“Yanga” by Xánath Caraza

“Yanga” by Xánath Caraza

 

El libertador Yanga por Pablo Platas

Yanga

 

Para Louis Reyes Rivera

 

Yanga, Yanga, Yanga,

Yanga, Yanga, Yanga,

Hoy, tu espíritu invoco

Aquí, en este lugar.

 

Este, este es mi poema para Yanga,

Mandinga, malanga,  bamba.

Rumba, mambo, samba,

Palabras llegadas de África.

 

Esta, esta es mi respuesta para Yanga,

Candomble, mocambo, mambo,

Candomble, mocambo, mambo,

Hombre libre veracruzano.

 

En 1570

Llegaste al puerto de Veracruz,

Encadenado como muchos,

Escapaste de la esclavitud.

 

Palenque, rumba, samba,

Yanga, Yanga, Yanga,

Espíritu indomable,

Noble hombre de África.

 

En 1609

Luchaste por la libertad,

Hasta tus puertas llegaron y

No pudieron entrar.

 

 

Mandinga, malanga, bamba,

Palenque, rumba, samba,

Palenque, rumba, samba,

Orgullo, ritmo y libertad.

 

Para 1630

San Lorenzo de los Negros

Se estableció.

Hoy, el pueblo de Yanga.

 

 

Candomble, mocambo, mambo,

Yanga, Yanga, Yanga,

Hoy, tu espíritu invoco

Aquí, en este lugar.

 

Yanga, Yanga, Yanga,

Palenque, rumba, samba,

Mandinga, malanga, bamba,

Candomble, mocambo, mambo.

 

Candomble, mocambo, mambo,

Mandinga, malanga, bamba,

Palenque, rumba, samba,

Yanga, Yanga, Yanga.

 

El libertador Yanga por Pablo Platas

 

Yanga

 

For Louis Reyes Rivera

 

Yanga, Yanga, Yanga

Yanga, Yanga, Yanga

Today, your spirit I invoke

Here, in this place

 

This, this is my poem for Yanga

Mandinga, malanga, bamba

Rumba, mambo, samba.

Words having arrived from Africa

 

This, this is my answer for Yanga

Candomble, mocambo, mambo

Candomble, mocambo, mambo

Free man of Veracruz

 

In 1570

You arrived at the Port of Veracruz

In chains as many

You escaped slavery

 

Palenque, rumba, samba

Yanga, Yanga, Yanga

Unconquerable spirit

Noble man from Africa

 

In 1609

You fought for freedom

At your doors, they arrived and

They couldn’t come in

 

Mandinga, malanga, bamba

Palenque, rumba, samba

Palenque, rumba, samba

Pride, rhythm and freedom

 

By 1630

San Lorenzo de los negros

Was established

Today, the town of Yanga

 

Candomble, mocambo, mambo

Yanga, Yanga, Yanga

Today, your spirit I invoke

Here, in this place

 

Yanga, Yanga, Yanga

Palenque, rumba, samba

Mandinga, malanga, bamba

Candomble, mocambo, mambo

 

Condomble, mocambo, mambo

Mandinga, malanga, bamba

Palenque, rumba, samba

Yanga, Yanga, Yanga

 

 

I am sharing one of my poems, “Yanga”, that was originally published in my bilingual book of poetry Conjuro (2012).

 

Xanath Caraza

Conjuro received Second place in the ‘Best Poetry Book in Spanish’ category of the 2013 International Latino Book Awards.  In 2013 Conjuro also received Honorable mention in the ‘Best First Book in Spanish, Mariposa Award’ category of the 2013 International Latino Book Awards. Conjuro was an award-winning finalist in the 'Fiction: Multicultural' category of the 2013 International Book Awards.

Xanath Caraza

La imagen de Yanga es parte del mural, El libertador Yanga, pintado por Pablo Platas en Xalapa, Veracruz, México.

El libertador Yanga por Pablo Platas

La grabación del poema “Yanga” de Xánath Caraza fue realizada en Venecia, Italia por la Universidad Ca’Foscari para el Proyecto de voz Phonodia.

 

Thelma Reyna Abuela Memories

Abuela's Imprint on My Heart

Thelma T. Reyna

My maternal grandparents were born in poverty in South Texas and had no formal education. Papá Grande, or Apá, as we children called him, was functionally illiterate, only able to sign his name. My grandmother, Maria Guerra, our Amá, was fond of saying, with understated drama, "Mis pies nunca han cruzado el portal de una escuela." My feet have never crossed the threshold of a schoolhouse...

She, like her husband, was raised in a tiny, dusty ranch populated with a few roosters, hens, goats, and perhaps a horse. In this isolation, she somehow, somewhere taught herself, as she often proclaimed, to read and write in Spanish: beautifully taught, as I saw in letters she wrote me when I left Kingsville, my college degrees in hand, newly married, to start my own family and forge my career in California.

Long before I moved here, Amá had already left her imprint on my heart. She was widowed soon after my parents divorced. My mother, our sole breadwinner, rose before dawn each day, drove 50 miles each way to work, and returned wearily at dusk to her nine children. So Amá moved into our large, aging house to help look after us. She cooked and cleaned, laundered, and fussed to get us older kids out the door to school each day.

Amá sat quietly in a corner on midnights when I studied late at the dining table, the rest of our house asleep. Silently, she kept me company, to show me her support. One particularly humid night, I fe ll asleep, face in book, and awoke to see Amá standing beside me, gently fanning me with sheets of notebook paper.

Yes, indeed, she left her imprint on my heart, my precious Amá, she of the ubiquitous flowered aprons with pockets deep enough to hold her Daily Missal and wire-rimmed glasses. Amá of hands roughened from tending to so many of us.

Amá of the signs of the cross she bestowed on our foreheads before we left the house. Amá of endless dichos for imparting her wisdom to us, especially, "Dime con quien andas, y te digo quien eres."

Amá of gentle eyes and humble voice, of unconditional love for even the rowdiest scofflaw amongst us. My brothers called her "Saint Grandma," for even they, in the scant attention they paid her, recognized her goodness.

Chicanonautica: Who the Hell is Paco Cohen?

by Ernest Hogan

 

It’s like I don’t as much create characters as meet them. It was that way with Paco Cohen.

I was working as a janitor, sweeping out classrooms and cleaning toilets at an elementary school. I wore a baseball cap and a bandana. Just another Chicano janitor.

I was still a sci-fi writer at heart, thinking about Mars, because Phoenix seems so much like a Mars colony to me. I started getting these flashes of a guy like me on Mars . . .

They weren’t very clear at first. I needed to experience some things before I could write this story. While doing the job, I soaked up the way I was treated and people reacted to me. 

I learned a lot from my Chicano—actually, most of them were Chicanas—coworkers, learning about their lives and the important part Mexican music played. They grew up, worked, and fell in love to this soundtrack.

Eventually, Paco came into focus, and began talking to me.

It wasn’t easy, like picking up a signal from a distant world. I had to tap into feelings about my down-but-not out writing career. Paco’s life was similar.

Soon I was telling people, “He’s gonna say stuff like, My mama would say, ‘Mijo, don’t be a yutz!”

And people would say,”You’ve got to write that!”

The result was the novelette “The Rise and Fall of Paco Cohen and the Mariachis of Mars.” The story of a man who was crucified on a vampire cactus by an interplanetary development corporation, then patched himself back together. The corporate take-over of Mars from a point of view of a guy who has to wipe the red dust off everything. Chicano stuff. I was amazed when it sold to Analog, the magazine that first serialized Dune.

I wasn’t thinking of sequels or franchises, but Paco wasn’t done with me. What would this Mars, and Paco’s life be like with the corporation versus the Chicano-style rasquache lifestyle of the workers, and the awakening of ancient Martian lifeforms. The result was "Death and Dancing in New Las Vegas” (the bilingual glitch on purpose, a nod to “the Los Angeles Times” and other artifacts of my SoCal upbringing) that also sold to Analog.

Would I be able to find success by pretending to be a venerable “hard science” writer?

 

It didn’t happen. By the time I wrote “Flying Under the Texas Radar with Paco and Los Freetails,” I had been told that what I have been sending Analog was “too surrealistic and cartoony” (my writing described in a nutshell). I couldn’t help it–that’s the way Paco’s life–and mine–went. This one was about how and why he got from Texas to Mars, and his youth as a rocking young rebel, with maybe some parallels to my life. It ended up seeing print in Latin@ Rising, that became Latinx Rising in the next edition.

And Paco still wouldn’t leave me alone. His world, his life, kept growing in the back of my brain, turning into stories . . .

Ben Bova, who published Cortez on Jupiter, and High Aztech liked these stories, and encouraged me to keep writing them and make them into a novel, like Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. I had thought about it, and was glad he liked the idea.

Then Covid killed him. Now I have to write the book, so I can dedicate it to him.

In the next couple of months, if this year doesn’t get too apocalyptic, another Paco story, “A Wild and Wooly Road Trip on Mars,” will appear in Xicanxfuturism: Gritos for Tomorrow / Codex II. I’ll be making a lot of noise about it. 

I also have a file with all the stories, notes, some additional bridging material, and part of another story. It’s about time I focused on finishing the novel I plan to call Paco Cohen is Alive and Well and Living on Mars. A good chunk of it is already written, and I am getting old.

I just hope that no thugs are watching me, waiting to impale me on the fang/spines of vampire cactus.

Ernest Hogan is alive and well and going stark, raving Xicanxfuturist no matter what pendejos running the world do.

The Pecan Sheller

Written by Lupe Ruiz-Flores

ASIN: B0D6KR93J1

Publisher: Carolrhoda Books ®

Language: English

Print length: 256 pages

ISBN-13: 979-8765610527

Reading age: 10 - 14 years

*Pura Belpré Children’s Author Award

In 1930s San Antonio, thirteen-year-old Petra dreams of going to college and becoming a writer.

But with her beloved father dead, two younger siblings to care for, and with a stepmother struggling to make ends meet, Petra has to drop out of school to shell pecans at a factory. Hoping it's only temporary, she tries not to despair over the grueling work conditions. But after the unhealthy environment leads to tragedy and workers' already low wages are cut, Petra knows things need to change. She and her coworkers go on strike for higher wages and safer conditions, risking everything they have for the hope of a better future.

"Heart-warming and enraging in equal parts, this important American story reveals the power of family, community, and hope."―Laurie Halse Anderson, New York Times-bestselling author

Review

A Junior Library Guild Selection

"A powerful, moving story explores the little-known but important story of the six-week pecan shellers' strike."―starred, Booklist

"Using short chapters with quick pacing, Ruiz-Flores (Piece by Piece) unveils intimate and well-researched depictions of the Pecan Shellers Strike of 1938 and its impact on Mexican descendants and beyond."―starred, Publishers Weekly

"The story deftly explores the nuances of both Petra's and Amá's relationship and traumas, as well as the strength and hope to be found in family and community. A poignantly, beautifully written tale."―starred, Kirkus Reviews

"Based on the real-life pecan sheller's strike of 1938, Ruiz-Flores's captivating tale is filled with hope."―New York Times Book Review

Lupe Ruiz-Flores is the author of six bilingual picture books. She is a former Regional Advisor for the Southwest Chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and until recently its newsletter editor. Lupe has won the SCBWI Work-In-Progress Grant, the SCBWI/Amazon Work-in-Progress Grant, and the SCBWI Martha Weston Award. She is a member of the Writers League of Texas, Texas Library Association, Las Musas, and Kindling Words. She was awarded the Tejas Star Book Award for three consecutive years. Her poetry and short stories have been published in anthologies, including Thanku: Poems of Gratitude. She was recently inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.

Putting A Piano In Its Place

Ashes to...Keyboards and Skins

Michael Sedano

I lost the piano I’ve had since 1950, a year ago in the Eaton Fire. Ever since, I’ve been able to play Thelma Reyna’s piano, so my fingers haven’t entirely forgotten how to find the right notes. Playing is not practicing so I’m a year out of practice. I’ve felt the absence of a piano in the house, and, peor, I haven’t had a permanent residence until only recently.

Three homes in Redlands, then Temple City, back to Redlands, rejoin us in Eagle Rock, Pasadena, Altadena. All those places and times, my piano keeps me satisfied and tormented at the same time. Practice tends to soften frustration and when it works and all the fingers come together, it’s a taste of the sublime.

I mourn the absence of that possibility, that momentary discovery of perfection, a line of notes becoming music.

Losing my piano in the fire creates a wound that can never heal. The piano and the sheet music that burned are unrecoverable things rich with memories. While all the things I lost and suddenly remember are emotional papercuts, losing that piano cuts deeper. Not that a new piano won’t assuage the loss. A ver.

Today, I have a piano. Mejor, the piano is a Kimball, same as my lifelong instrument, the one with all those memories. Time for new memories. Adelante, don't look back for too long.

Brandon, with Altadena Musicians, put me in contact with Steve from Santa Monica who had a piano he was donating to survivors of the Eaton Fire. Altadena Musicians understands what losing a precious instrument does to a person’s soul, and to professionals, livelihood. Brandon’s organization coordinates donors to gente like me who were burned out.

“What did you lose?” Brandon asks when I first contact him about a free piano. My inventory includes conga drums--a beautiful set Barbara gave me for Christmas one year--and my piano.

People are generous, wonderful, and truly good, sabes?

Brandon and the Altadena Musicians are not looking for credit, nothing formal-- like I don’t know Brandon’s last name. Nor Steve’s. In fact, these good people extended incredible generosity. When I texted Steve how I could not accept the piano owing to a costly professional mover’s quote, I thought that was that.

In response, Steve tells me all is not lost. And Brandon suggests the foundation can pay the movers. I am moved and grateful at the offer. On his own initiative, Steve connects with A. Garcia Piano Movers, a 30 years in business firm with no website, who move pianos for the Santa Monica music conservatory at discounts and at times pro bono. Steve makes all the arrangements for delivery. I cut short an Arboretum walkabout and get home in time to move furniture out of the path of the three vatos lifting my new piano into my new home. Órale.

I began today miserable, having abandoned hope of owning a piano again. In a rapid fire series of text and voice messaging I learn the piano will come to me within a few hours. At the same time, thanks again to Brandon and Altadena Musicians, another generous soul has placed conga drums in their unlocked patio for me to pick up sometime today. Ajúa.

And so it went, February 2, 2026.

“Matilde en la hamaca” by Xánath Caraza

“Matilde en la hamaca” by Xánath Caraza

 

Matilde en la hamaca: imagen de Israel Nazario

Matilde en la hamaca

 

Para Matilde en la hamaca de Israel Nazario

 

Ahí estaba

con su vestido amarillo

y el pelo abierto a la aventura.

Su mirada perdida entre el mar y un recuerdo.

Volar, volar, volar con las aves pasajeras.

 

El árbol la miraba calladamente

cuando se mecía en la hamaca,

la escuchaba suspirar,

leía sus pensamientos.

 

Distinguía su vestido amarillo,

su cabello flotando en el aire.

Temblaba el árbol al pronunciar su nombre.

Una discreta hoja se escapó hasta ella

con la ayuda del viento tocó su cabellera.

 

 

Matilde en la hamaca de Israel Nazario

Matilde in the Hammock

 

After Matilde en la hamaca by Israel Nazario

                   

There she was

in her yellow dress

and her hair open to adventure.

Her gaze lost between the sea and a memory.

Fly, fly, fly with the seasonal birds.

 

Quietly, the tree stared at her

while she rocked in the hammock,

it heard her breathe,

it read her thoughts.

 

It was able to see her yellow dress,

her hair floating in the air.

The tree trembled when pronouncing her name.

A discrete leaf escaped its way unto her

with the help of the wind. It touched her tuft of hair.

 

Xanath Caraza

Parts of Corazón Pintado: Ekphrastic Poems were written with the support from the Beca Nebrija para Creadores 2014 award from the Instituto Franklin in Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain.

 

Image by Israel Nazario, Matilde en la hamaca.

 

Cover art by Jesús Chán Guzmán

 

Corazón Pintado: Ekphrastic Poems (Pandora Lobo Estepario Press, 2015) by Xánath Caraza.

Xanath Caraza