Adiós Carlos Fuentes

Thank you señor Carlos Fuentes for all your books. We will miss you. Your books will be enjoyed by future generations.

Chicanonautica: La Cultura in the Library

Borders is crashing and burning. The final liquidation sales are on. In a few short months, it will all be gone. Looks like I ended my days as a bookseller there just in time.

Now I’m safely employed at a library, checking in, sorting and shelving books and “media items.” They call it Library Page, but I prefer to think of it Book Wrangler. Yippie-Tay-Oh-Tie-Ey!

One of the perks of the job is that I’m literally swimming in mind-stimulating stuff, finding things I wouldn’t have otherwise found. Or sometimes something I’ve been in search of for years is right there. Serendipity doo-dah daze.

Also, because our customers (the word “patron” is passé) are more and more of an Afrohispanic mix with touches of the Middle East, Asia, and Native America -- some people from the Eastside of the Valley of the Sun are afraid they might get shot here -- I get to keep up La Cultura.

We’ve got books, magazines and pulp westerns in Spanish, and they get checked out a lot, and not just by the gente I interact with every day.

Recenty I checked out Carlos Fuentes’ Vlad -- in which Dracula moves to Mexico City and finds that he fits in well, corrupting a respectable licenciado and his family along the way. Despite the look of the novella (it’s a little over a hundred pages), Fuentes’ isn’t trying to cash in on the current romantic vampire craze. This is a more traditional Dracula, with all of his political corruption intact, flourishing in a new environment.

And if you haven’t been in a library lately, they aren’t just about books anymore. They’ve become multimedia centers. The big thing is access to computers, and the Internet. There’s also CDs --our Latin section is impressive -- and DVDs.

The selection of movies in español is allowing me to catch up on Cinema Mexicana, from the alta clase art films, to monstros y luchadores. I recently checked out both Luis Buñuel’s Simon of the Desert (the title was in English on the Criterion package) and Santo, El Enmascarado de Plata in Atacan las Brujas (“Witches Attack”) and found that they made a good double feature.

Simon of the Desert is all about resisting temptation. Silvia Pinal plays the Devil trying to literally get Simon off his pedestal and seduce him. And there are miracles and demonic possession. Finally the Devil has to resort to time travel. All in forty-five minutes!

Santo (it means “saint,” get it?) also resists temptation in Atacan las Brujas. It begins with a dream sequence, and keep going like a strange nightmare. He even defeats a demonic horde while posing in crucifixion position. I’m not sure if the surrealism was intentional or not, but the effect is the same.

So, La Cultura is alive and well in my library, providing me with temptations that I can’t resist, as all good libraries, and cultures, should.

Now, if there were only more Mexican comic books!

It's All Good - News That Fits

Lalo Delgado Poetry Festival

The Metropolitan State College of Denver President's Office of Institutional Diversity and the Department of Chicana/o Studies present the 4th Annual Lalo Delgado Poetry Festival - "Man on a Mission" - April 25, 2011, 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM at St. Cajetan's Event Center, Auraria Campus.

Metro will celebrate Delgado’s life and career (he taught there for seventeen years) with a variety of events led by Chicano scholar Joe Navarro and punctuated with appearances by Delgado’s family, Metro officials and Lieutenant Governor Joseph Garcia, along with numerous readings and tributes from local poets. All events are free; for more information, call Metro’s Chicano Studies department at 303-556-3124.



PROGRAM: Lalo: Man on A Mission

MC Adriana Duran-Hodge

9:00 - 9:15 a.m. Prayer, Jim Garcia

9:15 - 9:30 a.m. Blessing Ceremony - Azteca Groupo Chimaltonalli

9:30 - 9:45 a.m. Introductions - Amanda Duran

9:45 - 10:00 a.m. Lalo's Poem "La Llorona: Ronnie Ortega

10:00 -10:30 a.m. Guest Poet: Joe Navarro, Chicano Scholar

10:30 -11:00 a.m. Dr. Luis Torres, MSCD Deputy Provost Academic Affairs

Poetry Readings - Lalo's Great-Grandchildren: Lalito Ayala, Mariah Jo Bradley, Daniel Jugret, Evelyn Ramirez, Aliana Inez Velasquez, Michael Alexander Vidal

11:00- 11:15 a.m Poets-

11:15 - 11:30 a.m. Dr. Steven Jordan, President MSCD

11:30 - 11:45 a.m. Colorado Lt. Governor Joseph Garcia

11:45 - 12:15 p.m. Lunch - Grupo Folklorico Sabor Latino

12:15 - 2:00 p.m. Poets: Ricardo Lafore, Amadeo Miera, Dr. Ramon del Castillo, Ken Arkind,

Renee Bryant, Sarah & Ryan Jones

2:00 - 2:30 p.m. Award of Lalo Delgado Scholarships: Professor Steven Cantu

Carlos Fuentes on Life, Love, and the Impact of his Work

In the spring issue of AARP VIVA, Carlos Fuentes expounds on a wide variety of topics. Here are a few quotes from the magazine:

On retiring: “Retiring is the worst thing you can do for your mind. Then what? You ride around on a bicycle? You have to work until the very end.”

On his grandparents’ legacy: "They gave me two things. On one side was a severity, punctuality and discipline; the other gave me joy and creativity.”

On the importance of education: “Without education, there’s no knowledge. Without knowledge there’s no development. Without development there’s no progress. Everything is linked.”

On being a writer: “First comes love, for one’s wife, children, family and friends. Then comes what we do as writers. Without that life, I couldn’t have written those books; without those books, I wouldn’t have lived.”

Wine of the Americas

April 27 Wine of the Americas Tasting Event. Come hear Executive Director Maruca Salazar talk about art of the Americas while the wine experts from Divino Wine and Spirits enhance your taste for wines from the rich soils of Argentina, Chile and New Mexico. $20 suggested donation, all proceeds benefit our education and community programming. 5:00- 7:00 p.m. Museo de las Americas, 861 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, CO 80204. A glass of Malbec sounds good right about now.

Ernesto Cardenal -Tonight!

This event is special, so I am repeating the information from the Colorado Humanities & Center for the Book.

Widely acknowledged as Latin America's greatest living poet and activist, Ernesto Cardenal, will make a stop in Denver as part of a 12 city North American tour to celebrate the release of his newest collection of poetry, The Origin of Species and Other Poems (Texas Tech University Press, 2011).

The author of more than thirty-five books, many translated into multiple languages, Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1965. His studies with Trappist monk Thomas Merton and his involvement with the Sandinista movement in his home country have informed his writing and political activism. He lives in Managua, Nicaragua, where he is vice president of Casa de los Tres Mundos, a literary and arts cultural organization.

Colorado Humanities & Center for the Book, in partnership with Museo de las Americas, is pleased to present this Hispanic Heritage Live special event in honor of National Poetry Month. The event will take place at Museo de las Americas and be presented in the round, so the audience has the opportunity to engage with the author. Following the reading there will be a Q&A moderated by Irene Vilar, editor of The Americas Series at Texas Tech University Press.

Reading and discussion with the author at Museo de las Americas, 861 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, CO 80204 on Friday April 22, 2011 at 6:30pm. For information: Tim Hernandez, tzhernandez@coloradohumanities.org or 303.894.7951 x19

Breathing, In Dust Wins Premio Aztlán

This excellent novel, reviewed on La Bloga at this page, is the recipient of the Premio Aztlán for 2010. On the same page you can also find an interview with Tim Z. Hernandez, the author of Breathing, In Dust. The review noted: "Tim Z. Hernandez is the latest writer I have read whose promise is obvious, whose talent is rich, and whose honest and unflinching debut novel, Breathing, In Dust, deserves a wide-readership and critical attention." Winning this award should help on both points.

According to Facebook and Wikipedia:

The Premio Aztlán Literary Prize is a national literary award for emerging Chicana/o Chicano authors, founded in 1993 by Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya. The award was originally sponsored by the University of New Mexico, but was moved in 2008 to the National Hispanic Cultural Center.

The award is limited to short-story collections and novels (but not children's or young-adult novels) published by a professional press during the previous calendar year. Moreover, the author must be living and must not have published more than two books. The winner receives $1,000 and presents a lecture at that year's National Latino Writers Conference.

_______________________________

Tim Hernandez is one of the primary organizers of the Ernesto Cardenal event (see above). Tim recently returned to Denver and is now the Center for the Book Program Coordinator. Congratulations, Tim - many of us are eagerly waiting for the next one.

That's it - go out there and make your own good news.

Later.

Chicanonautica: ¡Japí Jalogüín!

The season is upon us: Halloween/Jalogüín, and/or Días de los Muertos.

In my novel Smoking Mirror Blues I suggested combining them into a three-day celebration – Dead Daze. I still think it's a great idea, and I recommend it whenever I can. Maybe one of these daze . . .

But this was the 21^st century, and recomboculture was a global phenomenon. Halloween collided with the Day of the Dead, becoming Jalogüín even here in the very heart of Mexico. Someday soon it would be a mongrelized Dead Daze, just like Beto's El Lay. (From Smoking Mirror Blues.)

There are those who think that Halloween and spookiness require a cooler climate than Aztlán. I've never seen it. Probably because I was first introduced to Carlos Fuentes via The Witch (“La Strega in Amore”) the Italian horror movie adaption of his Aura, on L.A. Channel 11's Chiller, “where we present tales guaranteed to to give you that . . . un . . . easy . . . feeling . . .”

The Southwest is full of tales of things that go bump in the night. La Llorona and El Cucuy don't have problems inspiring fear in this climate. That upstart El Chupacabras seems to thrive on the new electronic environment. Gnarled cacti, thorny trees, and jagged mountains can send chills up the spine after the psychedelic light show of the sunset dims down. Then there's our hoodoo rock formations, vultures, Gila monsters, and scorpions that glow in ultraviolet light, and all those UFOs . . .

You don't need to go to Transylvania!

It's amazing how people can see – and live in – this place and not realize how fantastic it is. We filter our perceptions, put on blinders. This is dangerous – especially for artists, writers, and filmmakers. I'd like to see new visions that take us far beyond the stereotypical “Southwest” of motel landscape paintings and Hollywood Wild West clichés.

One such work that does this is a short story “Memorabilia” by Rudy Garcia in the ebook anthology Needles & Bones. It's packed with history and myth woven through New Mexico, bringing in dragons and sorcery to a landscape that is usually a backdrop for arid road trips. Centuries are packed into its pages. I also sense that there may be the seed of a novel that I would love to read in there.

We could also learn a few things from Mexican filmmakers, who have never had trouble creating chills in a hot climate.

And recently, René Castillo has brought to life a new La Llorona, in Hasta Los Huesos, an animated masterpiece that takes you to world of calaveras worthy of José Guadalupe Posada (only in three dimensions), and beautifully illustrates Mexican attitudes of love and death.

Here's to a bright future in celebrations of life and death!

Ernest Hogan has recently blogged about songs for Dead Daze, and horror in Mexican comic books.