Mariachis, Museo, M&Ms, and More

NEW BOOKS
The following book summaries are taken from the UNM Press website -

Santa Fe Nativa: A Collection of Nuevomexicano Writing
Rosalie C. Otero, A. Gabriel Melendez, Enrique R. Lamadrid
University of New Mexico Press, November, 2009

The belief that land is sacred, embodying the memory and inheritance of those who sacrificed to settle it, is common among New Mexican Hispanos, or Nuevomexicanos, and Santa Fe serves as their unique geographic and symbolic center. The city will celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of its founding in 2010 and this anthology honors its role as the foundation of New Mexican Hispanic culture.

Divided into nine parts, this collection reflects the displacement that many Hispanos feel having watched their hometown transform into a tourist and art Mecca. Parts I and II pay homage to Santa Fe through the sentiment that Hispano writers express for the city. Parts III and IV provide historical maps for places that have been reconstructed or obliterated by development, while Part V is dedicated to Santa Fe's distinctive neighborhoods. Parts VI and VII express nostalgia for traditional lifeways. Part VIII illustrates the spirit of Santa Fe and Part IX reflects on traditions that stand the test of time.

Rosalie C. Otero is the director of the University Honors Program, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and the associate dean of University College. She has written several book chapters, articles, and short fiction.

A. Gabriel Meléndez is professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Enrique R. Lamadrid is a literary folklorist and cultural historian in the University of New Mexico's Department of Spanish and Portuguese. In 2005, he was awarded the Americo Paredes Prize by the American Folklore Society in recognition of his work as a cultural activist.


Juan and the Jackalope: A Children's Book in Verse
Rudolfo Anaya
Amy Cordova , Illustrator
University of New Mexico Press, November, 2009

When Rosita, the loveliest gal in the Pecos River Valley, offers her delicious rhubarb pie as first prize for the Great Grasshopper Race, a thousand love-struck vaqueros line up for the competition. Of course everyone believes that the legendary cowboy Pecos Bill, riding his giant grasshopper, Hoppy, is a shoo-in for the grand prize. Sure enough, Bill and Hoppy give an impressive performance, crisscrossing the Southwest in a raucous ride. But young Juan, who is hopelessly in love with Rosita, astonishes them all when he and Jack the Jackalope take a miraculous ride around the world and across the Milky Way. The daring pair return, covered in stardust, to claim the beautiful Rosita and her delicious pie.

Set in New Mexico, Anaya's fanciful story, coupled with Amy Córdova's vivid illustrations, brings the tradition of Southwestern tall tales to a new generation of young readers.

Ages 6 and up

Rudolfo Anaya, widely acclaimed as one of the founders of modern Chicano literature, is professor emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico. Anaya was presented with the National Medal of Arts for literature in 2001 and his novel Alburquerque (the city's original Spanish spelling) won the PEN Center West Award for Fiction. He has also received the Premio Quinto Sol, the national Chicano literary award, the American Book Award from The Before Columbus Foundation, the Mexican Medal of Friendship from the Mexican Consulate, and the Western Literature Association's Distinguished Achievement Award. He is best known for the classic Bless Me Ultima.

Amy Cordova lives in Taos, New Mexico, where she is co-owner of her own gallery, Enger-Cordova Fine Art. She has illustrated many children's books and teaches art to elementary school children at the Yaxche Learning Center.


NEW DIRECTOR AT MUSEO DE LAS AMERICAS
The Museo de las Américas (Museo) Board of Trustees announced that Maruca Salazar has been selected as the new executive director. Additionally, David Dadone, former director of operations for the Museo, has been promoted to deputy director. Salazar will assume the position in July.

We are delighted that Maruca Salazar will be leading the Museo de las Américas as the new Executive Director, stated George Martinez, Board president. She comes to us with a wealth of artistic, administrative, and curatorial experience. Furthermore, Maruca's relationships with teachers and artists throughout the region will greatly assist us in increasing the scope and reach of our education programs, while expanding our artistic vision.

Prior to joining the Museo, Salazar served as the arts coordinator and arts staff developer for Denver Public Schools. During her tenure, Salazar developed an integrated arts education program, and was responsible for the development and stewardship of the $6.5 million arts budget. She holds a Master's of Arts in Multicultural Education from the University of Colorado, Denver; and a Bachelor's of Arts in Multicultural Education from the University of Veracruz, Mexico.

This is the opportunity of a lifetime and a true honor, stated Salazar. As an artist and educator, as well as a long time supporter and participant of the Museo de las Américas, I am committed to advancing Museo's legacy of learning and sharing.

A longtime advocate for the arts, Salazar is a founding member and supporter of the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, XicanIndie Film Festival, Pirate Gallery, and the Museo de las Américas. As a Visual Artist she has exhibited at local museums and galleries, including the Museo and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver.

This is an exciting time for the Museo, stated Martinez. The Board and staff are confident that Maruca will lead the Museo to new and exciting places, and cement our place as a cornerstone of Denver and the West's cultural community.

About the Museo de las Américas
Museo de las Américas (Museo) is the Rocky Mountain region's foremost museum dedicated to educating its community about the diversity of Latino Americano art and culture from ancient to contemporary. The Museo presents exhibitions and education programs that offer new views on Latin American art, advancing the role of Latino artists in the global cultural dialogue, and becoming a cultural hub for the local, national, and global community. The museum is centrally located in the historic Santa Fe Arts District - one of Denver's oldest Latino neighborhoods - at 861 Santa Fe Drive. For more information, please visit: www.museo.org.

Congratulations to Maruca! She's a great fit for the Museo.


HIT LIST READING AND SIGNING AT THE TATTERED COVER
On May 21, Mario Acevedo and I read and signed Hit List at the Tattered Cover here in Denver. We promoted the event as the M&M show and free M&M cookies were given to all who attended. I know that Mario and I had a good time and we think our audience did too. We sold a good number of books and read from our stories in the collection. Mario also read from Shortcut to the Moon by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, a prime example of the terrific writing that can be found in this book. Here's a bit from Alicia's story:

When you're from El Paso, you get used to the rough grain of the wind. The leaves turn piss yellow or brittle brown in the fall, not every shade of red and gold and purple, and the winter wind doesn't frostbite your thighs or turn your tears to icicles. In Iowa City, you learn the meaning of seasons. At the Black Angel Cemetery, where I spent untold hours practicing Iowa Writing Workshop techniques that felt like they were making me change from being left-handed to right-handed, the colored leaves of oaks and maples stood out among the headstones like fiery panes of stained glass. What I loved most about that year in Iowa, other than the cornfields and the blizzards and the daffodils blooming under the snow and the juicy double cheeseburgers at George's Bar, was getting blitzed on Cuervo and Colombian with my cousin Ivon in all-night, heart-to-heart sessions that we called "shortcuts to the moon."

I read from A.E. Roman' s Under the Bridge, a story that introduces Chico Santana, the private investigator that plays a lead role in Roman's debut novel, Chinatown Angel. You may recall that I interviewed Roman for La Bloga just before his book came out this past March. The book is great and you should pick it up if you are any kind of reader who appreciates exciting fiction, crime or otherwise. Here's part of what I read to the Tattered Cover audience:

My name is Chico Santana. I'm a private investigator. First off, I'm a nice guy, My wife Ramona says so, and she's part Haitian and part Dominican, so it must be true.

If you look closely at my nose, you can tell it's been broken twice. And if you pay attention to word on the street, you'll come to understand that the men who broke my nose are no longer eating anything that won't flow up a straw. I'm not a tough guy. A lot of tough guys are six feet under. I'm just lucky.

And I'm also not one of those PIs that sit at a desk with his feet up , waiting for his bosses ... to throw him a bone. Nor am I one of those types who are always bragging how close they can come to your chin without hitting you. I have no .38, but I do have a license to bust your ass, and if I have to, I will bust your ass and maybe even the ass of somebody you love.

Mario's story leads off the collection. Oh, Yeah is a short piece but it has plenty of humor, surprises, and tension to whet your appetite for the rest of the stories. My story, The Skull of Pancho Villa, features Gus Corral, a character I've grown fond of and who is starring in the novel I've just started. Here are a couple of photos from the event.

Manuel Ramos and Mario Acevedo at the Tattered Cover, May 21, 2009

Mario and Manuel sign copies of Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery

THE LINEUP

Edited by Gerald So with Patrick Shawn Bagley, R. Narvaez, and Anthony Rainone

ISSN 1945-7510 6" x 9", 36 pages, saddle-stitched $6.00

Available from Lulu.com and fine independent bookstores

Help promote The Lineup

The Lineup: Poems on Crime, Issue 02, has arrived. What does poetry have to do with crime? As Patrick Shawn Bagley says in his introduction to the latest issue of this chapbook, Poets do not ask that question. People for whom poetry is a vital part of their reading life do not ask that question. ... So why do we write crime fiction, let alone crime poetry? One may as well ask why we write -- or read -- anything at all. We do it in an attempt to understand. We do it to find some kind of meaning in events that all too often leave victims, perpetrators and everyone around them damaged or destroyed. ... Here you will find proof beyond any reasonable doubt of poetry's relevance to modern life.

Get your hands on this book and dig deep into serious, provocative images. I'm honored that my poem, The Smell of Onions, is included. The Lineup has quite a lineup of contributors: Amy MacLennan, Jennifer L. Knox, Deshant Paul, Stephen D. Rogers, Sophie Hannah, Christopher Watkins, Carol Novack, John Harvey, reed Farrel Coleman, Patrick Carrington, Karen Petersen, Janis Butler Holm. I hear that issue 03 will have Sarah Cortez as one of the editors. Sarah is the co-editor of Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery.

GUEST MUSIC REVIEW

Mariachi Classics: Mariachi Real de San Diego
Review by Flo, host of Cancion Mexicana, KUVO 89.3 fm, Denver

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but music is worth a thousand pictures. This is aptly illustrated by Mariachi Classics, a 2009 CD released by Mariachi Real of San Diego on the Mardi Gras Records label.

The CD has sixteen covers of songs that should be in the repertoire of any mariachi worth its salt. Many of the tunes evoke visions of girls in bright yellow, red, and blue swirling skirts with colorful satin ribbons in their hair. Others conjure up a snorting, prancing horse that rears up on its hind legs straddled by a charro waving his sombrero just as the Mariachi comes to a crescendo.

The table is set by the opening song, Las Mañanitas, signaling that what is coming is indeed a taste of old Mexico. In Mexico where most people follow the Catholic calendar, Las Mañanitas is traditionally sung to those celebrating the feast day of the Saint whose name they bear. In the United States, for people of Mexican heritage, no matter by how many generations or by how many miles they are distanced from Mexico, Las Mañanitas has become the “birthday” song.

All of the canciones on the CD are standards and the Mariachi Real de San Diego gives exciting renditions. A song becomes a standard by being played over and over again and in this case for decades. The songs have survived wars, crossed borders and been passed from generation to generation. Yet each time they are sung they sound as exciting as the first time but familiar enough that we know every word.

No matter how you translate it, the Mariachi Real de San Diego lives up to its name. In Spanish “real” means royal. This Mariachi’s vocal and instrumental mastery blend together seamlessly to create solid, soul-stirring renditions of these Mexican standards. If you only speak English, you’re also right - this is truly a REAL mariachi.
____________
Thanks, Flo - here's a video of Mariachi Real de San Diego

Mariachi Real de San Diego @ Yahoo! Video

Later.

National Latino Writers Conference- Videos

Thanks to Jose B Gonzalez and www.LatinoStories.com for sharing these videos with La Bloga readers.

Malin Alegria
Estrella Alvarez is turning fifteen, and she's not happy about it. For as long as she can remember, her mother has been planning an elaborate quinceañera, complete with a mariachi band, cheesy decorations, and a hideous dress. Estrella is so over it.

Reyna Grande
Dancing with Butterflies is about four women who share a love of Folklorico dancing. It was inspired by Grande's own love of Folklorico, and her desire to bring it to Latino Literature.


René Colato Laínez
Together a little boy and his grandma discover a world of language and realize that loved ones have special ways of understanding each other.


Josefina Lopez
A journalist and activist, Canela believes passion is essential to life; but lately passion seems to be in short supply. It has disappeared from her relationship with her fiancé, who is more interested in controlling her than encouraging her. It's absent from her work, where censorship and politics keep important stories from being published. And while her family is full of outspoken individuals, the only one Canela can truly call passionate is her cousin and best friend Luna, who just took her own life.


Fred Arroyo
Remember that the dream of one is the dream of everyone. Ernest is searching for a place where he can live beyond his past.


Patricia Santana
Premio Aztlan at NHCC Latino Writers Conference
Having left her much-loved San Diego barrio, Yolanda Sahagún is now living in the university dorms when a series of events—her mother dies and her father sells their home—forces her to re-examine her life.

Review: Into the Beautiful North

Luis Alberto Urrea. Into the Beautiful North. NY: Little Brown, 2009.
ISBN-10: 0316025275
ISBN-13: 978-0316025270

Michael Sedano


Don't say anything negative when I ask this question: Into the Beautiful North is one of those novels a reader will not put aside until its conclusion, ¿No?

Absolutely yes.

But then the reader will ask if Urrea's current novel is worthy of the praise heaped upon the author's notably wonderful novel, The Hummingbird's Daughter?

No. It's not.

On the other hand, Hummingbird's Daughter is an impossible work to follow; that is one superb novel. Whatever you are reading next, stop that. Go to your library or bookseller and take delivery of The   Hummingbird's Daughter. Read it. You're welcome de adelantado.

Into the Beautiful North, is not Hummingbird's Daughter. How could it be? A buddy novel, Urrea wisely sets out not to build on Hummingbird but to do something completely different. And quite well, ese, if you get what I mean, y si no, pues, no. But Into the Beautiful North is one of those funny pieces that comes along only every once in a while, so, finishing the dramatic Hummingbird, read this next one; you owe it to yourself.

Would any film fanatic compare "The Wizard of Oz", let's say, to "El Norte," or, maybe "Spanglish"? As an intellectual romp, one might. Howzabout comparing Into the Beautiful North to "The Magnificent Seven?" Now there's the delightful parallel; not mine, but Urrea's. His crew of colorful characters venture out from backwater Sinaloa to the mercilless frontera of San Diego / Tijuana, perhaps the two worst cities in the world, on a "mission from God" like los hermanos azul. 

How refreshing to discover a border crossing story that is a comedy. Not that Into the Beautiful North, is not a deadly serious border crossing story; it is. But the crossing ain't the tale, it's the cultural gaps that define the limits of these characters' experience, and infuse the plot with a sense of dread that, thankfully, Urrea holds in abeyance.

On their first crossing, they get caught. Not in a calamitous tragedy for the three teenage girls, but for their friend, Tacho, a gay vato who's assumed the role of protector and adult. Tacho gets an asskicking by assholes from the ICE. La migra, the regular tipos, are just regular good people doing a job, but these newly appointed jerks have no sense of honor. But then, Urrea sets up the beating long in advance of the mid-novel crossing.

Tacho has a lot of smarts that, owing to Mexico's extreme poverty, never had the benefit of a classroom. He's not ashamed of his sexuality, nor do his fellow villagers shun him for being himself. Outsiders, like the corrupt cops who come through selling mota to tourist surfers, could make life a misery. Tacho laughs at their hatred by taking the stereotypically gay limp-wristed posture as the name of his bar, La Mano Caida. As Tacho and the three luscious teenage girls are being processed back to TJ at the San Ysidro lock-up, he calls out the name of his business. The mensos from ICE hear Tacho wrong; they hear a terrorist organization, "Al Kaeda." It's a funny phonetic trick but also a satiric gut punch. As a literary device, it strikes me as a contrivance. The one weak element in an otherwise brilliant novel. I wonder if Urrea came up with the joke first, then forced the plot to arrive at that moment?

Ni modo. Pretend you've never read Urrea's earlier work and take Into the Beautiful North for itself. You'll laugh, breathe sighs of relief, nod your head knowingly at the deadly serious facts that rest just beneath the surface of this wonderfully comedic satire of manners, love, lust, and immigration.

Memorial Day, 2009.

Every year I struggle to defeat my sentimental nature that tends to the maudlin. This year, I lost, and sank into a green funk, staring into the faces of some soldiers I trained with back in 1969. A friend asked if I know where these vatos are today, if they lived through that year? I do not know, and I do not want to know.



The storms start out there, on Monterey Bay. Grey blue haze obscures the horizon between sea and sky. Eyes front, but the vista compels our eyes to dart left, to take in the wondrous mottled light beyond the red roofs and yellow barracks, past the sparkling white sand of the firing range. On the water, bright patches where sunlight penetrates the morning dank define the luminous swell and ebb of the tide. Darker greys wash down from the ether shouting rain! Wetness swooshes across the water, heading directly toward us. “The Daily Dozen.” Windmill stretches. Jumping jacks. Jump thrust. “United States Army Drill Number One, Exercise Number Five, everyone’s favorite, the Push Up.” We drop to the front leaning rest position and begin the four count exertion. “One, two, three, ONE, Drill Sergeant, one two three TWO, Drill Sergeant…” Peripheral vision of breathtaking beauty counterweights a boot shouting in your ear, “keep your butt down, Trainee!”

We smell the rain coming, pushing the air before it, enveloping us in cool humidity that smells wet, that raises gooseflesh. Now we hear its relentless arrival. Below us, Ft. Ord has surrendered to its drenching. Visibility zero down there in forbidden territory. We are maggots, confined to The Hill.

The first heavy drops of water strike us, a few more, more. At the order we pull our waterproof poncho from our gear, hunker down under the protective sheet. We are forty green tipi spaced dress right dress across the platoon’s PT field. The rain noise drowns out any other sound but the swirling wind pushing up from the bay. An unrelenting volume of water strikes our heads and backs. We savor these moments of privacy, alone with our own thoughts and memories, for now the Army only this dull green light and the sound of the passing squall. We feel rivulets form, tingle, and stream the length of our spine as the water courses down to the ground. We are blind; we can see only our boot toes and the corona of daylight that glows at the periphery of our waterproof poncho. Mud splashes against our now scuffed, once spit-shined combat boots. Run-off forms around our toes, puddling fashions the outlines of our leather as erosion sculpts a memory of our presence on the land.

The noise abates. The rain passes. We obey. Ponchos off. Stand tall. Monterey Bay sparkles with magical light, whales, porpoises, salmon, sardines, Steinbeck…"U.S. Army Drill Number One, Exercise Number Five. The Push Up…”

We bitched and moaned. We laughed. I hope we all lived.


So here we are, the last Tuesday of May, a Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except you are here. See you in June.

La Bloga welcomes your comments. Mouse down to the Comments counter below and Klik. If you'd like to be a La Bloga Guest Columnist, click here .

Debut poetry collection: William Archila

The Art of Exile (Bilingual Press) by William Archila

William Archila was born in Santa Ana, El Salvador, in 1968. When he was twelve, he and his family immigrated to the United States to escape the civil war that was tearing his country apart. Archila eventually became an English teacher and earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Oregon where he received the Fighting Fund Fellow Award. The award-winning poet's work has been published in many literary journals including AGNI, Blue Mesa Review, Los Angeles Review, Bilingual Review/Revista Bilingüe, Crab Orchard Review, and The Georgia Review. Archila also appears in the anthologies New to North America: Writing by Immigrants (Burning Bush Publishing, 2007), and Another City: Writing from Los Angeles (City Lights, 2001).

From the publisher:

In The Art of Exile, William Archila asks readers to engage with a subject seldom explored in American poetry: the unrest in El Salvador in the 1980s and its impact on Central American immigrants who now claim this country as home. In language that is poignant and often harrowing, the poet takes us on a journey from Santa Ana, El Salvador, to Los Angeles, California. Archila bridges race, class, metaphor, and reality with astuteness, mingling humor and pain with a skill that denigrates neither.

"A poet of the heart and head, of the personal and public, at times William Archila's poignant poems make me hear and feel an echo of Pablo Neruda and Cesar Vallejo." --From the introduction by Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize winner

Here is a poem from The Art of Exile:

"Self-Portrait with Crow"

As I punch the time-clock, I know
men will be gunned down at dawn
in a distant continent, someone
will dart into a café with a bomb nestled

in the belly, by the roadside a woman
will moan over the body of a man,
shrunken, stretched on the earth, that God
will finger the forehead of a dying country,

all of it funneled through the news on TV.
But tonight, instead of tuning in, I’m going to kneel
beside the window, recognize myself
in the croak of the crow, high above the black tree

of winter, claws hooked and rough, wings swept
back and hunched, face masked with exhaust.
I’m going to try, even if I fail, to see myself whole,
complete in the cry, in the beak of the crow.

◙ My review of Stephen Gutierrez’s new collection, Live from Fresno y Los (Bear Star Press), appeared this weekend in the El Paso Times. In part, I say of the collection:

Stephen D. Gutierrez's new book of short fiction, "Live from Fresno y Los: Stories" (Bear Star Press, $16 paperback), bears witness to the excitement and pain, exhilaration and disappointments, of growing up Chicano in Fresno and Los Angeles during the 1970s.

He renders his world in honest, eloquent brush strokes, creating stories that are simultaneously grounded in a particular culture while remaining universal in their message. He does this without sacrificing his trademark sense of humor.

You may read the entire review here. The Live from Fresno y Los may be ordered through your favorite bookstore, or online from Bear Star Press, or from Small Press Distribution. You should also take a peek at the other fine books published by Bear Star Press such as Death of a Mexican and Other Poems by Manuel Paul López.

◙ I had a wonderful time last week visiting UC Irvine to speak about Latino in Lotusland (Bilingual Press) along with two of the anthology's 34 contributors, Lisa Alvarez and Richard Mora (who contributed to the anthology under his pen name, Victorio Barragán, in honor of his grandfather). Our host was Alejandro Morales (who is also in Latinos in Lotusland), professor of Spanish and Portuguese in the School of Humanities. Many thanks to UC Irvine (students, faculty and staff) for making us feel at home.

◙ Last year, I told you about Arizona's Hispanic Flyboys 1941-1945 (Writers Club Press, 2002) by Rudolph C. Villarreal. On this Memorial Day, you might want to revisit (or visit for the first time) that post on this remarkable book that documents the heroism of our people that is too often overlooked. Click here to read the post.

◙ That’s all for now. So, in the meantime, enjoy the intervening posts from mis compadres y comadres here on La Bloga. And remember: ¡Lea un libro!

Home of the Brave

I brought my son to the Stowe Library before vacation so he could pick out some reading material. As he was looking through some books on drawing, I glanced through the young adult section. Since that is turning out to be the age group I most enjoy writing for, I read a lot of YA titles, and the library often gives a different selection than the local book store. When Carlos had finished choosing he came over to find me. There were some of the newer YA releases placed on easels on the top of the wooden cases and he reached up and pulled one down and handed it to me.

“Mom, this is great book. You have to read it.”

I glanced at the illustration of the young black boy in the cover’s bleak, snowy setting, his head leaning on a large-eyed gray cow and was intrigued. I opened it, flipped through its pages and gasped dramatically (as is usually my fashion…subtle I ain’t).

“Carlos! It’s written in verse! You know how I feel about poetry…”

“Mom, you won’t even notice it, I promise!”

Yes, we reverse roles sometimes and no, I’m not proud of my poetryphobia, but at least I listened to him and checked the book out.

I was very glad I did.

Katherine Appelgate’s touching novel, Home of the Brave is indeed written in poetic free verse, and as Carlos promised I did indeed forget that within the first few pages. It is the story of Kek, a refugee who has escaped the political unrest that plagued his native Sudan. He lost his father and his brother in the fighting and though he was separated from his mother, he has never lost hope that he will see her again. He is placed with his aunt and cousin in Minnesota (in the winter no less) and has to adapt to a different climate and culture as he mourns the loss of his immediate family and country. It is his happenchance encounter with a sad old cow—whose name just happens to translate to ‘family” in his language— that helps him deal with his intense feelings.

There is humor, such as when Kek, while trying to be helpful to his aunt, washes the dishes in the clothes washing machine. Sadness when he recounts the horror of the “night of men in the sky with guns/the night the earth opened up like a black pit/and swallowed my old life whole” (21). And touching when…well, I won’t give away the ending. It sounds cliché to say that I laughed and cried but…I laughed and cried.

More importantly, however, the book captures challenges that face all immigrant children who have to adjust their entire lives to a new home. Home of the Brave is ultimately a universal story, one that many will relate to. But as is their nature, children usually adapt better than adults. This is true for Kek who brings his open heart to this new, cold place and ultimately bonds with Lou, the old woman who owns the farm and the cow who provides the comfort and brings a piece of Kek’s home.

After I finished reading it, I grasped the book to my chest and had to admit to my son he was right. The only thing that reminded me it was poetry was the incredibly beautiful and evocative language, as I got lost in Kek’s story so easily. I’m glad I have my son and characters such as Kek who can teach me about poetry and maintaining open hearts, who teach me that even if you’re afraid there is always something to learn, beauty to be had.

National Latino Writers Conference Day 3

Michael Sedano

Among the most valuable experiences available to writers attending the conference are one-on-one meetings with agents, publishers, and authors. Here are a few shots from the 9:00 set of meetings.


By the way, technology is a wondrous way to pass a lay over. Like in Las Vegas, where the airport provides free wi-fi throughout the building, along with dedicated stations with AC plugs to keep the Mac running and charging while the camera uploads to the drive, and Adobe Fireworks does its magic shrinking the files to acceptable size. Tan cool, que no? Que si!

National Latino Writers Conference Day 2

Michael Sedano

An exhausting day of workshops, open mic readings, banquet, awards. Superb presentations by readers. Again, I apologize for not making the effort to name each individual, but promise to exert some diligence within the next few days to correct these shortcomings.

On another hand, the fotos today came out superbly. But then, several of these were shot by Michelle Adam, who has an excellent eye for a shot.

Herein find Valerie Martínez' poetry workshop, "On the Brink: Writing the Unpredictable Poem"; Salomé Martínez-Lutz' "Things to Consider When You Want to Write a Play"; Open Mic; Agents Panel; Children's Literature Panel; Publisher & Editor's Panel; Banquet.

Banquet photos include Premio Aztlán honoree Patricia Santana, reading from her beautiful novel, Ghosts of El Grullo, and Keynote speaker Josefina López, reading from her stimulating novel, "Hungry Woman in Paris."

Gilb, Benedetti, Writing Contests, Valdez

DAGOBERTO GILB

La Bloga wishes Dagoberto Gilb a quick recovery - we were saddened to hear of his health issues but we understand that he is doing well and should be back writing soon, which is great news.

A family representative released this statement on May 11:

Dagoberto Gilb had a minor stroke on April 29. He is grateful for everybody's concern and well wishes, and is now privately recuperating in rehab. He will be released within a few weeks and is looking forward to resuming writing and working.

The award-winning writer's most recent novel is The Flowers (2008). Prior to that he edited Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas Mexican Literature (2007). Gilb is a tenured professor in the creative writing program at Texas State University in San Marcos. You can find out much more about the writer on his website, click here.

Those of you who want to send your best wishes to Mr. Gilb can post a comment here on La Bloga and we will make sure he gets your messages.

I came across the following quote attributed to Dagoberto Gilb:

Write from the gut and soul. Spill it. Write from las alturas and from hoyos (avoid cheap, italicized, affected use of Spanish words). Don't offer excuses, explanations, apologies, apologias (the Latin). Remember Danny Santiago? His theme, his gimmick and hook, was being Chicano. Explaining, i.e., apologia lit. In other words, don't write for Them. Don't respond to their issues (if they ask about the gang problems in your community, ask them what they're doing about their biker and pedophile problems). Try to please God or the Virgin and not others (well, Others). But privately. As in silent prayer. They know you are flesh, know your tears of joy and pain. You will quit your day job; if you're a writer, you'll be fired often enough, anyway. If you want to be The Leader of the People, if you want to be a Saint, if you want to be The Guru, please don't pretend to be first of all a writer. Unless you're dead.
Notes on Lit from the Americas



MARIO BENEDETTI

From the Associated Press:

Mario Benedetti, a prolific Uruguayan writer whose novels and poems reflect the idiosyncrasies of Montevideo's middle class and a social commitment forged by years in exile from a military dictatorship, died Sunday, May 17, his secretary said. He was 88.

Benedetti died at his home in Uruguay's capital, Montevideo, personal secretary Ariel Silva said. He had suffered from respiratory and intestinal problems for more than a year, and had been released from a hospital on May 6.

Called "Don Mario" by his friends, the mustachioed author penned more than 60 novels, poems, short stories and plays, winning honors including Bulgaria's Jristo Borev award for poetry and essays in 1985, and Amnesty International's Golden Flame in 1986. In 1999 he won the Queen Sofia prize for Iberoamerican poetry.

His writings on love, politics and life in Uruguay's capital were turned into popular songs and a movie, and his readings in his homeland attracted sold-out crowds.

Read more at this jump.

For a look at some of the world-wide reaction to Mr. Benedetti's death, click here. Or here. Or here.

ESQUIRE WRITING CONTEST

Esquire made this recent announcement concerning its writing contest:

This contest is open to all, and the winning story will be published in a future issue of the magazine (as well as here, the new online home of Esquire fiction).

We encourage you to enter, but you have to follow the rules. The first and most important rule — besides, of course, that the story has to be original — is that the story must be based on one of three titles that we have provided.

...

Second rule: Your story cannot exceed 4,000 words. We are serious about that, too.

Other rules: You may submit only one story. The contest begins on May 1, 2009. All entries are due by midnight of August 1, 2009 and must be submitted electronically here at esquiresubmissions.com. (Yet more official rules here.)

First prize: publication in Esquire and $2,500.

Simple. Pick your title and start writing. And don't disappoint us.

LA BLOGA FLASH FICTION WRITING CONTEST?

Because I had such a good time writing my half-dozen pieces for ficción rápida, my post last week, I've been thinking about sponsoring a flash (i.e., very short) fiction contest here on La Bloga. We can't offer $2,500 like Esquire, but we can get you published here on our blog. And I may come up with a signed book or two, from authors you will certainly recognize, as additional prizes. But the contest won't happen unless there is significant interest. So, if you like this idea post a comment and let me know. If we get enough interest, I'll have more details next week.


LAST MINUTE NOTE - LUIS VALDEZ AT CAL POLY TONIGHT
The man who has been called the father of Chicano theater will give a lecture at Cal Poly on May 22 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in Phillips Hall at the Christopher Cohan Performing Arts Center in Building 6, room 124, San Luis Obispo, CA.

Playwright, author and film director Luis Valdez will speak followed by a book signing from 8 to 10 p.m., said Gloria Velazquez, a Cal Poly professor of modern languages and literature. The event is free and open to the public.

Valdez founded his internationally renowned theater company, El Teatro Campesino (The Farm Workers’ Theater) in 1965 during the United Farm Workers struggle and the Great Delano Grape Strike in the Central Valley. His play Zoot Suit is considered a masterpiece of the American Theater as well as the first Chicano play on Broadway and the first Chicano major feature film, Velazquez said. For more information, e-mail gvelasqu@calpoly.edu.

That's it -

Later.

National Latino Writers Conference

Here are a handful of snapshots from Thursday's Day One of the 2009 National Latino Writers Conference. 

Each day concludes with a beautiful event, a ten minute Open Mic concert. Writers get ten minutes, timed to the second, to share their work, poem, story, novel. My apologies to the writers that I have not documented their names here.

This is La Bloga's René Colato Laínez and his Los Bloguitos teammates. Below, Malín Alegría enjoys a tasty moment of poetry.








Here Greta Pullen and a National Hispanic Cultural Center staff member draw the names.
Laughter during Demetria Martínez' seminar on writing memoir.

Lydia Gil workshop on cultural journalism. Photographers will appreciate the challenge of shooting against a white screen in a dimly illuminated auditorium.

A moment of mirth during Reyna Grande's novel writing seminar. Another low light space. I dislike flash, so intrusive.

The morning opens with an alumna of the NHCC's youth workshops. Maybe Carlos will send us the poem that drew tears from some of the morning plenary session attendees.
Felipe Ortego y Gasca's address on the status of latino letters. Perhaps La Bloga can share the text of Dr. Ortego's address?
The host with the most, Carlos Vásquez, Director of History and Literary Arts. Carlos and the staff run a fantastic event. Warm hospitality, a beautiful facility. ¡Ajúa¡ Carlos & gente.

Following are an NHCC board member, and the director of the Center, Danny López.

Libertad Cautiva- Captive Liberty

Jesus Fernando Liera Cruz, a junior at Sierra Vista High School in Baldwin Park, was honored by the California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE). Libertad Cautiva won the statewide essay contest, earning him a $1,000 scholarship. He addressed his poem at the Seal of Excellence Award Banquet in Long Beach. Here is the poem in Spanish and English.

Libertad Cautiva

Una nueva vida, una nueva lengua, una nueva cultura

Pero con la misma esperanza de siempre, triunfar.



Todos en la sociedad me llamaban inmigrante, inmigrante!

Pobre sociedad discriminante! al no saber lo que es un inmigrante.



Inmigrante… palabra hermana de injusticia,

Prima de discriminación y madre de libertad.


Inmigrante, viajero de Dios con pasaporte universal.


El silencio es un inmigrante.

Y todos en el mundo pueden escuchar,

Gracias a aquel que no podía oír.



El aire es un inmigrante.

Y el humano es este país,

Que necesita a el aire para vivir!

Cubro mis oídos para poder escuchar,

Como el silencio me grita,

Y me dice lo que calla.



Inmigrante, viviendo en la colonia Ilusión,

Entre la calle Sueños y la avenida Esperanza.



Inmigrante, persona que con sus propias manos

Un castillo puede construir, pero no tenerlo!



Inmigrante, persona que para ir al trabajo

Tiene que cruzar las ciudades:

Pobreza, Sufrimiento, Miedo, Racismo, Humillación,

Para poder llegar a su trabajo…

Su gran trabajo, la empresa llamada,

ESCLAVITUD!



Inmigrante, obligado a darle la bienvenida

Al adiós de la libertad de expresión,

De derechos y felicidad.



Y quien no es Inmigrante en esta vida?

Los que venimos a este país que somos pobres

Nos dicen Inmigrantes,

Los que vienen con dinero, les dicen BIENVENIDOS.



Yo no se quienes son ustedes,

Ni que es lo que quieren,

Solo se que yo no soy un Inmigrante,

Que tengo nombre y apellido,

Que talvez no se en donde estoy

Pero si porque!



Talvez no se la respuesta,

Tampoco la solución,

Pero lo único que se,

Es que en el Cielo el único pasaporte que necesito…

Es mi corazón!



Pero mientras tanto seguiré viviendo aquí,

Aprendiendo un nuevo idioma, una nueva cultura,

Porque a mi no me separa un papel que diga quien soy yo.



Porque aun que viva cautivo en el país de la libertad,

Seguiré luchando por aprender este nuevo idioma

Para que a sí mi silencio se escuche

Y no quede en el frío anonimato.



Porque no existe mudo que no sepa hablar,

Existen sordos que al silencio no quieren escuchar

No existe sueño que se pueda lograr

Hasta que lo liberes y se convierta en realidad.



Porque los inmigrantes ya no queremos soñar silencio

Queremos tener la oportunidad de convertirlo en realidad,

Queremos un nuevo mundo donde poder decir nuestro apellido

Sea motivo de orgullo y no de vergüenza.



Por eso aprendiendo este nuevo idioma

Queremos liberar nuestros sueños multilinguales hoy,

Para así crear un nuevo mundo mañana.



Un nuevo mundo donde ya no soñaremos nunca más,

Donde podremos hablar nuestros dos idiomas libremente

Del miedo hacer llamado inmigrante

Donde un sueño deja de ser un sueño

Para convertirse en una meta.

Captive Liberty

A new life, a new language, a new culture,

But with the same hope as always, to triumph.



Everyone here calls me immigrant, immigrant!

The poor people who discriminate!

They do not know who is an immigrant.



Immigrant, the sister word to injustice,

Cousin to discrimination, and mother of liberty.



Immigrant, traveler of God with a universal passport.



Silence is an immigrant,

And everyone in the world can listen,

Thanks to the one who cannot hear.



Air is an immigrant,

And the human is this country

That needs the air to live!

I cover my ears to listen,

And like the silence, it shouts at me,

And tells me what is silent.



Immigrant, living in the colony of Illusion,

Between Dream Street and Hope Avenue.



Immigrant, a person whose own hands

Could construct a castle, but not have one.

Immigrant, a person who must cross cities to get to work,

The cities of Poverty, Suffering, Fear, Racism, and Humiliation,

Just to get to work,

The grand work, a business called Slavery.



Immigrant, obligated to give the good life

And then say good-bye to the liberty of expression,

Rights and happiness.



And who is not an immigrant in this life?

Those of us who came to this country who are poor;

They call us immigrants.

Those of us who came with money;

They welcome us.


I don’t know who you are,

Nor do I know what you want;

I only know that I am not an immigrant,

That I have a first name and last name,

Maybe I don’t know exactly where I am,

But I do know why.



Perhaps I do not know the answer,

Or the solution,

But the one thing I do know

Is that with God, the only passport I need,

Is my heart.



The more I continue living here,

Learning a new language, a new culture,

To me there is no paper that separates who I am.



Even though I live captive in this land of liberty,

I continue to fight to learn this new language

Because in this way my silence listens

There is no dream that you can obtain

Until you liberate yourself and convert that dream into reality.



The immigrants no longer dream silence.

We want to have the opportunity to convert our silent dreams into reality.

We want a new world where we are able to say our own last name

And feel proud and not ashamed.



That is why I am learning this new language

We want to liberate our multilingual dreams today,

Because in this way, we will create a new world tomorrow.



A new world where we do not need to dream any more,

Where we can speak our own languages openly

Where there is no fear that is called immigrant

Where the dream stops to be a dream

And is converted into a goal.

Review: Hungry Woman in Paris is Code

Josefina López. NY: Grand Central Publishing, 2009.
ISBN: 9780446699419


Michael Sedano


From its opening paragraphs, Hungry Woman in Paris reads with the same hyperbolic first person breathlessness of a Young Adult chiclit novel. But mothers, don't let your girls read Canela's story until they're engaged--at least--if not married. And if that adventurous daughter of yours reads Hungry Woman in Paris despite your censorship, then tells you she wants to go to Paris on vacation, alone, tell her you know about the swinger sex club scene, so don't get any cochina ideas about doing a ménage a quatre right there on the dance floor. Wouldn't she prefer a nice trip to Disneylandia, instead?

Your teenage boys will keep the novel under the mattress, and share the "best parts" with all their friends.

All of which means Josefina López achieves her purposes to, in turn, amuse, shock, tempt, and taunt sundry readers lacking the good sense to recognize Hungry Woman in Paris as a deliberately outrageous pastiche of the chiclit genre, with a generous helping of Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. Hemingway? Canela is the movable feast, which is part of the joke, and López' affront to prudes everywhere.

The novel is an almost complete success. I say "almost" because López' first person voice leads me to wonder if there's more than a soupçon of autobiography in this ribald tale of a failed journalist on the lam from a prima's tragic suicide and the bizarre velorio, a failed engagement, an irate mother, and her own depression. Naturally, she enrolls in cooking school.

This is not your mother's Como Agua Para Chocolate, despite the recipes and cookery. Canela stumbles her way through class, affronting classmates, seducing chefs and translators, earning a few measly Euros posing nude or helping Japanese tourists buy Louis Vuitton merchandise, and, with her typically impulsive thoughtlessness, help a Turkish woman escape her husband's vengeance. Más, she then inserts herself into the notorious riots of Arab youth contra French racism, and plays cougar to a Arabic rapper from the projects. Then...other stuff happens. This is the kind of novel that readers are advised to just sit back and let unfold.

Hungry Woman in Paris boldly takes Chicana literature into places where, like a literary Star Trek, no woman has gone before. Not that there aren't a few perplexities.

Canela comes out of Boyle Heights, a semi-successful writer but a failure to meet her Mexican-American family's standards to be a good Mexican daughter. Conflicting cultural norms play havoc with Canela's and her family's expectations. Canela's spent a lifetime fleeing them with no particular direction, and this has been further complicated by US immigration strictures. France, Canela discovers, is a lot like the US, except in many ways, worse, for immigrants.

That's right, "Mexican-American," a curious choice, given Canela's upbringing among the Mexicanas and Chicanas of Boyle Heights, her allusions to protests she's been involved in, and her kick-ass attitude to rules and external controls. Canela is conscious of the distinction, electing the binational term because "Chicana" would be too difficult to explain, with her limited French. But that's the public Canela. Yet, even the private Canela prefers the hyphenated identity term, but chafes under the oxymoron.

"No, I'm North American...Mexican-American," she tells a cabbie. "I clarified for him in Spanish. I wanted to tell him I was a Chicana, but then I would have to give him a cultural and historical lesson". The incident with the cab driver offers one of the novel's more insightful moments. Canela taunts the nationalistic driver that he can call himself Spanish if he likes, but his children, and for sure his grandchildren, will call themselves French. "It won't be up to you to determine their identity, it's up to them."

Given the extremes López takes her character, her editorial conventionality comes as a disappointment. She translates all Spanish language phrases into English, if not as an apposition in a follow-up periphrasis. The only saving grace of this irritating editorial strategy is the absence of italics. "'Hmmm,' her mother says, 'donde el va, yo ya vine.' Where he is going I've already been was my mother's way of saying she had already planned for betrayal."

When all is said and done, Canela and López want to make this one point clear: men everywhere are shits, most of them. A woman has a right to live her life in whatever fashion meets her needs, wants, desires, curiosities. Keep tasting life's treats and eventually, like the runaway Turkish bride, or Canela herself, a woman will find the man who deserves her. Or is that vice versa? Could a chiclit novel have a different ending? Probably not. López' Epilogue wraps the novel into a tidy package:

"Frenchwomen don't get fat and Japanese women don't grow old or get fat...but Latina women do. We get fat and we wrinkle, but our wrinkles come from laughing and crying. We know how to feel and eat; we know how to love and to come; we know how to live ourselves to death." In the end, readers will fulfill López' wish. It was delicious. And yes, "hungry" means horny.

Hit List Hits East Harlem

Sergio Troncoso writes about the reading experience at his blog, "Chico Lingo..."

MONDAY, MAY 18, 2009
East Harlem Cafe and Hit List Reading
Last Thursday I read at a place I am still entranced by, the East Harlem Café owned by Michelle Cruz, at 104th and Lexington in El Barrio. Two other authors from Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery, read with me, Carlos Hernandez and Richie Narvaez. A few hours before, Richie and I appeared on the Victor Cruz Show, a radio talkfest from Brooklyn. Man, did I have a good time. This is the thing about getting out there, reading and talking to people about your work. You meet new people who wow you, you get to discover what they have created, and you feel lucky. Let me count the ways.


Pancho Rodriguez and Tennessee Williams A Love Story Almost Lost to Time


Gregg Barrios sends the following news about his upcoming release. Felicidades, Gregg.

Just a heads up on the June 1st release of the trade edition of Rancho Pancho. It is the first play to be published in The Hansen Drama Series. It has a forward by David Kaplan, curator, Provincetown Tennessee Wiliams Theatre Festival. Blurbs from playwrights Nancy Cassaro (Tony n' Tina's Wedding ) and Luis Valdez (Zoot Suit ) as well as a gaggle of newspaper and magazine critics from the cities where the play has been performed.

The schedule of my first signing tour forthcoming with dates. Cities and bookstores lined up include:

Now Voyager Bookstore, Provincetown, Ma
The Drama Book Shop, New York City, NY
Borders - Garden District, New Orleans, LA

Hope my publisher can add your city or town to the tour. Meanwhile, there will be a special event in San Antonio to launch the book in June.

Be well,

Gregg

PS While the book purchase price is less expensive at B&N.com, you have to pay sales tax and shipping. At Amazon, it is at list price and you don't pay tax or shipping. But I hope you support your local independent bookstore and purchase your copy there.

http://www.amazon.com/Rancho-Pancho-Gregg-Barrios/dp/1601823312/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242611061&sr=8-3



"Rancho Pancho is a delightfully decadent love story. Through Barrios' beautiful work, we are given a bird's-eye view into the brilliant, prolific
and complex life of our greatest American playwright Tennessee Williams." – Nancy Cassaro, actress and playwright, Tony n' Tina's Wedding.

"A wonderful piece of theater... a delicious slice of history." – Luis Valdez, playwright, Zoot Suit.

Will the swallow come back to Barbara Renaud González?

Rigoberto Gonzáles sends word that his El Paso Times Review of GOLONDRINA, WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME? is posted now at http://www.elpasotimes.com/living/ci_12386618

Sounds like a good read. Per Rigoberto's review, "The narrator's name is Lucero, and like the star in her name, she proceeds to guide the reader through a border-crossing odyssey as sad and familiar as a corrido, as hopeful as the song referenced in the title, though the golondrina in question, that determined swallow, is none other than her own mother, Amada."

National Latino Writers Conference This Week in Alburquerque

This week, I'll be posting photos and updates from the conference that starts Wednesday at New Mexico's beautiful National Hispanic Cultural Center. I'll be there to conduct the workshop "Oracy: Presenting Your Work Effectively." Look for a link to my video illustrations and notes in a future La Bloga Tuesday.

That's the penultimate Tuesday of the fifth month of the year. A Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except you are here. Thank you for visiting La Bloga.

La Bloga welcomes comments and guest columnists. To share your comment, simply click the Comments counter below. If you want to share your own review of a book, an art or cultural event, click here to discuss being our guest.

Ate,

mvs

INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN D. GUTIERREZ

Stephen D. Gutierrez was born in Montebello, California, and grew up in nearby City of Commerce just outside the City of Los Angeles. He earned his BA from Cal State Chico and MFA from Cornell. His first book, Elements (Fiction Collective 2), won the Charles H. and N. Mildred Nilon Excellence in Minority Fiction Award. Gutierrez has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his writing has appeared in many literary journals. He is a professor of English at Cal State East Bay where he serves as Director of Creative Writing. Gutierrez is married with one son.

His new book, Live from Fresno y Los: Stories (paperback, $16.00), will be released on June 1st by Bear Star Press and distributed by the press and SPD. Of this collection, Virgil Suárez says: "If you read one book of stories this year, make it this one. Live from Fresno y Los kicks out the jams, and takes no prisoners. Enjoy, and tell a friend."

Jim Krusoe offers this assessment: "There is an ineradicable sweetness to these stories, accompanied by the crisp and happy bemusement of a genuine voice -- the sound of one person speaking directly to another, and not from the head, but from that most mysterious of mouths, the human heart."

And this from Lamar Herrin: "Stunning. Really, a lovely and loving collection of stories, nicely balanced between the vernacular and the literarily eloquent."

I’ve had the opportunity to read an advance copy of Live from Fresno y Los and I fully agree with Suárez, Krusoe and Herrin. Gutierrez kindly agreed to sit down with La Bloga and answer a few questions in honor of his new book’s publication:

DANIEL OLIVAS: Whether set in Fresno or Los Angeles, you capture the awkwardness and yearnings of puberty so perfectly that some of your stories made me break out into a cold sweat. How did you feel as you revisited that time through your fiction?

STEPHEN GUTIERREZ: I felt emotionally drawn into the times of those stories, not necessarily painfully, but fully aware that I had somehow come to grips with whatever inspired the stories by writing about them somewhat (I hope) artistically -- that is to say, with the detachment necessary to shape raw emotions into something meaningful. "Catharsis" is an overused and ill-understood term -- not even the experts understand it completely -- but in the sense of confronting past horrors with a measure of calm I felt relieved writing them, maybe even happy. Writing makes me happy, is the bottom line, however hard it may be to get to a place I'm satisfied with.

OLIVAS: "The Barbershop" is one of my favorite stories in the collection concerning an aging father's last days and his family's attempts to cope. The particular beauty and poignancy of the story grows out of the very simple attempt by the father to get a haircut and maintain some dignity. What was the inspiration for this story?

GUTIERREZ: This story is pretty much autobiographical. My father suffered from a horrendous form of early-onset Alzheimer's complicated by other neuro-degenerative maladies. One day I saw him take what I already knew to be a heroic walk up to the front door of his regular barbershop for his last haircut. The image of him setting off down the sidewalk stayed with me, and I tried to make something out of it.

OLIVAS: In "Harold, All American," you write about the racial and ethnic tensions among East L.A. teenagers: Chicanos vs. "Okies" vs. "wetbacks." It gets pretty brutal as the teens try to find their place on the pecking order. Does it change much when we grow up? Are we better equipped for adulthood by surviving such an environment?

GUTIERREZ: I think it does change. The famous tension between Okies (sometimes called "surfers," though none that I knew rode the waves, 25 miles inland from any beach worth surfing) and Mexicans (be they Chicanos or Mexican-Mexicans) and less so between Chicanos and Mexicans eases with time. Everybody grows up, matures, laughs about it, how stupid one was as an adolescent, how commonly adolescent one was after all, how narrow-minded and protective of one's own fragile identity against everyone else. But there are some who refuse to grow up and carry hate into their adult lives, how sad; or at the very least never completely rid themselves of old prejudices, recipe for stagnation. I think surviving any adolescence steels you for adulthood. The problem is that adolescence never completely ends in the quandaries it poses about selfhood. It's just a primer for the agonies of life, almost self-contained but not quite. It gives you useful tools though, like the awareness that time will pass, and change is inevitable, even if that current pimple in your life seems fixed.

OLIVAS: Your stories remind me so much of the community I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s near downtown Los Angeles in a predominantly Mexican/Chicano neighborhood. Do you ever get concerned that you're writing to a particular audience (someone like me) or do you see your fiction as being "universal"? Do you even worry about this?

GUTIERREZ: I'm happy to have any reader, one reader, two or three who enjoy my work. No, seriously, I give it some thought but not major. I think all writing is geared toward a particular audience; the suburban novel is going to bore stiff the urban reader. But let me amend that: most writing, by default, is particularized and necessarily appealing to a smaller audience than intended. That's because "universal" writing is less common than the reviewers of major book reviews with their biases in place would have us believe (or know themselves). I think my writing transcends its locale, if that's what you're asking. If you'll permit me one immodesty, I think it's universal, and I'm glad for that. I wouldn't want to just appeal to "my people," whoever they are at this point -- I know in the end I'm a member of the human race, and my stories reflect that. I hope my characters are deeply recognizable from whatever background you have -- they are people caught in the crux of life, facing their own demons.

The Border, the flu, the immigration, the violence – whose fault is it, anyway? - Part 2

(to see Part 1, go here.)

Guerrillas, Narcos, Washington, & the Ghosts of 1910
FNS Special Report

A new twist with unpredictable political consequences has emerged amid the shifting battle fronts of Mexico’s narco war. Sometime last weekend and somewhere in the mountains of southern Guerrero state, a group of at least 20 armed men presenting themselves as a column of the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI) appeared before Mexican reporters.

Uniformed and armed with AK-47 rifles, the group was led by Comandante Ramiro, or Omar Guerrero Solis, one of the most wanted men in Mexico and an almost folkloric figure who escaped from a prison outside Acapulco more than six years ago and wasn’t publicly seen again until last weekend’s secret press conference.

In comments to reporters, Comandante Ramiro accused the Calderon administration of not only staging the fight against drug trafficking, but of also protecting the interests of alleged drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. The masked guerrilla commander charged Guerrero Governor Zeferino Torreblanca, who was elected with the backing of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and social sectors sympathetic with the guerrilla movement, with also protecting Chapo Guzman and an alleged associate, Rogaciano Alba.

A former head of the Guerrero Regional Cattlemen’s Association, Alba also served as the mayor of the Guerrero town of Petatlan for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Gunmen associated with Alba are responsible for about 60 murders in the conflictive Tierra Caliente and Costa Grande regions of Guerrero, Comandante Ramiro said.

“The strategy of combating the narco is phony,” Comandante Ramiro charged. “Here in Guerrero, for example, the narcos participate in meetings that the army and state government hold to strike at one cartel and protect another, but essentially they are the same, because they murder, kidnap and torture,” he asserted. “Here the cartel of Chapo Guzman is serving the army, and vice-versa..”

The fugitive rebel leader likewise accused Erit Montufar, director of the Guerrero state ministerial police, of involvement in criminal activities in the Tierra Caliente region of the state.

Comandante Ramiro said narco-fueled violence was inspiring young people to join the ERPI’s ranks, which had successfully expelled Alba’s men from some mountain zones. The ERPI, he said, is engaged in active armed self-defense, “striking” and “dismantling” paramilitary groups connected to Alba and the state government.

The guerrilla leader said his troops try to avoid confrontations with Mexican soldiers, whom he called “sons of the people” welcome to join the revolutionary movement.

The ERPI first emerged in 1998 as a splinter faction of the leftist Popular Democratic Revolutionary Party/Popular Revolutionary Army (PDPR-EPR). Two top ERPI leaders, Jacobo Silva and Gloria Arenas, were captured by the Mexican army in 1999, but the guerrilla group survived and reorganized.

The EPR, as well as other spin-offs, remains active. As the 15th anniversary of the founding of the organization’s armed wing neared this month, the PDPR-EPR issued a new communique.

In its message, the underground organization addressed the recent flu epidemic, deficiencies in the Mexican healthcare system, human rights, political scandals, labor movements, the suffering of the mothers of Ciudad Juarez femicide victims, and more.

The group also said its members were reviewing the next step to take in its campaign to force a clarification of the fate of two high-ranking leaders, Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Gabriel Alberto Cruz Sanchez, who were allegedly disappeared by the Mexican government in May 2007.

Subsequently, the EPR waged a sabotage campaign against gas pipelines to force the appearance of its two leaders. The guerrillas later declared a truce, and a mediation commission was established between the EPR and Calderon administration. The commission, however, recently broke down, with no word on the fates of Cruz and Amaya.

Now 33 years old, the ERPI’s Comandante Ramiro told Mexican media he first joined the Poor People’s Party, a predecessor group of the PDPR-EPR which was founded by the late legendary rebel leader Lucio Cabanas in the late 1960s, when he was fourteen years of age.

According to Comandante Ramiro, the ERPI is organized like Cabanas’ old Campesino Justice Brigade, with units going up and down in size. Claiming his organization enjoys broad popular support in the Guerrero countryside, Comandante Ramiro said he spent the last four years year in the mountains, adding with a half-smile, “without a vacation.” Addressing reporters, he personally challenged President Calderon and Defense Secretary Galvan to come fight against him if they had a beef and stop sending “innocents” to die.

Replies to Comandante Ramiro

Reaction to the rebel leader’s bravado was slow in coming from Calderon administration officials and Governor Torreblanca, but other state officials and well-known political figures in Guerrero had quick words of response.

Dismissing Comandante Ramiro’s allegations, State Ministerial Police Director Montufar contended the fugitive was using the name of the ERPI to cover for crimes including cattle rustling, robbery and rape.

“How is it possible that someone who escaped from the Acapulco penitentiary, a delinquent of that level, assumes the mantle of defender of social causes?” Montufar responded.

Armando Chavarria, coordinator of the PRD group in the Guerrero State Congress and a former state interior minister under Torreblanca, urged the governor to initiate a dialogue with the ERPI.

“Personally, I don’t justify the armed struggle,” Chavarria said, “but I understand it.” The veteran politician said the ERPI’s public reemergence, arising from a grinding poverty trapping hundreds of thousands of people in the state, “makes the situation graver in Guerrero.”

After news of the EPRI’s reappearance hit the press, residents reported stepped-up Mexican military movements, especially in the Tierra Caliente.

While Mexican guerrillas engaged the media this past week, presumed narcos mounted their own publicity campaign by hanging more so-called “narco-banners” in Guerrero, Morelos, Tabasco, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua. Directed at President Felipe Calderon, Federal Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna and other top law enforcement officials, the latest messages were strikingly frank, with the banner signers acknowledging they were not members of a Boy Scout troop but nevertheless protesting alleged Calderon administration retaliations against family members of accused narcos. According the anonymous authors, the global code of conduct mandates that the family “should be respected.”

A New Game for Washington?

Locally, the EPRI column led by Comandante Ramiro adds another explosive element to a multi-faceted conflict underway in Guerrero involving several rival drug cartels, the Mexican armed forces and different police agencies, which often back different crime groups and battle one another. Last month, a fierce battle in the mountains between the army and suspected gunmen from the Beltran-Leyva cartel left at least 15 gunmen and one soldier dead. Along with large-caliber weapons and grenades, 13 suspects were seized by the army.

Politically, the persistence and even growth of the ERPI further signals the collapse of the broad-based political movement spearheaded by Zeferino Torreblanca that swept into power in early 2005 based on promises of change and end to decades of corruption and misrule by the PRI party.

The ERPI’s ability to attract young recruits shows how the guerrilla in Guerrero, like the narco, has become part of the trans-generational landscape. Comandante Ramiro’s column represents at least the third generation of Mexicans to take up arms since the late 1960s.

The existence of a guerrilla group in the heart of the narco conflict zone has national and international ramifications, especially at a time when the Democratic Party-controlled US Congress is considering a $470 million security funding request for the Mexican government, including money for more helicopters, advanced technology and training for the Mexican armed forces. The modern military equipment could used to fight guerrillas as well as narcos.

On May 7, the House Appropriations Committee approved the military assistance package and sent it on for further action. In an action bearing perhaps more than just passing political symbolism, the Mexico aid was approved as part of a larger security outlay for Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, even as the new Obama administration retunes its military strategy in Central Asia, Washington could be poised to become more deeply involved in a Mexican civil conflict that has centuries of deep political, social and historical roots.

On the eve of the House committee vote, scores of prominent Mexican human rights organizations wrote the US Congress opposing new military aid. The signatories of a May 6 letter noted that allegations of human rights abuses against Mexican soldiers mainly deployed in anti-drug operations soared 600 percent from 2006 to 2008, reaching 1,230 cases filed with the official National Human Rights Commission last year. In both Guerrero and neighboring Michoacan, complaints against soldiers are on the upswing in 2009.

Juan Alarcon, longtime president of the official Guerrero State Human Rights Commission, said his agency saw an unprecedented 85 complaints against soldiers from last December to the first three weeks of April. The majority of accusations, encompassing alleged violations of search and seizure, arrest and other laws, “have nothing to do with drug trafficking or organized crime,” Alarcon insisted.

Ghosts of 1910

In some respects, the situation in Guerrero and other parts of the Mexican countryside, both south and north, resembles the era before the 1910 Mexican Revolution when armed bands, heavy-handed government forces and insurgent political forces all rose to the occasion. Then, as now, foreign companies commanded key sectors of the economy.

Ironically, the huge copper mine in Cananea, Sonora, which witnessed one of the historic, runner-up battles to the 1910 revolt, has been the scene of a mounting conflict during the last two years between the mineworkers union led by exiled leader Napoleon Gomez on one side and the Calderon administration and owners Grupo Mexico on the other. Internationally, Gomez’s group has received important backing from the United Steel Workers and other labor organizations.

The Cananea strike almost erupted into a bloody showdown just as US President Barack Obama was preparing to visit Mexico last month. Attempting to break the strike, Grupo Mexico announced the firing of more than 1,000 workers. Hundreds of federal police then began saturating the area around the mine defended by miners and a women’s defense force.

In solidarity with the Sonora strikers, mine and metal industry workers blockaded shipments of containers scheduled for export from the Pacific Coast port of Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan, near the border with Guerrero.

Back in Sonora, miners took over a highway toll booth. At one demonstration, the Cananea strikers cried out: “If there is no solution, there will be revolution!”

As the Cananea strike approached its second anniversary, Sonora Governor Eduardo Bours appealed to the federal government to find a solution amicable to all parties.

This article originally appeared on May 14, 2009, reprinted here with permission from FNS.

© Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news, Center for Latin American and Border Studies, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email
fnsnews@nmsu.edu

ficción rápida

Copyright 2009 by Manuel Ramos. All rights reserved.

Exercising the writing muscle ...

Leaving

Olga forgot the reason she left the house as soon as she crossed the street. Wayne worried later that night but she had been mad at him when he went to work and he guessed she was staying at her bitch sister’s place, paying him back.

Olga slept in the park and then in an alley and then it didn’t matter where she slept.

A year later, as she sprawled on the sidewalk, Wayne almost stepped on Olga but he didn’t recognize her. She still couldn’t remember why she left the house.

Saturday Afternoon

“One more beer for me and my friend here.”

“I told you, I ain’t your friend and I don’t want your beer.”

“What a joker. Why you acting like this? Let me get the next round.”

“You keep messin’ with me and I’m gonna hurt you.”

“You drink this beer or I’ll cut you again.”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about. You can’t handle it. You get mean. Hell. Give me the beer.”

Trial

The defendant leaned over to his attorney and whispered, “This isn’t going the way you said it would. That jury’s not buying any of it. You’re not getting paid if you can’t pull this off. What else you got?”

The lawyer stood up.

“Go ahead with your closing argument,” the judge said.

The attorney coughed. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. My client just told me that he wants to change his plea. He admits that he shot Mr. Martínez, but he was crazy with jealousy when he did it. I know we can’t be changing horses this late in the game, but I thought you should know how mixed up my client is.”

The defendant jumped on his attorney and beat him with his fists until the bailiff pulled him off.

“Court’s in recess,” the judge said to the jurors. “You are excused. I’m declaring a mistrial. We have to do this all over again with a new jury.”

The bloody lawyer stumbled from the courtroom. He dabbed at his swollen lip with a handkerchief. He felt like smiling but he held back.

Artist

Flash finished his latest masterpiece with a final puff of yellow. He took a deep breath. Paint fumes and downtown smells filled his lungs. He wanted to say that he had created a fantasy of love and rebellion on the warehouse wall but there was no one to say it to. He added his tag. This is good, he thought. I nailed it.

He packed up his spray cans and rags.

Flash walked away from the wall and his painting. A tune popped in his head and he whistled. What song was that?

He realized he was hungry. He had been at it for more than three hours. Endings made him sad.

He sprayed paint into a rag and covered his nose.

Patient

“I think it’s the H1N1 influenza.”

“Swine flu? You think? Don’t you know?”

“The lab has to confirm it, but, yeah, you got it. You need to rest, drink fluids. We’ll see about a treatment plan after I get the confirmation.”

“I could die.”

“Not likely. We haven’t seen the serious cases, like in Mexico. You have to take care of yourself, though. It could get really bad. You have to wait here, in isolation, until we know for sure.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

The doctor had a mask across his mouth. The patient coughed into the air and spit on the floor.

Runner

He ran at 6:30 every morning. At least thirty minutes. Several blocks around his neighborhood; winter, summer, spring, fall. He ran into the rising sun or the cold wind. His face soaked up sunshine or dripped raindrops or melted snow. As he ran, his heavy breath roughed up his throat and ignited his lungs. The pavement beat his legs and twisted his knees. Unaccountable pain dotted his muscles. The first few months he sweated off pounds that had been hanging on his body for decades. When he had no extra weight to lose, he exposed ribs and cheek bones. His clothes swirled around his body like blankets in the wind. He ate less food. He drank less alcohol. He slept fewer hours. His friends worried.

“I’ve never felt better,” he said. “But then, I’m a poet.”

____________________________________________________

Well, that was fun.

Please join Mario Acevedo and me at the Tattered Cover, 2526 East Colfax at Elizabeth, Denver, on May 21 at 7:30 p.m. Mario and I will read from our stories, and a few others, in the new anthology Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery. This crime fiction collection has something for everyone, from traditional to hard-boiled mystery stories. Stop by and join in the fun.

Later.

Poeta de Colombia y Wisconsin

Maurice Kilwein Guevara and Poema

Gente: About two weeks ago I was fortunate enough to read for Paul Martinez Pompa (Pepper Spray/Momotombo Press) at Triton College in River Grovee, IL. I was paired with Maurice, and loved his sly, insightful, lyrical, muscular writing. Below is a brief description of who Maurice is, and below that, samples of the poetry that made me laugh and stirred my soul.

BIO:

Maurice Kilwein Guevara was born in Belencito, Colombia in 1961 and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, where he teaches in the MA and PhD Programs in Creative Writing as well as in the Latino Studies Program. Previously, he has taught at Vermont College, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Universidad de las Américas (Mexico), and Universidad del Norte and Universidad Javeriana (Colombia).

His first book of poetry, entitled Postmortem (U. of GA Press), won the National Contemporary Poetry Series Competition and was published in 1994. His second volume, Poems of the River Spirit, was published in the Pitt Poetry Series in 1996. Autobiography of So-and-so: Poems in Prose came out in 2001 with New Issues Press. POEMA, his fourth collection, was released in 2009 by the University of Arizona Press.

A dynamic presenter of his own work, Kilwein Guevara has given poetry performances and workshops in Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Spain, Cuba and throughout the United States. His work has appeared in Poetry, Parnassus, Ploughshares, Exquisite Corpse, Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, and The Journal of the American Medical Association. His poetry has been anthologized in Touching the Fire: Fifteen Poets of Today’s Latino Renaissance (Anchor/Doubleday), American Poetry: the Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon University Press), The New American Poets: a Bread Loaf Anthology (U. Press of New England), and No Boundaries: Prose Poems by 24 American Poets (Tupelo Press), among others.

In 2009, he will be a Senior Research Grantee with La Comisión Fulbright en Ecuador, doing background research for a novel and a play. .He has served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) and was the first Latino to be elected as its President. He is married to the poet Janet Jennerjohn; they have two sons and live in Milwaukee.

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Hector the Colombian Who Butchered the Hair of Juan Ramón

You don’t know him? Oh, I figured cause he’s Colombian too.
I don’t get my hair cut from him no more. Used to.
Used to sit down with him in his shop over on
Lincoln Avenue, and he cut my hair, I guess he cut my hair
like maybe twenty twenty-five times, you know for least ten years,
y fueron cortes de pelo de calidad buena.
See the thing is Hector the Colombian he can bullshit so much
you need waders after a while, him talking about his village in the Andes,
and his mother who wears a crown of thorns cause she’s a
super-duper Catholic lady and sees angels in the Tupperware,
and his bother that’s a narcoleptic mechanic, and his six sisters in Colombia who is so beautiful they still ain’t married, and he says that’s the difference between Colombia and every other country in the planet is how beautiful the Colombian women is, etcetera. But the last time I got my hair cut by Hector he looked terrible like he ain’t slept in a week, and I can smell the aguardiente through the cheap cologne and gold chains. Snip snip clip clip he starts up again on how perfect like an emerald ripped out of the belly of the mountain the Colombian women is clip clip. Now he starts crying saying God the Almighty and/or Jesus Christ and even the Holy Mother is jealous of Colombia because the Colombian women is so beautiful like gold shimmering in the sunshine, and God’s jealousy is the reason why Colombia has earthquakes and mudslides and more blood than a butcher shop clip clip clip when out of the blue he says Who am I kidding? She left me porque yo soy un verdadero pendejo and I drink too much and I’m a mess and a bad person clip clip, and I start feeling the hot tears falling on my head and neck drip clip, and I give a quick peek at the mirror and it’s a mess. He’s fucking up big time, cutting big ugly bald shapes into my scalp like I got a dog disease, and it’s all uneven clip drip with drops of blood. The problem, Juan Ramón, is I am afraid I am too democratic and love all the women equal, but for some reason they don’t feel the same way about democracy as I do clip clip. But I say, Hector look man my head’s all fucked up, chingado, you fucked up my head man check it out, and he wipes his eyes, puts the scissors and comb down by his side, and I say I ain’t paying for that shit. That’s a shit-job you done, and he says in a low, empty voice: You’re right, Juan Ramón. You look the way I feel. This one is on me, totalmente gratis.




Poema cubano con cara vieja

La red
Pared
Pared
La red
Poema cubano
Con cara café
Face note
Net of creases
Come come
Comes
Comes out
Crops up
A stogie
Sprouts
A brown stump
Faces out
Pores
Cinnamon
Time-net a brown face
Pores
Becomes
De la pared
Un puro
Comes out
A brown face
Crops up
Out of the white
Outcomes
Out of the white plaster
A leathered rolling
Cheekbones slope of forehead
Looks down
And comes a brown face
You
A brown face comes out of the white
You
Out of the wall
Brown pores
A galaxy
Damp old puro
Eyes hooded
Looking down
A brown face comes out of the white plaster, stump of puro in his mouth

POEMA, University of Arizona Press (2009) 978-0-8165-2725-

Lisa Alvarado

Yum! ¡MmMm! ¡Qué Rico!

By Pat Mora
Illustrated by Rafael Lopez

Smear nutty butter,
then jelly. Gooey party,
my sandwich and me.

*Reading level: Ages 4-8
* Hardcover: 32 pages
* Publisher: Lee & Low Books
* ISBN-10: 1584302712
* ISBN-13: 978-1584302711

From the publisher:

From acclaimed Latina poet and author Pat Mora comes a delightful collection of haiku focused on some of the most familiar (and a few unfamiliar) foods that are native to the Americas. Blueberries, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and more, these poems capture the enduring appeal of foods that have been part of the diverse cuisines of the Americas for centuries. Each haiku is accompanied by information about the food’s origins, and some fun facts about its history and current uses. With joyous illustrations that practically jump off the page, artist Rafael López captures the essence of each haiku and brings these delicious poems to life.

To read a booktalk with author Pat Mora visit http://www.leeandlow.com/p/morayum.mhtml

Review: Fidel's Last Days. Lydia redux. CSULA Meso American Conference Reminder.

Michael Sedano

Roland Merullo. Fidel's Last Days. NY: Random House, 2009.
ISBN: 978-1-4159-6120-9 (1-4159-6120-4)

Imagine Fidel Castro lying on his death bed, holding onto life’s last breath with a stubbornness that infuriates those enemies who fervently wish Castro dead at the hands of an assassin, not the respite of natural causes. “Oye, pendejo,” Fidel might think--were he a bit of a Chicano--“if you want me killed, write a pinche novel, ‘cause it ain’t happening any other way.” Which is what Roland Merullo has done. Write a novel, Fidel’s Last Days.

Fidel’s Last Days plays intrigue against intrigue. A Miami-based Cubano organization, fabulously wealthy and clandestinely professional, will infiltrate an agent, Carolina, onto the island. She will deliver a weapon to kill Fidel. There’s a traitor in The Orchid, but he’s known to its top men. Cynically feeding misinformation and partial information back to Cuba's security directorate puts Carolina and other agents at risk, sacrificial lambs to the cold-blooded goals of “Project Havana”. The top henchasshole is Carolina’s beloved tio, but ni modo on that. His plan heaps danger upon risk, depending on precise timing and movement, something’s bound to go wrong. Poor Carolina. There’s her desperate escape, but into Olochon’s cruel hands, just as Carlos himself falls into the delighted Olochon’s grasp.

Merullo’s writing ethos speaks with the most virulently anti-Castro, anti-Cuba voice you will read, whether from non-Cubano writers or Cubana Cubano novelists. For the former, Martin Cruz Smith, Havana Bay, or Daniel Chavarria, Tango For a Torturer and Adios Muchachos, Cuba provides local color, the background that frames everyday struggles to eat, get laid, pull off a crime. Cuba-origin writers like Achy Obejas, Ruins, Roberto Arellano, Havana Lunar, Leonardo Padura, Havana Gold and Adios Hemingway, Jose LaTour, Comrades in Miami, sharpen their axes with varying degrees of edginess sans obsession. In these, Fidel’s rotten presence looms at the edge of teenage prostitution, slow starvation, shortages of everything except unrelenting woeful suffering. Except for Jesus Diaz, The Initials of the Earth, with its sympathetic meeting with Fidel in a sugar mill. Across most novels, Cuba’s good and noble gente endure their suffering or find a way to get out, even if floating off for Florida in an inner tube, shark bait.

Not that shortages, economic folly, latent racism, repression, and political opportunism are not facts of Cuban society. Such flaws are inescapable caca heaped on the island, thanks to the US blockade. But some novelists use these conditions as material to grow a plot; for Merullo, these are the plot. For example, Achy Obejas’ character makes pragmatic advantage of regularly collapsing apartment houses; finding value in ruin, he scavenges valuable salvage and converts it to dollars. Merullo’s character sees these as part of a litany of metaphors that describe the rotten heart of Carlos' homeland, thus justification for an elaborate assassination plot and coup d’etat. When life gives you lemons, kill Fidel.

Not that Merullo hides his bloodlust motive in crafting a generally successful, suspenseful plot. And, perhaps, Merullo is not a blind hater, but merely a literary opportunist, an outsider much like Martin Cruz Smith, informed by locals with their own axes a-grinding. I’d love to learn who steered Merullo in the direction he leads the reader. Jose LaTour advised Smith, creating a beautiful novel with a flavor of authenticity, then wrote a parallel novel.

As in Havana Lunar, Fidel’s Last Days occur against a background of Cuban medicine. This isn’t the healing science of a recent rabble-rousing film but the medicine of shortage. Havana Lunar features a medical clinic lacking even aspirin to treat sick children, owing to the clinic’s location in a politically unreliable neighborhood where folks don’t rat out each other’s political shortcomings. Merullo is not as hard on his poor barrio clinics, such as Elena’s: “Although the shelves were not stocked with more than a week’s supply of the essentials—zylocaine, penicillin, aspirin, hydrogen peroxide—the nurses called on the patients in fair order, and, it seemed to Carlos, treated them capably, efficiently.”

Carlos happens to be Cuba’s Minister of Health, Castro’s personal physician, and a crony of all the good old boys. Carlos had been with el Comandante from near the beginning. But Carlos is not immune from political suspicion. Castro’s longer-tenured comrade, the quintessentially evil Olochon, heads D-7, internal security. Olochon relishes his job and his nickname, The Dentist, earned from his technique of pulling teeth with a “plumber’s wrench.” Ferreting out traitors to the state occupies Olochon’s days and nights, except when he’s got some traitor hanging in a cell waiting, wishing, for a coup de grace. At one point, Carlos expresses his belief to Fidel that Olochon goes too far sometimes. Fidel thinks Olochon is doing a fine job.

Olochon’s suspicious mien reflects, if not causes, the disheartening mistrust and political snitching that characterizes personal relationships witnessed in other novels, too. Carlos and Elena matter deeply to one another, yet Carlos fears letting her in on his role in the plot. “To protect her, he told himself. To protect her, and others. But, in fact, he was not truly sure of Elena’s political leanings. At times, quietly, she voiced criticisms—never of Fidel personally, but of the way things were done. And then, other times, he’d see her watching a television program that was pure propaganda, and there would be tears in her eyes for the great experiment that was Cuba.” For her part, Elena recognizes if Carlos is taken, Olochon will come for Elena and her family simply owing to her Carlos conecta. The limits of Cuban love begin at the ligature around one's throat.

Merullo wants readers to recognize a difference between Carlos’ contemporaries and everyday, less jaded Cubanos, like Elena. Olochon provides a focal point: “his anger had been like an ugly brother to Fidel’s, his ego like a twisted reflection of a twisted reflection. … there were those who claimed Batista had fled the country, not because of Castro or the sentiments of the Cuban people, but because of the boy who enjoyed killing. Olochon….the name was a sharp hot spike through the groin

Carlos’ view of Elena and her adult son, illustrates the depth of Olochon’s type of suspicion and the vast gap between lost potential and present decay. “Julio and his mother were real revolutionaries, real communists. They were, Carlos thought, what he had been at the beginning.” Earlier in the novel, a similar feeling intrudes on the hate fest for all things Castro, and for oneself. “The Revolution had been built on a concern for the pain of others. In the beginning the revolutionaries had killed, of course—without that killing they would still be slaves—but always in the name of a glorious future. Now, however, it seemed to him more and more that they killed in the name of a mediocre present, a status quo that kept so many Cubans wanting food, while a few, like him and Olochon, lived well. They had become the men they had once cursed.”

This conflict of past and present sets off a logic grown from Merullo’s depiction of Castro as an out of touch blowhard. Castro sits in the cabinet meeting and drones on and on, but only after each of the cabinet ministers have droned their glowing reports of fabricated progress, each minister quietly admiring the lying ability of a compañero. Does Fidel have to go, or should the assassin aim at Olochon’s evil? Ridding Cuba of el Comandante will destabilize the island, but killing Olochon will remove an evil blot on the island’s health. Fidel will die some day, but what if the director of D-7 ascends the throne?

It must have been a pleasure for Merullo to write Fidel’s death in the penultimate chapter. Without giving away the twisty ending from the final chapter, the Fidel-hater reader will re-read that paragraph with cascading frissons of glee. Ding dong and all that.

Sadly, a few small but glaring errors mar the otherwise involving suspense. There’s that matter of The Dentist’s yanking teeth one by one with a plumber’s wrench. I think not. A plier, a vise grip, a dental instrument of course, would do. But a plumber’s wrench is designed with one-way teeth that grasp a pipe across the circumference to exert counterclockwise force on a tube with ample clearance. Being somewhat of a handyman myself—I’m a regular carpintonto, in fact—I know my plumbing tools with an intimacy Merullo lacks.

Likewise, Merullo’s confusion of Cuban with Mexican comida. What happened to his local informant on this, quién sabe, but when Carlos takes Elena to dinner, they go to a restaurant whose fare illustrates not only run-of-the-mill privation but also an egregiously uninformed writer: “they turned down an alley, past a woman and small child begging and a man playing the Peruvian flute, then ducked into the large, noisy, popular Café Castro, where you could sometimes get a little chicken or fish with your beans and rice and tortillas”.

¡Hijole! That menu cries out for an editor or a fact-checker.


Artful News from Chicago



Hi All,

My studio building is having its annual Spring "OPEN STUDIO WALK" weekend on May 15-16, 2009. If you are in or near Chicago I hope you'll drop in and have a glass of wine and see some wonderful art. Art will be for sale!

More details and directions can be found on the Artists of Eastbank website - www.artistsoftheeastbank.com

J u d i t h e H e r n á n d e z
◘ Website: www.jhnartestudio.com
◘ Studio: 1200 West 35th Street, #35000, Chicago, IL 60609

Meso American Reminder

In Los Angeles, Cal State LA hosts the 2009 Conference on Mesoamerica. Continuity and Change in Mesoamerican History From the Pre-Classic to the Colonial Era. Click here for a PDF of this interesting event.

Lydia Considered and Re-Considered.

La Bloga enthused at the beauty, power, and pure drama of Lydia at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum.

Denver's John Keubler has an interesting answer to the question of how Octavio Solis' masterful teatro experience changed from its Denver debut to its exceptional El Lay staging. Click here (then press Esc when the site demands an email password) to enjoy Keubler's take on this wondrous play, including an LA Times critic's accusation Lydia is like a telenovela. Wha? Among descriptions I would hope critics studiously avoid is equating fluffy stuff like telenovelas with so fine an example of Chicano belles-lettres.

Now the play has found its way west to Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, where critical reception, perhaps because of all the hype, has been mixed. Los Angles Times theater critic Charles McNulty calls it “magical realism meets telenovela.”

I do not watch telenovelas, and I wonder how many telenovelas McNulty consumes along with a hot botana or two? For me, this sounds like beans rice and tortillas served at a Havana café, suspiciously uninformed. Ni modo. You'll enjoy Keubler's essay.

What's the word of the day? Catarro. May you not comprehend what this means, leastways, not as convincingly as I do right now. Damn.  Here's trusting my twice daily botana of Ciprofloxacin and Tamiflu are doing the trick, this second Tuesday of May. A Tuesday like any day, except you are here. Be well, gente. See you next week.

ate,

mvs

La Bloga welcomes your comments. Click the Comments counter below to add your notes to this, or any column. Be mindful that La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. When you have a counter view of something you read at La Bloga, or your own review of a book or arts event, click here to share your intentions to be our guest.

The Bully

A children's story by Álvaro Huerta
Illustrated by Andrew Huerta

Tomás wasn't born a bully. He simply made bad choices.

When his mother dropped Tomás off on the first day of school at Murchison Elementary, he cried uncontrollably. When the teacher wasn't looking, he walked home all by himself.

"Why aren't you at school?" his mother asked, puzzled to see him.

"I'm scared," said the 5-year-old, chubby kid. "I don't want to go to school. I want to stay with you, Mommy."

"Why can't you be tough like your older sister?" his mother responded. "Remember, you're a Gomez and we don't cry."

Not saying a word, Tomás shrugged his shoulders and went straight to the TV to watch his favorite Nickelodeon cartoons.

While most kids in East Los Angeles' Ramona Gardens Housing Project had a nickname, like Peanut Butter, Smiley and Fat Ritchie, no one bothered to give one to Tomás.

Since Tomás cried almost every day in kindergarten, he could've easily been nicknamed Cry Baby, Big Baby or Mommy's Boy. But he came from a family of bullies and the kids were afraid. No one dared to make fun of him.

He had a hard time with his reading at school. His first-grade teacher told his mother he had a learning disability, but he had to get on a waiting list for special help since his overcrowded school didn't have enough therapists.

One day, while in the fourth grade, a new kid at Murchison made fun of Tomás during reading aloud time.

"Hey, Tomás," said the kid, "you sound like a giant robot. Didn't you learn to read in third grade?"

Although Tomás was bigger than the other kid, he started to cry. Before he knew it, the entire class laughed in unison. Not saying a word, Tomás ran home.

His dad laughed at him too. Then he gave him a lecture he would never forget. "You need to defend yourself. If you don't, they're going to keep making fun of you," his dad told him with a stern look.

"Yes," said Tomás, feeling ashamed. Something happened inside of Tomás that day. He felt anger welling up inside of him. Anger he didn't understand.

The next day, he went on a rampage, taking lunch tickets from the other kids at school, making kids fight against each other and taking away the big, red handball from the girls during recess. All of a sudden, Tomás became the kid who controlled the playground.

He also told the kids in the neighborhood what to do. While he wasn't good in sports, he always wanted to be the pitcher in baseball, the quarterback in football and the point guard in basketball. It got to the point that the kids would stop playing when he showed up.

Deep down inside he was lonely. He was confused. At first the kids didn't respect him because he cried a lot, now they feared him because he told them what to do.

Not knowing what to do one day, Tomás locked himself in his mother's room and cried all alone while watching his favorite Saturday morning cartoons.

Concerned about Tomás' mood, his mother offered him his favorite cereal, Frosted Flakes, until he eventually opened the door.

"What's the matter, Tomás?" his mother asked. "Did someone hit you?"

"No," he responded.

"Did someone call you a name?" she asked.

"No," he responded, again.

"Then why are you crying?" she asked with a look of worry.

"Because no one wants to be my friend," he said.

"Well," she said, "maybe you should think about why nobody wants to play with you."

"The kids start to run when they see me just because I tell them what to do," he responded.

"Well, how would you like it if another kid bossed you around?" she asked him.

"I don't know," he said, feeling a little confused. "But Dad said that I needed to be tough and protect myself."

"Protecting yourself and being a bully are two different things," she clarified. "You should never take advantage of other kids."

"Maybe it's not cool to be a bully, after all," he said to his mother.

***

Guest writer Álvaro Huerta is a visiting scholar at UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center, and a doctoral student in city and urban planning at UC Berkeley. His story, "Los Dos Smileys," is featured in Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature (Bilingual Press, 2008). "The Bully" first appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

◙ On March 23, La Bloga ran an interview with Daniel Alarcón who co-edited with Diego Trelles Paz a special Latin American issue of Zoetrope: All-Story. If you haven’t purchased it yet, you must. The stories are wonderfully strange and beautiful, brutal and honest, on the cutting edge of contemporary short-story writing. You may learn more about Zoetrope: All-Story including the authors featured in the special Latin American issue, subscription rates, and submission guidelines by visiting here. Well, the New Yorker has just posted an interview with Alarcón about this special issue. Here’s a little taste of that interview:

NEW YORKER: All the writers you chose for this issue were born after the publication of “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” a point you mention in your introduction. Do you think there are barriers standing between young Latin American writers and a larger, more international audience?

DANIEL ALARCÓN: To be clear, the problem is not García Márquez — Diego [Trelles Paz] and I noted the publication of that book simply because it is so iconic, so well-known that at times it seems that’s the only Latin American novel many in the United States have bothered read. And, of course, it’s one of those books everyone absolutely should read, a perfect, transcendent novel, but an unfortunate consequence of its critical and commercial success, especially in the American literary marketplace, has been to spawn dozens of imitators, who by sheer numbers crowd out other significant and original voices.

Honestly, I don’t understand why these books keep getting published. For years we’ve seen bookstore shelves lined with warmed-over copies of Gabo, formulaic representations of a continent that doesn’t exist anymore. If Americans are still picturing Macondo when they think of Latin America, they will misunderstand a great deal of what is happening now. The demographic shifts of the last forty years have been stark, and naturally the literature reflects those changes. The frustrating thing about it is that in Latin America, the literary conversation has long since moved beyond magical realism—it’s only in the U.S. that the dialogue hasn’t progressed. And this isn’t just a literary problem—it’s a political, cultural, and economic issue as well.

You may read the entire New Yorker interview here.

◙ Over at The Rumpus, Ellisa Bassist happily allows herself to get transfixed by the phobias in Roberto Bolaño’s masterwork, 2666 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

◙ Rigoberto González, an award-winning writer living in New York City, reviews Maurice Kilwein Guevara's newest collection, Poema (University of Arizona Press), for the El Paso Times. He observes, in part:

History books about the 20th century will highlight the key players in wars, politics, science and economics. The poets -- those who express their view of the world through art -- might end up mere footnotes.

But writers receive their due in Maurice Kilwein Guevara's newest collection, Poema (University of Arizona Press, $15.95 paperback).

"I'm greedy for the entire Pacific Ocean and whales," admits the speaker in the opening poem. "I cross the border for roasted iguana and onion. Tremors at Momotombo. Where are you?" he asks, invoking Eunice Odio, the Costa Rican poet.

That poem is closely followed by a portrait of Catalonian visual poet Joan Brossa as the "Emerald Moth Discharging Energy." Next comes Elizabeth Bishop weeding the garden in a sienna blouse and John Berryman putting a fire out with his foot.

Each poem embeds a poet into life's everyday urgencies, because the world must have poetry to survive. Without it, "ours would be a history of chronic needs."

To read the entire review, go here.

◙ Abelardo de la Peña, Jr., editor of LatinoLA, lets us know about a few of the many new stories now available for your reading pleasure:

How Manny Broke Every Dominican's Heart by Claudio E. Cabrera

News from the Brown Side of Town, May 7 by Frankie Firme, Contributing Editor

Eviscerating Immigrant=Criminal Logic by Roberto Lovato

Letter to Mamita by Edie J. Adler, Contributing Writer

Prejudice and Ignorance are Nothing to Sneeze At by Andy Porras

A Latina Supreme Court Judge? by Gebe Martinez

A Soldier's Father by Abelardo de la Pena Jr.

Latinos on a Star Trek

Hispanic PR Association Announces 2009 Scholarships by Anai Ibarra

Summer Paid Internships at Tia Chuchas

◙ TWO EXCITING LITERARY OPPORTUNITIES FROM LIBRERÍA MARTINEZ:

May 26th - Librería Martinez presents Creative Writing Workshop taught by Reyna Grande. Through in-class exercises, weekly assignments, group interaction, and peer and instructor feedback, Reyna will motivate and cultivate the writer within you in a fun and supportive environment. Topics include the ABCs of the elements of fiction and the 123s of publication.

Location: Librería Martinez (Lynwood Location) at 11221 Long Beach Blvd., Lynwood, CA 90262

Time: Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m.

To register, contact Reyna Grande or call Librería Martinez at 310-637-9484.

May 28th - Librería Martinez presents its new BOOK CLUB. Join us for a meet-and-greet hosted by Reyna Grande. There will be beverages and snacks provided and the first book club selection will be revealed.

Location: Libreria Martinez (Lynwood Location) at 11221 Long Beach Blvd., Lynwood, CA 90262

Time: 7:00 p.m.

[NOTE: Photo of Reyna Grande is by Ibarionex R. Perello. He was a 2003 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Rosenthal Fellow. His first published piece of fiction is entitled "1952" and appeared in the Boston Review in 2005. It will form a part of his novel, Memories of Flesh and Bone.]

◙ Every so often a wonderful writerly gift comes my way that just makes me smile. I recently found out that one of my stories was selected for the forthcoming Sudden Fiction Latino: Short-Short Stories from the United States and Latin America (W. W. Norton, March 2010). There are several things that make this particularly nice. First, I didn’t have to submit, my story was chosen by the editors. Second, as an English major, it is a dream to be included in a Norton anthology. Third, I am honored to be in some pretty remarkable literary company (if you're a La Bloga reader and also will appear in this anthology, drop a comment below and let us know the good news). And finally, I am pleased to see sudden fiction anthologies continue to be published. In any event, here’s what Norton says about Sudden Fiction Latino:

For readers who love great short-short stories, this bountiful anthology is the best of Latin American and U.S. Latino writers. Following on the success of the Flash Fiction and Sudden Fiction series, Robert Shapard and James Thomas join with Ray Gonzalez in selecting works that each present a complete story in less than 1,500 words. Luisa Valenzuela, one of Latin America’s most lauded writers, provides the introduction. Readers will delight in finding stars such as Junot Díaz, Sandra Cisneros, and Roberto Bolaño alongside recognized masters like Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, and Jorge Luis Borges. They will discover work from Andrea Saenz, Daniel Alarcón, and Alicita Rodriguez, as well as other writers on the rise.

In Julio Ortega’s “Migrations,” a Peruvian writer explores how immigrant speech and ethnic origins are a force of meaning that evolves beyond language. In “Hair,” by Hilma Contreras, a Caribbean pharmacist is driven mad by a young woman’s luxuriant tresses. These stories stretch from gritty reality to the fantastical in a mix that is moving, challenging, humorous, artful, sometimes political, and altogether spectacular.

◙ That’s all for now. So, in the meantime, enjoy the intervening posts from mis compadres y comadres here on La Bloga. And remember: ¡Lea un libro!

The Border, the flu, the immigration, the violence – whose fault is it, anyway?

Part 1

Swine Flu, Border Security and Public Priorities

It couldn’t have struck at a worse moment. Reeling from economic crisis and public insecurity, Mexico was now faced with a public health emergency of unknown proportions. Across the country, from Tijuana in the north to Tapachula in the south, schools were closed, masses canceled, restaurants and nightclubs shuttered, museums and libraries shut down, and workplaces put on reduced hours.

Slammed with travel warnings and restrictions from abroad, Mexico’s important tourist industry, already teetering on the brink, was threatened with a coup de grace from the deadly hand of the swine flu.

Aguascalientes’ beloved San Marcos National Fair, the country’s largest spring festival, was canceled in the middle of festivities. Ironically, it was the controversial pop star Gloria Trevi (locked up for several years in a Chihuahua prison accused of corrupting minors before being acquitted) who delivered the final performance. The loss of an annual spring rite replete with love, wine, song and dance was added to the heartbreak of dying or sick relatives and friends.

In Mexico, the spring flowers withered and died this year.

In almost surrealistic fashion, an April 27 earthquake reportedly killed two people in the state of Guerrero and rattled Mexico City. Interviewed in a city which suffered major water shortages prior to the swine flu outbreak, a young woman described the feeling in the Mexican capital as apocalyptic.

It is still too identify the origin of the Mexican swine flu epidemic, but news reports link the possible start of the health crisis to a huge, runaway US pig farm located in the Veracruz-Puebla borderlands. The farm in question is owned in part by US-based Smithfield Foods, the largest hog and pork producer in the world and a company with a record for environmental violations on this side of the border.

Residents of the community of La Gloria have long protested unsanitary conditions, thick clouds of flies, unrelenting odors, and groundwater contamination allegedly coming from the factory farm. In response, the state governments of Veracruz and Puebla have slapped protestors with legal charges and sent in the police to arrest them.

Early this week, Smithfield Foods said tests found no evidence of swine flu in its employees or animals. Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said it was “adventurist” to blame the Veracruz countryside for the health epidemic and, in a comment sure to surprise many US health officials, added that swine flu was present in California and Texas before it was in Mexico.

Another high Mexican health official, Miguel Angel Lezana, expounded on the theme. Dissociating the pig farm from the killer virus sweeping the country, Lezana said it was difficult to determine where swine flu originated and may have in fact come from Asia or the United States.

Whatever true story of the swine flu outbreak finally emerges, it is almost certain the public health emergency, which could last for weeks, will have major political, social and economic ramifications for Mexico and its relations with the US and other nations.

Which brings us to the real meaning of border security. In recent months, both Washington and Mexico City have placed heavy emphasis on increasing border law enforcement. Coming from multiple branches of government, proposals are on the table to station more National Guard troops on the border, beef up local law enforcement agencies, set up additional border checkpoints and crack down on allegedly rampant gun running, to name a just a few.

Although the sheer volume of official, security-related statements (frequently contradictory) flowing from corridors of power on both sides of the border is challenging for even a news editor to follow and decipher, it is clear billions of new dollars are in the pipeline to government agencies and private contractors charged with implementing a cross-border security strategy.

Yet new border walls or state-of-the-art cameras didn't stop swine flu from crossing the border, south to north or north to south.

All this is not to say that Mexico and the US are totally unprepared to handle health emergencies like the swine flu. A healthy degree of cooperation exists among health professionals of the two neighboring countries, though much more remains to be done.

But serious questions about the ability of either country to handle a pandemic are the talk of the press. An individual connected to a major New Mexico hospital acknowledged to a media colleague that the institution would be rapidly overwhelmed if large numbers of people fell ill withswine flu.

The insider’s revelation is not surprising to journalists who probe the vast underbelly of New Mexico outside celebrity-haunted Santa Fe. Despite undergoing much-trumpeted economic growth in recent years, New Mexico has many trappings of the Third World underdeveloped colonias, mounting water shortages, lousy wages, high prices, rural doctor shortages, few dentists anywhere, and hundreds of thousands of people without health insurance. In numerous ways, New Mexico is not all that far removed from the Mexican reality.

A state that was once considered best suited for atomic bomb tests or treated as a quaint stop-over for Indian curios on the Chicago-LA highway, now ironically stands as the model of development for growing sections of the United States, where the Third World is settling in, too.

Like the financial meltdown of 2008, the swine flu is a wake-up call furiously ringing on both sides of the border. Will protecting public health make it up the list of political priorities for the respective governments?

-Kent Paterson

This article originally appeared on April 28, 2009, reprinted here with permission from FNS.

© Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email fnsnews@nmsu.edu

Awards, Author Events, More Free Books

COLORADO BOOK AWARDS

There is some excellent writing among the finalists for this year's Colorado Book Award in the category of Fiction/Literary:

Orange Mint and Honey by Carleen Brice, One World/Ballantine Books
Home Pool: Stories of Fly Fishing and Lesser Passions by Bruce Ducker, Stackpole Books
The Song of Jonah by Gene Geurin, University of New Mexico Press
People of the Whale by Linda Hogan, W.W. Norton
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, Ecco

The awards announcement from the Colorado Humanities and Center for the Book included this summary of one of the books that should have special interest to La Bloga readers:

The Song of Jonah by Gene Guerin

Unjustly accused in a minor sex scandal, Fr. Jon Armitage, a charismatic but brash young priest accustomed to hobnobbing with the upper crust of New England society, is exiled to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe in the early 1960s. There, in the bishop’s office, he discovers mediocrity and corruption to match anything from his previous situation and is assigned to the remote parish of Nueve Niños. Squatting at the edge of an ancient crater lake on the barren plains of northeastern New Mexico, Nueve Niños, with its long-standing reputation for mistreating its pastors, is an alien world that will prove his ultimate testing ground. Through his slow, often reluctant immersion into the lives of the villagers, Fr. Jon eventually gains insight into himself and his ultimate calling.

Gene Guerin was born in Las Vegas, New Mexico, in 1938 and educated in Las Vegas, Santa Fe, and Rome, Italy. Guerin is a freelance writer of documentaries and corporate videos for which he has received numerous national awards. His work includes an award-winning, hour length Spanish-language documentary on Pope John Paul’s visit to Colorado for World Youth Day 1993. Guerin also hosted a public service half-hour program featuring Hispanic issues on Denver’s Channel 2 in the 1970s. Most recently, he has been a writer for a non-profit organization called Cooperative for Education, which supplies textbooks and installs libraries and computer labs for the indigenous children of Guatemala’s highlands.



Fact of Life #31 by Denise Vega, Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, is a finalist in the Young Adult Literature category.

The 18th annual Colorado Book Award winners will be presented on Monday, June 22 at 3:30 pm at the Aspen Summer Words Literary Festival (June 21-26, 2009). Aspen Summer Words has been the place to be for anyone with a passion for the written word. One of the nation’s “Top Ten Literary Gatherings” (USA Today), this 6-day celebration of words, stories and ideas consists of a morning writing retreat, an afternoon literary festival, and professional consultations with agents and editors, bringing some of the world’s most interesting and engaging literary talent to Aspen.
Congratulations to all the finalists.

HIT LIST READING AND SIGNING EVENTS

Texas Friday, May 8, 2009 6:30 p.m. Murder By The Book 2342 Bissonnet Houston, TX 77005 Meet Lucha Corpi, Sarah Cortez, Bertha Jacobson and Arthur Muñoz Thursday, May 21, 2009 5:00 p.m. The Twig Book Shop 5005 Broadway San Antonio, TX 78209 Meet Bertha Jacobson and Arthur Muñoz New York Thursday, May 14, 2009 6:00 p.m. East Harlem Cafe 1651 Lexington Ave (@104th St.) New York, NY 10029 Meet Carlos Hernanez, Liz Martínez, Richie Narvaez and Sergio Troncoso Thursday, May 21, 2009 6:30 p.m. Mysterious Book Shop 58 Warren St. New York, NY 10007 Meet Sarah Cortez, Carlos Hernanez, Liz Martínez, Richie Narvaez and Sergio Troncoso Saturday, May 30, 2009 3:30 p.m. Author Signing at BookExpo America Jacob K. Javits Convention Center 635 West 34th Street New York, NY 10001 Meet Carlos Hernández, Liz Martínez, Richie Narvaez and Sergio Troncoso Colorado Thursday, May 21, 2009 7:30 p.m. Tattered Cover 2526 East Colfax Ave Denver, CO 80206 Meet Mario Acevedo and Manuel Ramos California Saturday, May 16, 2009 3:00 p.m. The Mystery Bookstore 1036-C Broxton Ave Los Angeles, CA 90024 Meet S. Ramos O'Briant and L.M. Quinn

La Bloga is helping to spread the written word in a very practical way - free books. We are partnering with Hachette Book Group during its promotion of free books recognizing May's Latino Book Month. Hachette is offering a library of five titles, including:

1. B as in Beauty - Alberto Ferreras

2. Into the Beautiful North - Luis Urrea

3. Hungry Woman in Paris - Josefina Lopez

4. The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos - Margaret Mascarenhas

5. Houston, We Have a Problema - Gwendolyn Zepeda

Click on the links in the titles to find out more about these novels.

To qualify for your five books, click here to send your name and a street address along with the answers to the following questions taken from the posts of the blogueros or blogueras earlier this week.

1. What East L.A. restaurant offers "unequalled pleasure" in a very special specialty?
2. What college has sponsored, since 1996, a summer conference dedicated to "advanced writers seeking to recharge, reconnect, and nourish their creative development"?
3. What was taken from René on his first day at his new school?

That's it on another beautiful day in Colorado. Read to succeed.

Later.

René Has Two Last Names

My dear character René from I Am René, the Boy/ Soy René, el niño is back with a new adventure in René Has Two Last Names/ René tiene dos apellidos. Illustrated by Fabiola Graullera Ramirez.

In this new title, René will work to have his two last names, just like in El Salvador. At school, they called him René Colato. But what happened to his Mamás beautiful last name? René is not a complete boy by being only René Colato.

• Reading level: Ages 4-8
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Pinata Books (October 31, 2009)
• Language: Bilingual English/Spanish
• ISBN-10: 1558855300
• ISBN-13: 978-1558855304

From the Publisher:

An engaging bilingual picture book about a boy’s clever efforts to help his classmates understand a Hispanic cultural tradition

"On the first day at my new school, my teacher, Miss Soria, gave me a sticker that said René Colato. The sticker was missing my second last name. Maybe Miss Soria's pen ran out of ink. I took my pencil and added it. Now it looked right: René Colato Laínez."

Young René is from El Salvador, and he doesn't understand why his name has to be different in the United States. When he writes Colato, he sees his paternal grandparents, René and Amelia. When he writes Laínez, he sees his maternal grandparents, Angela and Julio. Without his second last name, René feels incomplete, "like a hamburger without the meat or a pizza without cheese or a hot dog without a wiener."

His new classmates giggle when René tells them his name. "That's a long dinosaur name," one says. "Your name is longer than an anaconda," another laughs. But René doesn't want to lose the part of him that comes from his mother's family. So when the students are given a project to create a family tree, René is determined to explain the importance of using both of his last names. On the day of his presentation, René explains that he is as hard working as Abuelo René, who is a farmer, and as creative as his Abuela Amelia, who is a potter. He can tell stories like his Abuelo Julio and enjoys music like his Abuela Angela.

This charming bilingual picture book for children ages 4 - 8 combines the winning team of author René Colato Laínez and illustrator Fabiola Graullera Ramírez, and follows their award-winning collaboration, I Am René, the Boy / Soy René, el niño. With whimsical illustrations and entertaining text, this sequel is sure to please fans and gain many new ones while explaining an important Hispanic cultural tradition.

RENÉ COLATO LAÍNEZ came to the United States from El Salvador as a teen, and he writes about his experiences in children’s books such as Waiting for Papá / Esperando a Papá (Piñata Books, 2004) and I Am René, the Boy / Soy René, el niño (Piñata Books, 2005), which received Special Recognition in the 2006 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People. His book, Playing Lotería / El juego de la lotería (Luna Rising, 2005), was a finalist in the 2007-2008 Tejas Star Book Award, was named to Críticas magazine’s “Best Children’s Books” of 2005 and received the 2008 New Mexico Book Award for Best Children’s Book. René is a graduate of the Vermont College MFA program in Writing for Children & Young Adults and a bilingual elementary teacher at Fernangeles Elementary School in the Los Angeles Unified School District.


FABIOLA GRAULLERA RAMIREZ, a native of Mexico City, graduated from UNAM’s National School of Fine Arts with a degree in Graphic Communication. Her work has been part of collective exhibits in Mexico and Spain. She has illustrated many picture books, including I Am René, the Boy / Soy René, el niño (Piñata Books, 2005).

La Bloga

René Colato Laínez

Review: America Libre. Book Give-Away. Mesoamerican Conference.

Michael Sedano

Review: Raul Ramos y Sanchez. America Libre. NY: Grand Central. 2009.

I was happy to read Daniel Olivas’ review of Hit List Monday because it opens the week with a taste of the sublime, unlike the novel I started reading last week, instead of Hit List. The dog ate it, what can I say?

Fortunately, the edition I read of Raul Ramos Y Sanchez’ America Libre, is an advance copy anticipating its July 2009 paperback publication. So there’s time to fix a lot of stuff. Geography. Idiom. The “H” word. Most of all, Ethos.

America Libre takes place mostly in a dystopic present-day Los Angeles, but the trouble is nationwide. A Latina takes an errant bullet from drug-raiding San Anto cops. Barrios across the Southwest explode in violence. A National Guard platoon draws down on a mob and when the smoke clears twenty-three people lie dead. Across the nation, the barrios explode. Bloodthirsty television news channels provide only slanted, anti-raza coverage. Soon, lawlessness, or police indifference, bring vigilantes into the barrio. Bloody drive-by slaughters not only go unsolved, they grow in audacity. Increasingly, across the nation, xenophobia divides the country into brown v. white.

Conservative assholes, but I repeat myself, nativist assholes, ditto, hold sway in Congress. In a short period the United States of America begins rounding up all “Class ‘H’” people—“Hispanic” or Spanish-last name residents. Relocation camps in places like North Dakota will house the, first quarantined, then ultimately, concentration camped, population.

In Los Angeles, a group of, at first dissidents, then armed defenders, take on the violence. They ambush a three-car vigilante caravan. Using AK-47 and Rocket Propelled Grenades, led by an ex-Army Ranger, Afghanistan veteran and third-generation Hispanic, Manolo “Mano” Suarez, the barrio defender tortures the leader’s identity out of a vigilante. Joined by the incredibly rich and sexily blonde Hispanic Uruguayan Tupamaro Jo, and fiery orator Ramon Garcia, Mano helps the pretend poverty pimps craft a bloody liberation movement. Hispanics will take back their land from the …

Exciting material, could be a lot of fun to read, but for some serious obstacles.

The timeline gets mucked up. Each chapter tracks events by month and day, e.g. Month 2, Day 10. Someone--an editor, an assistant, a careless author—loses track of time. Month 11, Day 8 sees Mano quit his job with Jo and Ramon. Next chapter, listed as Month 21, Day 17, has Mano back on the street jobless and cheated out of twenty bucks, regretting quitting his job three weeks ago. Nine months of four weeks transpire in titles, but only 21 days in novel time. There are similar lapses in the sequencing gimmick.

Throughout the novel I had to keep asking myself who Grand Central thinks is its audience. Chicana Chicano readers, especially Angelinas Angelinos will have a lot of trouble enjoying the action owing to troublesome location errors, or, perhaps, ambiguities. And that's a small problem.

“East LA” is a place, not a stereotype, nor a metaphor. America Latina’s core action takes place in “Easlo,” an expression I hear for the first time in the novel. In El Lay, locals refer to “East Los” or “East L.A.”, and just as often respect specific communities like Boyle Heights, East Los’ neighbor to the West. Ramos y Sanchez writes as if “East Los Angeles” is a stereotype. In fact, Mano lives on Fourth Street, which is in Boyle Heights, not East LA. In another glaring locational error, after Mano and his crew of bombers blow holes across downtown L.A., the CIA moves its headquarters from its overlook of the Veterans Cemetery to some nondescript landscape. The Federal Building Ramos y Sanchez describes is on the tony L.A. Westside, miles from the downtown and not visible from East LA.

That type of blunder is easily fixed with a map or an informed editor. Less tolerable is the language people, supposedly raza, use. “Hispanic” is the major culprit. It’s clear Ramos y Sanchez and his editor struggled with the term. A limited Spanish-speaking Mexican-American like Mano and his guisa might indeed call each other and their gente “Hispanic” but dang, lots of characters buy into the term without any editorializing from the author about one of the most sensitive idiomatic expressions among Chicanas Chicanos Latinas Latinos, raza. I recommend the author and editor explore this terminological perplex with an ear for authenticity. Manitos and a chingón of Tejanos say “Hispanic” but in El Lay, Boyle Heights or greater East Los, hasta la westside, the “H” word might get your ass kicked. Among Mexicanos, Los Tigres Del Norte put the issue to song: En Estados Unidos te dicen que soy latino / Pero no te quieren decir que soy un Americano.

Politicized characters lack the ideological vocabulary one expects of Tupamaro or 60s veteranos. Instead of “amigo” the expression would, in the appropriate context, be “compañero” or “carnal” or “brother” or a host of other phrases that define relationship among speakers. For Ramos y Sanchez, “amigo” is the singlular expression of solidarity or palhood. Like “Hispanic”, the novel’s use of “amigo” contributes it a stunning lack of authenticity. I frequently have to read the author’s name again to make sure it’s not Amado Muro.

Everything that stuns my sensibilities is fixable in this action novel. Grand Central Publishing is home of Robert Ludlum’s library of high action thrillers. With that heritage in mind, Ramos y Sanchez has an obligation to give the reader more and better action. Things happen off stage or in exposition that deserve eye witness details and loud noises. The action develops much too slowwwwwly, and challenges even the most charitable reader’s willingness to suspend bullshit filters. Dozens of ammonium nitrate bombs detonate across Los Angeles downtown and not a drop of blood shed!?!

I suspect the most unfixable element is the horrid stereotyping of raza. In this world, as noted, dystopic, but other than gangbangers, junkies, whores, and looters, the barrios of this Los Angeles got themselves populated by gente with no backbone. All the crap that goes down and the people do not rise as one to do as they actually engage today: use political muscle and union power to organize the community. In this Los Angeles, outsiders sweep into town and lead us into temptation. The homegrown hero, torn by his loyaty to law and ordure and his Hispanic community, resolves the dilemma only after a National Guard tank levels the building where Mano’s son stood. In other words, out of selfishness rather than selflessness.

This puppet-like ethos of Los Angeles’ Chicano community makes America Libre one of the more subversive works of stories about chicanos by non chicanos. The cover blurb and author’s website describe the author as a Midwestern Cubano. If true, the author could possible fix the whole shebang by relocating the revolución to Pilsen or, mejor, Miami. That’s the ticket. One-way.

May / Book Give-Away!

La Bloga is happy to join with Hachette Book Company's promotion of free books recognizing May's Latino Book Month. Hachette is offering a library of five titles, including:

1.       B as in Beauty By Alberto Ferreras ISBN: 0446697893

2.       Into the Beautiful North By Luis Urrea ISBN: 0316025275

3.       Hungry Woman in Paris By Josefina Lopez ISBN: 0446699411

4.       The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos By Margaret Mascarenhas ISBN: 0446541109

5.       Houston, We Have a Problema By Gwendolyn Zepeda ISBN: 0446698520

 

To qualify for your five books, click here to send your name and a street (UPS) address along with the answer to questions:

Who are the editors of Hit List?

Who wrote the Foreward to Hit List?

Whose skull is the focus of Manuel Ramos' story in Hit List?

2009 Conference on Mesoamerica. Continuity and Change in Mesoamerican History From the Pre-Classic to the Colonial Era Comes to Cal State El Lay Mid-Month.

Congratulations to Dr. Roberto Cantu and his team of scholars and dedicated student workers on their upcoming academic conference presented in homage to Maya linguist Tatiana A. Proskouriakoff. The two day event runs May 15 and 16 at CSULA. The first three events indicate the promise of an intensely researched event:

A Valley Zapotec Text from 1614: What it Tells Us

Featured Speaker, John Pohl lecture, “The Hummingbird and the Flower Prince: New Approaches to Identifying Regional Political Interaction from an Analysis of the Narrative Themes on Postclassic Polychrome Vessels

Ulama: the Survival of the Mesoamerican Ballgame

Click here to view PDF of the conference schedule. This is a public, no registration fee event. CSULA sits astride Asia and América in El Sereno. Alhambra and Monterey Park to the east are Chinese and Vietnamese restaurant-rich communities. Lincoln Heights on the near West, City Terrace, East LA, and Boyle Heights on the South, SE, and SW respectively, offer infinite choices of tacos, tamales, raspados. To pick only one, Moles La Tia provides unequalled pleasure.



Tempus has fugitted with alacrity. Uau, 5 May. El Drinko de Mayo, as Lalo Alcaraz satirizes the bironga-heavy adverts that usually pepper us around this time of year. Not so much this year, must be the zombie strain of pig flu.

See you May's week 2, day 3.

mvs

La Bloga welcomes your comments. Click the Comments counter below. La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. Click here to share your idea.

Fine collection should engross any lover of mystery (not just Latinos)

Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery

(Arte Público Press, $19.95 paperback)
Edited by Sarah Cortez and Liz Martínez

Book review by Daniel A. Olivas

With the newly released Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery (Arte Público Press, $19.95 paperback), editors Sarah Cortez and Liz Martínez have succeeded in bringing together some of the best mystery fiction being written today.

This anthology features the work of Mario Acevedo, Lucha Corpi, Sarah Cortez, Carolina García-Aguilera, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Carlos Hernandez, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Bertha Jacobson, John Lantigua, Arthur Muñoz, R. Narvarez, L.M. Quinn, Manuel Ramos, S. Ramos O'Briant, A.E. Roman, Steven Torres and Sergio Troncoso.

In the foreword to Hit List, Ralph E. Rodriguez, an associate professor in the Department of American Civilization at Brown University, observes that the reader "will find no boring Latino caricatures or stereotypes in this volume." There is no doubt about that.

The anthology begins with a tightly wound, two-page bit of tough-talking noir by best-selling novelist Mario Acevedo titled "Oh, Yeah." In it, the narrator attempts to teach a seemingly dimwitted accomplice named Canela how to play a supporting role in an armed robbery. Of course, things go awry, but with a twist only an accomplished writer such as Acevedo could pull off.

There's some great humor here, too, such as S. Ramos O'Briant's sardonic "Death, Taxes ... and Worms," where we're introduced to a very proper Nellie Gallegos, who knows a trifle more about the death of her neighbor than she initially admits.

Several of the stories veer into wonderfully strange territory. "The Skull of Pancho Villa" by mystery novelist Manuel Ramos is based on various rumors as to the whereabouts of the Mexican revolutionary's head. The narrator, Gus Corral, informs us that the skull ended up in his family and recounts how it gets stolen from his sister's house. If you don't laugh out loud while reading this story, you have no sense of humor.

In "Nice Climate, Miami," award-winning author Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, a professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, brings us an icy killer named O'Hara who is hired to kill a man who has failed to pay a debt. The fact that O'Hara does not appear to have any connection to Chicano or Latino culture is proof that the editors saw no reason to pigeonhole or unduly restrict Latino mystery. Hinojosa-Smith's piece is crisp and smart and fits perfectly in this anthology.

But ethnic identity is certainly part of the collection. Sergio Troncoso's "A New York Chicano" involves one Ricky Quintana, an El Paso native who has made it in New York working for Merrill Lynch and who has developed a deep hatred for a bloviating, anti-immigrant host of a television show titled "America's Watch." What Quintana does to appease this hatred proves that he hasn't lost his identity at all.

No mystery collection would be complete without a lost soul or two. Alicia Gaspar de Alba's "Short Cut to the Moon" gives us exactly that in a troubled young woman who goes deep into alcoholic homelessness when she believes that her cousin has been murdered. Her search for the truth eventually converges with an understanding of her desperate need for help.

Space constraints do not allow for a description of each story in this landmark anthology. Suffice it to say that the stories in Hit List will engross, entertain and fully satisfy any lover of mystery fiction.

[This review first appeared in the El Paso Times.]

Manuscript Critique Auction and Post-Grad Writers Conference

Two exciting goings on from Vermont College of Fine Arts! The first from Miciah Gault, the editor of our literary magazine, Hunger Mountain:

Please join us for the Hunger Mountain Spring Fundraising Auction, featuring manuscript critiques with notable authors and agents, and limited edition letterpress broadsides. All items will be available at: http://stores.shop.ebay.com/thehungermountainstore beginning at noon EST on May 2nd. Bidding ends at noon EST on Saturday, May 9th. One-on-one critiques in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, writing for children, and writing for the stage will be conducted by phone, email or mail. This is a great way to study with a writer you admire and support non-profit literary publishing!

Not only are we offering an opportunity to work with authors such as Michael Martone, David Jauss, David Wojahn, Donna Jo Napoli and Tim Wynne-Jones, we also have a full-length children’s/YA fiction critique donated by literary agent Mark McVeigh, founding member of the McVeigh Agency, as well as a middle grade/YA critique offered by Tracy Marchini, agent assistant at Curtis Brown, Ltd. Picture book authors and illustrators Laura McGee Kvasnosky and Marion Dane Bauer will also be offering their expertise. Been toiling away on a script or stage production? Bid on a full-length play critique with playwright Gary Moore. Sue William Silverman is offering a full-length creative nonfiction manuscript critique, complete with a complimentary signed copy of her latest book Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir.

Other authors offering critiques in the auction include Philip Graham, Jess Row, Thomas Christopher Greene, Natasha Saje, Xu Xi, along with children’s and young adult authors Sarah Ellis, Martine Leavitt, and more. Also available are signed broadsides from the Stinehour Broadside Award Series including work by authors Alice Hoffman, Neil Shepard, and David Rivard and Lucia Perillo. These letterpress broadsides are all signed and numbered, limited edition, and frame worthy, making them the perfect gift for anyone who appreciates the artistry of literature! All purchases are charitable in support of Hunger Mountain's non-profit mission to cultivate engagement with and conversation about the arts by publishing high-quality, innovative literary and visual art by both established and emerging artists, and by offering opportunities for interactivity and discourse.

The link is: http://stores.shop.ebay.com/thehungermountainstore

The second announcement is from author and faculty member Ellen Lesser about the Post-Graduate Writers Conference coming up this August. And of particularly interest to me, for the first time there is a track for young adult authors led by award-winning authors An Na and Kathi Appelt.

Postgraduate Writers' Conference

Fourteenth Annual EventAugust 11-17, 2009

Vermont College of Fine Arts, home of the nationally acclaimed MFA in Writing and Writing for Children and Young Adult Programs, has since 1996 offered a summer conference dedicated to advanced writers seeking to recharge, reconnect, and nourish their creative development.

The Postgraduate Conference is open to all experienced writers, with graduate degrees or equivalent backgrounds. We emphasize process and craft through our unique structure based on intimate workshops limited to 5-7 participants, and including individual consultations with faculty, readings by faculty and participants, issues forums and master classes—all in a lively, supportive community of writers who share meals, ideas, and social activities in scenic Vermont.

The historic campus of Vermont College of Fine Arts is host to the annual gathering. Along with the rich menu of Conference events, participants enjoy the amenities of downtown Montpelier—the nation’s smallest and arguably most charming state capitol—just a few minutes’ walk from the College, as well as the beauty and recreational opportunities of the surrounding countryside and Green Mountains.

The Conference features prose workshops in novel, short story and creative nonfiction. In poetry, we offer regular workshops as well as ones focusing on book manuscripts. New for 2009, we have added two workshops in writing for young adults, and look forward to an exciting cross-fertilization with the other genres.

Our award-winning faculty for summer, 2009 are: Carol Anshaw and Clint McCown in Novel; Ellen Lesser and Michael Martone in Short Story; Lee Martin and Sue William Silverman in Creative Nonfiction; Nancy Eimers, Cleopatra Mathis and William Olsen in Poetry; Robin Behn, Major Jackson and Charles Harper Webb in Poetry Manuscript; and Kathi Appelt and An Na in Young Adult. Click “Faculty” below for biographical notes on these outstanding author-teachers.

Contact Ellen Lesser, Conference Director, with any questions, and to chat about how our program can serve you, at (802) 828-8835 or mailto:pgconference@vermontcollege.edu

Wings Press and A Few Notes

SPOTLIGHT ON WINGS PRESS

The Wings Press website has a paragraph labeled Something Like a Mission Statement:

Wings Press attempts to produce multicultural books, chapbooks, CDs, DVDs and broadsides that, we hope, enlighten the human spirit and enliven the mind. Everyone ever associated with Wings has been or is a writer, and we know well that writing is a transformational art form capable of changing the world, primarily by allowing us to glimpse something of each other's souls. Good writing is innovative, insightful, and interesting. But most of all it is honest. Likewise, Wings Press is committed to treating the planet itself as a partner. Thus the press uses as much recycled material as possible, from the paper on which the books are printed to the boxes in which they are shipped.

Wings Press has been around since 1975. Again, from the website:

Wings Press evolved during the small press movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. One of the founders of Wings Press was Joanie Whitebird, who was active in the formation of COSMEP (Committee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers). Whitebird was the driving force behind the first truly multicultural anthology of contemporary Texas poetry, Travois, published in 1975 as a cooperative venture between the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and another small Texas publisher, Thorp Springs Press. Wings Press was founded that same year by Joseph F. Lomax (Editor and Publisher) and Joanie Whitebird (Editor) as "an informal association of artists and cultural mythologists dedicated to the preservation of the literature of Texas."

Since then, the press has published an impressive array of authors including: Naomi Shihab Nye, Townes Van Zandt, Virgil Suárez, Cecile Pineda, James Hoggard, Donald Hall, Roberto Rodriguez, Marjorie Agosín, John Howard Griffin, raulrsalinas, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Ana Castillo, and many more.

Wings has many publishing accomplishments to its credit. The press gained national attention (including a full-page story in Publishers Weekly, and significant reviews in newspapers around the country) with the publication of John Howard Griffin's posthumous novel, Street of the Seven Angels. The next year, Wings brought out the definitive edition of Griffin's classic work, Black Like Me, with a foreword by Studs Terkel and several previously unseen historical photographs. The book received starred reviews in trade and library journals. Wings also published Lorna Dee Cervantes' first book in 14 years - DRIVE: The First Quartet. Its best selling poetry title, Carmen Tafolla's Sonnets and Salsa has sold more than 4000 copies. Tafolla also is the author of Wings's first illustrated children's book, Baby Coyote and the Old Woman / El coyotito y la viejita, which went into its third printing in 2005.

Not too bad for a "small" press operating not from one of the coasts but from the heart of San Antonio, Texas, and not from an impressive office building or university complex but straight from the back yard of the current editor and publisher (since 1995), Bryce Milligan. Bryce has achieved almost legendary status among writers, readers, and other publishers, as well as a few musicians, linguists, and antique musical instrument restorers. Here are a few tidbits about this guy:

*In 1985, Milligan co-founded (with Sandra Cisneros) an event which evolved into the San Antonio Inter-American Bookfair.

*No male scholar in this country has done so much for Latina writers as has Bryce Milligan. His support for us — in newspaper articles, book reviews, scholarly articles, community activism and publishing — began thirty years ago. ... I cannot even express to you how far ahead of the curve he was ... . Sandra Cisneros.

*Among other things, he has been a folksinger, a maker of guitars, drums and dulcimers, a carpenter, a rare book bibliographer and appraiser, a college English and creative writing instructor, a poet-in-the-schools, an arts administrator, a book and magazine editor, a book designer, and a publisher. As a writer, he has been a newspaper columnist, a freelance journalist, a scholar, a novelist, a poet, a playwright, and an essayist.

*Milligan's latest literary project is a simple little thing, really: a series of novels about Enheduanna, a woman who was the first-known writer in the history of the world. It's a project Milligan prepared for by spending several years learning cuneiform writing and the Sumerian language of 2,300 B.C. Milligan, fluent in Spanish, also reads in several other languages, including Latin, Greek, Welsh, Norse, Anglo Saxon English, Middle English and Old Irish.Listed below are events scheduled for the month of May for new books from Wings Press. If you are in the area, support the writers and the press. All the events are in San Antonio. If you can't make it to San Anto in May (is the Conjunto Festival back? - if so, yet another excellent reason to visit the Alamo City), go to the website and order a book or two.

Bryce is doing work that all of us at La Bloga admire and respect. Keep it up, Bryce.


May 2. Saturday, from 4 to 7 p.m., at StoneMetal Press Printmaking Center & Gallery. A reception and reading for Marian Aitches, winner of the 2009 Whitebird Chapbook Series competition. Marian’s new book, Fishing For Light, is a limited edition -- 500 numbered and signed copies -- printed on linen/recycled paper, with a hand-sewn spine. Only $15. Refreshments, music and poetry.

Marian Aitches fishes for light in rivers, and rivers run through these poems. She fishes back through family history, dream, certitude, and over the south Texas landscape of her childhood. A poet who can write A thousand years away, / I will be the bones / some anthropologist holds / up to the light, amazed / by the music they make will surely have many books beyond this first stunning collection. This is for all readers who want to know the tough sister, the one / who saved the others.
— Margaret Randall, author of over 80 books of poetry, photography, and documentary witness. Recipient of the Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett grant for writers victimized by political repression.

May 5. Tuesday, starting at 6 p.m., at The Twig Book Shop. Victoria Garcia-Zapata Klein will read from her new chapbook, Another Water Bug Is Murdered While It Rains In Texas ($10). Victoria is joined by Robert Bonazzi, Bryce Milligan and several other area poets for this post-Poetry Month reading.

In poetry as direct and powerful as it is genuine, Garcia-Zapata Klein continues the tradition she established with Peace in the Corazón, winner of the Poesía Tejana Prize, by serving the reader a savory helping of down-home truth, life and love. The title poem creates direct, hard-to-shake, and oddly parallel images between the voice of an abused, misused woman and the irksome, ever-present Texas cockroach. The poet reminds us that we are a problem / a splinter nagging the crisp weave of / the all powerful American dollar whose most powerful weapon is to read, in order to define and defend ourselves.
– Carmen Tafolla, author of Sonnets and Salsa, The Holy Tortilla and a Pot of Beans, and others


May 7. Thursday, from 5 to 7 p.m., at The Twig Book Shop. A very special evening with Robert Burns specialist and interpreter Arnold Johnston, author of The Witching Voice: A Novel From the Life of Robert Burns ($18.95). The novel is illustrated with period engravings, and features an extensive glossary of Scottish terms. January 25, 2009, marked the 250th anniversary of the birth of Burns, one of the most beloved poets in all of English literature. Arnold Johnston’s The Witching Voice brings to life the crucial years from 1784 to 1788, when Burns rose from poverty and obscurity as an Ayrshire farmer to nationwide acclaim and lionization by the aristocracy of Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital and a bastion of the European Enlightenment. Written in the same Scots-English that Burns made so familiar to the world, The Witching Voice is based on extensive research. It pulls no punches, offering a clear picture of the gifts, demons, and shortcomings of this poet who continues to charm us. As Richard Katrovas puts it, The Witching Voice conjures the sexy soul of an angelic rogue.

Here is literary history served up in a surge of life, humor, poetry, and song. Johnston succeeds in giving us a life of Burns that is at once unsentimental and yet deeply felt. He convincingly conveys Burns as a man of his time, while opening up the lyrical beauty and energy of his work in a way wholly accessible to a contemporary reader.
– Stuart Dybek, recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship; author of I Sailed With Magellan and The Coast of Chicago


Thursday, May 7 at Barnes & Noble, San Pedro at 410. Saint Luke’s Episcopal School Library’s spring bookfair is being held at Barnes & Noble. Carmen Tafolla will read and sign books at 4:30 p.m. Wings Press’s newest poet, Annie Parker, will read from her new chapbook, Remembrance of Rain, at 6 p.m. Ms. Parker, a graduating senior at TMI, was the youngest finalist in the history of the Whitebird Chapbook Series competition, so Wings Press is publishing a special chapbook to recognize this fine young poet.

Be sure to mention the Saint Luke’s Book Fair to the B&N cashier so a percentage of your purchase will benefit the school library.

Attentive to the world around her, Annie Parker somehow prays through her writing. She carries that Whitmanian sense of awe and gratitude for all things around. Like Mary Oliver, Annie’s attention to the natural world is constant; her expression of this is both precise and innovative.
— Marian Haddad, author of Somewhere Between Mexico and a River Called Home


May 14. Thursday, from 5 to 7 p.m. at The Twig Book Shop. Jay Brandon will sign copies of his latest book, Milagro Lane. Many San Antonians will have read a portion of this one when it was serialized several years ago in the San Antonio Express-News. Now in book form for the first time, Milagro Lane features many real persons and real situations, including some scandals too hot to report at the time it first appeared! Former columnist Rick Casey has provided an insightful Foreword. Special thanks to the City of San Antonio, Department of Cultural Affairs, for a grant supporting this publication.

Part mystery, part insider’s guide, Milagro Lane is a wonderful romp through a wonderful city.
– Rick Riordan, author of the Tres Navarre mysteries and the Percy Jackson novels for young adults.

In Milagro Lane Jay Brandon does for San Antonio what Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles: he makes the city the most compellingly authentic character in a book filled to bursting with compellingly authentic characters. Milagro Lane is a page-turner that will keep you up far into the into the wee hours, seduced as much by Brandon’s affectionate and informed portrayal of San Antonio, as by Brandon’s abundant gifts as one of the country’s masters of the mystery.
— Sarah Bird, author of How Perfect Is That and Yokota Officers Club

Within Jay Brandon’s Milagro Lane beats the heart—el corazón—of a great city. Sure, the novel is a beguiling mystery that leads down plenty of intriguing blind alleys, a whodunit populated with flesh-and-blood San Antonians and imagined characters real enough to stand up and walk off the page. But Milagro Lane is much more than that. The main character—the conscience of the book— is San Antonio, a South Texas border city with Southern charm that remains a mystery to most of the country and many of its inhabitants. Only someone who grew up in the Alamo City can understand the unique flux of cultures that exists here. Brandon’s observational acuity and quicksilver talent translate those urban rhythms into a cohesive page-turner.
— Steve Bennett, Book Editor, San Antonio Express-News

If you value innovative literature and its survival in the 21st century, and if you like living in a city where literature and writers are valued, support your local small presses. Wings Press books are available on line at www.wingspress.com, on all commercial book outlets like Amazon and B&N, and in most bookstores.

A FEW NOTES


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Friday, May 1 at 6:30, a cheese and wine reception, then a reading and signing by Josefina López (Real Women Have Curves) for her semi-autobiographical first novel, Hungry Woman in Paris. Plaza De Libros - Lynwood | (Plaza Mexico) | 11221 Long Beach Blvd., Suite 102 | Lynwood | CA | 90262. Click on this link for a video preview of the book.
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I'm pleased to announce that two of my stories are finalists for a Top Hand Award, the annual writing recognition sponsored by the Colorado Authors' League, in the category of Adult Short Fiction. The stories are Fence Busters from the Dozen on Denver series published by the late Rocky Mountain News (the dozen stories are scheduled for a Fall 2009 anthology from Fulcrum); and The 405 is Locked Down, my contribution to Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature, edited by Daniel Olivas. This news made me feel good all over.
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Speaking of feeling good, check out this video. It's a great musical trip around the world with a message that we all can relate to at one time or another. Click on the link.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2539741

We're moving into the months without "r"s - the best. Have fun.

Later.