FROM THE PUBLISHER
Chopper! Chopper!: Poetry from Bordered Lives (Red Hen Press/Arktoi Books) reflects
the lives of Mexican Americans, immigrants, Chicanas/os, and la
jotería—malfloras, jotos, and beautiful rainbow communities. As vividly as
Mexican Technicolor, these poems capture life in the barrio: vendors hauling
carts with elote, raspados, botes y más. Vatos fighting to exist. Mujeres
claiming space. Summer evenings, children playing in the calles of East L.A.,
El Paso, and bordered tierras everywhere. Reyes’s work exudes the pride,
strength, turmoil and struggle of neighborhoods brimming with tradition and
invention, estilo a la brava. These homegrown verses reveal the barrio in all
its intricate layers. Revering difference, they fight to make room for
something new: Marimacha Poetry. ¡Y Qué!
PRAISE FOR CHOPPER!
CHOPPER!
“Chopper!
Chopper! replenishes the landscapes of East L.A. and the lives that give it
shape. Reyes resurrects old-time shops and hangouts. They memorialize the land
alongside edifices of refuse, sterile towers, man-made deserts and rivers,
machines that suffocate the sky, fields locked in the historical cycle churning
out the fieldworker’s woe. Queers, dandies, cholos, mariachis the same as
‘Chumash, Pomo, Modoc’ ramble these streets. In these dramatic monologues, the
perfect poetic mode to retool history, Reyes’ wit leaves a mark. Her young self
marvels at ‘old coors or budweiser botes, tab, aspen soda cans . . . tossed by
the lake at Lincoln Park, half buried in the sandbox just like the statue of
liberty in planet of the apes.’ In this cool, sad, funny collection, East L.A.
startles us like ‘a pinche far, faraway land’ it really is." —Kristin
Naca, author of Bird Eating Bird
“In
this book there is no time to run home chillando or licking your wounds—the
gente in Reyes’ recollections pull you into a world where crooked tortillas and
marimacha swagger are less the image of otherness, but a symbol of
nosotros’ness. Through Reyes’ barrio lyricism, we, the others, do not cross
over to become the norm, but come together as strands of hair, distinct, yet
slicked together by the force of love, coraje, and Tres Flores.” —Lorenzo
Herrera y Lozano
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Verónica
Reyes is a Chicana feminist jota poet from East Los Angeles, California. She
earned her BA from California State University, Long Beach and her MFA from
University of Texas, El Paso. Her poems give voice to all her communities:
Chicanas/os, immigrants, Mexican Americans, and la jotería. Reyes has won AWP’s
Intro-Journal Project, an Astraea Lesbian Foundation Emerging Artist award, and
was a Finalist for the Andrés Montoya Poetry award. She has received grants and
fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts,
Ragdale Foundation, and Montalvo Arts Center. Her work has appeared in Calyx,
Feminist Studies, ZYZZYVA, and The New York Quarterly. She
is a proud member of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS) and
Macondo Writers’ Workshop.
To read a sample poem, visit Arktoi Books. Arktoi Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press, was established in 2006 by Eloise Klein Healy to
publish literary works of high quality by lesbian writers. The mission of
Arktoi Books is to give lesbian writers more access to "the
conversation" that having a book in print affords.
IN OTHER
NEWS...
• The Los Angeles Review of Books,
edited by Tom Lutz, recently ran my three-question
interviews with Orlando Ricardo Menes and Alvaro Huerta regarding their new
books.
• Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times ran Héctor Tobar's review
of Tim Z. Hernandez's beautiful new novel, Mañana
Means Heaven (University of Arizona Press). My interview with Hernandez
regarding his novel will run in a special online edition of High Country News
tomorrow.
1 comment:
Veronica Reyes is a fantastic poet!!! Go check out this collection. You won't regret it!!!
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