Review:
Juan Gomez-Quiñones.
Indigenous Quotient/Stalking Words: American Indian Heritage as Future. San Antonio: Aztlán Libre Press, 2012.
ISBN-13:978-0-9844415-2-5
Michael Sedano
In 1980 I attended the black caucus meeting at an academic conference in Manhattan. As I walked into the packed room, a friend advised me that he would handle it when a hothead would rise to challenge my presence in the room. What a crock of caca then, and now.
That long-ago moment illustrates a fatal flaw plaguing cultural revolutions. Some adherents cling to a “we them” dichotomy that results in isolating homophilous groups from each other. In the particular instance, in that group of professors, “black caucus” implied other-than-old-guard academics, but the objecting member wanted “only black gente allowed, screw you others.”
Being who I am--or was then--I wanted to invite the fellow to kick my ass out, if he could. But I had not come for a fistfight but to drink in the topic of the day, thus readily accepted my friend’s taking lead when the brother stood dramatically and pointed across the room to me.
The assembly by consensus put down the objection and affirmed solidarity with the association’s sole Chicano. Then followed a worthwhile discussion of Molefi Asante’s newly published book, Afrocentricity.
Given
stupendous excitement among the caucus with their predictions of the book’s impact on conventional thought, when my friend handed me a copy signed by his friend Molefi, I noted the modest page count. A good theory of cultural identity doesn’t need a lot of words when the author’s chosen the right ones.
All that comes to mind holding a copy of Juan Gomez-Quiñones’ Indigenous quotient / stalking words, from San Antonio’s dynamic Aztlán Libre Press. Two small essays bolstered by a montón of references and bibliography offer solidly academic work. Although conformance to the milieu of the academy obligates the writer to dense, unadorned prose, readers who can penetrate it will say “It’s about time.”
Indigenous quotient / stalking words can become as exciting a book for raza as
Afrocentricty was when it arrived.
Indigenous quotient / stalking words is a professional historian’s tool. However, since the subject of Identity belongs to all readers, anyone who manages to find the book will enjoy it. Seek it out. Gomez-Quiñones’ exposition will foster endless hours of discussion, which is the whole point of the book. Publisher Aztlán Libre Press makes the title available on its
website.
Gomez-Quiñones’ two essays call for “full integration of Native American histories and cultures into academic curriculums”. We matter, the pissed-off professor argues. His anger seethes between lines, oozes from paragraphs, soaks pages in self-restraint at the old guard. The book is meant to engage them. The Profession declares que lástima, that history and those people are all gone now. Anyone can claim to be indio and hold ceremonies and stuff. Bottom line, indigenous American cultures don’t really matter, end of discussion.
The first essay, “Indigenous quotient”, seeks to revive that discussion, rejecting its a priori view reflected in a painting titled If Only described in an email by Daniel Cano. I remember when I was at Fort Bragg after I'd returned from Vietnam. I was walking down the hall, and I stopped to see a large painting of the embattled George Custer, surrounded by thousands of marauding Indians. In the background, high above the fray, the painter had inserted a line of airplanes and hundreds of parachutes dropping into the battle.
“Indigeneity,” JGQ observes, “is a response to the genocide that is at the core of colonialism”.
When colonialists aren't killing us, the scholar-advocate illustrates, colonialism’s concept of indios as aborigines results in keeping indian people from autonomous self-accountability on grounds natives are deficient.
This kind of restrictive historiography cannot conceal the persistence of indigenous history, nor obscure continuous archaeological discoveries enriching awareness of indigenous history, nor ignore popular sentiment reaffirming indigenous identity. We matter because we exist, it's time we insist on that.
The second essay, “Stalking Words,” is JGQ’s version of Afrocentricity, which Gomez-Quiñones terms “Indigenitude.” The abstraction welcomes the old guard’s trivializing condemnation of indigenismo that anyone can claim to be indigenous. That’s the point of the new paradigm, “a politics of truth” that changes the production of truth from a colonialized mind’s to a self-affirming indigenous stance: “Among some Indigenous, ethnicity, group membership, and cultural practices are all taken into account, encoded in a true heart whose sign is integrity. Among many Indigenous themselves, the defining truth is a historical and multifaceted ethos that can be identified, described, and valued (auto-valorizado), whose outlines can be imagined as an ethical paradigm.” (78)
Self-declaration is the first but not the entire process here. Gomez-Quiñones offers observations on ways to achieve effective historiography through academic tools and a paradigm shift.
The academic approach requires research into indio and simpatico sources liberated from colonialist bias. Extensive endnotes provide a starting point for the scholar’s task of tracking back references, identifying valid resources, forming one's own conclusion.
Analysis freed from European colonialism-derived paradigms will more effectively construct indigenous historiography and impel it into its future. Specifically, JGQ talks about three strategies: keep geography in one’s foreground—Europeans stole our land forever nunca olvidaremos; engage, focus analysis and ideology on policies and practices, not people who oppose and disparage; be alert to those infected by aboriginism and others who define the Problem as merely ethnicity.
The author lays out a highly structured case befitting its academic genus. The table of contents helpfully outlines the argument and exposition.
Poets have been ahead of the curve on these elements of Professor Gomez-Quiñones’ prescription. Poets feature lost and ruined homeland themes in poems about the barrio, Aztlán as separate eden, the land itself and a host of farmworker poems. “La tierra is la raza’s kissing cousin” Abelardo writes. Geography and land occupy central roles in raza poetic consciousness.
Don’t scare the xenophobes is something poets ignore with relish. “love thy master of the blue-eyed hatred” Ricardo Sánchez screams in one of the movimiento's numerous anglo-as-devil poems. More often, poets turn within, looking at soft-focus illustrations of jefitas, pachuco ironies, mythic indios. “We don’t have to kill Sam or sacrifice his blood / Sam is suicidal” Alurista counsels in his edenic “Dawn Eye Cosmos.”
Clearly, the first two strategies have long occupied the cultural memory of chicanismo. Indigenism plays a crucial role in affirming identity in murals as in movimiento poetry. Talk about a rhetoric ideally suited to its audience. Poets and painters assert a separate Eden in Aztlán through allusions to razared, gente de bronce. A mythic pre-Columbian America is compelling because it is true.
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| Estrada Courts, Boyle Heights L.A., ~1980 |
In short, a crucial element in JGQ's rationale--shifted paradigms--has long existed. Gente comprehend an ethos of indigeneity.
Gomez-Quiñones’ third consejo can be a trap. For all who thirst for more and better history, some intently fashion alternative fantasy histories, others mindlessly dismissive of any but their way. These are that fellow in the black caucus meeting, true believers whose nativism drives them into a Manichean frenzy separating “we” from “them.”
On the precept that the limits of one’s language are the limits of one’s world, the “battle of the name” illustrates one trap. Hispanic. Don’t call me Hispanic. Latino. I’m female. Latina. Be inclusive, nonsexist. Latino Latina. Awkward. I’m a Chicano, ese. Chicana Chicano. Latinos are Europeans, I don’t see any Italians around here. I’m Cubano. You’re a gusano. I’m from El Salvador. So, you’re a Mexican from El Salvador. I’m Mexican American. I’m Mexican-American. I’m an American.
With identity all over the place, finding a central heart continues to elude community cohesion. A theory like that presented here can provide a fulcrum. Fortunately, identification needs permission from only one other person to form bonds of mutuality. Mejor, indigenous gente don’t need permission from academia to develop and promulgate proper history into their classrooms. Except in Arizona. The only requirement for mutuality is communication.
The first step in any movimiento or paradigm shift is getting gente talking about ideas like these so each person can find at least one other like-minded voice.
Indigenous Quotient/Stalking Words: American Indian Heritage as Future will get readers talking. Juan Gomez-Quiñones wants readers to do the math: divide European colonialism into indigenous history and the quotient is You.
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| Estrada Courts, 2012 |
A structural feature I appreciate of Gomez-Quiñones' book is his inclusion of a self-critique segment. In that spirit, I would expect someone to demand more evidence that poets already speak with indigeneity. This evidence, by La Bloga alumna Olga Garcia, blinds you with brilliance, an ostensive definition of Indigenitude:
A Poor People’s Poem
This poem
angry
corajudo
bold
has got
a bad attitude
un genio from hell
and you
you’re afraid
of my poem
afraid of this
deep dark red poem
that bleeds
woman words
you
you’re afraid
cuz even though
this poem
*is*
about survival
it isn’t about
endangered whales
or dying forests
Listen
this is a poor woman’s poem
a Mexicana
Chicana
Mestiza
India
Mujer
Este de Los Angeles
poem
Yeah
this poem’s
got roaches crawling
all over it
and tiny pink mice
nibbling at the edges
and corners of
simple-everyday words
Listen this poem rides the bus
works 12 hours a day
7 days a week
with no medical benefits
and no paid vacations
Listen
this poem
has crossed rivers
and mountains
jumped over
and crawled under
barb-wired fences
this poem
has slaved
in hot-sun pesticide fields
picking
piscando
your lettuce
tomatoes
oranges
onions
picking
piscando
the vegetables
and fruits
that make your meals
nice and balanced
And this poem
has worked all kinds of shifts
in inner-city factories
sewing
packaging
stuffing
cutting
folding
ironing
the clothes you wear
the jeans
the shirts
the jackets
that keep you
in style
Yeah
this is a poor woman’s poem
a brown people’s poem
so you see
right now
we don’t want to talk about
the ozone layer
We
the people in this poem
we wanna talk about where we live
about affordable housing
about how the hot water doesn’t work
and the windows don’t close
about the Never-no-heat-in-the-winter
Sit-u-a-tion
we wanna talk about drugs
about the alcohol cocaine crack heroin
impregnating our communities
making modern colonized brown black slaves of us
we wanna talk about food stamps
about jobs and fair wages
about 12 hour shifts
and working conditions
we wanna talk about the police
about choke-hold
and billy clubs
about busted heads
and handcuffed minds
about sharp-teeth dogs
and shackled freedom
about racist cops
who hate
poor
brown
black
people
we wanna talk about dying
about the river of blood
flowing where we live
about the heads of 2 year old babies
scattered on concrete floors
about the mountain of bodies here
outlined in white chalk
So you see
right now
we don’t wanna hear you preach
about recycling
cuz poor people like us
we’ve always recycled
we invented the damn word
and out of necessity
recycled our papers, cans, bottles
recycled our socially constructed poverty
recycled even our dreams
So you see
we do wanna talk
but talk about lies
about Am er i KKK a
about treaties broken
and lands and people stolen
we wanna talk about
S L A V E R Y
U.S. colonization
Third World penetration
And you
you’re afraid
of my poem
afraid of the East side poem
holding hands
with El Salvador
Nicaragua
Tijuana
Chiapas
Pico-Union
holding hands
with
SWETO
South Africa
South Central L.A.
Yeah
I know
you’re afraid
of this
brown black
poor people’s poem
©1998 Olga Angelina García
copied from here
Librotraficante News
Where Are They Now?
Back on January 31,
On-Line Floricanto enjoyed the pleasure of sharing a collective poem written by
Pueblo American Government, formerly Social Justice Education Program.
Subsequently to that On-Line Floricanto, the
Librotraficante Caravan began forming to journey through Aztlán from Houston to Tucson smuggling books banned in Arizona and leaving libraries of banned books in their wake.
The caravan leaves Monday, March 12, arrives in Tucson Friday, March 16 enjoying portable floricanto stops in Mesilla and Alburquerque and points along the way. The lineup of writers showing up for these Book Bashes y Mas and Literary Showcases updates regularly at the website.
La Bloga's Michael Sedano will join the trip with Latinopia's Jesus Treviño. A key goal along the route is to interview poets like these students in Tucson, to share their responses to the book ban, and to hear them read their stuff.
Visit the Librotraficante
website for the schedule in your city, to donate books, money, warm wishes. Tony Mares contributes the following:
Ode to los librotraficantes
You carry books as you roll along
in your caravan through Texas, New Mexico,
and on to Arizona. You are
the most dangerous caravan in America.
Once your ancestors crossed the Río Grande,
their bodies wet from the swirling water,
the sweat running down their backs.
Now you carry wet books in your caravan,
books dripping with wisdom. You are
the most dangerous caravan in America.
You scatter books in underground libraries
along the highways of the Southwest. You are
lighting the fires of imagination in young minds
of all cultures along your route. You are
the most dangerous caravan in America.
Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Las Cruces,
‘Burque, and on to Tucson where the San Patricios
await you! Irishmen who fought for Mexicanos
in the Mexican American War now hover
like a ghost army over your caravan
to remind all people to learn, to share,
to love books like members of your own family.
Beware, Inquisitors of Arizona. Beware.
You are not welcome anywhere.
A caravan of librotraficantes is rolling
intellectual thunder your way. It is
the most dangerous caravan in America
on a mission to bring illegal wet books
to your students so they may see the world
through eyes clear, intelligent, and free.
Inquisitors of Arizona, you lock up books.
Inquisitors of Arizona, you invade the classroom.
Inquisitors of Arizona, you bully young students.
Inquisitors of Arizona, you missed the news:
Inquisitors went out of style centuries ago.
Books have been, are, always will be
illegal aliens, illegal immigrants, undocumented
ideas to light up the visions that make us human.
Inquisitors of Arizona and elsewhere:
First you ban cultures. Then you ban books.
Then you stoke the ovens to burn the books.
Then you stoke the ovens to burn the people
who love those books. But not this time.
Librotraficantes you are
the most dangerous caravan in America
the most dangerous caravan in America
the most dangerous caravan in America
Tony Mares
02/18/12
VietnamVeterans Organize Welcome Home Annual Observation in Whittier Califas
Via email:
Sunday March 25, 2012 from 11 AM to 4:30 PM at California High School in Whittier, CA.
Please be there and pass the word. We are on, we are determined and we will have the best Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans event yet!!
The persistence of history is exceedingly well understood by Veterans of US military service. Some stuff just never goes away, the good and the bad and the unbelievable. Keeping some memories alive, putting others to rest, remains an ongoing process for Veterans. They aren't looking for thankyous. Maybe a little sense: when that draft noticed arrived everything about a person changed and would never be the same again.
In Southern California a group of Veterans, many of them combat veterans, dedicate themselves to recognizing what happened a long time ago and for a moment rekindling the camaraderie born from wearing the uniform, answering a call to duty. Less than 5% of the nation, and fewer every year, know how these women and men feel. It's fitting the rescue money for this year's event comes from several Veterans service organizations.
Applications to participate in this May’s tenth annual National Latino Writers Conference, organized by the History and Literary Arts division of Alburquerque's National Hispanic Cultural Center are available via the center’s website,
http://www.nhccnm.org.
Conference faculty conduct workshops on each writer’s métier. This year’s May 16-19 includes Christina García, Tim Z. Hernández, and Jimmy Santiago Baca workshopping writing novels, poetry, short fiction, anthologies. Rigoberto Gonzáles workshops writing book reviews and criticism. Kathryn Córdova works with Biography/News Writers. Vincent Gutierrez covers screenwriting. Demetria Martínez engages Writing for Social Justice. Iñigo Moré features nonfiction. YA fiction is novelist Alisa Valdés-Rodriguez' workshop. Among Publishers, Gary Keller will answer queries, Nicolás Kanellos keynotes the conference.
La Bloga-Tuesday’s intermittent feature, “
Reading Your Stuff Aloud” stems from Michael Sedano’s role on several past NLWC faculty rosters as well as this May.
Individual meetings with agents and publishers highlight the experience for many a writer, especially when the feedback is “send me the first chapter.”
Writers with well-advanced projects will jump on this year’s innovation, "advanced consultations". A meeting with selected faculty to go through a manuscript—no more than 45 pages. The opportunity comes with a hundred dollar add-on to NLWC’s already affordable $300 registration.
On-Line Floricanto Leap Week 2012
The next Leap Week On-Line Floricanto is scheduled for Tuesday, February 29, 2028. Be there or be square. Levi's and capris O.K.
Today, Francisco Alarcón and the moderators of Facebook group
Poets Responding to SB 1070, recommend work by José Hernández Díaz, Rossy Lima-Padilla, Danielle Jimenez, Juana Hernández, Sean Penna.
"I Am Still Joaquin" by José Hernández Díaz
"Las dos lenguas" por Rossy Lima-Padilla
"Ordering Charro Beans at the Food Court" by Danielle Jimenez
"Spiritual Ritual" by Juana Hernández
"Las Muertas de Juárez" by Sean Penna
I Am Still Joaquin
By José Hernández Díaz
We inherit pain
And pass it down.
-Homero Aridjis.
I am still Joaquin,
I wake
And see it
In the street;
I am still Joaquin,
I fall
And feel it
In my dreams.
The ground was always mine,
Because
My roots
Reside in rain;
The sky will soon be mine,
Because
Success rises
From pain.
The wall of infamy
Is now a
Reason to divide/
They set up unjust laws
And then they
Tell us to
Comply.
Once again,
They have overlooked
The cleansing
Fountain;
Once again,
I stand,
An Aztec man
Against a mountain.
I am still Joaquin,
Because
Mi raza
Is my core;
I am still Joaquin,
Because
I know
I will endure.
Las dos lenguas
Por Rossy Lima-Padilla
Mi idioma es una pared pintada
de obsesiones blancas y negras,
es una pared alzada en un desierto,
aquí también hace mucho frío por las noches,
por el día se detienen a descansar
algunos tristes pájaros.
Mi idioma es una pared
alzada sin fin,
cuya sombra cae sobre mi sombra.
Es una pared de huesos,
con coyunturas profundas
por donde pueden verse las extensiones
de mi realidad, buscando verte desarmado.
Pero no ves tú ni la pared,
ni los huesos, ni el desierto,
ajenos a ti son los pájaros tristes,
mismos que son origen de mi idioma.
Para ti no existe nada más que tu lengua,
esa criatura fría
que se adueña de todo territorio.
Una lengua agria que no conoce otro comienzo
que su propia descendencia.
Para ti sólo existe tu lengua viperina,
lengua de serpiente que ha buscado
acorralarme desde el día que llegó a mi tierra
y comenzó a construir sobre mí
ésta pared que me ahoga.
Tu lengua es la serpiente
que busca por las calles,
en las leyes y en las escuelas,
encontrar mi lengua
para cercenarla,
para arrancar de tajo
el único pedazo de mí
que germina con el dulce canto
de mi madre.
Busca serpentina, mi lengua errante,
mi lengua de necesidades básicas,
mi lengua sumisa que simplemente busca
una humilde tregua por las tardes,
esas tardes que tu lengua siente
que también son suyas.
Buscas mi lengua
para arrancarla, para colocarla
junto a todas las otras lenguas que has arrancado.
Mis hermanos ya no entienden mis canciones,
no reconocen mi mano
que sujetó su mano por siglos enteros,
y no puedo gritarles
porque mostraría mi lengua desnuda
y vulnerable, y seguirías su olor
de flores y tierra fresca.
Mi idioma es una pared
con la que has impuesto tu idioma,
cada piedra la colocaste con saña.
Nuestras lenguas luchan
en una superficie no visible.
Mi lengua es la vida
que siembra cuidadosa por túneles secretos.
Tu lengua me persigue carnívora,
mi lengua sobrevive.
Mi lengua es la vida
arrullando a hijos y hermanos.
Mi lengua es la vida
agua limpia que busca redimir tu opresión.
Mi lengua es la vida
hay un mar de paz
al otro lado de esta pared.
No tengas miedo.
Mi lengua es la vida.
Ordering Charro Beans at the Food Court
By Danielle Jimenez
The food court diffuses with different kinds
of shoppers, and for thirty minutes I am one
of the rushed. The girl with Juana on her nametag
passes me my order over the silver counter: a bowl
of pinto beans, cilantro and bacon seasoning
the broth, brown and creamy. She wafts
the steam towards my nose, even though
five patrons wait in line, and urges me
to smell the freshness, but I smell my mother
and grandmother, the one from Reynosa,
the one who made charro beans in a jarro,
the one who could flip tortillas with her hands
and never burn her fingers with the black pillows.
I open my eyes because somewhere along
the memories I’ve closed them. The girl, smiling,
thanks me, when I should thank her for the scent,
that scent that was almost dark, now opened up
like flour-covered palms reaching for a jarro.
Spiritual Ritual
By Juana Hernández
Mama who rubs hand cream on at midnight,
who dresses in sheer silks and bright satin,
who smooths sheets and fluffs pillows
with arthritic hands
weary of waiting
for you to come home,
mama who rises at first light,
bird-like,
who wakes up alone,
no rooster crow even,
that old home–once known,
she long left behind,
mama who dresses in half-light,
sets off for yet another
beginning.
Mama who finds warmth in the kitchen,
finds solace in the linoleum floors
sturdy under bare feet,
brews a pot of tea,
sips it slow since it might
as well be the closest thing
to love, to girlhood dreams,
so sweet and soothing,
reassuring,
this hot bit
of spiritual ritual
still left on earth.
And so she steeps
leaves and crushed cloves
chopped guava, whole sugar cane
and fragrant sticks of cinnamon.
pours herself another
piping hot steaming
sticky spilling
overflowing
cup of more.
Las Muertas de Juarez
By Sean Penna
There are those who say
The Devil does not exist
Juarez will tell you
Differently…
The Devil walks her streets
And owns her soul
She had always been
half crazy…
Until NAFTA became the blade
That severed the remaining strands
Of her tenuous sanity
Now, she of rotted teeth,
And tattered skin
Crumbling bones,
And lunatic mind
Plays host to the Devil
Coursing through her veins,
Pulling her strings,
The malevolent puppet master
Whose show never ends
The Devil’s hunger is insatiable
Craving destruction of faith,
Hope,
Life,
And soul
A vile lachryphagous moth…
Drinking tears of sorrow,
Pain,
and misery
From those he has taken…
And those he will yet take
Las Muertas de Juarez
In life, you did everything
In your power to survive…
Swimming against life’s
Turbulent currents
Fighting to stay above water
Struggling to reach prosperity’s shore
To the Devil, you are not the
Vibrant,
Proud,
Strong women of Mexico…
You are his quarry,
His sport,
A tool to ply his trade
Of despair,
Pain,
Suffering,
And death
The cataract eyes of Juarez
Are blind to your suffering…
The sands of her outskirts
The only comfort she can provide
In Juarez
The Devil does exist…
Coursing through her veins,
Pulling her strings,
Drinking her tears
BIOS
"I Am Still Joaquin" by José Hernández Díaz
"Las dos lenguas" por Rossy Lima-Padilla
"Ordering Charro Beans at the Food Court" by Danielle Jimenez
"Spiritual Ritual" by Juana Hernández
"Las Muertas de Juárez" by Sean Penna
 |
| José Hernández Díaz |
José Hernández Díaz is a first-generation Chicano poet with a BA in English Literature from UC Berkeley. José has been published in The Best American Nonrequired Reading Anthology 2011, La Gente Newsmagazine of UCLA, Bombay Gin Literary Journal, In Xochitl In Kuikatl Literary Journal, The Packinghouse Review, among others. He has forthcoming publications in Blood Lotus Journal, The Progressive Magazine, and in the anthologies, El Norte que Viene, and Tan cerca de EE.UU. (poesía mexicana en la frontera norte). He is currently fulfilling an internship with Floricanto Press as an Editor. In addition, he is an active moderator of the online group, ‘Poets Responding to SB1070,’ where he has contributed more than 30 of his own poems. In his spare time, José enjoys collaborating with the poet, Claudia D. Hernández, in the English/Spanish translation of their poetry.
 |
| Rossy Evelin Lima |
Rossy Evelin Lima ha participado en dos antologías poéticas: La Ruta de los Juglares, McAllen, y Letras en el Estuario, Matamoros. Además de haber publicado en revistas locales como Tierra Firme, Gallery, Interstice, Nuevo Santanderino y Panorama. También ha publicado en México en la sección cultural Ojo de Ciclope del periódico Expreso de Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas. En la revista La Pluma del Ganso, Mexico D.F. en la sección Aquí está Usted; en Lenguaraz, revista de la facultad de filosofía y letras de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, quienes dictaminaron a favor de los textos El Río Bravo y Caminante. En España en la revista 3D3 Revista de Creación en Andalucía, en la antología Caminos Inciertos del Centro de Estudios poéticos en Madrid y en la revista internacional Negritud de Atlanta, Georgia. Recibió el tercer lugar en el Certamen Literario José Arrese en el 2008, mención honoraria por la revista Gallery en el 2009; en su participación en el Segundo Coloquio Estudiantil Sobre la Lengua en la University of Texas Pan-American, su obra poética fue premiada por ser considerada como “La mejor entre las de su área académica.” En el 2010 recibió el Premio Gabriela Mistral por la Sociedad Nacional Honorifica Hispánica. Rossy ha organizado más de 10 eventos poeticos en la Universidad de Texas Pan-American, y organizó el Festival de la Mujer 2011. En la actualidad es fundadora de la asociación Colectivo Huatsamara, la cual promueve las artes en el Valle del Río Grande y ha impartido tres talleres literarios en Mission, McAllen y San Juan Texas. Sus labores comunitarias incluyen el haber fundado y dirigido el programa Un mar de cultura, en el cual se motivaba a los jóvenes a seguir sus estudios académicos; con este proyecto se les dio información a un aproximado de 250 jóvenes y padres en iglesias, escuelas y centros comunitarios.
 |
| Danielle Jimenez |
What you'll find on Dani Raschel Jimenez's bookshelf: Kafka and Murakami, as well as Espada, Lorna Dee Cervantes, and the complete Fullmetal Alchemist manga series. If you ever meet her, tell her you read her poem on La Bloga, and she'll treat you to a Corona.
 |
| Juana Hernandez |
Juana Hernandez is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in American Literature and Culture, with minors in Chicana/o Studies, Education Studies, and Political Science. Juana writes at the Wordpress blog I Am the Woman of Myth and Bullshit, and has contributed opinion essays on race and gender to Campus Progress, Feministing, and Fem 2.0. She has also published several poems via City Writes Literary Journal, Viva La Feminista, and Poets Responding to SB 1070. Born and raised in Southern California, Juana presently resides in Washington, DC where she works in higher education administration and covers education news and policy for Kitchen Table Politics (@TheKitchenTbl).
 |
| Sean Penna |
Sean lives in Lodi, CA with the acclaimed Chicana poet Nancy Aide Gonzalez. He enjoys cooking, wine tasting, and spending time with his children.
