Review of Blues for the Buffalo, Backyard Floricanto Returns to Casa Reyna, Jorge Martin qepd

 An Old Friend Through New Eyes

Review: Manuel Ramos. Blues for the Buffalo. Houston: Arte Público Press, 2025. ISBN: 979-8-89375-008-9

Michael Sedano

If you were reading detective fiction in 1994, you were excited by publication of a new Manuel Ramos novel, Blues for the Buffalo, featuring a Denver Chicano lawyer-detective malgre lui, Luis Montez. 

That was forty years ago, so it’s likely many readers are meeting Luis Montez for the first time, and today’s readers are excited by publication of the fourth in the Luis Montez series from Houston’s Arte Público Press. (link), Blues for the Buffalo. 

For gente who get a summer vacation, the four-volume Luis Montez series is perfect for summer binge reading. The series offers not simply four brown noir mysteries but more arrestingly, Ramos crafts a distinctive character in Luis Montez whose ethos occupies a central focus of Blues for the Buffalo.

Not that the novel lacks action and murder and clues and supporting characters. Ramos always fills his books with rich portions of all the above. Blues for the Buffalo, for all its insights into what makes Luis tick, has a fire-bombing murder, a gruesome hit-and-run, a shot in the dark, a bad guy getting it from Luis’ father.

Blues for the Buffalo introduces a California private detective character, Rad Valdez. Rad’s an ass-kicker and no Chicano but he’s got a semi-open mind about raza identity. Valdez is like a proxy for the modern reader who doesn’t “get” the title allusion to Oscar Zeta Acosta, the Brown Buffalo, and gives Ramos a platform to teach some history. This isn't dry stuff; it's like listening to oldies on remastered vinyl.

Oscar Acosta reads from his
Autobiography of a 
Brown Buffalo, 1973

There's no disclaimer like,“Any similarity to actual poets and Yo Soy Joaquin are strictly co-incidental,” but there could be. And there’s a sly smile behind that in the novel’s allusion to Denver poet and movimiento activist Rodolfo Corky Gonzales, who authored the movimiento anthemic ballad, Yo Soy Joaquin. That part’s not in the novel but what’s an allusion for if you have to spell out everything, que no?

Ramos isn’t raising pedo for its own sake. The book's fictive authorship is possibly a motive for murder and just desserts. The poetry subplot lets author Ramos riff on the literary life, flamboyant writers, and signing tables.

Manuel Ramos dedicates Blues for the Buffalo to Zeta, “For Zeta c/s”. Ramos is careful not to embellish or lionize the Los Angeles lawyer and writer in the novel's lengthy expositions about Chicano history and the place Oscar Acosta holds. 

The Brown Buffalo’s a kind of red herring--the book isn't really about Zeta, and the legendary activist is used as a fraud perpetrated upon a fragile woman by an evil half-brother. Evil is a word that dare not speak its name, in the story behind why the woman goes missing and the search leads to a Molotov cocktail and death of a good woman.

Readers who’ve seen Montez take too many risks and make dumb decisions that get him shot in the leg and have his legal practice come crashing down on him will find Buffalo’s Montez a breath of fresh air. Luis is earning a meagre living as a reinstated lawyer again. Slowed down by the leg, he’s introspective and sensitive. Ramos gives the character numerous ethos-fashioning soliloquies on urban change, the movimiento, conscientiousness, being a good son.

Like all the Luis Montez novels, Ramos juggles several plot threads whose characters pop in and out of chapters. As a favor to readers, halfway through Blues for the Buffalo, the author offers a thumbnail summary, “now it appeared that Rad’s presence in town had something to do with the fire that had claimed the life of Charlotte Garcia. And somewhere in all that, I had to sort out the killing of my client, Wilson López, and the unlikely linkage between the poet, Bobby Baca, and the small-time hood Chick Montero.”

All that gets sorted, raveled, and unraveled in good time, along with an untied loose thread about the missing woman and the ugly motive behind the woman’s disappearance and the chain of tragedies leading out of the search for a missing daughter, sister, family secret.

Summer is icumin in and that’s when gente who get vacation time like to kick back and read. Arte Publico’s making binge-reading the Luis Montez series an ideal way to do just that, kick back and read. You’ll enjoy the noir sensibility Manuel Ramos infuses into his novels, clever writing, plot twists you don’t see until they hit you in the gut, entertaining characters and despicable bad guys.

If you’re a working stiff who doesn’t get time off and have to sneak in a book only now and again, there’s nothing like a good mystery novel to distract from the crap and daily drudge. A Luis Montez mystery novel like Blues for the Buffalo brings just what you need to chase away your own blues and if you’re up on your movimiento history, it’ll bring smiles to your face. Y si no, here's a free lesson that anti-DEI tipos don't want you to have.

Backyard Floricanto Returns to Casa Reyna Poetry Garden

La Bloga has long championed the home-grown floricanto, a literary uprising in a living room or backyard. Festivales de Flor y Canto take place on big stages attracting whomever gets the word. Back in 2010, Michael Sedano organized a reunion floricanto of the first major floricanto at USC in 1973. Both festivals were three-day celebrations of Chicano Literature.

These were big deals but floricantos don’t have to be, and should not be, restricted to the big stage. Everyday gente can put together a guest list of poets, send out invitations, and get together in the living room or back yard to eat, drink, and share an open mic with fellow writers and invitadas invitados.

Poets and writers in the Altadena-Pasadena and neighboring communities enjoy the generosity and hospitality of Thelma Reyna, laureate emerita of Altadena, whose poetry garden makes a personal setting for an afternoon floricanto. This was the case last year, when Richard Vargas featured at Casa Reyna Poetry Garden. Link. 

This year, Reyna, with co-host Michael Sedano, welcomed the year’s first floricanto featuring Roy Kuchel and Karineh Mahdessian. 

A floricanto can be fully experienced only in public. This foto essay, however, captures moments of sublime joy wrought from sharing by the afternoon’s features and open mic readers. Iphone fotos by Michael Sedano, art directed/curated by Thelma T. Reyna.

Host, Thelma T. Reyna

It's not all poetry. Margaret García canta.

Alicia Viguer-Espert

Toti O'Brien reads then later sings a song.

John Martinez

Donald Berry

Jimmy Recinos

Mary Anee Berry moves the audience with a fire poem.
Casa Reyna is two blocks south of the Eaton Fire's reach.

G.T. Foster reads from his Vietnam-era memoir 

One of the day's feature poets, Karineh Mahdessian

Karineh Mahdessian makes her return to a poetry stage
in today's Floricanto

Leading the spotlighted readers, Roy Kuchel

Roy Kuchel made his poetry debut at one of last year's
Backyard Floricantos at Casa Reyna Poetry Garden

Remembering Jorge Martin

In 2018, Casa Sedano hosted author liz gonzalez in a book release Living Room Floricanto for her Dancing in the Santa Ana Winds (link). It was a joyous celebration with friends and familia for the San Bernardino native. Last week, liz gonzalez celebrated the life of her husband, scientist, musician, cancer patient Jorge Martin.

liz is surrounded by writer friends in the foto below. The display behind them tells Jorge's life story in a series of tee shirts. There is joy in sorrow, and the Jorge Martin Celebration of Life brought both in equal measure. Jorge's spirit lives on in memories of him held close to the hearts of Jorge's and liz' friends and familia. 

liz begins life after caregiving stops. La Bloga wishes liz the joy of finding the new life awaiting discovery.