Latino Leaders Speak, Seen At a Book Festival

Who’s Next? Leaders Learn As They Grow

Review: Mickey Ibarra and María Pérez-Brown, eds. Latino Leaders Speak, Vol. II. Personal Stories of Struggle and Triumph. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2025. ISBN: 979-8-89375-025-6

Michael Sedano

What do you get when people on upward career trajectories gather to listen to a speech given by someone of notable achievement talk about themselves and how they got to the top? If you do so regularly you get a collection of speeches like Mickey Ibarra and María Pérez-Brown’s collection, Latino Leaders Speak, from Houston’s Arte Publico Press (link).

 

The collection of twenty-five speeches aren’t oratory but communal, comfortable discourse of an achiever among peers, gente who come from ranks of elected officials, policy makers, corporate executives, opinion leaders, community activists, industry experts, and political insiders.

The collection will be useful to young adult readers on the verge of making career decisions. It’s not that any kid aims to become president of San Diego State University, or Governor of New Mexico, or a White House Deputy Chief of Staff, but somewhere between ninth grade and the first job out of college, those people found the right way to get there. 

 

A collection of talks like this, successful raza at pinnacles of authority and comfort, give readers insight into lifelong habits and career strategies to emulate or reject. Some of the speakers come from farm labor, others from middle-class comfort. Common consejos and observations emerge from the readings: leaders like these found within themselves the ganas to take risks, depend on mentors, didn’t forget familia and where they’re from. The preacher calls out the vital importance of public speaking to a leader’s abilities, a skill each of the other keynoters should have credited as well. 

This collection emerges from collaboration between Arte Publico and Latino Leaders Network (link) https://www.latinoleadersnetwork.org The 20 year-old nonprofit dedicates itself to networking among diverse business professionals in various cities via luncheons, awards, and other networking events. Latino Leaders Speak comes from luncheons between 2009 and 2024.

Useful as this collection appears, it’s flawed by the absence of women. Among the 25 luncheon honorees who make it into the book, only three women make the list. Theirs are among the most effective readings in the collection, more’s the loss.

Coincidentally, the first essay comes from California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra (the collection is alphabetized), whose 2009 speech pays tribute to the first Chicano elected to Congress, Esteban Torres. The speech establishes Becerra’s ethos as a respectful, humble, loving father who cares about healthcare and immigrants. Not a bad campaign ad for the rising-in-the-polls Chicano.

While the book’s emphasis is political and elected leadership, there’s also Raiders coach Tom Flores, musician Emilio Estefan, actors Tony Plana and Edward James Olmos, and community activist Rev. Luis Cortés, Jr.

You can order copies from Libromobile, your local indie bookseller, or Arte Publico. Volume I in the series is free via Latino Leaders Network's website.

Scenes From The 2026 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books 

Surface rail from Pasadena to the University of Southern California makes travel a breeze. At 35 cents for seniors, it's also a travel bargain that can't be beat. Those centavitos we save on transportation come in handy when a vendor charges siete bolas for an agua fresca. 

The Times runs a razacentric section it calls De Los (link). It's the festival's first stage and book display area, just where the crowd enters campus. It's a prime spot for foot traffic and that's what's happening.

A mariachi group takes the stage. These are high school students from South Gate, a working class community. Little kids filter out from the audience to sit at the foot of the stage to soak in the cultura from musicians not too much older than the attentive chamacos. It's heart-warming and invigorating seeing these young people in fancy traje I hope the school provides, playing and singing solos. Ajua!

I'm with Thelma Reyna and as we enter the bookseller area we spot Reyna Grande's new book. Thelma tells me she's seen Grande's social media spots where Reyna is sewing a glorious jacket mirroring the book jacket. "Isn't that Reyna?" Thelma says. Sure enough, the brilliant yellow jacket and matching hat can't be missed.

Or, maybe not. Reyna Grande stands back from the display where readers stare at the yellow flowered cover of Migrant Heart (link), unaware the woman standing behind them is the author wearing her textile rendering of la portada of Migrant Heart, Essays About Things I Can't Forget. 

I imagine it's a typical occurrence at book fairs, authors mixing with readers free from trappings of celebrity.

National Poetry Month: Poetry Reading 2026 by Xánath Caraza

National Poetry Month: Poetry Reading 2026 by Xánath Caraza

 

Para cerrar el National Poetry Month de este año, el 30 de abril, en línea, tendremos una celebración poética con Golda Solomon, poeta laureade de Yonkers, NY y Xánath Caraza. La cita es a las 7 p.m. hora centro y habrá que registrarse por adelantado. Este evento está apoyado por el UMKC Intercultural Dialogue Student Association y el Dialogue Institute of Kansas City. 

Esperamos su asistencia.

 

Golda Solomon

Xanath Caraza

When: Thursday, April 30, 2026 @ 7.00 p.m. CST

Where: Zoom (Registration in advance needed):

Registration (in advance):                                                                

https://umsystem.zoom.us/meeting/register/AzHRel02S56FVAHX2vpeLA

 

 

Burgled and Grateful

BEING GRATEFUL...FOR WHAT WE DON’T HAVE

Thelma T. Reyna

 

Our hearts sank when we entered our home near midnight

and realized that something was wrong.

 

It had been a magnificent Saturday night. My son and I had attended a glittering, art-filled community mixer. We drove home happily reflecting on the camaraderie and epicurean delights that suffused the magical evening.

 

But when we walked into our empty house, we noticed all the lights were on. We saw the back sliding door wide open, its curtains billowing into darkness. The side door was ajar. I stepped on a long, splintered piece of wood on the kitchen floor. 

 

We realized that our home had been broken into.

 

The Scene of the Crime

 

Somebody—more than one individual, judging by evidence—had kicked in the side door leading to our kitchen. The door’s deadbolt and doorknob were destroyed, along with half of the door jamb and part of the adjoining wall, where the deadbolt had been ripped out of the frame. The floor around the door was littered with twisted nails, jagged wood, and pieces of brass from the locks. 

 

We went cautiously room through room after phoning the sheriff. We avoided touching anything, hoping the intruders had left fingerprints. They had been everywhere: open drawers and closet doors, clothing dangling from hangers and strewn on the floor, purses and bags thrown on beds and dressers, two jewelry boxes askew on a bed and a table. I noticed that several pairs of my gold earrings were gone.

 

Then my heart sank further: my son’s safe was stolen. Concealed in a corner of his closet, the small safe contained part of his silver coin collection and several of his registered guns. He estimated the value of this loss at over $9,000. The safe, when empty, had required two strong men to carry. Filled as it was, it would have weighed almost 200 pounds. We learned the following day that the thieves had stolen a dolly from our backyard and apparently used this to haul the safe out of the house and through a chained, but not securely locked, driveway gate. 

 

We were stunned. We have lived in our home for 40 years and never been burglarized, though some neighbors have been. For most of those years, our family has had large dogs that guarded our gate faithfully and probably frightened away the same thieves who targeted neighbors. We always considered ourselves lucky. 

 

 

Measuring the Damage

 

We no longer had a dog. It cost us almost $2,000 to repair the door and concomitant damage and install high-security locks. It took two men half the day, one man the full day, to put things aright again: the king’s men bringing wholeness.  Four deputy sheriffs, at different points, came to our home to assess the damage and interrogate. A detective came on the fourth day. 

 

My son and I were most concerned about the three guns in his safe, and the danger to our community if the safe were cracked by the thieves. Where might the guns end up?  Will these thieves return to our home—now that they knew “the lay of the land”—armed with my son’s guns, to finish the job? There were valuables they had seen but, for whatever reason, had not stolen.

 

For several days afterward, we feared to leave our house. What if they’ll break in through a window? We need to let them see that the house is occupied. But we also feared being home. What if they come in the middle of the night? What if, indeed, they come back with guns? 

 

We felt violated. The security we had relished for years in our house, which we lock even when we’re home, vanished that night. In a quest to feel whole again, to feel safe again, we installed a whole-house alarm system.

 

Deep Gratefulness...For What Didn’t Happen

 

Afterward, my son and I discussed what might have been. We had much cause for gratitude: we weren’t home when the thieves came; no children were present; many items of sentimental value that could have been taken, weren’t.  In 40 years of safety, we’d become complacent, as our inadequate driveway gate proved. But we’re wiser now, withoutfalse notions of inviolability.

 

Were the thieves amateurs? Very likely. Were they rushed for time? Also likely. They could have vandalized walls, floors, mirrors, and furniture; but, aside from the point of entry, no physical damage occurred. We are grateful for this.

 

In short, we are grateful for what we don’t have:  immense damage and losses, a ruined home. We have a violated  home, a transgressed  home, which is heart-breaking enough. But we didn’t lose a home. Or a life.

 

And for that, we are deeply grateful.

 

Chicanonautica: The Moon, Mars, and Chicanos

by Ernest Hogan

Earthlings are going to the Moon again, and it’s not just white male AngloAmericanos this time. And my feelings are . . . weird.

I was a fan of the Space Program ever since I went crying to my parents “there’s no cartoons on TV, just a big chile in the sky,” and my dad explained to me that it was John Glenn going into space, for real.

My little mind was blown. Reality and what was and wasn’t possible transmogrified for me. I was launched on the bizarre trajectory that I’m hurtling along today.

Just before Covid, Diego F. Jauregui, a 12F Fellow of the Smithsonian’s National Air Space Museum Space History Department, interviewed me. I guess it was to make up for a shortage of Chicano astronauts.

I never became an astronaut and don’t consider myself a poet, though Guillermo Gomez-Pena called me “ a Chicano SCI-Fi poet” and I admit that does describe me well though I don’t set out to commit acts of poetry on purpose—it seems to be in my DNA.

The crew of the Artemis II mission doesn't have any Chicanos, or Latinos, or even Hispanics, though they did take 58 tortillas, because they don’t make crumbs like bread. It has a Black pilot, a woman, and a Canadian who, though not Indigenous, has connections with the Anishinaabe and Manitoba nations.

Back on Earth, Chicano have been writing poetry about space and the future.

What would Ray Bradbury think?

Pedro Iniguez’ Mexicans on the Moon: Speculative Poetry from a Possible Future won the 2024 Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Poetry and has been getting recognition beyond what you’d expect for a book of poems. He’s also in Xicanxfuturism: Gritos for Tomorrow / Codex I. 

More recently, Juan Manuel Pérez–another Xicanxfuturism Codex I contributor–has come out with a Bury My Heart Under the Martian Sky. Being the author of a series of stories about a Tejano mariachi on a colonized Mars (one of which will be in Xicanxfuturism Codex II coming soon, stay tuned . . .), I felt I had to look into it. Besides, it has a great cover by Kolega Soberanis.

I was impressed. These poems show that the days when I was afraid that there was some kind of conspiracy against nonwhite/nonAnglos getting out into space are over. They give a vision of a future from a Chicano viewpoint, with roots in PreColombian mythology, showing a relationship to the Earth and the universe that provides a needed alternative to the capitalist/colonialist propaganda that has dominated science fiction and the popular imagination well into this current century.

[Insert mariachi grito here]

Chicanos are creating new futurisms with the infusion of and creation of a New Chicano Dream.

I have a feeling Coyolxauhqui the Mexica and Ixchel Mayan goddesses of the Moon are smiling.

 

Ernest Hogan is doing his duties as the Father of Chicano Science Fiction while working on making his Paco Cohen, Mariachi of Mars stories into a novel, and waiting for Xicanxfuturism Codex II to come out as deranged leaders promise to destroy civilizations overnight.

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books began in 1996 with a simple goal: to bring together the people who create books with the people who love to read them. The festival was an immediate success and has evolved to include live bands, poetry readings, film screenings and artists creating their work on-site.

The Festival of Books takes place on the University of Southern California campus. USC is located in the University Park neighborhood of downtown L.A. near such attractions as the California Science Center, the Natural History Museum, the Exposition Rose Garden and the California African American Museum.

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books spans nearly the entire 226-acre USC Campus. The event does not provide wheelchair rentals or motorized transportation. If fatigue is a concern, please consider planning ahead and bringing a wheelchair or other aids.

The festival attracts approximately 160,000 people of all ages each year from Southern California and all around the country.

Come and say hello to these amazing authors.

Anthology & Poetry & Cookies, A Mother's Knife

Poetry is Community: Anthology & Poetry & Cookies.

Michael Sedano

The call for poems circulates in December 2025. In early April 2026 the publisher, Golden Foothills Press, predicts hard copies in-hand at the April 25 “Poetry & Cookies” Altadena poetry celebration now in its 20^th year. Click here for more history.

That’s fast turn around, but it's even more pressured. The Editor-in-Chief sends in January his selections to the publisher. That's three months to produce hard copies in each published poet's hands and a supply to sell at the book launch, "Poetry & Cookies. Meeting a demanding schedule like this reflects professionalism and experience. the publication--and the laureate program--offer a role model any community can emulate.

The anthology comes out of the two-year terms of Altadena Library’s Co-Poets Laureate. The Laureate program itself grew from librarian Polly Dutton’s initiative. In early years, Dutton held a poetry and cookies reading celebrating the laureate’s service. 

In 2015, Laureate Thelma T. Reyna published the first Altadena Poetry Review: Anthology. Since that first book, Reyna's family-owned press, Golden Foothills Press, has published all but two issues in the series.

Of the 2026 number, publisher Reyna observes:

In the 11-year history of the Altadena Poetry Review: Anthology the 2026 Anthology is the largest ever. Our debut edition, in 2015, had 105 poems written by 60 mostly local poets. 

This edition, the 8th book (none were produced in the COVID era), has 180 poems written by 158 poets from across the state and nation, and down under. The book has 325 pages, vs. 178 pp. in 2015. 

One might say that the visibility and renown of our Altadena poetry community, and its literary gem, is growing. 

Kudos to all the poets in this book; to its Editor-in-Chief, Co-Poet Laureate Lester Graves Lennon ; and to Assistant Editor and Co-Poet Laureate in Altadena, Sehba Sarwar.

A year ago, thousands of people fled their homes as miles of Altadena neighborhoods burned to the ground in the Eaton Fire. Today, the region slowly rebuilds its structures while it strengthens and rebuilds its spirit. Altadena Poetry Review Anthology 2026 captures what fire cannot destroy and what poetry affirms and sustains: a community’s spirit and hopefulness.

Here's a link to Golden Foothills Press where pre-orders are soon in the offing. For now, browse the publisher's catalog for its lineup of contemporary views and arte. Attend Poetry & Cookies and buy copies of the Altadena Poetry Review: Anthology and listen as selected readers and open mic'ers share their work.

Altadena Library and Poets Laureate Lester Graves Lennon and Sehba Sarwar, along with publisher Golden Foothills Press, welcome you to this year’s 3:00-6:00 p.m. Poetry & Cookies on April 25, 2026 at Bob Lucas Memorial Library & Literacy Center, 2659 Lincoln Ave, Altadena, CA 91001.

https://altadenalibrary.libnet.info/event/16132810

 

He Finds Mom’s Knife

Mom used that long blade to test the doneness of the barbacoa, the star of every familia pachanga. Of course, the beef isn’t the only feature. When la familia shows up for a party they load the serving tables with side dishes like potato salad, beans, moles, arroz, handmade tortillas from a distant tortilleria, and the always hit of the fiesta, Stella’s chile.

I owned too much stuff when I left my Pasadena home and since it didn't fit in Altadena, I rented a storage locker, so when I lost everything I ever owned in the fire, fifty boxes of random stuff were what I had left.

I lost Mom’s handwritten recipe for the 3-day barbacoa marinade in the Eaton Fire, along with most of my fotos of familia pachangas. That stuff in a storage locker escaped the fires and that’s where Mom’s knife turned up. 

I imagine Mom selecting the knife back before I was born. 

Dad is riding a tank to Leipzig, winning WWII. Mom  lives in Berdoo, a  soldier’s 18-year old expectant wife. 

She can afford one knife and she buys this one. Maybe she found it at Cuatro Milpas on Mt. Vernon? Maybe she walked into town to Sears or Montgomery Ward? 

It’s the knife I remember from as far back as I remember watching my mother cook, using the cuchillo slicing calabacitas, tomatoes, round steak, papas, nopales. 

And barbacoa.

Dad gathers leña enough for a big hot fire in the pit long before first light. The coals are ready at sunrise. 

The meat sits in a tina wrapped in tinfoil, swaddled in a bedsheet, burlap sacks, and banana leaves. 

Dad lowers the tina into the hole using precarious rebar hooks then covers the pit with layers of sheet metal and sealing it all with a layer of dirt.

At four or five in the afternoon, Mom declares it’s time. 

Gente have been singing and laughing, reminiscing, snacking on preliminary food. Tacos of someone’s fabulous frijoles, kids emptying a KFC bucket, there’s a taste test of competing potato salads. This chile is really picoso! Is there more? Stella rattles off her recipe but it’s all in technique, no one makes chile like Stella.

Dad scrapes away the dirt, wisps of escaping steam carry aroma. Stand back, Dad advises, prying away the sheet metal releasing a steamy cloud of deliciousness. The tina tilts precariously, it's hot unsteadying work, leaning over that pit, hauling up a tina awash in red swirling jugo. Two men balance the tina at the ends of those rebar hooks, meat juices sloshing into sizzling ash as the tina tips. Ultimately, the tina goes up and out and onto the wheelbarrow.

Mom approaches the exposed chunk of meat. She thrusts the length of the blade into the unresisting moist tender meat--as it should. She twists the handle and extracts the blade, a sliver of beef sticking to its length. 

Mom’s fingers bring the first bite to her mouth. A sniff, a nod, a bite, a satisfied smile. Her knife carves a layer of carne into taco-size slices and chunks for the first servings. Diners will cut off their own after the top layer's eaten.

When I find the knife its stainless steel length bears scars from many an off-angled filing. It's not a sharp edge. I take Mom's knife to the sharpener guy in Altadena who restores the edge to paper-shredding precision and oils the handle. 

Of all the stuff I did not lose in the Eaton fire, mira nomás, I still have my Mom’s knife. 

“Que la poesía” por Xánath Caraza

“Que la poesía” por Xánath Caraza

 

Xanath Caraza

Que la poesía se vuelva lluvia

Que moje todos los techos

Inunde las charcas vacías

Y reviva los renacuajos secos

 

Que la poesía se convierta en viento

Que ulule entre los árboles

Choque en las ventanas rotas

Y viaje por toda la tierra

 

Que la poesía se haga relámpago 

Fulmine pensamientos cuadrados

Llenándolos de círculos

Y amarillas ondas floreadas

 

Que la poesía se ponga color verde

Que cubra la tierra

Se enrede en los patios  

Las flores blancas se hagan poemas

 

Que la poesía se haga granizo

Que golpee mi cuerpo

Me dé frío y absorba

Cada sílaba incompleta

 

Que la poesía se torne en fuego

Que devore las casas

Las llene, recorra los muebles

Queme la indiferencia

 

Que la poesía se vuelva rayo

De luna para que por las noches

Nade entre aguas oscuras

Alumbrada por ella

 

Que la poesía se haga tornado

Se lleve la apatía

Despierte del letargo

A poetas despistados

 

Que la poesía se transforme

En agua de rosas

Y apague ese fuego

Que llevo dentro

 

Xanath Caraza

Let Poetry

 

Let poetry become rain

Let it soak all rooftops

Flood empty ponds

And revive dried out tadpoles

 

Let poetry become wind

Let it undulate among trees

Crash into broken windows

And travel all across the land

 

Let poetry become lightning

Let it strike down square thoughts

Filling them with circles

And flowering yellow waves

 

Let poetry become the color green

Let it cover the earth

Wrap itself throughout courtyards

White flowers transform into poems

 

Let poetry become hail

Let it strike my body

Make me cold and absorb

Every incomplete syllable

 

Let poetry become fire

Let it devour houses

Fill them, travel across furniture

Burn indifference

 

Let poetry become moonlight

For at night I swim 

Dark waters

It illuminates

 

Let poetry become a tornado

Let it take apathy away

Awake absentminded poets

From lethargy

 

Let poetry become

Rose water

And put out the fire

I carry inside

 

Xanath Caraza

Che la poesia

 

Che la poesia diventi pioggia

Che bagni tutti i tetti

Inondi gli stagni vuoti

E riporti in vita i girini seccati

 

Che la poesia diventi vento

Che ululi tra gli alberi  

Che si schianti sulle finestre rotte

E viaggi per tutta la terra

 

Che la poesia diventi lampo 

Fulmini pensieri quadrati

Riempendoli di cerchi

E di gialle onde fiorite

 

Che la poesia diventi verde

E ricopra la terra

Si aggrovigli nei cortili  

I fiori bianchi diventino poesie

 

Che la poesia diventi grandine

Che colpisca il mio corpo

Mi rinfreschi e assorba

Ogni sillaba incompleta

 

Che la poesia diventi fuoco

Che divori le case

Le riempia, percorra i mobili  

Bruci l’indifferenza

 

Che la poesia diventi fulmine

Di luna per lasciarmi nuotare

Di notte tra le acque oscure

Illuminata da lei

 

Che la poesia diventi turbine

Porti via l’apatia

Risvegli dal letargo

I poeti distratti

 

Che la poesia diventi  

Acqua di rose

E spegna tutto il fuoco

Che ho dentro 

 

Xanath Caraza

“Que la poesía” está incluido en el poemario Sílabas de viento / Syllables of Wind (Mammoth Publications, 2014). Poema original en español de Xánath Caraza. Traducción al inglés de Sandra Kingery. Imagen de portada de Adriana Manuela. Traducción al italiano de Zingonia Zingone y Annelisa Addolorato del poemario Le Sillabe del vento (Gilgamesh Edizioni, 2017). Editado por Andrea Garbin. Imagen de portada por Enrico Ratti.

 

Xanath Caraza

Syllables of Wind / Sílabas de viento received the 2015 International Book Award for Poetry. In 2015 for the International Latino Book Awards received Honorable Mention for Best Book of Poetry in Spanish by One Author.

 

Xanath Caraza

In 2019, “Que la poesía / Let Poetry” was selected for National Poetry Month by High Plains Public Radio. Listen here.