Sasquan. Latino Kids Lit List. Ask A Mexican. Política in kids lit.

WorldCon 2015 - How inclusive of Latinos & Native Americans?

 

The world's biggest SF/F convention will be held in Indian Country of Spokane, Wash., next August. Since I participated in many "Spanish strand" workshops/panels in WorldCon 2013 in San Antonio, I've suggested they should continue the Latino inclusion and involve some Native American speakers on panels and workshops. Officially, I've received no response. The one move they made at changing their all-white, very-old/male speakers list was to add Tananarive Due. Questions about Latino and Native American author-inclusion and workshops remain.

The World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) produces WorldCon. It's part of the long-running F/SF establishment that's dominated speculative lit for decades. Its old direction of good-old-boy club has changed somewhat to include women. Then blacks. Then Asians. But it's an uphill climb for them to change themselves into a group better reflecting 21st Century North American spec lit. How is it that Sci-Fi people are so retrograde conservative?

Another piece of that establishment is The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, SFFWA. Here's recent posts about them

"In the early 90s, I applied and was first denied entrance (I'm from Mexico, but still live here) until I argued that America is the whole continent and that Mexico is in America and thus I should be admitted to SFWA (I had done everything asked for). They eventually relented, letting me in as the first Mexican in SFWA, and a few years later managed to drop me when I was late paying my annual dues (by no more than a week). I agree: let´s do something new and multinational about it."

"I decided not to join (not based on this update)."

"I am definitely ready for a multinational thing."

I don't know exactly what everyone might mean. But there's NO reason that Chicano, Latino, Native American, black and other historically underrepresented authors should have to worry about anything other than creating their art. PERIOD. Exclusion, privilege, bureaucracy, chauvinism of any form have no place in speculative literature. Or much of anywhere else.

If you're thinking of maybe attending Sasquan next year, here's what they say about being included in workshop/panels: "Sasquan would like to hear from you if you’re interested in being considered as a panelist and/or a performer. We don’t know everyone and Worldcons always find a few good panelists/performers by encouraging volunteers to apply."

You can add your ideas on their website. Maybe I'll see you there.

Remarkable Latino Children's Lit of 2014

Just in time for gift-giving season, here's one group's list of kid's books--some written by Latino First Voices--with Latinos as the main characters.

"Latinas for Latino Lit (L4LL) announces our annual "Best of the Best" children's literature titles written by or about Latinos. Selections include award-winning authors such as Duncan Tonatiuh and publishers ranging from household name New York presses to community-focused, independent companies.

"Why publish this list now? At the end of the year, "tastemakers" such as The New York Times and National Public Radio (NPR) publish their "best of" lists. Inevitably, their selections feature few, if any Hispanic authors. The L4LL Remarkable Latino Children's Literature of 2014 selections spotlight this glaring absence, rooted not in Hispanic authors' lack of talent. Rather, their exclusion reflects the tastemakers' significant professional blind spots and institutional flaws."

You can go to their site and download the list.

 

¡Ask a Mexican! Happy Birthday: Thoughts on 10 Years of Raising DESMADRE

History will decide the Chicano authors and their literature that should be called classic. But I don't know how history could omit Gustavo Arellano and his works. In the guise of humor and satire, el hombre has produced some of the tightest, most precise, chignón funny writing of our generation. Here's a message from him:

"This week marks the 10-year anniversary of this infernal columna—10 pinche years already! The Mexican is not much for retrospectives—that's a gabacho thing—but I do want to take a moment to offer thanks to a couple of cabrones: former OC Weekly editor Will Swaim for giving me the idea for the column; VICE Media chingón Daniel Hernández for writing the Los Angeles Times profile that changed my life; Scribner for printing ¡Ask a Mexican! in best-selling book form; mi chula esposa for all her support and pickling my peppers (and that is not a metaphor); Tom Leykis for hosting a call-in-version of ¡Ask a Mexican! all these years (subscribe to his podcast at www.blowmeuptom.com); all the haters, whose vile words remind me why I started writing this in the primera place; my friends and familia for the obvious reasons; the Albuquerque Alibi for being the first newspaper besides my home periódico to have the huevos to run the column; and, lastly but not leastly, ustedes gentle readers, whose eternal curiosity about Mexicans makes this weekly rant an eternally rollicking bit of DESMADRE. To the next decade or 50!"

If you'd like to send him best wishes, or another windmill for him to use his lance on and dissect, do so.

Should Latino/a authors do YA lit with la política?

If you're a Latino/a writer who thinks the political has no place in Latino kid's lit, that it can't be engaging to young people, that it won't earn good reviews, that such novels won't be successful, here's a Sunday NYTimes book review of Paolo Bacigalupi's new YA, The Doubt Factory. He's no Chicano, but he's got otras sangres that spice up his prose. Here's a snapshot of what he did:

"Paolo Bacigalupi [and Alaya Dawn Johnson] are attempting a path in their latest books, thrillers that don’t just marry the personal to the political, but exploit the fantastical conventions of genre to make a head-on critique of the contemporary political landscape.

"To be a teenager is to be acutely aware of power, in all its forms — by virtue of having so frustratingly little of it. Which means adolescent protagonists impose a limiting factor on political fiction. They turn to science fiction and fantasy and play politics to their heart’s content: There’s no believability ceiling to how teenagers in futuristic societies can change their worlds. Following up award-winning Y.A. dystopian novel, Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker, an impassioned astonishment of linguistic ingenuity and innovative world-building, but also an attack on the politics of poverty and oppression.

"Now, Bacigalupi uses conventions of genre to attack a thoroughly unconventional brand of evil: the public relations experts and scientists-for-sale who conspire to replace certainty with manufactured doubt, nicknamed The Doubt Factory: “The place where big companies go when they need the truth confused. . . . The place companies go when they need science to say what’s profitable, instead of what’s true.” Tobacco industry lobbying, pharmaceutical companies’ manipulation of the F.D.A. — Bacigalupi doesn’t shy from indicting real-world doubt merchants by name and deed.

"In our proudly post-postmodern world of antiheroes and shades of gray, the value of nuance, in fiction and beyond, is almost axiomatic. To see the world in black and white is to see it through a child’s eyes. Bacigalupi is challenging this conflation of simplicity with naïveté, which makes for a somewhat flat narrative, but a stirring cri de coeur. Compromise, complication, doubt: These are his enemies. Maybe there’s nothing childish about moral clarity; maybe to understand that some stories have only one defensible side is what it means to grow up.

a VERY Chicano-political fantasy novel

"In the end, this is the message for young readers: Wake up. Ask questions. Challenge authority. Form your own opinions. Fight injustice, no matter the cost. These days, suggesting that a book has an overt message is almost an insult, as if purpose is incommensurable with art. Maybe so: these are not perfect novels. But they’re bold and ambitious, unafraid to charge into territory too often avoided, their authors keenly aware: Some messages are too important not to deliver."

You can read the entire article and then decide whether you'd like your next kid's book to get a review like this. I wish it so.

Es todo, hoy,

RudyG, a.k.a. Chicano spec author Rudy Ch. Garcia, who might go to Sasquan if there's a good reason.

I Ask(ed) a Mexican y respondió

by Rudy Ch. Garcia

Since every Tomás, dick and harried--mexicanos, gabachos, racistas, pochos, and quién-sabe-qué--are always asking Gustavo Arellano questions that he answers in his distinguished column Ask a Mexican, I decided to try one. And, qué milagro!--he answered mine this past Thursday.

Pero había un problema--something I didn't anticipate. Seems that written words can be a fickle thing. Or maybe it's that writers are fickle things. Or maybe it was just that my question-writing was somewhat vague. In any event, The Mexican Arellano addressed his response to me with a, "Dear Gabacho." Last time I looked--right after I showered--I was nowhere near being gabacho, but that's how he addressed me.

So, to determine how sorry the text of my question actually was, I also sent it to a few Chicanos I know to see how their answers compared to Arellano's. I told them it was a challenge, and three took the bait. First below is my question and then Gustavo's answer. That's followed by three others who answered the challenge. Hopefully Arellano won't turn a deaf ear to my next one after he reads this, something I'm already thinking about.

This appeared in the OC Weekly on Thursday and is reprinted with Arellano's permission:
DEAR MEXICAN, Cada día, my perro Manchas and I go for an afternoon walk in this North Denver parque. We often pass the gringo gentry who are temporarily "improving" the neighborhood, as an investment. You know how the gentry are—they move into the barrio, but send their precious güeritos to the charter schools so they won't get piojos from our kids or wind up pregnant with half-brown babies.

Anyway, I swear, every time Manchas and I pass one of these purebred, hyper-trained gentry dogs, the owners pull their pinches perros away from mine so they can't sniff cola or . . . you know. I guess my question is: How can the gentry know that Manchas is Spanish-surnamed, bilingual and mestizo, since they've never even talked to us? And is there anything I can do so Manchas doesn't grow up with a pocho complex and think he's inferior to a gringo's dog?
Yankee Hipsters Go home! [not my original closing--swear!]

DEAR GABACHO:
Gotta pay our respect to our veteranos—they can ramble as awesomely as any gabacho at a retirement home! I think what you're complaining about is the gentrification of historically Mexican neighborhoods by hipsters, a phenomenon happening everywhere from Denver to Los Angeles, SanTana to Chicago and beyond. It's important to fight the encroachment of pendejos with no ties to the area who start demanding changes—get rid of quinceañera shops, crowing roosters, cars parked on lawns, or corn grown in the back yard and nopales in the front.

At the mismo time, though, raza really angry with gentrification should practice gente-fication, the process of young locals getting over their pocho complex and opening their own businesses to pump enough money back into the area so city bureaucrats don't have any excuse to use the ruse of redevelopment on raza. Think of that strategy as our economic Mexican-American War—and if there are hipsters who are respectful of the old guard, such as the San Patricios that joined our side against the invading Yankees so long ago, then I say embrace their ranks, pound a PBR with them and teach them the secrets of scaring insufferable hipsters away from the barrio by blasting Banda El Recodo at all hours of the noche.
The Mexican

Okay, so Arellano thought I was not so bronze and a rambling old fart; I can live with that. He might have guessed that from my La Bloga pic, a self-portrait, one of those attempts at art attempting to mimic life, and maybe I don't mimic so well. 'Tá bien.

Next, Michael Sedano, La Bloga's Tuesday contributor answered my same question. "Ask a Chicano" contestó:
"Orale, carnal. First off you have to drop the language of the oppressor. "Gentry"? Híjole, as if your worldview buys into their class systems. "Gentry," so what are your gente, chopped liver? Another thing, oh my droog--why do you want them to talk to you? If it's their women who ignore you, la cultura has the ways and the means: work on your piropos. "As for the question of your dog, it's not the amount of pocho in the dog but the dog in the pocho.
michael sedano

Then comes Ernest Hogan, Wednesday's La Bloga contributor and sci-fi author:
"Okay, here's for the AskAMexican Challenge:
We used to have a lot of poodles and such in my neighborhood. They seem to be moving out, along with their “traditional” Arizona owners. Their grandmothers are afraid to walk the streets after dark, which is muy raro, because it's one of the quietest places I've ever lived. Yeah, there's this vato who wears a Santo T-shirt when he walks his pit bull. Man and beast strut with pride. I recommend that. Maybe sing or whistle an old ranchera, but no narcocorridos. I would stop short of a program of intimidation. I'm careful where I wear my ¡VIVA MÉXICO, CABRÓNES! shirt.

"Besides the canine mestizos--we adopted one who was abandoned by someone who felt they had to move out fast--it's mostly either pit bulls or Chihuahuas around here. And the Chihuahuas are taking over. The City of Glendale is even offering a deal on the license fees for the perrititos. This Chihuahua encouragement makes me nervous. I sense a diabolical ethnic-cleansing plot. But, then maybe I've lived in Arizona too long.
Ay, ay, ay,
'N [aka Ernesto Hogan]

Last comes an answer from a Houston Chicano, entitled, Gentle with the Gentry:
"Well, it didn't help things that you gave your perro a Spanish name, Manchas. That's a dead giveaway. The Gentry are always suspicious and full of trickery--they wrote the book. Your history tells you that it started with Columbus, the other immigrants, and has never stopped. They came, made new rules and took the land. Urban gentry is just a smaller scale of it.

"Had you named you're dog Fido or Pluto or Snoopy or some other distinctly white dog name, perhaps you would have been received with half-open arms in your own barrio. The whole idea with being white is money related. Move into a poor neighborhood, fix up the old house, declare it historic and increase its value to sell it for a profit. But the Gentry have more elaborate tricks like hold on to the house, live there for two years and move on, getting a great tax break and thus more profit.

"Anyway, back to Manchas. Dogs don't know more than what you teach them, but they do have instinct. A dog is already bilingual. They speak "dog" and then they speak the basic language the owner teaches them. This all goes way back before civil rights and equality stuff. And the dogs don't care. When a dog is chasing a burglar, the burglar does care what language the dog speaks or understands. And dogs have a more effective way of communicating, thus the saying, "His bite is much more worse than his bark." So, a gentry person can sit there and talk to your dog but no matter if they speak in English or Spanish, the dog only obeys you and the words that come from your mouth.

"When the gentry sees a Chicano with a pure-bred, they are in cultural shock, wondering, "Why don't this vato have a Chihuahua?" Now you are imitating them, meaning you're keeping up with or outdoing the Jones. You've assimilated too well in their eyes. Besides, their dogs don't even like them. A dog is nothing but an extension of their insecurity. It's a status symbol, meaning they care, but then there's the dog side. Imagine being left at home indoors alone all day, not being able to go do your dog do-do, not having children around, having to bathe and smell like a human That's a lot of dog stress.

"So dogs will snarl, and bark and chase each other. That's natural among all species. And they either will or will not get along. But they don't plot and connive like Gringos or Gentry. The exception to this is if the owner specifically teaches the dog to hate and attack. But this is a whole 'nother area of dog psychiatry and therapy.
Rafa

I did like Arellano's answer, as far as he elaborated on Gente-fication, the only problem being that our combined Gente financial base gets drowned under the development money that builds Gentry bars, eateries and mota shops.

Anyway, after these four different takes on my question, I doubt there's any great lessons to be learned, other than maybe I shouldn't ask strange questions in my strange way. However, I will be more careful on how I phrase whatever future questions I do have. And, I know I won't get a Chihuahua, except maybe to vary my dog's diet. But if any readers out there have better takes on what transpired above, please leave comments.

La Bloga's a Good Mexican, for a week

The plethora of world events and information this weeks makes at least my head spin--Tunisia going into chaotic freedom, of some sort; the Egyptian gov't going the way of the pharoahs; Obama going the way of the Republicans [they may not have to run their own candidate next time); my British pounds ETFs going the way of Tunisia; economists' predictions going the way of Mary Poppins or that kid who cried wolf.

En una manera, it's fortunate La Bloga doesn't deal with predicting which way the world will go. Centering on Chicano lit gives us enough to cover.

While today isn't a great example of that mission, sometimes we get noticed. Like Gustavo Arellano, of "Ask A Mexican" fame did recently. La Bloga was the "Good Mexican of the week!" Click here to see what he said.

_______________

From vampiristo Mario Acevedo comes the following:

A favor, please. Author Mark Henry is visiting Denver to promote the mass-market release of Road Trip of the Living Dead and is having a signing 7pm, Friday Feb. 11 at the Broadway Book Mall, 200 S. Broadway, Denver. Mark writes the hilarious Amanda Feral glamor-zombie novels. Could you give us a shout-out? And of course, you're all invited.

Mark used to be therapist and social worker for the state of Washington and has lots of interesting stories about that work. While his stories are ultimately for scandalous entertainment, you can get him to rant how zombies are an allegory for the dispossessed and discarded. Maybe you can interview him for La Bloga.

His website: http://www.markhenry.us/

Mario's probably MC-ing the thing, and he makes such events into happenings, so stop by if you can. He also noted that Henry sees the "dispossessed and discarded" in government workers, of all things. Perhaps he had some anti-immigrant Ariz. demons, elected or otherwise, in mind. An interview, Mario? We'll see.

es todo, hoy
RudyG