Wednesday, April 16, 2025

IN THE COMPANY OF WOLVES

By Antonio Farías


*ISBN: 979-8-89375-011-9
*Publication Date: September 9, 2025
*Format: Trade Paperback
*Pages: 188
*Imprint: Piñata Books
*Ages: 12-16



This engaging novel for young adults explores family secrets, grief and loss.



Jaime goes to live with his paternal grandmother and uncle the summer his father is killed in Vietnam. The family ranch and New Mexico’s endless landscape are a completely new experience for the middle schooler raised in New York City, and he is shocked when his mother announces she must go back to the city—without him! They are both worried about his brother, who stayed behind and is insistent on joining the Marines. Neither can stand the idea of losing him to war, too.


As the days stretch out before him, Jaime learns the ways of the Cieza men who have lived in the Southwest for generations, including how to care for the chickens, ride his father’s horse, Shadow Walker, and shoot a rifle. A budding love interest, the granddaughter of a neighboring rancher, brightens his summer. And when he and his Tío Julio see Graybeard, an old wolf that hasn’t been in the area for years, the boy’s uncle shares the legend of the wolf pack descended from indigenous peoples and teaches him how to track the beast. Could the old wolf be his father, trying to communicate with him? Will they really kill him as their neighbor insists they must to protect the livestock?


In this novel for young adults, a boy on the cusp of manhood observes the importance of family, respect for the natural world and the impact of war as he considers who he will become. Young readers, especially boys, will be drawn to this coming-of-age story that explores masculinity and men’s roles.



ANTONIO FARÍAS has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside. His work has been published extensively, including in Sudden Fiction Latino (W. W. Norton, 2010), Chicken Soup for the Latino Soul, Latino Boom, Urban Latino Magazine, Tilde and Bilingual Review. He lives and works in Denver, Colorado.






Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Comida de Cuaresma: Tortas de Camaron

That time of year when some people endeavor to eschew meat, especially on Good Friday, brings the delights of making and eating nopales--opuntia cactus paddles--in red chile sauce garnished with shrimp omelettes made with dried powdered shrimp. 

Don't translate the food gente. "Cactus with shrimp pancakes" lacks the mouth-watering anticipation that comes when you pronounce nopales con tortas de camarón as you remember back to your youth when gramma or mom used to make nopales, and not just during Lent. Nopales con tortas de camarón are good all year round!

Today's The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks column has a bonus, a wondrous, unique, recipe featuring pumpkin and hominy to add taste and texture people will enjoy and devour all the helpings you offer. 

Do please cook the recipes and let el Gluten-free Chicas Patas know how it turns out for you. You're encouraged to share your own tricks and recipes for nopales.

La Bloga welcome Guest Columnists. If you're a gluten-free cook or baker, send your column ideas via email. Click on our fotos above for the link.

Provecho!

Peeling Nopales the (Mostly) No-Espina Way

Any time a cook prepares fresh nopalito pencas, an espina or two is sure to find a finger or palm. Así es, the romance of el nopal. If you collect your nopales from the garden your likelihood of tiny painful finger pokes increases. Enjoy!


A sharp paring knife and careful finger placement between the espina carbuncles are two secrets to preparing nopales.

Use a washable cutting board or work on newspaper. 

Meticulous Method: Draw the point of the knife around the spiny perimeter of the cactus paddle, cutting away the outer ¼ inch of spininess.

Sensibly Fast Method: Hold the penca flat on the newspaper and draw the knife across the face of the penca nearly horizonally. Most espina nubs slice right off along the path of a sharp edge's travel. 

Dip the blade in a glass of water to wash away espinitas.

Steel the blade frequently to keep the edge slicing effortlessly.

Wash the pencas. 
There's a white espina in the top the foto below, in the middle where the two pencas meet. It would be disagreeable to find that on your tongue, so wash and inspect.



Slice the pencas into ¼" strips. Draw the blade at a diagonal through the strips.

The nopalitos are ready to use raw in a salad, add to a stew, toss in when you scramble eggs. 

Below, nopales simmer with carne de puerco. Later, the cook will add una torta de camarón to soak up some chile.


See below for The Gluten-free Chicano recipes for nopales con tortas de camarón and a really fancy yet economical pumpkin hominy and nopales guisado.

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks
Nopales con carne de puerco y tortas de camarón
Michael Sedano


Grown from single penca planted in 1960. ©2013msedano
You know it’s Springtime when opuntia cactus of the right varieties form plentiful buds and you keep an eye on them over the next few weeks until the pencas are large and still tender, deep green and ready to be picked, peeled, diced and cooked up.

But early February is not Springtime. The nopales stand bereft of buds. Still weeks to go before we can return to the old nopal and harvest some of its tender offerings. When he bought this land in 1960, my father kicked his heel into the hillside here, to soften the dirt. He dropped a penca where he worked and stepped on it, pressing it into the earth.

When there was still open land and groves in Redlands, people who didn’t grow their own knew the best places to pick nopales. Just as gente knew the groves where the best verdolagas grew, a favored field where the kelites were almost weed-free, they knew where the best tunas--hence the best nopales--grew. Nopales were a feature of the local landscape; in the wash, in alleyways, in a corner of an empty lot.


Unusually thin penca.

Some nopales are more delectable than others. The ones with fuzzy micro-espinas are inedible just because they're so much hassle, no one I know has ever eaten one.

Pencas need to be new growth, healthily green-colored, free of complicated espinas, and a scant half inch thick, so diced chunks have skin on two sides.

Always ask permission before cutting someone's nopales. Most gente will exchange recipes and urge you take a few more. I've heard some tipas request a few dollars to allow a forager to pick nopales.

Today, the local Mexican markets sell diced nopalitos in plastic bags, as well as whole pencas if you want them for grilling, or to cut your own.


The nopal forms the heart of comida de cuaresma. With scrambled eggs for breakfast, in a pickled salad for lunch, and Nopales con tortas de camarón for dinner, those observant of the Lenten stricture against eating meat find hearty eating in nopales.

I, like my people, always preferred the dish with pork, hence today’s The Gluten-free Chicano recipe features pork as well as shrimp and eggs with nopales. The dish is completely gluten-free.

Nopales con carne de puerco y tortas de camarón is down-home cooking, but also company food.

Ingredients
Medium onion
4 teeth garlic
three or four branches of cilantro
Two pencas or 1 pound diced fresh nopales.
1/8 lb chicharrón broken into 2" squares.
1 lb pork, 1/2 cubes".
Serrano or jalapeño chiles, sliced thin.
salt, red chile, comino powder, black pepper.
Eggs – 2 people per egg
2 oz ground dried shrimp powder (1 large package)
Baking soda
limón or lemon
Tomato sauce
Water or broth, maybe milk


Nopales exude a viscous gum during cutting and cooking. This is a natural thickener to the sauce but can be unnerving to the first-time user.

In a smoking hot pan...
Mince onion and garlic and wilt with the sliced chiles in good olive oil.
Add cubed pork, brown.

Add sprigs of fresh cilantro.
Toss in the nopalitos and fry until they turn a deep green.

Lower the heat.
Add one or two cans of tomato sauce and the water from rinsing the cans.

Stir in pieces of chicharrón and let simmer twenty minutes or however long it takes to make a batch of tortas de camarón.

Tortas de Camarón
This torta is an omelette thickened with powdered shrimp.

Separate eggs. Add a pinch baking soda to egg whites.
Beat egg whites to light peaks.
Blend in egg yolks.
Stir in 1/4 cup of water or milk, salt, black pepper.
Stir in half the package of powdered shrimp.
Assess your needs. Add water and the rest of the shrimp if you'll need to make more tortas. The mix should be thick enough to form dollops, not pour.

Squeeze a lime or lemon half into the egg-shrimp mix.

In a hot pan...

Drop generous tablespoons of egg mixture into hot olive oil and spread the pancake with a spatula. Turn and cook until center is done. The tortas will brown very nicely.

Float the tortas atop the nopales and serve to table.

Place a torta or two on each plate, cover with a scoop of nopales and carne de puerco. Eat with your hands and tortilla de maíz.

Refritos, green salad, cold gluten-free beer, hot conversation at your option.


The Gluten-free Chicano cooks
Chile Verde Con Granitos Y Calabaza
https://labloga.blogspot.com/2013/09/gluten-free-chicano-cooks-bluebird-on.html
Michael Sedano

pork meat, peeled hatch chile, cubed pumpkin 
Company was coming and the Gluten-free Chicano was busy as an agent provocateur at a peace rally. The Gluten-free Chicano wanted something easy but not ordinary. He had the perfect ingredients on the calendar—the day before, Frito Lascano held his annual La Pelada and the Gluten-free Chicano had 30 pounds of roasted Hatch chile in the refrigerator.

The fastest use of freshly-roasted chiles is soup. Remove stems and seeds, chop lightly then whiz in a blender. Add water or broth to keep the blades moving. Make a cup of chile paste. In a saucepan, heat the chile, stirring in broth, milk, half-and-half, or yoghurt, or cream, to produce the thickness you want. Serve in a fancy bowl with a chile ring garnish. Prep time: 10 minutes.


Serving soup is for a less engaged day. I decided to make a variation of Frito’s "pumpkin soup". 



This distinctive stew gets chewiness from granitos plus texture from lots of meat. The bit of sweetly aromatic squash adds interest to the mélange of richly spiced vegetables. The chiles determine the chilosoness, so be prepared with habanero or other hot sauce if your chiles are not.

The preparation illustrated here at La Bloga and at Read! Raza came out famously. Gente took home plates, and I wanted to freeze some to make tamales.

Most Mexican food is normally gluten-free and this pork stew is normal. A non-meat alternative adds cubed papas in place of pork, and reduces cooking time to around half an hour.

Ingredients to serve 20 or freeze for later
3 lb boneless pork
1 bag diced nopales or 2 pencas
2-3 lb roasted green chiles
2 cups white hominy with liquid
2 or more cups diced orange squash like butternut, pumpkin, or banana squash
Fresh cilantro
4 green onions
Onion, garlic, comino, salt

Sharp knives.
Cut everything to the same proportions.
Cube meat and squash to ½” or 1” cubes.
Dice/chop onion and nopales to size of grains of hominy.
Chop the chiles after removing stems and seeds.
Thinly slice 3-6 dientes of garlic.
Slice green onion into 2" pieces, chop greens.

Deep, wide sartén, or large saucepan. Medium flame.
Lightly brown the aromatics and squash.
Add pork and brown.
Add chile and its juice, mix together.
Add granitos and some juice, mix together.
Add green onion
Chop a big pinch of cilantro stems and leaves, sprinkle on top.

Reduce heat to lowest simmer.
Cover and cook two hours, stirring regularly.
If you added too much liquid, slightly uncover lid and it boils off.

When this chile verde is done, the pork is fork-tender, the base viscous and saturated with flavorful liquid.

Serve over steamed rice (for excess carbs) or just ladle some chile verde into bowls and the guests will come and go, walk around the room, and talk of Michangelo.

Sunday, April 13, 2025

“Verdiazul movimiento / Blue-Green Movement / Γαλαζοπράσινη κίνηση” by Xánath Caraza

“Verdiazul movimiento / Blue-Green Movement / Γαλαζοπράσινη κίνηση” by Xánath Caraza

 


Ritmo constante aletea

frente a la ventana,

fugaz saludo con olor a miel

verdiazul movimiento llena

la vista esta mañana

en medio del caos.


 

Blue-Green Movement

 

Constant rhythm of fluttering wings

before my window,

a brief greeting and the scent of honey

blue-green movement fills

my view this morning

in the midst of chaos.

 

Xanath Caraza

Γαλαζοπράσινη κίνηση

 

Σταθερός ρυθμός φτεροκοπά

μπροστά απ’ το παράθυρο,

φευγαλέος χαιρετισμός με μυρωδιά από μέλι

γαλαζοπράσινη κίνηση γεμίζει

τη ματιά το πρωινό τούτο

στη μέση του χάους.

 

 


“Verdiazul movimiento” is part of the collection Lágrima roja (Editorial Nazarí, 20217). “Verdiazul movimiento” by Xánath Caraza was originally written in Spanish.

 









“Blue-Green Movement / Γαλαζοπράσινη κίνησηare part of the collection Red Teardrop / Κόκκινο δάκρυ (Pandora Lobo Estepario Productions, 2022). Translated into the English by Sandra Kingery and Aaron Willsea. Translated into the Greek by Natasa Lambrou.

 

Cover art by Miguel López Lemus

 




Images by Steve Holland

 

  

Friday, April 11, 2025

Mona Alvarado Frazier on Writing, Winning, and Feeling Seen

 Guest Post: Mona Alvarado Frazier

 


When I wrote A Bridge Home, I didn’t imagine it would make its way to an award panel, let alone be honored 

as a co-winner of the Paterson Prize for Young Readers and the 2025 Southwest Books of the Year – YA. I 

didn’t even know it had been submitted. My publisher, Arte Público Press at the University of Houston, 

often enters titles into award consideration without notifying authors. So, learning about this recognition 

came as a surprise—one that made me pause and reflect on how far this journey has taken me.


A Bridge Home is my second YA novel, but this world of writing and publishing still feels relatively new. 

My first book, The Garden of Second Chances, was published in May 2023 and was met with unexpected 

acclaim. It received a gold medal for Best Latino-Focused YA Book and a silver medal for Most 

Inspirational. Before A Bridge Home was even released, it received a starred review from the American 

Library Association—an honor that felt like a light guiding the path ahead.


Being retired from my day job has made a significant difference in my creative process. I’m an early riser, 

and the quiet morning hours hold a special kind of magic for me. My writing day begins with a few 

stretches, a half pot of coffee, and some foamed soy milk. As I settle in with my cup, my rescue cat, 

Selena, tells me it’s time for her to go outside. Once she’s content, I carry my coffee to my bedroom, light 

a candle, and write in my pajamas. On a good day, I’ll finish three solid hours of work before stepping into 

the rest of my day. It’s a rhythm that grounds me. I feel out of sorts if I’m not writing Monday through 

Saturday.


Despite the recognition, my writing process hasn’t changed. I don’t chase trends or worry about what 

might win awards. I write what I need to say and what I wish I had read as a teen—stories about identity, 

injustice, hope, and resilience. Stories that center on and explore Mexican American/Chicana heritage. 


My audience is anyone who finds themselves in those pages, whether they’re thirteen or seventy. But I 

always begin by writing for the younger version of myself—the teen girl longing to see her world reflected 

in a book.


Working with Arte Público Press has been a gift. Though small in size, their team is mighty and 

mission-driven. I especially admire the women on the marketing team and feel fortunate to work with them.

With only about twenty books published a year, they are selective and it is competitive. The incoming 

director is Dr. Gabriela Baez, PhD, and I have had the opportunity to hear about her vision for APP’s 

future.


My next manuscript is in the hands of three literary agencies, and it’s a novel I’m excited about: a 

contemporary YA novel that blends magical realism with the Mexican healing tradition of Curanderismo.


Though my name may not be widely known among the general public in Oxnard—perhaps because local 

print media has yet to feature my press releases—my work has found its way to local librarians and fellow 

writers across Oxnard and Ventura. While the city does not have a dedicated bookstore, Heritage Coffee 

(@heritagecoffee805), in the historic Heritage Square downtown, carries my books. Being born and raised 

in Oxnard, California, is something I hold close. It’s where my roots are, and I carry that with pride. I know

my mother, family, and friends are proud of what I’ve written—and their unwavering support means 

everything to me.


Writing has become not only a way to express myself but also a way to give back—to offer stories that 

affirm, challenge, and heal. While I may be the only writer in my family for now, my daughter and I have 

talked about co-writing a novel together—one centered on a young protagonist with an “invisible” 

disability. I imagine us telling that story one day, side by side.


In the end, awards are wonderful and affirming. But what keeps me going is something more personal: 

the ritual of coffee and candles, the silence of the morning, and the hope that somewhere, a young reader 

will find themselves in the pages I’ve written and feel seen.

 


 

 

Thank you Mona for this thoughtful article. 

Mona's website is www.alvaradofrazier.com Her IG is m.alvaradofrazier. Her books can be ordered from Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org, and Amazon. 

Thursday, April 10, 2025

We Are All the Children of Immigrants

          Note: A good time to retell and past story.
                                                                      
My mother (left) with her friend, Connie Saenz, a child of Oaxacan immigrants

     My mother and her older siblings were the children of Mexican immigrants, refugees fleeing the violence of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, crossing the border at El Paso, heading to Southern California and settling in Santa Monica, where people from Jalisco had been migrating since at least the 1820s when California still belonged to Mexico. Only my mother and her older sister, Toni, were born in in U.S., “natural born citizens,” politically and culturally different from their parents and older siblings. 
     There were no strict immigration laws between Mexico and the U.S. in the 1900s. People crossed both ways to visit relatives, shop, work, conduct business, and return home. The 1929 U.S. Immigration Act imposed a one-dollar entry fee on immigrants entering the U.S. which was later raised to eight-dollars, along with literacy and health tests, mainly aimed at limiting European and Asian immigrants whose hard work and knowledge of agriculture threatened American farmers. 
     At the El Paso border, American labor welcomed Mexican workers, who could avoid paying immigration fees by wading across the river and entering the other side, no big deal. There was no organized immigration enforcement service, but later, as Congress tightened immigration laws, crossing the border became more humiliating when immigrants, especially women, had to disrobe, so agents could spray them with kerosene to satisfy the health requirements. Still, American business interests urged them south.
     Up to the 1970s, it was still fairly easy to cross the border, either way. Agents watched to make sure no one was carrying anything obviously illegal or dangerous. I remember in high school kids returning from a weekend in Baja with their parents smuggling in firecrackers. If you brought back a cherry bomb or an M-80, you were king. The agents turned a blind eye. It was like that until Nixon’s trumped-up “War on Drugs,” tightening up immigration laws. U.S. agents asked to see personal identification, like driver’s licenses, green cards, MICA's, and temporary visitors' passes. Neither government wanted to really shut down the border, completely, since businesses on both sides raked in millions of dollars a month.
     Immigration did get tight in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, when politicians had no answers for Americans who questioned why the U.S. economy had tanked and there were no jobs. That's when American racism raised its ugly head and politicians figured it would be a good idea to blame foreigners for the financial crisis, even though economists said a country’s financial stability had little to do with immigration but more to do with reckless business decisions made by government officials and corporate heads. 
     To show they were addressing the problem, the American government deported hundreds of thousands of Mexicans workers, many who had made lives here and others who were U.S. citizens. It wasn't unusual to pack Mexicans into cattle cars, haul them by train into the desert, and dump them there. It's all well-documented in the book Decade of Betrayal, by Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez, and in the song "Deportees" by Woody Guthrie, who sang about a plane loaded with Mexican farmworkers crashing and burning in Coalinga, CA., on their way to a deportation center in El Centro, California. Even though the media identified the pilots, they didn’t identify the passengers on board, hoping to hide the tragedy from the public. Some government official got the bright idea to bury the Mexican deportees in a mass grave some place in Fresno. 
     Families, like my mother’s, pretty much stayed in their barrio shanties, going out only to work in the brickyards, beanfields, and packing sheds, low-paying jobs Americans didn’t want, always fearful of getting caught up in immigration raids. 
     When I once asked my mother if her family ever talked about returning to Mexico, she said her father talked about it, but nobody else did. She said she never had the desire to visit. Her father still owned a portion of the family ranch in Jalisco, where her relatives still farmed the land near the town of San Gaspar de Los Reyes, in the village of Mitic. 
     My mother told me she recalled when she was about sixteen, and she had just been released from spending three years at Olive View Hospital, recuperating from tuberculosis, which she later learned had been misdiagnosed, her brother Chuy talked about visiting the family in Mexico. My mom said once home from the sanitorium, she made up for lost time, finishing high school, working at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills, attending dances, and enjoying the movies in downtown Santa Monica. Her family in Mexico was the furthest thing from her mind. 
     Her older brother, “Chuy,” was relentless, begging her then insisting. Chuy had lived on the family ranch in Mexico as a teenager but returned home after a couple of years. She respected her older brother. As she remembered, “We all worked, but my brother Chuy would leave home, go to other states, work, and send my mother his check, every week, to support the family.” 
     Her father, Nicolas Gonzalez, was in his forties when he contracted emphysema after working for years in Santa Monica’s brickyards and died. In those days, the old-timers didn’t wear masks or any type of protection. They worked in clouds of red dust all day with just cloths over their noses and mouths. They didn’t know they were breathing in tiny particles of brick. Over time, their lungs just disintegrated. They ended up choking to death, at least, that's the way my father told it. 
     My mother told me, chuckling, "Chuy, my brother, had lived in Mitic for a couple of years. He had a girlfriend there. I didn't know, then, but he didn't want my mom to know, and he was taking my mom with him to visit her relatives. I guess Chuy figured I could keep my mother distracted while he went to see his girlfriend. I think he had a baby, too. He might have even been married but nobody really knew. My brother was private." 
     Mitic was once a thriving community, until revolutions, revolts, and draughts devastated most of it, sending the people fleeing to San Juan, Aguascalientes, and the United States. Showing respect to her oldest brother, my mother finally agreed to accompany him and her mother to Mexico. She was fully Americanized and not a hint of Mexican ranch life in her. She wore slacks and blouses, Rita Haworth-style, at a time when ranch women in Mexico wore long, dark dresses down to their ankles. 
     She recalled when she first saw the ranch and met her relatives, "They were so poor. All they had to offer us were cooked beans and a little soup." My mother spoke as if she had been transported back to 1941, a teenager again. She said her mother decided to stay with her sister in San Juan de Los Lagos, while she chose to “rough it” and stay on the ranch with her father’s family. She met a young cousin, Patricia. The two quickly became friends. 
     The town of Mitic was nearly deserted, the dirt streets empty, and many of the adobe homes decaying. The ancient Indian village, historians trace back to before the conquest, had fallen onto difficult times, most of the men gone, looking for work in the States. She said, "I had to sleep on…not even a bed. It was like a cot, and it nearly rested on the dirt floor." 
     The house was made of adobe and in poor condition. At night when she tried to sleep, she could hear scampering in the house followed by banging noises. Sometime in the early morning, she opened her eyes and saw the face of a large rat staring back at her. The rats were everywhere. After one night, she told her mother, she could not stay in the house another night. "I felt so bad because I had planned on staying a few nights, but the next day I packed up and left." 
     It was a difficult departure. She and her cousin, Patricia, had gotten close in a short time. She said, "Patricia was about fifteen and very pretty…a beautiful girl." Patricia asked if my mother could stay for her confirmation and confided in her, saying she had nothing nice to wear for the ceremony. "It was hard," my mother told me. "I almost cried when I had to leave."
      She said the ranch was a big difference from her mother’s family, the Villalobos, who lived in San Juan de Los Lagos, middle-class, teachers, with modest homes in the city, whose kids played musical instruments and, at least, had enough to eat. “They were all very friendly but didn’t have much, either.”       On the way back home, they visited her mother’s other sister in Aguascalientes. "Those relatives who lived in Aguascalientes were very, very wealthy." My mother described how my grandmother's sister had married a banker. The family owned a house with many rooms, the floors covered in Saltillo stone, a courtyard and fountain, and maids to care for the children. They were polite and friendly but a bit reserved, and they were wealthier and more refined than any of the relatives who had migrated to the U.S. Wealthy Mexicans had no need to migrate to the U.S. 
     Once she arrived home, my mother excitedly told her mother she wanted to send Patricia a confirmation dress. From her closet, she picked the prettiest one she could find. She hoped the dress would fit. She and her cousin were about the same size. She wrapped the dress, placed it in a box, took it to the post office, and mailed it to Patricia, hoping to surprise her. 
     A few months passed. My mother heard nothing from Patricia or her parents. Then, after what seemed a long time, my mother received a letter from Patricia's parents. They wrote, telling my mother how much Patricia had loved the dress, but Patricia had taken ill not long after my mother’s departure. She grew worse, and she died. They thanked my mother for the dress and told her their daughter looked beautiful wearing the dress in her casket. 
     As she told me this, my mother’s eyes glazed over, her voice cracked when she said, "It was so sad."