Tía Chucha’s bookstore is open!

 

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you already know that La Bloga celebrates Latinx culture in its many forms: literature, art, food, politics, and more. In our different voices, we try to bring you news of where and how you can join in the celebration—wherever it might be. But in the end, our truest love are books, especially those written by Latinx authors.

One way is to celebrate Latinx literature is to visit (and support) independent bookstores such as Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural in Sylmar. The mission of Tía Chucha’s is to transform community in the Northeast San Fernando Valley and beyond through ancestral knowledge, the arts, literacy and creative engagement.

Tía Chucha’s began as a café, bookstore and cultural space owned and run by former Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodríguez, his wife Trini Rodríguez, and their brother-in-law Enrique Sánchez. Tía Chucha’s provides year-round on-site and off-site free or low-cost arts and literacy bilingual intergenerational programming in mural painting, music, dance, writing, visual arts, healing arts sessions (such as reiki healing) and healing/talking circles. Workshops and activities also include Mexica ("Aztec") dance, indigenous cosmology/philosophy, and two weekly open mic nights (one in Spanish, the other in English). Tía Chucha’s also has hosted author readings, film screenings, and art exhibits as well. 

While the pandemic has moved many of these offerings into the virtual world, Tía Chucha’s is still going strong because of the committed staff and vibrant community members.

You may visit Tía Chucha’s and do some socially distanced book browsing, or order online. Check out some of these wonderful titles, and stock up on books for adults, teens, and kids.

Lupe Mendez - On Point and Staying There

Cover Artist: Ramiro Rodriguez

2018 Editor’s Choice Selection

AVAILABLE FROM WILLOW BOOKS, HERE

WHY I AM LIKE TEQUILA is a collection of poetry spanning a decade of writing and performance. This collection exists in 4 parts – each a layered perspective, a look through a Mexican/ Mexican – American voice living in the Texas Gulf Coast. Set within spaces such as Galveston Island, Houston, the Rio Grande Valley and Jalisco, Mexico, these poems peel away at all parts, like the maguey, drawing to craft spirits, quenching a thirst between land and sea. 

Originally from Galveston, TX, Mendez (Writer//Educator//Activist) works with Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say, Brazilian Arts Foundation and other organizations to promote poetry events, advocate for literacy/literature and organize creative writing workshops that are open to the public. He is the founder of Tintero Projects and works with emerging Latinx writers and other writers of color within the Texas Gulf Coast Region. Lupe co-hosts INKWELL, a collaborative podcast on regional, national and international Latinx writers and other writers of color. Mendez is a CantoMundo Fellow, a Macondo Fellow and an Emerging Poet Incubator Fellow.

Mendez has close to 20 years of experience as a performance poet, having opened up for such notable writers as Dagoberto Gilb, Esmeralda Santiago and the late Raul Salinas. He has shared his poetry across the country in places such as the Holocaust Museum Houston, the Jung Center, MECA (Houston), the Mission Cultural Center For Latino Arts (San Francisco), the National Hispanic Cultural Center (Albuquerque) and the Mexican American Cultural Center (Austin). A keynote speaker/poetry performer across Texas, Mendez hosts writing workshops across the country, most recently as a teaching artist for the Poetry Foundation’s Teacher Poetry Summits.

I wanted to start our conversation with a quote from your site:

“Si me quedo dormido con un lápiz en la mano, no me lo quites - podría estar escribiendo en mis sueños.”

- Terri Guillemet

 

How does that reflect your life and work?

 

Hijuesu, I love that quote.  It serves as both a bit of a reminder and a focal point. I have been an educator roughly around the same amount of time I have been a writer and so the Guillemet's quote speaks to me in both ways.  I used to have that quote painted on butcher paper on the front wall of my elementary school classroom when I was a writing teacher. It was high up, because I knew my kids' ojitos would eventually gravitate to the ceiling and I wanted it to seep into their subconscious: always write, always explore, always dream. I am fond of it for other reasons. I use it remind myself that I was more than my day job. I never resented the time I spent creating lesson plans and teaching kids the writing cycle. I was building a well oiled machine in these young readers and writers. It takes a sense of creativity to build up curriculum and access points where you are encouraging the body to engage in speaking about language and craft, to think about these patterns, to emulate them in writing and to read with corazón. But I did go through periods where I felt a longing to get back into my own writing or sometimes fearing that if I took too long a break from it, I'd get rusty. I giggled to myself the first time I read this quote - it is a truth. I have fallen asleep with a pen or pencil or a laptop in my hands. I used to post this quote in 2009 - 2013. I still stay up and write in the dark well past midnight. Now I do it because it's sometimes the only quiet time I get (I have a two year old, so no way can I write when she's got my full attention).  This quote keeps me grounded. Me hace recordar que hay que seguir adelante.

 

 

Talk a little about your book, Why I Am Like Tequila. How does it reflect your own journey as a writer?

 

So I had worked on the poems in the collection for well over a decade. Some of the pieces were poems I used to perform with at venues across Houston and Texas for a bit. I write about the worlds I belong to. The landscapes and communities I am a part of.  I kept thinking of home in Galveston, TX, of home in La Pareja, a rancho just outside Atotonilco El Alto, Jalisco, MX. I kept thinking of playas and cerros. I kept thinking about the rising/receding tides, the hectares of maguey, and the rhythm in the poems and it all started to come together. 

I kept going back to my time as a 5th grade Science teacher. When I taught the life science unit, there was always one factoid I used to throw into the unit that amazed the kids, but also amazed me - that every 7 years the human body has completely replicated all the cells in the body.  You are practically a whole new being. And it was this notion that always had me make a comparison between my worlds. I thought of tequila as well. I have always been around and known of the process by which tequila is made - Don Julio happens to be made in Atotonilco El Alto and its a given fact that it takes seven years to cultivate a full maguey to harvest the root to then make tequila.  

It was also this notion that got me thinking of how everyone is like tequila:  we are always being pressed, chopped at, boiled, pressured, fired, into something refined.  The world comes at us, in whatever order, and cleaves at us but in the end, every once in a while, we are an elixir. We are the best, most new, refreshed, refined thing we can be at certain time, just as often as we are in the ground, tumbling and mixing it up with the dirt. The human experience is full of the highs and the lows and this became the perfect analogy for it all. I am like tequila because the world remakes me every 7 years, every 7 thoughts, every 7 breaths into something better than I was before.

 

A Chicano?

 

You know, to this day, I don't know if I am Chicano.  I didn't grow up with the identity. I didn't discover Chicano understandings until my twenties in college. I knew Mexicano. I knew Tejano, but a Mexican - American identity didn't always sit well.  I always felt on the outside. Even in Texas, Even in Jalisco.  Most gente from Jalisco don't move to Texas. 

I used to laugh when I would go out to norteño spots and hear the DJs do a shout out "para todo la gente de San Luiiiisssssss" and the crowd would go nuts, or "para todo la gente de MOOONNNTTTEEERRRRRRREEEEYYYYY" and same thing, a roar. And with most of my friends when the occasional "para todo la gente de Jalisco" they would laugh and I would jump in the air and did't give a shit "a su pinche madre!" and it never failed, I would look out across the room para que veas - I would see one or two paisas and we would wave to one another. My friends would giggle and say "vez, no 'stas solo." Even though this is just a jovial moment, I have always been cognizant that there are differences between what Mexico looks like, what it sounds like, what it prays like, what it tastes like for me. The same geographical and cultural nuances that happen in the US happen in other spaces - Mexico is no different. I remember hearing banda as a kid well before it became prevalent in the US. Well before it became such a major genre in Mexico. Banda has always been in Jalisco.  The same can be said about my life in Texas.  I didn't grow up with many a Mexican role model in a space like Galveston. There was no poetry scene there when i was growing up. There is a small community that is a mix of 3rd and 4th generation Mex-Ams and Mexicans present, and this was my community. I was still the outsider. I went to school with Mex-Am kids that didn't know Spanish and they would make prejudicial remarks about "being too Mexican". And then there was always the geography - being from a barrier island, one already knows what it means to live in isolation. My writing was a way to push into all this understanding. I am still looking inward in this regard. I want to be able to stand up and provide space for the brown writer who lives a coastal life, who lives in two worlds, whatever those worlds may look like.

 

 

Are there core themes you return to, and if so, what are they and what is their power in your life?

 

So I think in a way I alluded to this in the end of the previous question - I look at both space and time, history and culture in my writing. I look at social issues and hope I serve as a decent observer of events. I know that time is fleeting and am aware of how ethnic and racial histories are vital to the growth of historically marginalized communities. I keep looking at the Latinx condition. I keep looking at what the counter history has told us for years. I keep going back to the sea. I try to go back to Mexico and to the RGV as much as I can.  I used to listen to corridos, just for the story, just for the bajo sexto or the acordeón. But that was before I realized that these are part of a brilliant Mexican form of poetry. The corrido is all things subversive.  It is cutthroat. It is infinite. It is both non-academic and story of witness, narrative and legendary.  It is consumable and linguistically profound. When I am writing, i am thinking along those lines. I want my work to be as infectious as a corrido.  I want for my work to work in you in some ways that you don't even know it is changing your understanding of "world".  I want it to work like the corrido: so ingrained in you that you don't even know you are reciting poetry.

 

 

You are involved in several incubators - Tintero Project, among them. What about this juncture in time fuels that work?

 

As I read this now, I think perhaps, one day, Tintero Projects can serve as a full on incubator program, but we are not there yet. Wouldn't that be something?  I am a long time member, partner, producer, you name it - in Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say. The org has been around for over twenty years and shows no sign of slowing down. It was in this community that I began to see what community can create for itself. Tony Diaz, novelist and political commentator created NP to respond to the statement we heard time and time again "Hispanic people just don't read." 

So Tony helped build a community of readers and writers here in Houston. When I was a novice writer, I was also a volunteer, licking envelopes, mailing flyers, setting out chairs and folding them back up at the end of readings. I was boxing and boxing books, helping people purchase books and sometimes, even selling books out of the back of my car. But I also got the perks - I got to sit at dinners, or have coffee or have drinks with visiting writers from all of the US and America Latina and got to listen to them, even ask them questions about both craft and the lit biz. 

 

I remember what it was like to run and host and provide space for established as well as rookie writers, even before I ever got on the mic as a poet. NP grew up: it went from monthly live shows to hosting the Latino Book and Family Festival to hosting a still current radio show to eventually participate in an ethnic studies movement with the Librotraficante Caravan and the Librotraficante Movement.

 

I knew that there was still room to hold some of these things current and with Tony's blessing - I worked to establish Tintero Projects, trying out the old formats but expanding in ways NP talked about. So Tintero Projects works to provide a platform for newer and established writers. It's for all POC writers, but we always maintain a heavy support for Latinx writers. We've provided time and space for performance, for workshops and for collaborative opportunities. I don't even know if I responded correctly - but in the end, what fuels this work is community.  If we want to see Latinx writers and POC writers, then we have to make sure that there is space for them to do their thing.

 

Where do you clock in on the "What is Latinx literature" discussion?

 

Is there a discussion? If there is one, I need fellow Latinx editors, writers, publishers, to begin to widen their understanding that the labels that are present weren't created by those of us the labels seek to identify.  "We" are not a monolith. We are every race. If we somehow hide or make invisible the Black body or the Indigenous body, then we are doing the work of colonizers before us. Somebody reading this might even have a fit because we are saying "Latinx" and I can already hear people speaking out "I am not Latinx, I am [add in Nationality name]!" and I already have a response, ARE YOU REALLY THOUGH?

 

I have been a part of the conversation where Spanish purists say that Latinx was made by Caucasian folks and it isn't a word in Spanish like "Latino" and frankly - that's an ignorant response. People forget that Spanish/SPAIN was just a vulgar a colonizing force as the English, the Dutch, the French, the Portuguese, etc.

 

It has taken me a whole life time to figure out that my roots tie back to the Wirikuta (Huichol) peoples of Jalisco. So much of all of our beginnings are lost to false comfort in "history". Hell just now, in these last few months in the pandemic, in conversations with a cousin (as HE is working to piece together side of the family tree), I learned where our grandmother was born: San Carlos, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

 

It took me til I was 35 to figure out that my father's side of the family is connected to the lands of the Kauyumari and the Huichol tribes. No telling how long it will take me to learn of my mother's people. I am eager to begin this learning and unlearning of names and systems, people and places. And this is where language must take us. Language changes and the links to language and people give us the tools and the means to collect and birth counter-histories that need to be told.

 

I'm not here to make this comfortable for gente. But I am here to learn and be taught, to grow with and to guide as much as I can. As far as I know, I support books in all Spanish, in Spanglish, in Portunol, in Portugues. I support books in indigenous languages.  I support books as much as I support stage performances. Spoken word and threate is as noteworthy as the book, because they are EQUAL FORMS OF PUBLICATION. Anybody that tells you otherwise has never tried the other. I support books and performances created by Afro-Latinx writers. I support self-published work. I support gorilla theatre. I support including Hatian writers in Latinx canon. I support ethnic studies. You with me? Good. Let's go.  

 

Who were your influences/mentors?

 

My grandparents. My parents. My theatre teacher in high school (S/O to Mrs. T), my Government teacher and track coach, Tim Cotton. Tony Diaz. Luis Omar Salinas. Martin Espada, Sasha Pimentel, Lorna Dee Cervantes. Carmen Tafolla. Patricia Smith. Norma Elia Cantú. Raul Salinas, Robin Davidson, Jonathan Moody, Stephen Gros, Tim Z. Hernandez, Lucille Clifton, Miguel Piñero, Lex Wiliford, Gil Scott Heron, Sylvia Plath, Roque Dalton, Mario Benedetti, Jose Alfredo Jimenez, Chavela Vargas, Nina Simone,

 

How does being a husband and father inform your work?

 

Being married and a father has morphed when I write. It informs how much focus and tension to the work I create. I look at mortality in a different way.  My partner and fellow writer, Jasminne Mendez, a Dominican-American writer lives with Lupus and there have been complications to her condition a different points in our journey together. I once took part in an MFA poetry workshop while she was recovering in an ICU. She was on the mend, and got the ok from her to participate and I asked my classmates and prof. if they were ok with hearing the occasional "beep" of a heart monitor. 

 

And now as a father, I have learned that I am definitely not on a time clock to get this work done. I published my first book in 2019. We have a photo of my daughter at 10 months old holding a copy of the book in her little hands. Me dio orgullo. She just stared at it for a while. I am more confident than ever that I have something to say.

 

What is something not in the official bio?

 

I am a good cook and used to play in a samba band. 

Icess Fernandez Rojas is crushing it

Icess Fernandez Rojas is an educator, writer, podcaster, and a former journalist. She is a graduate of Goddard College's MFA program.
Her work has been internationally published in Queen Mobs Lit Journal, Poetry 24, Rabble Lit, Minerva Rising Literary Journal, and the Feminine Collective's anthology Notes from Humanity. Her Houston-based story, “Happy Hunting”, was recently published in the Houston Noir anthology.

Her podcast, Dear Reader, is based on the popular blog of the same name.
Her nonfiction/memoir work has appeared in Dear Hope, NBCNews.com, HuffPost, and The Guardian. She is a recipient of the Owl of Minerva Award, a VONA/Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation alum, a Dos Brujas Workshop alum, and a Kimbilio Fellow. She's currently working on her first novel and finishing her memoir, Problematic.

Follow her:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Icess and at her website: http://icessfernandez.com/.

When it comes to women characters, who controls the narrative?

march 13, 2020 by icess fernandez rojas, posted in on assignment, writing, writing life

Dear Reader,

Greetings from San Antonio! (I started this in San Antonio last week so…it’s still technically true).

I attended the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference last week in San Antonio. It’s a pretty great conference usually. This year, the Coronavirus scared many people from going.

But somehow, despite that, the conference turned out pretty good and I made connections with people, had amazing conversations, and learned many more things, unexpected things.

One of the panels I went was about Badass Women in literature and it got my mind thinking about some things in modern literature and the role of women as characters. Who we are? What are we supposed to be?

The feminist in me says anything she can be anything she wants to be. However, the reader and burgeoning academic in me knows that is not true. When it comes to literature, cannon, classical, and modern, women usually are stereotyped and are devoid of any depth. They are reduced to a label — the mother, the whore, the sidekick, the virgin.

This is seen so much in noir, a genre I love, read, and (when the moment strikes) write in. Women are the femme fatale or the secretary. Either she’s a good girl or a bad girl and even in those two labels there is no room for shades of gray.

Women, as do the other humans, contain multitudes. And among them is “the burden of their secrets.”

Yes, that last sentence was surprising. I heard that in the panel about La Llorona, a folklore tale from Latin America, primarily Mexico but other parts of the Americas have this story. The Wailing Woman of the river (or insert other body of water) comes out at now crying for her children. She had drowned them after her husband left her. Or, in some versions, she drowned her children because she was too poor to feed them and killed them as an act of kindness. Or, in other versions, she was sent back down to Earth to look for her children and can not enter the afterlife until she finds them.

Or maybe it’s just a tale told to children to keep them in line, like the boogie man.

Regardless of the version of this story, any character, whether it’s a primary or secondary character, needs to have dimension. But I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that characters would have secrets; not secrets they keep from other characters but secrets they keep from themselves.

And that is depth, ladies and gentlemen. That is humanity.

Trauma suffers in silence and when those secrets don’t come out in a constructive way, it can seem that someone, the character, maybe acting out of turn. They may not have anything

And, as I tell my students, context is everything.

I think about stories like La Llorona (the actual story and not the movie) and how they have been passed down through the generations. What secrets did the Wailing Woman have to bare? What was her silent trauma? Was the drowning of her children the final act of a trigger from a trauma buried so deep she didn’t even realize it?

This character has been villainized and in that villainy she continues to be a victim herself. But she may not be real, you say? It doesn’t matter. How we interpret this story or folktale or cautionary tale says mountains on how women are treated in story.

The Mother.

The Whore.

The Sidekick.

Evil vs Good.

Damaged vs Naive.

Frankly, if we can’t get it right on the page, how can we get it right in real life. Our literature reflects our values right back to us. These stories that devalue women make it into our classroom, on state tests, and our drilled into students’ heads.

And the cycle continues.

In the impromptu panel I became a part of, I said this one phrase: “Who ever controls the narrative controls the world.”

So, I leave this question to you, dear Reader:

Who is controlling the narrative about women? Who is controlling that part of the world?

Think about it and get back to me.

Waiting for your answer,

–Icess

Dear Reader,

This is a time for art.

That’s a statement that I believe needs to be repeated.

The is a time for art.

Because this is what art does best. It gets us through human emotion and statements and stuff. Crappy stuff. And it does it by healing what has been wounded.

It helps us become seen when we need to be seen the most.

So yes, in the middle of all this, this is the time for art.

And art, dear Readers, is what I am going to give you.

And I’ve got two I want to share. Not mine though. I’m still working on stuff.

Pandemic, a poem written by Lynn Ungar, has been making the rounds. In this Chicago Tribune opinion, states that the poem made its way through social media. Even well-established poets like Rebecca Solnit gave it a thumbs up.

The poem is haunting and gentle in a way that makes you feel cradled in a cloud. It reminds us of humanity during a time some of us question what that humanity is or what it means. It reminds us that we are together despite being apart and that, in some ways is a solace.

Here is a stanza that haunts:

And when your body has become still,

reach out with your heart.

Know that we are connected

in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.

(You could hardly deny it now.)

Know that our lives

are in one another’s hands.

(Surely, that has come clear.)

Do not reach out your hands.

Reach out your heart.

Reach out your words.

Reach out all the tendrils

of compassion that move, invisibly,

where we cannot touch.

To touch, without touching. This is intimate. Close. Human.

My other piece of art in the time of global pandemic comes from friend Elisabet Velasquez. My friend is from NYC and is coming from a different angle to this pandemic. Also still human, also still haunting.

She shared her poem on her Instagram.

Mami & Papi go outside during quarantine is a poem where I see my family and I in the most. The idea that for people of a certain age, the world is finally moving at their pace. They have the space that they can move, the time that they can move and they do not feel rushed.

They feel this freedom at the time when they shouldn’t be free when they should be terrified in their own homes. But that freedom is too delicious and who knows when it will be their time again.

Like these line early in the poem:

Have you ever seen Brooklyn when it’s free

I haven’t — I ask him to describe it to me

so that I can remember this moment when papi sounds like he’s made it somewhere

and his body doesn’t owe anyone anything.

Or the line about her mom being able to go to the post office:

quick & painless. Her back might even feel young enough for a walk in the park later.

This poem is a gut check and a wake-up call. This was the rush was and this is what the social distancing is. And this is the living trauma of an epidemic.

Man, how I do love art.

Take a peek at both poems. Tell me what you think and share, share, share art.

This is a time for art.

Art saves,

-Icess

Blogueras Forever: Alvarado Reviews Cardinal. Living Room Floricanto Vincent Cooper.

Wonder Woman is Puerto Rican or Ann Dávila Cardinal has a new novel!!!
Lisa Alvarado

*Editor's Note. La Bloga welcomes former weekly columnists Lisa Alvarado and Ann Dávila Cardinal to today's pages.

Ann Dávila Cardinal is a force of nature.  I met her when I was trying to harass then Vermont College's admissions to let me finish my B.A. at the ripe old age of 38. I remember sitting in her office, feeling all at once at home. She got me. And more importantly I got her - her grit, talent, dedication as a writer.  I got my degree and was lucky enough to stay in touch after graduation.

But wait! There's more! Through Ann's keen eyes and ears she contacted me and Jane Alberdeston  Coralin about a call for Latinx YA. Through that we wrote Sister Chicas together and once again, Ann's broad reach helped us find an agent and publisher.

I remember a conversation we had back in the day where Ann put it to the universe that she wanted to write a novel... and folks, this is one amazing read from an uber-talented hermana, whose grace, literary chops, and other worldly work ethic has born more fruit. Below is a brief description from her publisher and our conversation about the acclaimed new novel.

From the Publisher: 

   

Five Midnights by Ann Dávila Cardinal is a modern take on the El Cuco myth that is bound to be loved by many. With a narrative that’s well-paced and intriguing, the author builds a world that utilizes a story passed down through generations since the Spanish Colonization of Puerto Rico and Latin America.

Javier Utierre and Lupe Dávila are trying to find out who (or what) killed two boys in San Juan, and along the way uncover an old magic based on the aforementioned myth. As Lupe and Javier become embroiled in the chase for the murderer, their adventure grows more nebulous. The mystery introduces us to some colorful side-characters who give us pieces of the ultimate puzzle, such as Papi Gringo, one of Javier’s childhood friends who’s become a sort-of Bad Bunny personality, and Izzy, another one of Javier’s friends but also Lupe’s elusive cousin. All the characters add to the story’s sense that everyone knows or is connected to each other, which is essential when writing about Puerto Rico; there’s always a feeling like you know somebody who knows somebody within Puerto Rican culture.

What would you like to say to La Bloga’s readers about Five Midnights?

You mean beyond that I hope they will read it? 😊 I guess that I’ve always been fascinated with the legend of El Cuco, and how the threat of supernatural forces is used to try and get children to behave. And that though he is called different things, a version of him appears in pretty much every Latin culture, which tells me either this tactic has worked for generations, or that parents resort to desperate supernatural threats when feeling powerless (yes!). My hope is that I captured the spirit of this myth, and the spirit of Puerto Rico.

Briefly describe your protagonists and what you see as the point of connection for readers.

Lupe Dávila is a sixteen-year-old Gringa-Rican from Vermont whose mother took off when she was little, and she is left struggling with life with an alcoholic father. This particular summer, her father ships her off to his brother’s home in Puerto Rico for the entire season, where she gets in involved in a mysterious murder case. Lupe is a fighter who takes zero shit from anyone but doesn’t let anyone close either. Being of mixed ethnicities and from a broken, drunken home, she struggles with fitting-in in either place, something which I think will connect with many readers.

Javier Utierre is a smart and kind almost-eighteen-year-old from a middle-class city near San Juan that has been badly affected by the economic issues on the island. As people left his neighborhood, drugs moved in, and he found himself caught in the net of addiction. But thanks to a priest he connected with, he’s been in recovery for two years. But when a childhood friend is brutally murdered, he is forced to face his past and the hand he had in creating the darkness he has been running from. Javier is a young man facing some bad choices he made, something most of us must face at one point or another in our lives.

Usually, there is more than one message in a novel. What is the major message in Five Midnights? What are the other takeaways you would hope for readers?

What I hope is that it helps shine light on certain issues, the major one being addiction, specifically that though most of what we hear are stories of drugs affecting certain socio-economic classes, in reality it affects us all. And that though it is mostly a love letter to Puerto Rico, I strove to show la isla in a realistic light (I mean, other than mythic monsters traipsing around). The beauty and the struggles as it was written pre-Maria when the island was already suffering. And finally, that if you don’t fit into one neat little box on a census, you still fit in with the community you make.

Talk about your own evolution as a novelist -from being co-author in Sister Chicas to your current book. Describe the ways you found helping hands, as well as what barriers you had to address.

Helping hands? Like, I didn’t know how to write a metaphor until you and Jane Alberdeston Coralin taught me? 😊 I learned so much working with you two on Sister Chicas, especially since you both are poets. Such beautiful language. Then I earned my MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and my craft deepened and deepened thanks to my faculty advisors. But we knew so little of the business then, we were flying blind. We did well despite that, but since then I’ve built a community of writers who are at different points in their careers so I can draw on their knowledge, and then pass that on to younger writers. The first time we got an editorial letter, we felt as if we’d done something wrong. Now I know that those letters are what brings out the best in the book, that you should hope for at least two so you are certain the work is where it should be. I’m a dreamer, so there was also a thickening of skin, a tether to expectations. The work is still joyous, but I’m more realistic about the outcomes.

What is the importance of YA literature from your point of view as a writer and a member of academia? How does what you do for a living impact your life as a writer?

Oh, it is through my job that I fell in love with young adult literature. Years back, I sat in on a lecture in our MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults (WCYA) program by Sundee Frazier—brilliant writer, lovely human being—who talked of craft and representation, and I remember my blood pulsing faster and faster through my body, it was all I could do not to jump to my feet and cheer. I’d never heard someone talk about craft like that, with an eye always on the reader, on the responsibility of shaping young minds. It adds an entire level to the craft of writing, an additional depth of meaning. And my job of counseling writers into VCFA’s programs only feeds my hunger. I get paid to talk to writers all day long, it doesn’t get much better than that! And each conversation inspires me. Truly.

In working with you on Sister Chicas, the idea of representation was central. How is representation on the micro and macro level an element in Five Midnights?

In Five Midnights I tried to represent my own story, and those of my family. Though Lupe has a lot of me in her, so does Javier, and Marisol. In this novel my frustration and anger at how Puerto Rico has been treated came out in the character of Marisol. And the intense bond of island family. As someone who did not have the best situation at home, the caretaking of my family in Puerto Rico was invaluable. It made me who I am today. And my love for my uncle Esteban, who always made me feel cared for, something a child of an alcoholic/addict thirsts for. So in addition to representing my own experience teetering between the two worlds, I hope I captured what being una Boricua means to me.

Particularly at this historic juncture, what is the significance of Puerto Rican literature and visibility? Who influenced you? Who continues to influence you?

Oh, this one made me tear up. I have lived on a steady diet of Latinx literature most of my life, studied Puerto Rican literature at Columbia, read everything I could get my hands on from Manuel Alonso’s El Jibaro (written in 1845) to Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro’s recent work. And the Dávilas have produced a number of writers, from my great-great uncle Virgilio Dávila to my cousin Tere Dávila who manages to write award-winning books while running an advertising agency. I feel…not the pressure of this legacy, but rather the buoying. Does that make sense? Can buoying even be a verb? But it is my wish that more work of the island is translated and released via traditional academic and commercial publishing venues on the mainland. There are so many brilliant mainland writers of Puerto Rican heritage, but not much work of the island-based writers coming this way. I’d love to see a bridge built, so all these brilliant works can go both ways.

Talk about literary fiction and genre fiction. How do you see the categories? Are the distinctions useful? What’s your observation about the intersection of literary fiction/YA/Latinx fiction?

Oh, girl! Now you know I’m pulling out my soapbox now! You know this is a passionate subject for me. I was going to get a t-shirt made for AWP that read “Genre is not a four-letter word!” But these days I’m beginning to realize that this division and judgement is dated. Younger generations of writers just don’t have these prejudices anymore, I mean, Colson Whitehead wrote a zombie novel, and George Saunders…well, that’s all I need to say: George Saunders. Victor LaValle, Carmen Machado…these are all literary writers who write speculative fiction. I predict that this classist perception of genre as “less than” is going away. And really, as far as I can tell that bias hardly ever existed in YA literature. Almost all our WCYA faculty have written some genre work, and there just isn’t that judgement when you’re writing for young people. There is so much depth that can be carried along with a magical storyline. If you don’t believe me, read All of us With Wings by Michelle Ruiz Keil, or The Storm Runner by J.C. Cervantes. Gorgeous, elegant work, with so many layers.

Tell us something not in the bio.

From the age of four to about six or seven, I slept with the sheets wrapped tight about my neck to prevent a vampire biting me in my sleep. I am the youngest of five children, a span of sixteen years between my oldest sibling and me, and so I was dragged to all kinds of movies. My mother also had a huge crush on Bela Lugosi (never did get that one) and so I saw Dracula at about four years old. I loved horror but had so many nightmares that I had to take preventative measures. Must have worked since I never did get bitten. 😉

Living Room Floricanto At Casa Sedano Welcomes SanAnto's Vincent Cooper
Michael Sedano

A few years back I actively coupled a goal of taking the perfect public speaker photograph with another goal of photographing every raza and allied poet on the Eastside reading their own stuff. That's almost the same foto, que no?

Public speaking--I call it Oracy--is equivalent to Literacy and Numeracy as fundamental competencies of a civilized person. I think in Aristotelian terms. The third century pagan held it would be unthinkable in his 'hood for someone to be unable to defend themselves with a sword. Equally unthinkable, Aristotle said, that a person would be unable to defend themselves with their words. And when people started agreeing with that notion, people became civilized.

Aristotle was thinking the courts and the agora, but the point applies to one's writing. An effective reading is the writer's way of honoring not just the composition but the labor of creation. Don't do a crummy reading but give your words the respect all that work earned it. In short, it's not enough to write it, fulfill the process by reading it aloud well.

The Living Room Floricanto, and its al fresco variant, the Backyard Floricanto, is a way to celebrate Oracy, take fotos, and bring poets to the pad, since Barbara and I don't get around much any more. It's much more, of course. The Living Room Floricanto is fun. My gosh, as today's fotos show, we did an open mic then enjoyed our featured guest. After that, a hootenanny broke out.

As the Emcee, Michael Sedano leads off the Open Mic with two minutes of creative  non-fiction. Sedano introduced the guest with the second-longest drive, Santa Barbara-NOLA's Melinda Palacio.

Melinda introduced Steve Beisner, wearing orange marking his opposition to gun violence.

Steve, a La Bloga Guest Columnist in the past, introduced Viktoria Valenzuela, Vincent's poet-wife.

foto:Concepcíon Valadez

Viktoria had the pleasure of introducing Living Room Floricanto At Casa Sedano's special guest,  fellow Veteran, San Antonio's Vincent Cooper reading from his recent publication, Zarzamora.

Melinda brought her Fender Montecito model Ukelele, a beautifully crafted instrument with mother-of-pearl inlay and mirrored finish. And what a tone! In the fotos, I have a great posture because I'm leaning back to hear those plunking chords and get into the beat.

Steve is a professional musician. I appreciate his tolerance with my poorly-disciplined fingers. We played some Irving Berlin, Lennon-McCartney, Sabor a Mi. The most wondrous event happened when guest Angel Guerrero sang a capella in a clear powerful contralto.