BILINGUAL LITERATURE FROM TAMEME

An Avocado from Michoacán
/ Carne verde, piel negra

By Agustín Cadena
24 pages; $6.95
(Translation: C.M. Mayo)

A story by the winner of Mexico's San Luis Potosí Award for the Short Story. English and Spanish side-by-side. Includes interview with the author and translator's notes.

Agustín Cadena was born in 1963 in the Valle del Mezquital, Mexico. Poet, fiction writer, essayist, and translator, he has published more than twenty books in these genres and received numerous national awards, fellowships and other recognition for his literary work. His most recent book is Los pobres de espíritu, which won Mexico's San Luis Potosí National Prize for Fiction. His writing has been translated into English, Italian and Hungarian as well as adapted for radio and television. He currently teaches a seminar on Mexican culture and literature at the University of Debrecen, in Hungary.

C.M. Mayo is founding editor of Tameme and author of Miraculous Air and Sky Over El Nido, which was translated by Agustín Cadena as El cielo de El Nido.

Read an interview with Cadena.

Click here for the printable purchase order form. This is a beautiful, evocative short story that's also handsomely produced.

Tameme, Inc. (www.tameme.org) is a nonprofit foundation based in the state of California. Tameme's mission is to promote English-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English literary translation of new writing from North America— Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. Tameme Chapbooks ~ Cuadernos, celebrate and disseminate this new writing and translation in an attractive and affordable format. "Tameme"— pronounced "ta-meh-meh"— is a Nahuatl (Aztec) word which means "porter" or "messenger." Tameme Inc.'s first publication was the now at-rest Tameme literary journal (1999-2003).

◙ Over at Sharkforum: Recent poems of the week included "Solstice" by Emmy Pérez and "A Secret Between Lady Poets" by María Meléndez. These are two of the many talented poets featured in The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry from the University of Arizona Press which gathers works by emerging Latino and Latina poets in the twenty-first century. The anthology is edited by Francisco Aragón who has poems and translations in Crab Orchard Review, Chelsea, Jacket, Electronic Poetry Review, and Tertulia, among others. In addition to Puerta del Sol (Bilingual Press), he is the author of three chapbooks and the translator of four poetry collections by Francisco X. Alarcón. He directs Letras Latinas, the literary unit at the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

◙ News from the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center: So much is going on at the CSRC…here are a few highlights but visit the link above to learn more:

An article that appeared in the fall 2004 issue of CSRC’s Aztlán has won a national award in American history. “The Political-Economy of the Mexican Farm Labor Program, 1942–1964,” by Joon K. Kim, won the 2007 ABC-CLIO America: History and Life Award, which is given biennially to recognize and encourage scholarship that advances new perspectives on accepted interpretations or explores previously unconsidered topics in American history. The award will be presented on March 31, 2007, at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Minneapolis. The CSRC will receive a certificate for publishing the award-winning essay. Kim is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

The UCLA Art + Activism lecture and event series will present Ricardo Dominguez, Assistant Professor in the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego, in “Border Disturbance Art in an Electronic Age,” on Wednesday, March 7, 4:00 p.m., in 1250 Broad Art Center. Dominguez is a co-founder of The Electronic Disturbance Theater, a group that creates virtual sit-ins by disrupting access to websites. The software system that enables these online protests was developed in 1998 to demonstrate solidarity with the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico. Dominguez’s performances have been presented in museums, galleries, theater festivals, hacker meetings, tactical media events, and as direct street actions around the world. Art + Activism is a joint program of the UCLA ArtScience Center and the ArtGlobal Health Center. The CSRC is a co-sponsor of this free public event. A reception will follow.

The CSRC is a co-sponsor of Aqui No Hay Virgenes, an upcoming art exhibition at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center. The exhibition will present what curators Jennifer Doyle and Raquel Gutierrez characterize as “atypical images of radical Latinas.” Featured artists are Alice Bag, Nao Bustamante, Diane Gamboa, Alma Lopez, and Shizu Saldamando. The opening reception, free and open to the public, will be Thursday, March 15, 7:00–10:00 p.m., at The Village, 1125 N. McCadden Place. The CSRC Library and Archive will be at the event promoting its two new efforts, the Mujeres Initiative and the LGBTIQ Initiative, which are designed to increase archival holdings in each area. For more information, call 323-860-7397 or visit the website.

Now available at the CSRC Library and Archive are Under the Shade of a Pecan Tree, by Pilar Castañeda (West Sacramento Press, 2005), a fictional novella set in San Antonio during the Depression, and Provocaciones: Letters from the Prettiest Girl in Arvin, by Rafaela Castro (Chusma House, 2006), which contains stories of growing up in a Mexican familia in California during the 1950s and 1960s.

The new issue of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies is rolling off the presses and should be in subscribers’ mailboxes shortly. If you are not a subscriber, you will miss the following wonderful articles: Paul Allatson on the poetry and prose of the late Chicano author Gil Cuadros; Steven S. Volk and Marian E. Schlotterbeck on three cultural responses to the femicide of women in Ciudad Juárez; Susan Rippberger and Kathleen Staudt on public schooling on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border; Robert Chao Romero on Chinese-Mexican intermarriage during the early twentieth century; and Tara J. Yosso and David G. García on a critical race analysis of Culture Clash’s play, Chavez Ravine. The dossier section includes personal essays on the year 1972, and Patssi Valdez is the cover artist. If you would like to subscribe, you can go to the CSRC store to buy a current subscription or send the Center your postal address by email so that they can send you a subscription package. The Center is also selling full sets of the journal in hard copy for $100. Just send an email!

◙ New issue: Somos Primos for this month is now live. Edited by Mimi Lozano, Somos Primos is dedicated to “Hispanic Heritage and Diversity Issues” and is produced by the Society of Hispanic Historical and Ancestral Research.

◙ Over at the El Paso Times: Book editor Ramón Rentería reviewed Rafaela Castro’s new book, Provocaciones: Letters From the Prettiest Girl in Arvin (Chusma House, $13.95 paperback), a collection of essays depicting her close-knit family from the late 1930s to the 1990s.

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