bishop's murder. Gonzalez concludes in his 1/6/08 El Paso Times review:

Goldman's skillful and energetic prose gives this exhausting real-life narrative a necessary push. The supplementary sources such as the index, chronology of events and "dramatis personae" are essential for keeping track of the multiple threads explored in this confounding investigation.

"The Art of Political Murder" is also the art of investigative reporting. Goldman works hard to examine even the smallest of details that contributed to this high-profile case, which became a defining moment in reconnecting a wartorn country to its long-threatened notion of justice.

La Bloga welcomes guest columnists, news, ideas, reviews, opinions, recipes, and appropriate
stuff. Our newest La Bloga bloguera, Sunday's Ann Cardinal, joins us after a string of warmly welcomed guest columns. If you've something to share, send an email to a La Bloga bloguera bloguero, click here, or leave a comment below. The only comments we don't welcome are those that go "grate column. Check out my desert acreage site at nowhere.com". Sabes? Hay les wachamos until next Tuesday.

SPOTLIGHT ON GIL CUADROS

Gil Cuadros published stories and poems in Indivisible, High Risk 2, and Blood Whispers. His work is also on the compact disc, Verdict and the Violence: Poet's Response to the LA Uprising. He was awarded the 1991 Brody Literature Fellowship, and was one of the first recipients of the PEN Center USA/West grant to writers with HIV. He lived in Los Angeles until his death in 1996 at the age of 34.

In his short life, Cuadros published one book, City of God (City Lights Books, 1994), which is a collection of short stories and poems. It is a deeply affecting examination of ethnicity, sexuality and the ruthlessness of AIDS in 1990s California. David Trinidad said of this book:

"City of God is an unsparing account of devastation and empowerment in the age of AIDS. From the body's first mysterious eroticism to its final humiliation and pain, Gil Cuadros gives voice to both the beauty and sorrow of our common fate. His writing cuts like a double-edged sword—at times artful and sharp, at times unfiltered and raw. This is an awesome and haunting book."

For an in depth discussion of City of God, I strongly recommend Mestizaje: Critical Uses of Race in Chicano Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2006), by Rafael Pérez-Torres.

Perhaps Wanda Coleman put it best when she offered this opinion of City of God:

"I accuse Gil Cuadros of literary seduction in the nth degree... He makes me read on when I want to cry... I do not want to look at his words, and yet I cannot take my eyes away. His images sooth, burn, inspire. I accuse Gil Cuadros of language abuse—his stroke of silk, his pen a bludgeon. I accuse him of heart-bashing."

(Photo of Gil Cuadros by Laura Aguilar courtesy of UCLA LGBTS)

News from Poet MargoTamez---Indigenous Lands at Risk

There is some disturbing news from poet Margo Tamez, author of Naked Wanting and Raven Eye, concerning the Department of Homeland Security, native peoples and border rights.

Border struggle article, here.

For background on Margo, her poetry, and her commitments, read my post, here.

Lisa Alvarado

The Three Kings and Lupe's Killer Coquito

Okay, hermanos: it's taken me six Three Kings Days to get this recipe down. From the first time I tried a coquito at my Tia Georgina's in Guaynabo, I was hooked (that was also my first experience with a Puerto Rican Paranda, but that's a whole other column. If my friends showed up at my house at 6:00am playing musical instruments and expecting to party all day I could not be held responsible for any injuries I inflicted). But when I returned home determined to share this discovery with my family and friends, like the osito of fairy tale fame, none of the recipes I encountered were quite right. Most ended up too thick like a fast food milkshake (which, by the way, are thickened with cellulose. Once I found out I was drinking vanilla movie film, I swore off them for good). Others were just too light on the rum for the Caribbean half of my taste buds. There was something to this obsession of getting the recipe right that took on additional meaning. I was treating it as if arriving at the perfect coquito recipe was evidence of the sangre Boricua that runs beneath my skin that's the color of the very drinks I was so eagerly concocting. It was as if the alchemy of this traditional cocktail was a test.

So each year I changed it a bit—increasing the rum, tweaking the spices—getting just a little closer each time. This year I finally enlisted the help of my bartender extraordinaire husband, Doug (he's sober, but he's forgotten more about mixing drinks than most 25-year-old hotshots have ever known). After all, it was he who joined me on my journey to truly embrace my Puerto Rican roots after my mother's death. It was the son we had together who inspired us to begin our yearly sojourns to her island. And he was there when I tasted my first coquito. Therefore it made sense that it was Doug who helped find the final piece and suggested cutting the condensed milk with the lowfat, allowing the rich, sweet taste to remain while achieving the perfect consistency, the perfect balance of milk and cinnamon. When I took my first sip the other day, I knew we had done it: yes, Rizos de Oro, it was just right, my island pedigree was in evidence as the smooth milky taste of rum and coconut danced across my tongue.

And because I'm so dedicated and grateful to my La Bloga brethren, I've decided to share my super secret recipe with you today.

So as the sixth of January approaches, be sure to hit your supermercado for some Coco Lopez, and mix up a batch of Lupe's Killer Coquitos for you and yours. I think it's sad that most people have forgotten that the twelve days of Christmas are NOT the shopping days before. And I find it depressing to walk out on New Years Day to see the green, skeletal remains of Christmas trees sticking out from a pile of snow, banished before their time and negating the last five days of festivities. There are still many of us tuck our kids in at night with hay stuff-shoeboxes beneath their beds as they await the arrival of the three Magi on their camels (or in Puerto Rico, horses). It took me some time, but I have learned what you probably already know: that the party should continue for more than one day (we won't even touch on los octavos…that's too much even for me). So join me in a toast, gentle readers, y ¡Feliz Día de Reyes!


Lupe's Killer Coquito

1 cans cream of coconut
1/2 can sweetened condensed milk
6 oz. 2% lowfat milk
10 oz white rum
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

Pour all the ingredients in a blender, and blend at high speed for at least a minute. Chill in the refrigerator for a minimum of two hours. Shake well, and serve with a sprinkle of nutmeg on top. Serve in small glasses. ¡Qué rico!

Scene From the Movie Giant -- And a Few Bits

Manuel Ramos


SCENE FROM THE MOVIE GIANT
Tino Villanueva (Curbstone Press, 1993)
It's been several years since I watched the classic movie Giant, whose cast included James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, Sal Mineo, and Rock Hudson. The first time I saw it, I was a young boy, probably eight or nine. It was the middle of the 1950s and I was in the Rialto Theater on Main Street, in a small Colorado town. The Rialto was one of those movie palaces that used to occupy places of respect in almost every American town -- a gaudy, blinking marquee, deep red carpeting, elaborate wall fixtures, and thick curtains that majestically opened when the lights dimmed and the newsreel flickered on the screen.

I remember Saturday afternoon matinees with my buddies and an occasional midweek night out with my parents and younger brother for some special screening. The Rialto was where I first encountered American icons of comedy such as the Three Stooges and the Little Rascals, and red-blooded heroes like John Wayne and Burt Lancaster. It's also the place where I practiced my recently acquired reading skill. Sitting on a worn cushion and scraping my shoes on the sticky floor, I read all the credits as they rolled up the screen; I learned that the director was always last and when his name appeared, the flick was about to start.

But my experience with Giant was different. Going in, I thought it was only a love story but it had some attraction for me because of James Dean. Back then, and maybe for years afterwards, I deluded myself that I was something of a rebel, even at that young age, and so I was drawn to teenage outlaw myths created by the movies and other facets of mass culture in the immediate post-War years. In another movie I thought Sal Mineo was perfect when he sauntered down a nameless New York street hunched over in a shiny red jacket, smoking a cigarette and flashing a switchblade. I saw the first four Elvis Presley movies and every rock and roll melodrama that passed through the Rialto.


And so I checked out Giant, mainly to see what James Dean had been up to after his surly bulldozing of the decaying middle American landscape in Rebel Without a Cause. Of course, I didn't think of it that way when I was a kid -- he was cool, man, and that was enough.

But what I got from Giant was this amazingly complicated story about Texas -- quick money from oil, cowboy aristocracy clashing with political tensions created by a vanishing Old West; rich and poor whites mixing it up in their own private class war; and, eventually, Mexicans: people who looked like my grandparents, who were scattered throughout the film as so many props.

I felt uncomfortable watching this movie. I didn't like the way the Mexicans were treated in the film but somehow I thought that maybe it was the Mexicans' fault. Why were they in a movie anyway? Movies were for slapstick comedy, outer space monsters, the glory and bluster of John Wayne on the shores of Iwo Jima, and juvenile delinquents.

Texas poet Tino Villanueva has focused his own reactions to this movie and created an epic poem entitled Scene From the Movie Giant. In his marvelously written book he capsulizes a lifetime of provocations inspired by the movie. In particular, he deals with one scene where a trio of quiet, almost submissive Mexicans are subjected to blatant and violent racism.

Villanueva agonizingly chronicles his own attitudes about the crucial scene, which portrays the apparent victory of brute force and hatred over the humble Mexicans. Sarge, owner of a diner, refuses to serve a Mexican family. When cattleman Rick Benedict (Rock Hudson) objects, Sarge savagely beats him up. Villanueva stretches his images over the years and miles to Boston where, as a graduate student, he still grapples with the real meaning of the scene from the movie. As Villanueva writes, he constantly must turn back to the time when his offended small world was disrupted, unresolved. As is made clear in Villanueva's pages, his own resolution comes through the words he has chosen to present to the reader, so many years after he watched a movie in fear and awe. He has presented the truth as only a poet can understand it.

(this review first aired on Denver radio KUVO in 1995)

A BIT OF NEWS

How Else Am I Supposed to Know I'm Still Alive?



If you can't read the image, it's an announcement of a presentation of How Else Am I Supposed to Know I'm Still Alive, written by Evelina Fernández and starring the very talented and always entertaining Debra Gallegos and Yolanda Ortega on January 19 at 7:30 PM at the Troutman Theater at Aurora Central High School, 11700 E. 11th Avenue, Aurora, CO. $35 for adults, $10 for students and seniors. The performance benefits the Nuñez Foundation College Scholarship Program. We love these women and their enthusiastic performance art, and I know I'll see many of you at the play.

Nation of Immigrants
The Art Students League of Denver sent the following announcement about their upcoming exhibit, Nation of Immigrants, curated by Tony Ortega and Susan Sagara Bolton: "This exhibit brings together a wide range of media, styles, concerns, and sensibilities from artists whose inspiration is the immigration experience. Walking through the exhibit, you will experience the history each artist brings to their art and how culture and heritage resonate through their work." Participating artists include Polly Chang, Manuel Cordero, Carlos Frésquez, Ken Iwamasa, Clara Martínez, Emanuel Martínez, Sylvia Montero, Adriana Restrepo, George Rivera, Danny and Maruca Salazar, Carlos Santistevan, and several others. Exhibit opens January 4, 5:30 - 8:00 PM and runs through February 27. The Art Students League is at 200 Grant Street, Denver, 303-778-6990.

Dolores Huerta
Dolores Huerta will be the keynote speaker at the Latina/o Advocacy Day event to be held February 24-25 at the Adams Mark Hotel in downtown Denver. Sponsored by the Latina Initiative and the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights, the event provides advocacy and lobby training on policy issues of concern to Latinas and Latinos in Colorado. For those who might not know, Dolores Huerta is a long-time human rights activist and a co-founder with César Chávez in starting the United Farm Workers in the 1960s. Info., send an email to: dusti@latinaadvocacyday.org. Image courtesy of favianna.com.

Sacramento Poetry Center
I'm passing on the following piece:

Another great night of poetry is coming up this Monday, January 7 at the Sacramento Poetry Center, 1719 25th Street, at 7:30 pm.

Starting off the new year will be Barbara Jane Reyes and Oscar Bermeo. It will be an exciting night of powerful poetry hosted by Arturo Mantecon. Don't miss it!



Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines and raised in the SF Bay Area. She is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish, 2005) which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. Her other honors include an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship and numerous Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Asian Pacific American Journal, Chain, New American Writing, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, among others. She lives with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland.

Born in Ecuador and raised in the Bronx, Oscar Bermeo is a BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) award winning poet, educator & literary events coordinator. Oscar now makes his home in Oakland, where he is the poetry editor for Tea Party magazine and lives with his wife, poeta Barbara Jane Reyes.

Sacramento Poetry Center
1719 25th Street
Sacramento, CA
916.451.5569 - www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org


Later.

Floricanto Press News

FLORICANTO PRESS NEWS

Mujeres de Conciencia/ Women of Conscience. Spanish English parallel text and photography by Victoria Alvarado. ISBN: 978-0-9796457-7-8. 2008 $69.95 Oversize Hard bound. Especial Holiday advanced purchase for individual customers $49.95. Save $20.00

This is an art book with magnificent black and white photos of prominent Latinas who have made definite and long standing contribution to the Hispanic community and the country at large. This photographic essay constitutes an important collective biography as well, with great journalistic insight and integrity into the lives of leading Latina women in the fields of education, science, literature, business, law, the arts, journalism, politics, and other fields of endeavor. This coffee table monograph, which has been published with art-book quality as a collector's edition, provides stunning artistic, B&W photographs of each subject with a parallel biographic journalistic essay in Spanish and English. The biographies explore the life-changing events of each subject, the personal mix of elements, circumstances, and values which allowed these women to set goals and objectives toward most successful careers and contributions to society. There are 72 leading women included in this collective biography and an extraordinary photographic essay offering the most incredible array of role models to inspire, guide and motivate young Latinas. This title is an important addition to reference collections and individual libraries for they are testament to the vision and values of la mujer Latina.

Operation Familia. By Donna del Oro. ISBN: 978-0-915745-96-8. 520 pages. $24.95

Dina Salazar likes to think she has it together. Dodging the bullet of early marriage and motherhood that every other female in her family has succumbed to, she_s her own woman. Or is she? Is she free ...or just lost?

Adventurous, athletic Dina has a satisfying career and her freedom from emotional entanglements. She has it all. All except the love of her life, Rick Ramos_THE HATED ONE--who ended up marrying another woman nearly six years before. All except the closeness of her blue-collar family, who live in a latino barrio of Salinas, ninety miles south of Silicon Valley. All except the feeling of belonging to her cultural heritage. She speaks Spanish but who is she really? Is she a mixed mutt with an American mind and a latino heart? In her attempts at educating herself and climbing the socio-economic ladder into the middle-class, has Dina lost her latino heart and soul? Then, like an artichoke, Dina begins to peel away the secrets to get at the heart of her family. When Dina learns that her stern, disapproving Mexican-born grandmother has a shameful secret-- a son Grandma Gómez had to abandon in Mexico sixty years before-- Dina is reluctant at first to get involved. The uncle she has never known has died mysteriously-- killed, her grandmother believes, by a rival in the Juarez drug cartel. And Abuelita_s grand-daughter, Teresa--Dina_s Mexican cousin-- is in danger and is on the run. To Dina_s dismay, her grandmother urges HER to find out where her grand-daughter and great grandson are seeking refuge in Mexico. Her grandmother tells her that Dina is the only one that can rescue Teresa and her son, for Dina is the only one who speaks fluent Spanish. What_s a girl to do when la familia calls?

"A delightful, endearing story! You can_t help but root for Dina in her journey of self-discovery."--Brenda Novak, Nationally Best-selling Author

"Dina is a character that many Latinos can identify with a woman trying to weave her own place between cultures. Around Dina, Donna Del Oro has done her own weaving: a heady plot of crime, romance, family conflict and intrigue."
--Carlos Alcalá, Sacramento Bee Columnist

Shadow of the Fathers. By Robert Friedman. ISBN: 978-0-915745-75-3. 2007. $14.95

In Shadow of the Fathers, Robert Friedman turns a disturbing, possibly tragic historical event in Puerto Rico into a captivating work of fiction. Personal obsessions and public events collide as the novel's characters grapple with lies, false identities, puzzling connections, U.S. wars and colonialism. A rich, suspenseful tale, the novel moves from the colorful life of San Juan to the snow-covered streets of New York, from the pastel heat of Miami to the fog-shrouded canals of Amsterdam. Pablo Camino is the son of a doctor sent to Puerto Rico over four decades earlier to research a cure for pernicious anemia. While there, Dr. Cornelius Rhoads claimed in a letter to his close friend, "Ferdie" that he had purposely killed eight of his Puerto Rican patients and planned to exterminate several more of "that degenerate race." The letter was discovered and Rhoads was forced to leave the island. He later insisted it was all a joke. Pablo, a highly regarded Puerto Rican artist, is haunted by his dead father's past. Did the doctor really kill those patients? Has Pablo inherited from him the feelings of murder that often grip his own heart? When Pablo kills an intruder in his home, he vows to finally discover the truth about the father he never knew -and about himself. He flees Puerto Rico to look for Ferdie. Back on the island, Ralph Camacho, Pablo's best friend, carries out his own search into a past that casts heavy shadows on individual lives in the present.

Diadema. Carlos Aceves. ISBN: 978-0-9796457-6-1 $24.95

Carlos Aceves has created an allegorical story rooted in the deepest essence of the Latino soul. Diadema is a symbolic artifice very much like Doña Marina, La Malinche, searching for her child, her very being. Knitted in a true story, Aceves bring forward the Latino imperative of who really are we? What are our roots? This is the Hispanic crucial element of understanding self. Latinos are not alone. Spain if often called by Spaniards "the whore of Europe" for it was invaded by most every group in Europe creating a concatenation of races and cultures; today there are over five different languages spoken there. Latinos to a certain extent inherited this dilemma, and Aceves attempts to use fiction weaved in reality to address the Latino, Chicano predicament of self-preservation and self-understanding. Aceves propounds a clear lyric message begin your journey for genuineness and self-understanding and let the road lead you where it may: "Se hace camino al andar." Roberto Cabello-Argandoña, Editor.

Unamuno: A Lyrical Essay.
By Pedro Blas González. ISBN: 978-0-915745-75-3 $22.95

The most extraordinary and exemplary piece of Latino prose writing, bordering in Rational lyricism. Scholarship and art in Europe, traditionally crisscrossed each other, particularly when the brightest minds where at it. Germany has Goethe, the Hispanic world has Unamuno. Both were consummated philosophers and creative writers, who left indelible marks, both in culture and philosophical argumentation. Goethe's "Werther" is credited with initiating Romanticism in Europe. "El Sentido Trágico de La Vida" ponders the ever-present human (and Hispanic) preoccupation for life, death and beyond, immortality. However, it takes a Latino scholar to analyze, scaffold, and present in an very understandable way to us the grandiosity of Unamuno's philosophical concerns and his scrupulous argumentation. Dr. Pedro Blas González is the first Latino scholar to elaborate and deconstruct Unamuno's philosophical work and related creative writings. This is a lyric work of prose, as well as of literary criticism, philosophical analysis, and pure rigorous Latino erudition advancing Hispanic thinking. Roberto Cabello-Argandoña, Editor.

Waves of Recovery: The Life of an Advocate of Latino Civil Rights. By Maurice Jourdane. ISBN: 978-0-915745-95-1 $26.95

This a riveting personal account of Maurice Jourdane--currently a Superior Court Judge and a member of Jerry Brown's California Attorney General's Office--leading to his legal representation and advocacy for farm workers and César Chávez's organizing efforts. Mo's life reads like a Greek mythic tale in which the hero suffers and endures moral and physical affliction in his quest, his now legendary legal fights and successes against the powerful California growers and agricultural interests in court. This biography is a testament to human strength in behalf of justice for Latinos. The success of César Chávez's civil rights movement and union organizing efforts cannot be fully understood without knowledge of the life and sacrifices of Maurice Jourdane, El Cortito. His legal successes, at great personal costs, solidified Chávez's leadership and prepared the way for the consolidation of the Farm Workers' Union, and ultimately for the farm workers to prevail against the powerful political and economic interests of the California growers. Roberto Cabello-Argandoña, Editor.

Latina Filmmakers and Writers: The Notion of Chicanisma Through Films and Novellas. Jenny Dean. ISBN: 978-0-9796457-1-6. $26.95

During the Chicano Movement in the 1960s and 1970s, Chicanas helped Chicanos achieve equal rights, while at the same time suffered oppression as women within their own race. In the 1970s, the Chicana Feminist Movement was founded to address the specific needs of Chicanas as women of color in the United States. Chicana artists began to write and produce works in which Chicanas were given a proper name, voice, and image. Soon, Chicanisma, a sense of sisterhood and feminist discourse, emerged to confront the triple oppression of race, class, and gender. Latina Filmmakers and Writers: The Notion of Chicanisma Through Films and Novellas examines the works of seven celebrated Latinas who collectively represent a 20-year history of Chicanisma: Chicana (a film by Sylvia Morales), Puppet: A Chicano Novella (a book by Margarita Cota-Cárdenas), La Ofrenda: The Days of the Dead (a film by Lourdes Portillo and Susana Muñoz), Paletitas de Guayaba (a book by Erlinda Gonzáles-Berry), El Espejo/The Mirror (a film by Frances Salomé España) and Loving Pedro Infante (a book by Denise Chávez). These works demystify masculine power and offer realistic portrayals of Chicanas and give them a rightful name, image, and voice in American culture.

"Dean provides a thoughtful and honest account of ... the concept of Chicanisma. Latina Filmmakers and Writers cleverly situates Chicana literature and film at the perilous yet unique intersection of class, gender and race ...and weaves a Chicana feminist theory and original oral history research " Guisela Latorre, University of California. Santa Barbara.

"This book deals with the voices and works of Latinas [whose voices]... must be heard since they elaborate on the concept of "Chicanisma."This is an important new book in the development of Chicana Studies and Latina thought. Kudos!" Dr. Luzma Umpierre, Human Rights Advocate.

"...This book... is a must read text for contemporary society. ...[it] will be most helpful in Chicana and Chicano Studies, Women and Feminist Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Cultural Studies in understanding the experiences and issues concerning diversity in a postmodern situation." Dr. T. Osa Hidalgo de la Riva

Huevos y la Mujer Latina: The De-masculinization of the Macho. Julián Camacho-Segura. ISBN: 978-0-9796457-4-7 $19.95

Huevos is not a politically correct articulation of the plight of Latino men in this era of so called gender equity and diversity. The author contends that while White women have made progress, Latinos, particularly Mexican men, have been entirely ignored; they have become the epitome of the poor working class. Ambitious and upward mobile Latinas often look down upon Latinos, and particularly Mexican males' lackluster economic success preferring other males. Latino males have been left out of any gender or racial discussion, yet suffer the highest work related death rates, lowest college attendance and graduation rates, high incarceration rates, the highest poverty even though they have the highest labor participation rates. The Latino male have become the Sisyphus's of America condemned to low wages by globalization, to ignorance by mediocre, highly-unionized schools, and destined to be marginalized of any equity-political-solution.

The progress of White women has maintained White power by driving the diversity dialog, praxis, and remedy away from Latino males-the working, and uneducated poor. As Latino men have been relegated to a caste style social gender structure-the hard working indigent-Latinas have been blinded into believing that feminism and Chicanisma are positive, weakening Latino traditional social fabric and support system, while simultaneously ignoring the societal divide distressing Latinos, and especially Mexican males. "Huevos! Ya era hora! In an era of such political correctness, the timing couldn't be better. Once again Julian Camacho tackles the issues that are relevant in this truly academic discipline of Latino Studies." John J. Morales Jr. Chair and Professor of Chicano Studies, L.A. Mission College. "Julian Camacho's work is thought provoking and it is bound to create deep conversations and debate. Thank you for addressing the real challenges Mexican men face everyday in US society." Marcos Ramos, College of Letters and Science. University of California, Berkeley "An exciting and enthralling design to educate the body and stimulate the mind. Destined to be one of the most discussed books in 2007!" Oscar Barajas, Author of soon to be realized book "Tales From The Wireless Clothesline"

Clásicos de la Literatura Hispanoamericana Colonial en su Contexto Sociohistórico.
Dr. Clary Loisel. ISBN: 978-0-915745-97-5. $24.95

Esta monografía va dirigida a los lectores que ya tienen un conocimiento básico de la literatura hispanoamericana colonial pero que quieren un análisis más profundo de algunas obras principales del canon. Este libro sobre la literatura colonial constituye un esfuerzo por reunir el testimonio de nueve escritores de los siglos XVI y XVII que han expresado algunas experiencias y vicisitudes principales de varios pueblos de Hispanoamérica para acercarse a su identidad nacional y artística. Seleccioné a estas figuras por sus contribuciones únicas a las letras hispanas. El tema central de este libro es la transformación y la "nativización" de los modelos peninsulares por los escritores del Nuevo Mundo. Es mi esperanza que, volviendo a estudiar a estos autores y obras, podamos comenzar a comprender mejor una pequeña parte de la enorme producción literaria de los dos siglos después de la llegada de Cristóbal Colón en 1492. Divido el libro en dos partes principales: "El Siglo XVI: Literatura de la Conquista" y "El Siglo XVII: El Barroco, Arte Hispánico". Al principio de cada parte hay una introducción sobre el marco histórico-social así como de las corrientes estéticas de cada época. Cada uno de los nueve capítulos se dedica a las biografías y al análisis de la obra de los autores seleccionados: Hernán Cortés, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, El Inca Garcilazo de la Vega, Bernardo de Balbuena, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Juan del Valle Caviedes, Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora y Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

"El lector se siente atraído a la lectura de Clásicos de la Literatura Hispanoamericana Colonial por la claridad de su presentación y por la curiosidad de ciertos detalles que me han animado a releer a algunos escritores de la literatura colonial, por ejemplo a Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz". Ramón Corro, Profesor de Español Emeritus; University of Montana.

"Este libro muestra de forma muy clara la transformación de los modelos literarios españoles realizados por diferentes autores en el Nuevo Mundo. Por lo tanto, puede servir como recurso útil para el profesor así como texto de trasfondo para el estudiante de letras renacentistas y barrocas". Robert S. Stone, Profesor Asociado; US Naval Academy.

"Clásicos de la Literatura Hispanoamericana Colonial , por el profesor Clary Loisel, es un aporte importante a los estudios hispanoamericanos coloniales. Es de gran utilidad para un público general y para especialistas". Mark Cox, Profesor Asociado de Español; Presbyterian College.

"Con Clásicos de la Literatura Hispanoamericana Colonial , Clary Loisel ha sabido abarcar las obras claves de la literatura colonial con la precisión y erudición necesarias para el especialista y con la claridad y llaneza para el gran público". Andre Moskowitz, City University of New York Graduate Center

Café Chronicles.
Francisco J. Zermeno. ISBN: 978-0-915745-98-2 $17.95

Life is wonderful, and I have learned from it twice, my first 12 years in México, in Spanish, and the many others in California, in English. I know that every one has a unique life, but I could claim that mine has been a bit more unique. Why? I am a 6'4" café Mexican, that's why! In a land of chaparros, there I was in México. In a land of whites, here I was, and am. I was born in the high sierras, then was transplanted to urban Guadalajara. I survived. Then, I went back to the rural sierra, and this now city slicker couldn't rope a cow, especially in my black shoes. Heck, I tried playing soccer in México.too tall. I tried playing soccer in the USA, there was none in the 1960s. So, when I went into basquetball, my feet were faster than my hands on concrete. Shooting? A slingshot at a bird, ok, but a ball at a basquet? I went to the fields. Have you ever tried short hoeing lettuce or picking strawberries from my height? I had my gringo phase.

Result? I couldn't even convince mother, who kept telling me, 'gringo culo prieto' - with Mexican motherly tender love, of course. I tried to fit in as a Freshman at UCSanta Bárbara. I was taking Bonehead English with Dr. Fernández. I couldn't. Heck, I've even made a run a city politics. Result? Missed it by 1,500 votes. The reason given me? Latinos don't vote. Yes, I wondered if the political machine is just not ready for a 6'4" Mexicaned café to join the elected elite. As a good Mexican, I have always adapted, fatallisticly, as is my, our, nature. Yes, I have always wondered if a caféless, tallless, USAless life would have been different. Yes. I think so. But this one's mine, and I'll keep it. So, what I have been doing is writing, and reading, kilos of words, from the outside looking in. It's been a two year plus weekly column, with what I've observed, with a café Latino consciousness. Some love it and learn from it. Others hate it and have told me to take my culo prieto back to México. Hey, is life wonderful or what? Hope you agree. Live on!

Chat Room & other Latino Plays.
Leo Cabranes-Grant. ISBN: 978-0-9796457-5-4 $22.95

"It gives me great pleasure to introduce Floricanto's New Series: Latino GLBT works. In this edition, we have "The Chat Room and Other Latino Plays" which explores the complexities of Latino gay life through characters and events that challenge our expectations in both funny and disturbing ways. Several closeted men meet in a public space to flirt with each other, but end up discussing the joys and pains of fatherhood. A bisexual man surprises his gay partner with an unusual birthday gift: a Puerto Rican. A Latino-Rican decides to pursue a chat room date with a mysterious man that slowly takes over his apartment and even brings a woman in. All three plays are an invitation to revise our values and to experiment with new identities. " Carlos T Mock, MD "...That's one very important reason why this new line from Floricanto Press exists: to provide Latinos/as and other readers, writers, and interviewers with GLBT writers of quality who will provide significant work about the Latino-American gay experience. Writers like Leo Cabranes, whose plays Floricanto is putting out, in effect, leading the way. Leo addresses the issue: what does it mean to be a Latino-American in the U.S? How does the color of your skin, or your accent, or any of a dozen of perceived differences affect not only how you may be treated-demonized, vilified, adored, iconized-but also how you come to perceive yourself? And how does that change who you become?

In Mortality, the changing and changeable nature of Latino American GLBT identity becomes a toy played with by the characters and the author to express and illuminate the underlying anxiety that this topic always incites. And we've not yet begun to explore other themes of this writing: machismo versus homosexuality, male versus female, and how or even why that should alter to catch up to the rest of the world. Or the role of the various religions-Catholicism versus Santeria for example-that are touched upon in these works. So much to read. So much to think of. Meanwhile welcome to this new line of Floricanto gay Hispanic books. I hope you enjoy the work, as much as I've enjoyed it." Felice Picano

Papi Chulo . Dr. Carlos T. Mock. ISBN Complete: 978-0-9796457-0-9 $24.95

"If self-identity is a crucial issue in this literature, then national identity is what Carlos Mock addresses; and Papi Chulo, actually is the story of a country as seen through the eyes and lives of three strong women of several generations. For Carlos Mock, the theme is felt so strongly that it must be openly expressed. "To Puerto Ricans, I've become an American. But to Americans of Puerto Rican descent, I'm insufficiently Puerto Rican because I've not undergone the years of prejudice they have." So the question becomes, who are any of these characters, these authors, these people? And we've not yet begun to explore other themes of this writing: machismo versus homosexuality, male versus female, and how or even why that should alter to catch up to the rest of the world. Or the role of the various religions-Catholicism versus Santeria for example-that permeates in the novel. So much to read. So much to think of. Meanwhile welcome to this new line of Floricanto gay Hispanic books. I hope you enjoy the work, as much as I've enjoyed it." Felice Picano

Dr. Carlos Mock was born in San Juan, PR in 1956. After a career in Medicine, he turned to literature. Papi Chulo is his third novel. He currently edits Floricanto's LGBT Latino series

Diversity: Mestizos, Latinos and the Promise of Possibilities. By Amardo Rodríguez. 978-0-915745-92-0 $18.95. 152 pages

This book is about the hope that resides in brown, the color of creation. It defines brown ideologically rather than racially. That is, brown is about peoples who are increasingly defying the borders of ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, and race that limit imagination and possibility through various anxieties, insecurities, and paranoia that make us afraid of the world's ambiguity, mystery, and complexity and, in so doing, make us afraid of our differences. It is about peoples who are of borderlands-conceptual, communicational, relational, communal, theoretical, and cultural spaces, such as Spanglish and Ozomatli, which are devoted to possibility. Thus in a world where too many believe in a coming clash of civilizations and that Latino immigration poses the most serious threat to the prosperity of the U.S., this book introduces and expounds on various theoretical notions that make for new visions of the world and ultimately new ways of being the world.

La Gringa
by Pedro Martínez. ISBN: 978-0-915745-94-4. 428 pgs. $25.95

Joe García, a Marine Colonel and childhood friend devoted to the President, La Gringa is also told from multiple points of view that push at the edges of literary tradition.

The deciphering of the Da Vinci Code discovered Jade Stewart as the descendent of the Davidic Dynasty. Her existence threatens the legitimacy of Christian orthodoxy, and she is anathema to the Christian fundamentalists. Beautiful, brilliant and single, she is a controversial and charismatic President at a time of great change in America, including a schism between the American Catholic Church and the Vatican, the admission of English speaking Canada into the United States, and the political emergence of the Mexican-American community. Her election to the Presidency in 2008 is carried on the brown backs of Chicanos in Texas and California.

By the age of fifteen Jade Stewart was uncontrollable, and her wealthy, widowed father, David Stewart, takes her from the family estate in New York to his ranch in South Texas. In Laredo Jade Stewart becomes involved with Beto Guerra, a Chicano mix of Elvis and James Dean. At the age of seventeen, Jade Stewart has a child out of wedlock by Beto Guerra who had enlisted in the Marines and not returned from the wars of the Middle East. The day after the child_s birth, David Stewart tells Jade that her baby boy had died. After her election eighteen years later, President Stewart_s enemies, the terrorist Christian Militias, steal the records of her child_s birth and presumed death. Threatening to charge that the President had had an abortion, they attempt to blackmail her. The President sends Joe García to Laredo to recover the evidence that her child had died the day after birth. Embedded with compelling characters from across the spectrum of the American narrative, La Gringa is an imaginative and disturbing vision of what the future may bring. Sprung tightly by metaphor at the beginning, the plot springs to a violent conclusion, as Joe Garcia follows a trail that skirts taboo, tests his loyalty to the Anglo America of Jade Stewart, and careens towards Monarchy.

Soul Twins: A Latino Journey From The Edge To Self-redemption. By Oscar Vega Romero. ISBN 978-0-915745-93-7. $22.95 162 pages.

Oscar Vega Romero was born and raised in Mexico. He was the second child in a family of six sons and a daughter. His parents, a hard-working laborer father and a home-maker mother, impressed upon him the importance of education and setting a good example. Romero immigrated to the United States in 1998. He is a videographer, an artist, and a writer who uses his artistic talents to teach, entertain, and make others more aware of their hidden potential.

NEW
Latina Mistress.
By R.F. Sánchez 978-0-915745-91-3. 332 pgs. $24.95

This story is about young and pretty illegal alien women in El Paso, Texas, who unknowingly fall or conveniently acquiesce to the sexual demands of their male employers, who most happen to be Anglo Americans. Much what has been written about El Paso and the southwest is about its history, its settlers, its movers and its heroes. Latina Mistress, however, is about ordinary people, illegal aliens, their loves, hates, beliefs, and more importantly their circumstances. The events which take place in the novel intersect the Hispanic and Anglo worlds, with their own good and evil characters. This novel follows the long tradition of historical fiction in the sense that all the anecdotes told here are actually true, although the names have been changed to protect the guilty. The author gathered these very human stories through years of observation as well as personal experience and much research. The author and his wife, Helen, actually knew personally Berta, one of the tragic heroines of this novel. He also interviewed scores of males and females of both cultures attesting to the accuracy of the story. What is a young and beautiful illegal alien to do to survive two alien worlds, the Hispanic and Anglo worlds, with their own good and evil characters? The answer is shivering in its clarity: whatever is required. This novel depicts the dramatic lives of two beautiful sisters, both illegal aliens, and how some people take advantage of their weakness and their sex. In this sense this novel is a classic tale of what has always occurred with the disadvantaged all along; the powerful taking advantage of the weaker and more disadvantaged members of society. Although the novel starts with the arrival of the two pretty young women in the United States, dramatic events unleashed, which change the lives of these women. Some of these circumstances are simply traumatic, others are downright heart-breaking, and some others are happy events, which they must undergo before setting roots in this country. As in real life, not every immigrant coming to the United States makes it, in this novel; Rosario did, but not her sister, Berta. Some characters in this novel are truly loveable, others quite detestable; all nevertheless are quite human. The reader weeps at times, is angry at times, rejoices at times, but at the close you will find a new meaning for what is meant for a Latina Mistress.


Amazon.com Bestseller!!!

NEW
Mosaic Virus.
By Carlos T. Mock, M.D. 9780915745798 $24.95

It is 1983. In Rome, Cardinal Siri, the most powerful Cardinal in the Vatican, summons a young Jesuit priest and assigns him a grave and urgent task. The Vatican has been keeping secret an epidemic of deaths among priests in the northeastern United States. Father Javier Barraza must determine how and why they are dying-and whether a suspected international conspiracy against the Holy Roman Church is coming to fruition. Barraza is an Argentinean who has risen swiftly through the ranks to the post of Devil's Advocate-an investigator of candidates for sainthood. In his new assignment, his path immediately intersects with Lillian Davis-Lodge, a special agent with the FBI, and a compelling figure from Barraza's past. The reappearance of Lillian is more than mere coincidence; she is far from the "special agent" she claims to be. She occupies the highest echelons of power in the United States, with full access to information and influence. Secrets and spies inhabit the subterranean world of the Church just as they do the government of the United States, and a disturbing trail of evidence strongly indicates to Barraza that his Church may be complicit in what he has been assigned to investigate. Set in the arcane, yet alluring world of the Vatican, The Mosaic Virus will grip you in its terrifyingly-true-to-life tale of secrets, sex and violence. At the end, you'll pray that it's only fiction. Carlos Mock's maiden voyage proves he is already a master storyteller.

NEW
Notes From Exile. By T.M. Spooner. 978-0-915745-89-0 302 pgs. $22.95

Rich in language and imagery, Notes from Exile is a skillfully crafted novel. A blend of humor and drama thread this tale, concluding in what can best be described as a haunting modern tragedy. Struggles both large and small remind us of human frailties and how in the final analysis, we go it alone. For its wit and passion, this novel should not be missed! Mexico has long been a land of enchantment and mystery, a place where more than one foreigner has sought refuge, fleeing real or imagined demons. In a quaint village along the shores of Lake Chapala, two recent college graduates join two men living in self-imposed exile. One, a journalist and jaded philosopher is escaping an inherited family destiny; the other, a British combat veteran is fleeing what many viewed an unnecessary war. Notes from Exile is a venerable creation, containing humor, love, and sorrow - each in their own time and measure, all ingredients for a story of escape and hope. Through the novel we learn, often harshly, how each one of us is responsible for defining our destiny. The dilemma is that while some will succeed, others will tragically fail. Excerpt from Notes from Exile - In the vigilant distance, the jacaranda trees and the African tulips remained still and breathless. The long, fragile egrets waded in the muddy shores of the great lake. Lirio acuático, water hyacinth, and tules, water rushes, nursed in the shallow water, their roots a web of thickness and lust. The lake was sick, dying of a disease called neglect. The mountains nestled beside it, powerless to heal, and the long, loping line of the woman cradled it in her lap. She had bravely turned to face the deprivation. Fishers, naked to the waist, cast their wide nets, each harvest more meager. What a disease this thing called neglect.

New
Latina Instinct.
By Michel Estrada. Translated by Robert Nasatir. ISBN:978-0-915745-71-5. $24.95

In Michel Estrada's Latina Instinct, Carmen leaves her modest life in rural Pinar del Río to attend the University of Havana. When she gets there, she confronts the harsh reality of contemporary Cuban life. Latina Instinct is an exceptional document of daily life in today's Havana, faithfully recording the challenging existence of university students struggling to make the grade. Before she can learn from her trials, Carmen must mature amidst the dangerous and complex streets of Havana. Michele Estrada's novel offers the first honest and riveting glance to present-day Cuban urban life.

She attends the University to study computer science but the politics of academic life and the demands of school are quickly upstaged by the excitement and danger of Havana. She rooms with a group of experienced students who teach her how to get along: studious Paula, playful Dunia, naïve Monica, and Lili, the free-spirit. And the men in Carmen_s life are equally important: Arturo, the womanizing fifth-year student, and Sebastián, the debonair Spanish businessman. When Carmen first meets them, she is gullible, but each teaches her a valuable lesson by example, and they are not always good examples. She learns about survival, both at school and in the city, but the most important lessons are those that she can only learn on her own.
Over the course of a year, Carmen encounters good and bad relationships, short-lived and lasting friendships. Her innocence leads her into difficult situations, but her wits, and a little luck, get her out of them. Along the way, Carmen changes from an innocent country girl thrown into the big city to an experienced and savvy young woman equipped to face the challenges of present-day Cuba.

New
Latina Icons: Iconos Femeninos Latinos e hispanoamericanos.
Edited by María Claudia André.La Mujer Latina Series ISBN: 978-0-915745-85-2. $26.95

These articles, written by well-known Latin Americanists, many of them Latinos themselves, reflect a most revealing landscape of iconization of these women ranging from religious, political, and popular sectors. These figures help us understand the complex discursive process of the creation of popular female images, and the influence that institutions and cultural traditions play in their creation. La Malinche, the movie actress María Félix, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, María Ilonza, Frida Khalo, Selena, Yemayá, Carmen Miranda, and Malena, the woman object of a most notable Tango, are among the figures discussed in this highly recommended book.

Esta colección de ensayos explora los procesos de representación y de iconización de algunas de las figuras femeninas más prominentes de América Latina. En ella se intenta definir qué significado tienen estas figuras dentro del contexto popular y determinar cuál es la función que desempeñan en la construcción de una identidad colectiva e individual. Los ensayos aquí incluidos presentan un revelador panorama sobre las múltiples articulaciones entre lo religioso, lo político y lo popular que nos permite vislumbrar no sólo la compleja red discursiva que circula a través de los diversos medios de producción cultural, sino también establecer el nivel de participación e influencia que ejercen de los organismos institucionales en la construcción de símbolos, imágenes y tradiciones culturales. La Malinche, la actriz del cine María Félix, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, María Ilonza, Frida Khalo, Selena, Yamayá, Carmen Miranda, y Malena, la mujer centro del tango mas famoso escrito, son las figuras femeninas aquí discutidas extensivamente en este extraordinario libro.

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Lisa Alvarado

Ulises Silva, Tragical Mirth, and Pushing the Envelope

I recently posted an article about a piece of speculative fiction, Solstice. It's a novel that's sharp-edged, haunting, and has some kick ass-heroines.

The following is a conversation with Ulises Silva, its author, and the founder of an independent press, Tragical Mirth Publishing.

(If you missed my piece, you can read it here.)


1. Tell me about the genesis of Tragical Mirth Publishing. Do you see yourself as a niche publisher? If so, what do you feel are the strengths of that? The downside?

Tragical Mirth Publishing is the independent publishing house I established in order to self-publish Solstice in 2007. I took the dreaded self-publishing route primarily for creative control.

After all, one of the earlier comments I got on an earlier draft of Solstice was that the characters’ names (i.e., Itztli, Jai Lin) were too difficult and different for most audiences, and that I should change them. I think that’s what I feared the most about going through a traditional publisher—that they’d want to change the characters’ ethnicities and names in order to make them more commercially appealing. That would have defeated the purpose of writing this story. So I took the chance and created Tragical Mirth to self-publish, and it’s a gamble that’s surprisingly paid off. Despite it being a self-published book, Solstice received positive reviews in Booklist, Library Journal, SciFiNow magazine, and now here at La Bloga. I see TMP as a niche publisher in the sense that I want to focus on giving authors of color an entry into the crowded literary marketplace. While I’mnot yet ready to publish other writers, I do hope to eventually start working with authors of color and let them tell the stories they want to tell.

I want them to see TMP as an alternative to the big publishers that seem naturally inclined toward labeling anything written by us as Urban Fiction or what have you. I think that focus on letting writers of colors tell the kinds of stories they want to tell is our greatest strength. Hopefully, down the line, TMP will be a very viable publisher with a full roster of good and promising writers of color. The downside, of course, is that TMP is an independent publisher, and not currently set up to publish anything. And, assuming I can ever get to the point where I can publish other people’s works, writers will still need to temper their expectations. I doubt we’ll ever be about giving someone a $10,000 advance and promise to get their book into every top review magazine and best-selling list. But if a writer is willing to work with us and be willing to take some of the risks with us, then hopefully we can accomplish something special. And considering the unexpected success of Solstice, I truly believe we can achieve anything.

2. Your novel is a piece of speculative fiction. How does that sync up with popular ideas of 'Latino/Chicano' fiction?

A lot of ‘Latino/Chicano’ fiction is based on telling stories from our historically marginalized point of view. We tell stories that, while familiar to Latinos, might seem alien to most everyone else. They’re stories about growing up as hyphenated Americans, about Latino/Chicano political activism, about all our experiences on the fringes of mainstream American consciousness.

They’re about telling the stories no one else can or cares to tell. Solstice, although grounded in speculative fiction, is deeply influenced by this aspect of Latino/Chicano writing. The notion that Scribes can use the English written word to literally manipulate reality is based on my belief that mainstream media has the power to invent our reality and historical awareness (or, in some cases, efface it altogether).

So it’s no coincidence that the Editors tasked with watching over these Scribes are all people of color, people who operate in the shadows and whose native languages serve as a defense against Scribes. Solstice’s protagonist, Io, is a Mexican-Japanese anti-heroine. She’s the best of The Editors, but she moonlights as a vigilante, and her mantra is that only cruelty can destroy cruelty.

But she’s haunted by the loss in her life, including the loss of her parents and her own normalcy. She carries a reminder of this loss with her—a copy of Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street given to her by her mother as a reminder of “where she came from.” Although her character is adrift at the start of the story—caught between two distinct ethnic identities, occupying the fringes of common law, trapped in the purgatory that is her own aimless vigilantism—it’s her mother’s book that keeps her oriented, even if she doesn’t know it.

And, of course, there’s Nadie, the novel’s antagonist. She’s the Scribe who decides that humanity is irreparably corrupt and destructive and must therefore be exterminated. But she wants the world to know why it’s being destroyed, which is why she sets out to tell a story—in her own unique way—that recounts history’s many unpunished crimes, including the horrors of colonialism. It’s one of the book’s ironies that this young girl whose name means "no one" is the one who brings these crimes to light and issues her final judgment.

3. In Solstice, you create a world similar to Dick's Blade Runner. Talk about that as a landscape for your characters, and the decision to pit Scribes and Editors against each other as the central theme.

The story is set in an alternate near future where the U.S.’ power and influence have eroded following three catastrophic military ventures (there are vague references throughout to Iraq, Iran, and Taiwan). I wanted the story’s landscape to present an uncanny glimpse into a foreseeable future, where government corruption has gone unchecked thanks to stolen elections, interest groups, and widespread apathy. Part of this landscape, of course, are Scribes, people with the power to make whatever story they write come true. Scribes are meant to reflect the notion that the written word, in the hands of certain people, can create reality. We see it in history books, of course. How many of us have heard that it was Mexico that provoked the war of 1846 -- a war Americans call the Mexican War and that Mexicans call La Invasion Norteamericana?

But consider this also: If we think on the ways mainstream media helped the current administration launch its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and how they invented for all of us the reality of Iraq’s nuclear stockpiles and willingness to use them against us, then we can see that the written word really does have power. It’s no coincidence that I make references throughout to a Scribe named Don Poinsettia, a Scribe Io takes down with the help of a Chinese Scribe, Xiu Mei Xiang. Poinsettia is a Murdoch/Rove figure who’s used his powers and his MIX media empire for personal gain.

The suggestion is that he single-handedly brought about the U.S.’ downfall. I actually plan a prequel to Solstice that will focus on him and Io’s attempt to hunt him down. She’s the top Editor, after all. Editors are, in essence, a representation of post-colonial theory. So much of what Latinos and other writers of color do is write the stories that colonial and mainstream texts have skipped or effaced. I wanted the Editors—all people of color whose native languages serve as a defense against a Scribe’s powers—to represent that ongoing struggle.

4. Solstice is populated by strong female characters, outside the 'norm.' Can you share what motivated you and what you hope you engender in the reader with that choice?

It really began with my mother, a strong Mexican woman who never backs down from any fight, and who always taught me to respect women’s rights and equalities.

From a very early age, she let me see the inherent ludicrousness of the machismo that was (and perhaps still is) rampant in Mexico and Latin America. I remember seeing Aliens for the first time, and seeing the Ripley and Vazquez characters in action, and being totally awestruck by them.

I think that was the first time that I saw a female character that kicked butt with the best male characters, and the first time I started to ask myself why we didn’t see more characters like them in movies. We’ve all seen male action heroes, but not nearly enough female ones, at least not many that weren’t just Barbies with guns (e.g., Lara Croft). I’ve always believed that, as a writer, you should embrace the control the written word offers you. As writers, we can tell whatever stories we want with whatever characters we want. That’s why, when it came time to start writing my stories, I always featured a strong female lead, because those were the kinds that I always appreciated the most.

With Solstice, I saw an opportunity to create Io, a heroine who’s very strong, very independent, and not just a sexualized, hot-blooded LatinAsian woman bowing down to stereotypes. I wanted her to have real layers, real depth, and real flaws. And despite her troubled beginning (she really is a monster at first), I wanted readers to sympathize with her plight, and appreciate her eventual redemption. Maybe more importantly, I wanted people to read her and the rest of the characters, and say to themselves, “why aren’t there more characters like these in books and film?” I wanted to give Latino/a and Asian audiences a set of strong central characters they could appreciate and even embrace. And I wanted to show other audiences that a Latina/Asian woman could have other roles than the ones people are used to seeing them in.

5. What are the themes you find yourself returning to? What's their significance personally and creatively.

Creatively, I’m fascinated with end-of-the-world scenarios, maybe too much for my own good. I guess, growing up in the 80s and thinking that the Emergency Broadcast Network was going to come on at any moment, I thought the end of the world could really happen. So I migrated to these kinds of stories. I was always fascinated with the human response to apocalypse, and especially how the media would react and spin stories if an end-of-the-world scenario began to unfold. That’s why there are many instances in Solstice where Io and her companions are listening to the radio or watching TV; they’re forced to watch the horrors of Nadie’s actions through the filters of network news and talk shows. Personally, I’m just as adamant about writing stories featuring people that look and act like us. Growing up, I didn’t see a whole lot of Latino/a protagonists that were strong or three-dimensional or even law-abiding.

So it’s important to me, as a Latino writer, to create characters we can relate to. Because I genuinely feel that our people, especially our younger audiences, still don’t have a whole lot of positive portrayals in mainstream media to inspire them. There aren’t enough characters like us out there that make us think we can be heroes or awe-inspiring or even strong. I’m just one person, but I make it a point to always feature strong, central Latino/a characters in all my fiction. With Solstice, it’s Io.

With my next novel, Inventing Vazquez, it’s a Chicana named Liliana Vazquez. With my next speculative fiction novel, The Mourning Syndrome, it’ll be a Chicana writer named Clara Solis. That will always be my goal: to have real characters that we, as Latino/as, can readily identify with, and maybe even be inspired by.

6. Share with Bloga readers where you hope to take them with Inventing Vazquez.

From the writer that brought you Solstice, a dark, apocalyptic novel, comes…a light-hearted comedic satire. That’s going to be a nightmare to try and market, but… In any event, Inventing Vazquez is my new novel (with a release date sometime late 2008 or early 2009) that takes
on an issue very important to me: the (mis)portrayal of Latino/as in American cinema. Like I said before, I don’t think our people have a lot of positive examples to look up to in film. Most of the time, we’re portrayed as gang members, or domestic servants, or crime victims. And even when films do cast Latino/as, half the time they play non-Latino roles. It’s like America Ferrerra said in Ugly Betty: "Mexicans don’t have action heroes. All we have is a fast little rodent."

So Inventing Vazquez is my little critique of the whole industry. (As an aside, even the title of the book is in reference to the Vazquez character from Aliens. Yes, the same one I mentioned earlier. I eventually learned that the actress wasn’t even Latina; it was a non-Latina actress with brown contact lenses, bronzed skin, and a fake accent. I was so discouraged, because for so long, I’d really liked that character and what I thought she represented.)

The story centers around Liliana Vazquez, a mousy Chicana who’s hired by a major film studio to serve as a “Hispanic Sensitivity Issues Consultant” following the widespread outrage among Latino/as over a recent film. She’s hired to read scripts and alert the studio if she thinks it’s going to offend Latino/a viewers, but she comes to realize that the position is a token one. She, like the Asian Sensitivity Issues Consultant and the Arab Sensitivity Issues Consultant (a Sikh man), is just a PR gimmick.

And although she starts off as soft-spoken and mousy (she’s ashamed of her voice because it’s so girly despite her being 29), she has to find her voice—literally and figuratively. The story is about her finding a way to make her voice heard among people who don’t want to hear it. It’s a comedic satire, so I hope to make audiences laugh. But I also hope to get people to think about the issues I raise. Because although the films mentioned in the book are loosely based on real-life films (e.g., “Empire of Blood” instead of “Apocalypto”), some of them should resonate with the audience (i.e., “yeah, I can see them making a movie like that”) despite being so off-the-wall silly (like one film, “Latin Lover,” about a guy that gets women to fall for him when he bites into a magical habañero pepper).

7. Where would you like to see Tragical Mirth in ten years? Where would you like to see yourself?

Ideally, I’d like Tragical Mirth Publishing to have a full roster of writers of color, and a full line of good books that tell good stories about us. And I’d like to be able to work with writers, and give them the kind of encouragement and feedback they’ll need to keep writing. Because I genuinely believe that people of color, especially Latino/as, need to write more, and we need to start creating the kinds of stories and characters that mainstream media won’t. So hopefully, with enough lucky bounces and maybe some more commercial success with Solstice and my future novels, I can work toward this.

As for myself, writing is what I love, so I plan to keep writing. I always said that to simply publish Solstice and present it to my family as mygift to them (because nothing says “I love you, mom, dad, and brother” like a novel about the end of the world) was my only goal; anything after that would be gravy. So I’m just enjoying the ride, and embracing the joy that is writing fiction. Hopefully, in 10 years, I will have published a few more: Inventing Vazquez, The Mourning Syndrome, a sequel to Solstice, and maybe one or two more. And I genuinely hope that, by then, the kinds of characters I like to feature won’t be ‘outside the norm’ anymore.

8. Tell us something not in the official bio.

Some things that may or may not be true about me:

• I stay up until 2 a.m. every night writing, drawing, or watching horror films. This despite the fact that I have to be at work at 8:30 a.m. I started my writing ‘career’ in earnest with an Anime fanfic entitled, Nightmares in the Apocalypse, which was so horrid and badly written but nonetheless made me somewhat popular among a small group of teenage readers.
• I can make a mean guacamole.
• I write music on the side, and play bass guitar, electric guitar, and drums. All at once. Really.
• I’ve been in a punk band, am currently in a blues band, and am now trying to form an indie rock band.
• I draw pictures of my main characters to get a sense of who they are and what they look like. And all these pictures are done in Anime style.
• I don’t do windows.
• Having grown up in NYC, I naturally root for the Detroit Tigers, the Arizona Cardinals, the Miami Dolphins, and the Buffalo Sabres.
• I hate powdered laundry detergent.
• Having grown up in NYC, the city I most want to live in is San Francisco, or Chicago, or Toronto. Which is why I’m in Michigan.
• Being Mexican-American, naturally, my favorite kind of music is indie rock and Japanese rock.
• I was actually a terrible grad student, probably because I spent all my time writing instead of studying.
• Being Mexican-American, my favorite film of all time, naturally, is Lost in Translation.

Tragical Mirth Publications -- http://www.verytragicalmirth.com/index.htm

Solstice -- http://www.verytragicalmirth.com/solstice.htm

Lisa Alvarado

On Writing for Children

By René Colato Laínez

MAKING A LONG STORY SHORT

In children’s stories every word counts. But some times there is a lot of information to tell, information that you feel is worth telling. How are you going to do it with out using so many words? How to tell the short economic version instead of the long version? How are you going to cover a lot of ground quickly and move the story along? Well, you can use the technique MAKING A LONG STORY SHORT. It consists in writing a long event into a single sentence.

In the children’s book THE RELATIVES CAME, the relatives are coming all the way from Virginia. Author, Cynthia Rylant, makes the traveling part of the trip pass very quickly in this single sentence.

"So they drank up all their pop and ate up all their crackers and traveled up all those miles until finally they pulled into our yard."

By connecting “and's”, the author makes this move quickly in the story, letting a lot happen in one sentence. Because Rylant's main point in the story is for the relatives to meet and have a great time, she gets the whole trip in one sentence and gets those relatives to their destination quickly. Now Rylant is ready to tell their relative’s adventures.

Cynthia Rylant uses this technique again in her young adult novel I HAD SEEN CASTLES. John Dante is a soldier during the Second World War. When the war ends, he is ready to come home. Rylant puts the entire outcome of the war in one sentence.

"After the war ended, America made Germany its friend, Russia its enemy, and it helped rebuild Japan."

This time instead of connecting “and's”, she uses commas. In only a single sentence, she has saved many words. She would have used a page to describe what happened to Germany, Russia and Japan after the war. Rylant is making a long story short by using a single sentence instead of three pages.

***

I use this technique a lot in my own writing. On my manuscript in progress about the Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, I tell the story on how Romero became a hero and martyr for the Salvadoran community. The first pages of the story are about Romero as a child and his return from Rome to El Salvador as a young priest. Romero went through many steps in order to become an archbishop but I did not have the time to go over every single step in detail. I put everything together in one single sentence:

"First, Oscar was a priest, then an auxiliary bishop, then a bishop, and finally on February 10, 1977, he became the new archbishop of El Salvador."

Now I was ready to continue with my story.

The same technique came to the rescue on my forthcoming picture book MY SHOES AND I, illustrations by Fabricio Vanden Broeck, (BOYDS MILLS PRESS/ FRONT STREET, 2009). MY SHOES AND I is about a boy crossing three borders in order to arrive to the United States. There is a great connection between the boy and his shoes, and this connection is the heart of the story. But how was I able to put a long trip into the pages of a picture book? You guessed it. I used MAKING A LONG STORY SHORT.

"A bus, a sandwich, the first border, another bus and another sandwich, we are in Guatemala City."

I used MAKING A LONG STORY SHORT two more times in the book and in no time at all,
My young protagonist was ready to cross the last border.

By using this technique, I can save many words. I can concentrate in what is the most important event in my story and summarize in a single sentence what it is not so relevant. The trick is to put everything in one sentence that compresses time and detail.

I hope you can you this technique on your own writing.

New year, expectations & (in)certitudes

Michael Sedano

What is it about the winter holidays that I find myself reading desultory stuff, i.e. not chicana chicano novels? Last year I started the year with a review of an historical novel, Imperium, centered around my favorite Latino, the old Roman Cicero, plus a chapter from a creative non-fiction piece that didn't find a publisher.

December 07's year-ending novel was the less-than-satisfactory British thriller, Brian Freemantle's The Namedropper. Freemantle normally produces reliably readable, engagingly plotted novels. His Charlie Muffin spy series held my attention for years. Charlie’s taken his sore feet and brown shoes into anti-hero retirement. Now Freemantle brings a true antihero in Harvey Jordan, an identity thief who rips off rich guys. Harvey is a despicable character whose malevolence marks him as one of the bad guys. Yet, Freemantle has the reader rooting for Harvey to stick it to an even bigger jerk, a slimy Wall Street broker.

I almost set down the novel several times, owing to crummy proofing and a poor design that makes me claustrophobic yearning for white space. Think inkhornist and pages that smell of the lamp. Yet there's something engaging, even compelling, in a story built around the quaint concept of "criminal conversation," a euphemism for adultery, and the emotional wringer the crooked Brit Harvey is put through by North Carolina's divorce laws. Freemantle never quite gets United States English right--another editing flaw--but all told, The Namedropper's an engaging courtroom thriller and cockeyed love story worth a visit to the library. I hope your holiday reading was more profitable for you.

It's a pleasure to announce our 2008 La Bloga experience is broadening with Ann Hagman Cardinal, our recent guest columnist, beginning her every-other-Sunday regular spot on January 6, which is Three Kings Day. Ann's column features a tasty Three King's Day libation you're gonna read and want to put into your own cup, I'm sure.

Speaking of recipes, among my favorite holiday treats is Cajeta de Membrillo. Quince is a wonderful but underappreciated fruit that suffers in comparison to apples and pears, both of which it resembles. Membrillo comes off the tree fuzzy and sticky, aromatic, bitter, and hard as a rock. But add sugar, heat, patience, and Uau! Cajeta de Membrillo becomes an unforgettable confection. I gave tiny chunks to my year old granddaughter Charlotte and she wanted more. Welcome to the ranks of membrillo lovers, Charlotte! One day we'll put up a batch together.

I posted the full recipe at Read! Raza. Here's a quick look at the details:

Step 1: Get your hands on the fruit. My family grows it, but some seasons the tree is less productive.

Step 2: Clean, cook, peel, core. This year I made a flavorful agua de membrillo from the peel and core, in the offal spirit of chicano cooking: everything but the squeal.

Step 3: Add sugar and cook for hours and hours under high heat and constant stirring until the cajeta is just right.

Step 4: Test the cajeta and if it's not just right, cook it some more. If it is just right, let it sit in an oven or the sun to dry it out and let the paste turn into a toothy treat.

Step 5: Cut into rectangles and eat out of hand, or heat a quality tortilla and wrap it around a hunk of membrillo for an instant empanada sin pan. Use a tortilla de maíz and this is a completely gluten-free treat that Celiacs will find completely palatable. Use a tortilla de harina or a slice of wheat-based bread and make me jealous.

Agua de Membrillo. What a treat this is; the hit of any tamalada, especially for the kidlets and the tea-totallers. Save the peel and cores and the water you boiled the raw membrillo. Add a few sticks of canela and the lime you squeezed over the fruit to keep it from oxydizing. Add a little sugar and water to fill a big pot. Boil the heck out of it. Strain. Serve warm or chilled. Absochingaolutely delicious!

Do check out the full cajeta process description at Read! Raza and let me know if you have questions.

La Bloga's "old" regulars look forward to welcoming Ann Cardinal as the new La Bloga Bloguera. La Bloga welcomes your comments and guest column ideas. Email one of us and let us know of your interest.

So it goes, the first Tuesday of 2008. And, since I didn't receive any novels or poetry collections for Xmas, I'm open to sharing titles or volumes. Leave a comment with your recommendations, promises, or comments on comida chicana and cooking generally.
See you next week!

mvs