Chicanonautica: Our Creative Realidades

by Ernest Hogan

And suddenly, I’m published again. This time in Our Creative Realidades, an anthology of creative nonfiction from Somos en escrito.

From the official announcement:

This explorative collection resounds as a first-hand account of experiences and visions that offer powerful responses to such questions, found in the diverse writings of Kathleen Alcalá, Juan Alvarado Valdivia, Carmen Baca, Norma Burgos-Vázquez, Vanessa Caraveo, Robert René Galván, Nisé Guzmán Nekheba, Ernest Hogan, Maria Nieto, Matthew Olivas, Violeta Orozco, Álvaro Ramírez, Edel Romay, Dionisio Salazar, David Vela and Rosa Martha Villarreal. 

Yes, we Latinoids have realidades. Note the plural. And they get creative. Sometimes the lines blur between fiction and nonfiction.

 

Take my contribution:

See? Not only did they call me Ernesto (which I don’t mind, I’ve been answering to it all my life, it’s just that it’s not what’s on my birth certificate, and I get tired of telling about the Irish cabin boy who jumped ship in San Francisco, ended up in New Mexico, and later disappeared in SF in that big earthquake), but they identified “Lost in Trumptopia” as a short story. A lot of it is the truth as I saw it, but I do get imaginative at times, sometimes downright sci-fi.

Here’s an sample:

It’s the Trumpian dream in action: Let the post-modern robber barons run amok. Maybe they can convert the entire planet into liquid assets. Then they can go off in snazzy spaceships to launch a program of galactic liquefaction. We don’t need no stinking aliens. We are the invaders. We are the menace.

It came from pieces I first posted both here at La Bloga, and at Mondo Ernesto. Strung together there is a story arc. Kinda feels like fiction.

Hope it’s not the shape of things to come . . .

Ernest Hogan also wants to you buy Guerrilla Mural of a Siren’s Song: 15 Gonzo Science Fiction Stories.

Review: Journey to Aztlán Goes In Search of Its Audience

Review: Juan Blea. Journey to Aztlán. Parker CO: Outskirts Press, 2014.
ISBN: 9781478700371

Michael Sedano

With a title like Journey to Aztlán, no one reasonably expects the book to fulfill the title’s self-help promise and cultural mystery. Journey to Aztlán is not for nationalists looking for fantasy history, nor poets researching visions and philosophies of our separate Eden.

In this self-disclosing memoir, Juan Blea takes readers along on his journey to aware, self-sustaining sobriety, which he calls, Aztlán, or choosing life.

Journey to Aztlán accounts one man’s conquest of crippling depression and drug addiction. For Blea, expression is therapy, for certain readers likewise. For that audience, Journey to Aztlán offers a therapeutic, inspirational narrative of use in forming one's own narrative.

Structurally and stylistically, Journey to Aztlán is an easy, quick read. Blea begins in February 2000 in crisis, then flashes back to July 1977 and launches the story of the boy who lived to this moment. Each chapter moves the story forward, skipping months, or years, cataloging provocative, interesting incidents in Juan’s life, from how he abandons suicide that February to teaching, and writing books for people afflicted like Blea, in 2011.

Presented as a patient's autobiography, the novelist in Blea lets his creative juices flow in the description and selection of key events and people. Keeping the narrative interesting, selected chapters change voice from first person to third. The tactic shows off Blea’s considerable skills in the third person. More importantly, third person allows him to tell and explain matters succinctly that escape tidy first-person illustrations.

Cultural nationalists will hate the Aztlánish elements of the narrative. At a point in life when Blea thinks himself an expert on chicanidad, especially Aztlán, a wise Japanese scholar sets him straight in a nearly “you see, grasshopper?” scenario. Humbled, Blea vows to abandon his tolerance for “good enough.” He vows to hold higher expectations of his students, and himself. A focused pursuit ever on goal is another name for Aztlán.

The simplicity of the argument strikes Blea as noteworthy so he recreates a story involving a tough group counseling session that rejects his--the counselor's--magic formula to “choose life" which is how the therapist translates Aztlán for these clients.

It’s a familiar lesson couched in intercultural terms. Behavior, not commitment, defines value. Blea realizes he can’t go after Aztlán in a half-assed manner. He insists his clients can’t go after their goals half-assed and, like Blea, turn to the pen to write it down and work it out. In the book, Blea makes believers of them.

Creative nonfiction is fun to read up to that point the writer makes a message or moral. This is Journey to Aztlán’s narrative flaw, fortunately it's at the end and the reader makes accounts, doesn't leave too disappointed.

Blea doesn’t have a satisfying conclusion to the book. The story is ongoing so there's no ending there. But ending the book escapes Blea. The final paragraphs find him wandering around a message until he runs out of equivocations and stops.

What else could he do? Growing conscienticized to living with a concept that “Aztlán is within everyone” defies narrative's capacities and reader expectations. It's an insight best suited to poetry.

Contact the publisher’s website here for ordering details.

Marketing Your Work
Reviewed in La Bloga-Tuesday
Note: Self-published writers have equal opportunity to be considered for a review by La Bloga-Tuesday. La Bloga is a team of eleven writers, each of whom follows her or his own practice. This is Michael Sedano’s.

Among the pleasures of doing criticism are the regular letters from self-published literary workers wanting a review in La Bloga. It’s encouraging learning how many writers in Aztlán are being productive, finishing manuscripts in a broadening range of genres, looking for an audience.

It’s a unique privilege to read new voices, even if some don’t make much of an impression. It's good knowing we are out there. The gems, those are worth reading through handsful of pulp, and ill-edited work to find the gems and semi-precious treasures la cultura churns out.

For the most part, La Bloga-Tuesday reviews work from independent, university, commercial publishers by established or notable emerging authors. Owing to marketing power and prowess, their product is what I read mostly. Así es.

I report on books I enjoy, that have value for a readership. Some come to me off the library’s new book shelf, others recommended by readers, and accidents. I came across Juan Blea’s 2007 novel, Butterfly Warrior, serendipitously. I liked it enough to share in a La Bloga Review. I later ran into Juan at a National Latino Writers Conference and we chatted.

Juan sent me a press kit early this year, offering his new work after seven years. It was an ideal entrée to get Journey to Aztlán into the stack of to-be-reads and possible reviews.

For writers coming in cold, there are sure-fire ways to be left out. For example, I get inquiries similar in entirety to these:

“Dear La Bloga: Please send me a mailing address so I can send you a review copy of my novel. Signed,…”

“Dear La Bloga, I would like you to review my latest novel. It’s a 60s based unbelievable novel somewhere between Naked Lunch and Wuthering Heights. Signed…”

I look at hapless efforts like those, disappointed at the lack of respect shown the writer’s art. Like reading one’s work aloud, respecting the labor of creation demands an effective presentation of one’s work to a public.

Debut novelists seeking a review from any genre-appropriate reviewer need to make a credible and competitive presentation to earn consideration. The work of writing a book ends when the work of marketing the book begins. They are both sides of a one-sided coin.

Respecting one’s time energy emotion poured into finishing the manuscript demands spending more time labor emotion putting together a marketing campaign.

At minimum, bring the book to market with a press kit prepared with all the professionalism you and collaborators can muster. Your press kit doesn’t sell the book, it sells the would-be critic on ordering and reading the book.

The competition does it. Every successful book gets to market as the result of a marketing plan. Self-published authors are no different except they have a bigger hill to climb: no track record, no corporate money, no sales history. Y que?

Send a press kit like the pros do. There’s a fifty-fifty chance you get a reply. If you ask wrong, or not at all, it’s a hundred percent chance of No. When you ask again, take the second "No."

Just because you do everything right doesn’t mean it’s going to work. Think of the odds your novel faces from big-time competition and dozens of self-published authors with slick press kits. That’s why you have a competitive press kit!

There’s no limit on the number of winners. Give yourself that fifty-fifty chance of being one.


On a Personal Note

August 31, 1968 was one of those penetrating heat hot summer days in Los Angeles. The bride and groom kneeled for what seemed hours as the Monsignor droned on about marriage like a barbeque, the coals grow hotter, then cool, then the coals grow hotter.

That 23-year old groom turns 69 on his 46th anniversary next Sunday. I'm still having the time of my life.

Review: Devil’s Tango. Cultural Tourism. Foto del month. Banned Books Update: Librotraficante film. On-Line Floricanto for the Middle of June.

Review: Devil's Tango shakes readers to the core.

Michael Sedano

Cecile Pineda. Devil's Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step. San Antonio: Wings Press for Cecile Pineda, 2012.
ISBN 9780916727994

Last month as I was enjoying Robert Arellano’s Curse the Names, his doomsday novel informed by outlandishly consequential U.S. nuclear policies, I had simultaneously begun reading Cecile Pineda’s creative nonfiction thriller, Devil’s Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step.

Pineda’s doomsday take on global nuclear policies, the deception leading up to and growing out of the failure of GE’s nuclear design at Fukushima, Japan, cast a harsh emotional glare on what should have been a bright, fun read about nuclear disaster.

I had to stop. Not because I can’t dance, but I was terrified to step outside and breathe the air. It’s everywhere.

Pineda scared the living caca out of me. To get around that, I adopt a critical perspective derived from Chapter 104’s title, A Little Bit Goes a Long Way… Fear, like radiation, spreads. The main thing is, don't panic. That's a reading stance to adopt as one reads fact after fact Pineda’s massive research cobbles together to terrify you.

Just as Arellano’s character goes crazy thinking about a nightmare scenario, Pineda’s fact-driven scenarios spur a reader’s imagination to nightmarish personal fears involving one’s grandchildren and loved ones. A little bit of fear goes a long way toward coloring one’s reading. For Devil’s Tango, fear plays continuo behind the driving disharmonies of Pineda’s composition.

There’s the photographer’s story from Chernobyl. From the air, photos showed vast junkyards of radiation contaminated vehicles and other machinery. He couldn’t take a photo at ground level because all that junk, and more, had been swallowed up into the flea market economy. Don’t buy a desk or office chair within the million square miles of Belarus or Ukraine.

There are the soldiers whom Russian leaders sacrificed. Sent them to pick up nuclear waste with their hands, wearing their Army green fatigues and comfortable leather boots. Pineda doesn’t say if they spit-shined those boots.

Three hundred forty thousand soldiers--all of them--died. No record remains of their names, who they were, where they were born or died, or of their cause of death. Pineda denies the unspoken premise, if we don’t know their names, do they matter? QEPD, brothers and sisters. You did your duty. Russian army, U.S. Army, if you see a mushroom cloud on the horizon, you say “yes, sir!” put on your raincoat and march toward the smoke.

If Chernobyl is the boogeyman of nuclear safety, what shall the world consider Fukushima? In the first week after the earthquake, Fukushima has released more radioactive cesium than Chernobyl and all the bombs detonated during the years of atmospheric testing. One hundred tons of fuel…have melted through containment and fallen into the basement of the reactor buildings—something TEPCO admitted only much later. Thousands of tons of radioactive water have been released…contaminating the water and sea life for all eternity or 4.5 billion years, whichever comes first. (84) Scary stuff.

The scariest words Pineda writes are her allusions to all of us being wiped off the face of the earth. Relating a Siberian nuclear accident where years later, the ground still moves, the author observes, You know what this means. You know the fall-out plume will soon blanket the northern hemisphere. You know it will contaminate the food chain, on land, and on the sea. You know it will taint the soil, and the water, and the air you breathe. You know from now on, it will taint everything you drink and everything you eat. (6) The frightened rhetor relaxes, recognizing the fallacy begging the question. That’s a relief.

Not that we can do anything about it now, but the Tokyo Electric Power Company and General Electric company lied about the dangers, damages at Fukushima’s four reactors. TEPCO was releasing volumes of radiation that would sweep the globe and where fallout settled, the land would be quarantined for half a million years. A TEPCO portavoz denied gas releases as they were happening. As a result of the leak that did not occur, region-grown produce is banned from entering gaijin lands. And all those rads went upsofloatingly into the windstream.

But according to TEPCO, matters are under control and the Japanese government plans on restarting the nation’s other reactors in a skosh.

According to GE, its reactor design—the same one used in numerous U.S. sites--is safe. Chapter 66, Why every GE Mark I Boiling Water Reactor the World Over needs To Be Shut Down, counts 12 reactors with GE Mark II designs and 23 GE Mark I in the United States. But the problem goes beyond this one manufacturer to the paradigm of cooling systems.

In nuclear energy generation, cooling system is an oxymoron. In California, Diablo Canyon bought Westinghouse and San Onofre, Combustion Engineering, Pressurized Water Reactors. And installed both on earthquake faults. San Onofre remains closed because officials have no idea how the dang thing works.

A visit to Southern California Edison’s San Onofre online plant tour doesn’t inspire confidence. Clicking the worker safety drop-down menu brings up a page about trimming trees, reading meters, digging ditches, ordinary Cal-OSHA stuff. Nothing about nuclear safety here that SCE wants the public to know.

By the way, don’t blame the tsunami for the Fukushima meltdown. The GE reactor failed with the first earthquake. Aftershocks set matters up for everyone to blame mother nature. Bad management, bad engineering, bad timing, all went into the disaster. The tsunami wasn’t bad luck or an act of the goddess some want you to believe. Citing an activist report gleaned from Freedom of Information Act-garnered documents, Pineda makes this clear, There’s a reason why every nuclear expert on the planet wanted the world to hear this and that’s because there is also the claim that Japan is only place such a massive tsunami could take place!

Fear. Radiation. Nuclear riches in exchange for a dance with the devil. It can happen here. Devil’s Tango draws in its readers with engaging writing and fascinating scenarios, but Pineda’s leaving it to readers to draw their own conclusions, then buy in.

Reading Devil’s Tango benefits from keeping mindful of that chapter title about a little bit of fear going a long, long way. You probably can relax. After all, at book’s (except for the notes and references) end, Pineda takes a step back from the brink and leaves a message for the future. If we didn’t kill ourselves in our time, in your time, pull the plug on nuclear power.

Wings Press, who publishes Manuel Ramos’ must-read King of the Chicanos, publishes ebooks, too. Readers can order Cecile Pineda's Devil's Tango e-edition via Independent Publishers Group distribution in North America, and in Europe via Gazelle Book Services. Local booksellers can get the softcover volume, or sell you the ebook and you won't have to pay your pal a cut.

At 223 pages, Devil’s Tango makes a portable beach companion when Jaws gets too passé and you want a good jolt.

Lacking an index, you’ll find yourself dog-earing pages and leafing back and forth through its chapters looking for that reference to San Onofre, or that sit-in campaign by mothers in Tokyo, or any of the alarming facts Pineda weaves into her fearsome tale.

¿Sabes qué? I bet you can use your ebook reader and do word searches, access the internet and find those links to all those references Cecile Pineda’s assembled on her seventeen page bibliography that sits there mutely on the printed page. Did I say the book needs an index?


Next year, en Havana

Rummaging through a deteriorating memory for noteworthy creative nonfiction titles to compare with Devil’s Tango, the first title coming to mind is La Bloga friend Tom Miller’s, Death of the Saguaro.

It’s nothing like Pineda’s volume, and I navigated over to Miller’s website  in search of a quotation to exemplify Miller’s version of “creative nonfiction” as a worthy contrast to Cecile Pineda’s style. I struck out since Saguaro’s publisher, Arte Publico, shares a flash program instead of cut-and-pasteable text.

While there, I noted Miller’s renewed his offer to tour Cuba with gente genuinely interested in literary arts as practiced in Cuba. The trip encompasses a diachronic approach from pre-independence to writers whom travelers will meet during the tour.

A past trip attracted Arizona Republic journalist Terry Cornelius, who heaps praise on the tour and Obama’s progressive move that allows cultural tourism like this to the once embargoed island.

Visit Tom Miller’s website for details on his work, and links to a PDF about the trip. Maybe Tom will meet government gente who want to lead that nation to host the International Latina Latino Writers Conference there in Havana. Ojalá.


Banned Books Update

On this date in June 2012, Arizona schooling remains the same: rotten at the top. The books the city's elected school board banned, stay banned. So it goes.

Small changes after elections across the nation, but the status quo preserves itself in Tucson’s classrooms and administrative offices.

Bunker mentality, meet moral victory. In the end, if the bunker’s well-protected, the occupants believe they can hold out until siege mentality wanes, an inevitability.

When the barricades come down, the victors ascend the balcony, thump their chests, and say “See? You didn’t want it badly enough!”

One vato who has the ganas, puro ganas no lana, is Gabriel Carmona. On the Librotraficantes bus, Houston to Tucson with stops in San Antonio, El Paso, Mesilla, Alburquerque, Carmona mounted his camera on tripod or shoulder and captured footage that he’s now edited to a final product.

His Librotraficante handle was Comandante Poeta Carmona. He’s in the film as that performer, reading tribute pieces of banned literature as well as his own compositions inspired by events on the bus and visiting with Rudolfo Anaya at the author’s House that Ultima Built.

The Texas premiere was June 9 in San Antonio. The filmmaker is putting funding together for a tour to Arizona then California. Like an independent writer on book tour, Gabriel arranges showings in any variety of location where an audience shows up. Spread the word, share your art. Adelante, brother.

Rudolfo Anaya welcomes Gabriel Carmona to Anaya's home.

View a trailer for Gabriel Carmon's Librotraficante video here.


Foto of the Month

Eye of the earth

Pt. Lobos State Reserve near Carmel, California. I've been watching this sandstone formation for as long as I can remember, probably the 1950s. Wind and sea erosion eventually releases the stone from the hold of mud that flowed and hardened around stone 10,000 years ago.

The far edge of the continental landmass meets the Pacific Ocean at Pt. Lobos. Some slabs of earth date back 70 million years. There's a cool vibe out here where the Pacific Plate slips under the North American Plate and that leads to mountains and valleys and fabulous vistas and that vibe. Climb out here, sit, listen, feel it. More fotos at Read! Raza.

Low tide, calm seas at Pt. Lobos.

On-Line Floricanto Mid-June 2012
Pocho Luna, Avotcja, Pedro L. Ramírez, Mari Herrerras, Andrea Mauk

"For our tíos Manuel" by Pocho Luna
"Diaspora negra / Black Diaspora" by Avotcja
"Card Catalogue" by Pedro L. Ramírez
"En nuestra ciudad" by Mari Herrerras
"Passion and Economy: A Postmodern Tale" by Andrea Mauk


For Our Tio Manuels 
by Pocho Luna

Tio Manuel like animated red adobe moved
Slowly about Abuelo's ranch where once we played
Hide and seek. Hip high weeds veiling memories
Shrouding decades-old laughing ghostly shadows
Of tias tios nietas nietos y bisabuelos rustling
In the wind whispering heaven’s
And hell’s
Secrets

Past dawns sinewy Tio arose like five
Gnarled branches creaking in the autumn breeze
Frosty breath exhaled in the frigid fifth wheel
Mixed with screeching steam of a lime green
Percolator sputtered thick black coffee grounds ominous
Divination. El Rey the Rooster crowed atop a rusted 55 Chevy moored
Into dried mud long ago rooted into the earth
Resting tired bent chassis. Rosary beads dangled on
Raised arms to the clandestine sun
Croaking with harsh voice Tio praised for life renewed
For spirits of ancestors gone
Touched right index finger to corazon
Sign of the cross
He prayed for the soul
Of little Margarita muneca
Who drowned in the ditch
In 1973 his favorite doll-faced sobrina
Often heard giggling under haunting eves moonlit

Autumnal Fresno fog poured over like thick leche
The adobe home Manuel’s Papa built in 1953
Singing…              “V               I                  V                A
J             A            L             I             S             C             O!”
Silent grito lest La Migra
Cold War Ears heard his sonorous grito echo
With strong arms like steel brick by brick
Created Mexico in the midst of Anglo Fresno
A Window to sweet smelling Zapopan
Markets flowing with honeyed pulque dripping
From porous Spanish walls. Tequila like streams
floating repentent Sunday menudo-stained priests
Baptized one black-haired son screaming
"Yo Soy Mexicano" in murky baptismal font
Mexicano tambien sin papeles
Named Manuel Guadalupe Luna
so called Alien from another world
The rest, five sons two girls, Chicanos

Twilight rose-colored skies last month spied Tio
Third foot cane walking along overgrown dirt paths
Cut off khakis differed knotted legs from staff
Wandering in and out of then and now murmurs
Flitting in the wind past a half-buried Niño de Atocha
Blessing him as he strolled with October chills
Tio stopped leaning against a pomegranate tree
Half-century-old twisted unkempt
Like hundreds of brown arms to sky outstretched
He braced shirtless back to a wizened wooden friend
Wiping his cataract eyes closing lids
Conjuring…

1965 hot Fresno July sweat dripping from the sky
Beat down 110 degrees on his Mama’s brow
Crying for her Mijo’s lottery number
For putrid jungles limbs strewn about
Like mama’s fideo in a soupy tomato sauce
Vowing to La Virgencita for protection
Glorious Stars and Stripes waved along
A patriotic young Manuel to Vietnam

Tio Manuel our family’s last tie to the old days
One foot in America one foot in Mexican ways
A blurry forearm blotch once spelled Marines
Now spreading into leathered flesh unreadable
Looks like a shriveled nopale leaf sliced off
thrown to trash like napalmed Charlie scarred.
Barefoot on a whicker chair Tijuana statue-like santo
Manuel sat daily sun up sun down waiting
Digging twisted toes into the earth melding skin and dirt
Becoming one melting
Anxious to join whispering spirits in the weeds

Now the old camper shell door with one hinge
Creaks open slams shut over and again
Serenading rat’s nests inside Tio’s bed enjoy peace
From ICE. Unlike Tio who sleeps
Lonely nights away from Margarita’s sweet giggles
Away from memories’ spirits whispering
Waiting in the garden for Manuel’s soul
To play underneath full-mooned nights
Never to come.  His rosary trampled
Among violent foot prints heavy stamped
Into the earth where once we played hide and seek.
Tonight in Tijuana Tio breathes his last days
Surrounded by unfamiliar gardens silent
Clutching a photo of mama tattered tear-stained
and a handful of Vietnam Medals

Copyright 2012 Pocho Luna


DIASPORA NEGRA
por Avotcja

Escuchando al aviso en los vientos Africanos
Lo mas viejo de los Viejos
De mis Bisabuelos tiró nuestro idoma en las aguas
Mejor una comida pá los tiburónes en el mar
Que un juguete trivializado pá los estafadores
Marionetas en el juego de la esclavitud
En estos días
Hablo con los espíritus de mis antepasados
Y me dicen, silencio hija
Escucha el ritmo con el alma entera
Y me dicen, en este océano de la existencia
El ritmo es un salvavidas
Y escucho
Vivo escuchando a los ritmos africanos en todo
Y me encuentro, un espíritu sempiterno
Un espíritu nacido de recuerdos en los huesos
Mi herencia renacida
En cualquier País de mi Diaspora Negra
Todavia presente … este espíritu irrompible
El latido de la cultura … Siempre cuchicheo
Compartiendo regalos de secretos ancestrales
Y hablando por los pies y bailando por mi canto

Copyright © Avotcja

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

BLACK DIASPORA
by Avotcja

 Listening to the warning in the African winds
The oldest of the oldest
Of my Great-Grandparents threw our language in the waters
Better a meal for the Sharks in the Sea
Than a trivialized game for the Sharks that walk the land
Pawns in the ugly game of Slavery
These days
I speak with the Spirits of those that went before me
And they tell me, be quiet child
Listen to the rhythm with your entire Soul
And they tell me, in the ocean of existence
Rhythm is a Lifejacket
And I listen
I live listening to the rhythms of Africa in everything
And I find myself, an everlasting Spirit
A Spirit born of memories hidden deep in my bones
My heritage reborn
My Black Diaspora is wherever I am
Always present … this unbreakable Spirit is
The heartbeat of my culture … always whispering
Sharing secret ancestral gifts
And dancing through my Songs & speaking through my feet!

translation & Copyright © Avotcja

("Diaspora Negra / Black Diaspora" first published in La Lunada a publication by Galeria de La Raza San Francisco, CA 2010)



Card Catalogue
by Pedro L. Ramírez

I.
Buried and flanked
Slips of dewy decimal library of congress codes,
Upright like park dominoes,
And stored in polished
Oak swirled boxes
Like contours that map theCentral, north, south, east and west
First nation’s continent.
They stood in library reception halls
Empty of Raza,
Alone and utterly stagnant but
Full of cosmic information for the ages.
Chicanos searched thru the A-Z slip stacks,
And could not find books like stacked dolls
Written by exiled chili pickers, pallet builders,
Rail layers, meat packers, and city sweepers.
They said you people have
An oral tradition passed along by your ancients
Who left empty hieroglyphic rooms.
Orale,
So go find it in song,
And you won't find your vernacular
in the stacks standing like fort sentinels,
but I found Dagoberto.
And you have no poems, political treatises, literary manifestos,
theatrical presentations, scientific nor biological discoveries, nor
Historical records and social science studies, military methodologies,technological inventions, gourmet recipes, horticulture,
urban planning schematics, Psychological studies, films,
nor immigration regulations,
that are viable and bonafide
Scholarly studies.
You may find something in Spanish Studies or
You can read life and times of Zorro,
a delightful study of your rebellious kind.
My fingers trounced the slips searching for something
Or someone.
I found The Crazy Gypsy in a local Fresno State Publication.
Cracking poems like eggs about his Chicano state of mind
But saying we are Aztec Angles.

II.
So the Gypsy
Conspired to hold the card catalogue hostage,
Behind a barricade of abuelas’ chocolate, cazuelas de cobre,
Mague pencas, Aztec earth stones, abuelos hands
holding hieroglyphic pyramids stone blocks.
Masked he fired chile pellets to fend them off,
And made demands of opening universities to
Dreamers, scientists, spiritualists, scribers, mathematicians
And more,
He demanded they publish books with stone bindings,
and that all the published books be catalogued under
CHICANO LITERATURE!
The Gypsy let loose the muse and
Entrenched and resistant the books emerged
Like brown buffaloes and
We devoured the pages
like pumpkin empanadas.
And a river of thought rolled like a wave of honey panal
Into the corked minds that would transcend futures
like the clock of Popocatepetl and Ixtacihuatl
spewing white gas tufts
into ultraviolet prisms of father sky.

III.
The collection became Arizona's most wanted
With mug shots in curricular administrative texts,
Slapped on post offices walls and
Legislative all-points bulletin aimed at the books.
Certain capture was inevitable.
Program curriculum were shackled,
ankle bracelets were placed on each book as
Their subversiveness was a threat to Arizona schools.
Banned and exorcised from the shelves by
Cross wielding black, red and white patriots.

IV.
Libro Traficantes
like midnight coyotes delivered texts traversing
the Saguaro landscape,
Ankle bracelets set off
like independencia blasts.
The Traficante semillas planted
Like buried pencils
in red dirt,
And the landscape
sprouted Chicano books
Like corazoned nopales,
fluorescent
heart catalogue without end.

© Pedro L. Ramírez



En nuestra ciudad
by Mari Herreras

You, clove and cardamom
herba buena en leche con azúcar moreno
eyes, sweet dark almonds
lips, large torn grapefruit
bitten, sucked, quenched
desert relief.

You, clove and cardamom
sea-salt hair
star and moon-kissed skin
nopal hands
smooth with thorn-worn grasps
a map
a moment
every 500 years,
every 1,000.



Passion and Economy - A Postmodern Tale
by Andrea Mauk

I look up at the 10 freeway, cars parade
like ants on a mission after a good
Southland rain.
The sun slides its poignant fingers through the L.A. haze
but the people once connected by wires
instead of Apples
can't wake up even with the help of Starbucks.
And gas is still over $4.00 a gallon.

Standing on Gingerbread Platforms, they
wait for the Gold Line to pull in,
devour tamales de queso
and each other's souls with
dead-eyed blankness
because nothing is real and
face-to-face doesn't matter anymore
since all my best friends are on Facebook.

Except the job, need the job
to pay the bills, at least some of them this month.
The company had a good quarter
but Wal-Mart's still nipping at the heels,
so there's talk, and there's doubt
in theunion local and the back of the mind
taking up the space reserved for hope and compassion.

War in some far-off land is financed by us,
but the school custodian gave up his push broom
in honor of the balanced budget,
and the news reporter repeats the headlines
every five minutes as if we hear it often enough,
it will become the truth. But truth is just
a concept, as empty as the urban myths
that tell us that the traffickers are the bad guys,
as if we don't understand supply and demand.

The smiling college grads ride their
basketed Schwinn cruisers across campus,
throw their battered couches out front
on Ellendale Street, and fly off to the
crunchy apple to work for the firm that
can still put a spin on why the mortgage crisis
was not the banks' fault. The young
and the faithful haven't dug far enough to
unearth the hollow center,
and the bells at San Vicente de Paul still chime.

Deep in the evening, when the fog rolls in
and the seagulls abandon the fast food
dumpsters on Fig., when the carpool lane is empty
and no one needs to hear traffic on the fives,
when inky indigo and streetlamp halos mask the
graffiti murals and
peeling paint on rows of quaint California bungalows,
you crack a beer or three and unlock
the heart that's gone numb from it all.
And I'm on my side, a  bag of
carne y huesos on a sagging mattress,
waiting for your poignant fingers
to touch my soul. Together,
we remember why we came here.
We are truth
adrift in a world of decay, hoping to hold
each other for a few hours before
we start another cookie-cutter day.

Copyright 2012 Andrea Mauk


BIOS
"For our tíos Manuel" by Pocho Luna
"Diaspora negra / Black Diaspora" by Avotcja
"Card Catalogue" by Pedro L. Ramírez
"En nuestra ciudad" by Mari Herrerras
"Passion and Economy: A Postmodern Tale" by Andrea Mauk

Pocho Luna. I grew up in Fresno, in a working class Chicano home. My father grew up in makeshift tent communities, picking crops up and down California in the 1950s and 1960s.

During the Mexican revolution my great grandfather, Jesus Luna, crossed the border from Chihuahua into El Paso, then on to Fresno. In 1920 Jesus built an adobe house on the outskirts of the city, it is still our family’s home and the center of our Mexican identity today. I desire to give voice to the experiences of my Chicano family who have gone before, whose spirits walk with me, who whisper in my ear and guide me.

Currently I am a PhD candidate in history at Stanford University. My research involves border issues, Latin American religion, the Cult of Saints in the Hispanic World, Immigration into the Southwest, and the Criminalization of Chicano culture.

Pedro L. Ramirez attended Fresno State University as an EOPS student and holds both a B. A. and M. A.  in English/Creative Writing  from San Francisco State University. Since 1991, Pedro has been teaching at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, CA. where he has taught in the Migrant Transition Program working with Migrant farm- workers and urban youth, but Pedro now teaches English where he teaches basic composition, critical thinking, Chicano Literature, and Creative Writing. He also taught in the Puente Project. He is the founder of Chicanos Writers Artists Association (CWAA )at Fresno State. He is a founding member of Cultural Awareness Programs (CAP) at Delta College where he has noted speakers and poets such as Rigoberta Menchu, Victor Martinez, Gary Soto, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Juan Felipe Herrera  and Margarita Luna Robles to note a few. Pedro is a community activist and founded Raza Advocacy for Education. Pedro is dedicated to promoting poetry, diversity and cultural competency on the Delta Campus. Pedro has published his poetry in La Bloga, Iowa Review, Blue Unicorn, La Opinion of Los Angeles, Sentimientos del Valle, Artifact, El Tecolote SF, La Voz de Atzlan, and and many other journals. He has read nationally. A native of Fresno, Pedro began his teaching career at San Francisco/Fresno State University and Fresno City College. He credits the rich creative writing community there for inspiring him to write and teach. Pedro has published a semester poetry magazine which is student generated. He has read for the College Board AP Lit., GRE, SAT, SAT II, and CBEST. He has worked as a farm worker, janitor, and a gas station attendant. He loves working with students.  You can contact Pedro at pramirez@deltacollege.edu.

Mari Herreras is a fifth-generation Tucsonan, mom, and staff writer for the Tucson Weekly. She loves exploring Tucson and the Southwest with her son, who gives her soul plenty of love to keep writing poetry.

Andrea García Mauk grew up in Arizona, where both the immense beauty and harsh realities of living in the desert shaped her artistic soul. She currently calls Los Angeles home, but has also lived in Chicago, New York and Boston. She has worked in the music industry, and on various film and television productions. She writes short fiction,poetry, original screenplays and adaptations, and is currently finishing two novels. Her writing and artwork has been published and viewed in a variety of places such as on The Late, Late Show with Tom Snyder; The Journal of School Psychologists and Victorian Homes Magazine. Both her poetry and artwork have won awards. Several of her poems and a memoir are included in the 2011 anthology, Our Spirit, Our Reality, and her poetry is featured in the 2012 Mujeres de Maiz “‘Zine.” She is also a moderator of Diving Deeper, an online workshop for writers, and has   extensively about music, especially jazz, while working in the entertainment industry.

All over the map

Poets in Texas

Friday, July 8, 2011 at 7:30 p.m.

Free. Open to the public.
Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Arts Center
600 River Street
Austin, TX 78701

More than 20 nationally recognized Latino poets from across the U.S. will gather in Austin, Texas, for CantoMundo, a national poetry workshop dedicated to supporting and developing Latina/o poetics.

On Friday, July 8, 2011, at 7:30 p.m., these poets will present a free poetry reading that will be open to the public at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Arts Center. A reception will follow the reading.

These participants in CantoMundo represent the best of Latina/o poetry in the United States. Some of the featured award-winning and nationally recognized poets include: Millicent Borges Acardi (New York City), Francisco Aragón (Washington D.C.), Oscar Bermeo (California), Eduardo Corral (Arizona), Carolina Ebeid (Austin, Texas), Amalia Ortíz (Texas/California), Luivette Resto (California), and ire’ne lara silva (Austin, Texas), among others.

Saturday, July 9, 2011 at 7 p.m.

Free. Open to the public.
Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Arts Center
600 River Street
Austin, TX 78701

Award-winning poets Judith Ortíz Cofer and Benjamin Alire Sáenz will read from their acclaimed poetry collections at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Arts Center at 7 p.m. on Saturday, July 9, 2011. A reception and book signing will follow.

This event is hosted by CantoMundo, a national poetry workshop dedicated to supporting and developing Latina/o poetics. CantoMundo provides a space where Latina/o poets can nurture and enhance their poetics; lecture and learn about aspects of Latina/o poetics currently not being discussed by the mainstream publishers and critics; and network with peer poets to enrich and further disseminate Latina/o poetry. The Center for Mexican American Studies of the College of Liberal Arts of the University of Texas at Austin is the primary sponsor of CantoMundo. For the complete list of CantoMundo poets, please visit this link.

An Elevated View: Colorado Writers on Writing

Participating authors include Mario Acevedo, Kathy Brandt, Laurie Wagner Buyer, Margaret Coel, W.C. Jameson, Mara Purl, Joe Stone, and Susan Tweit.


Tattered Cover, Colfax Avenue, Denver: July 6 2011 7:30 pm

Editor W.C. Jameson and many contributors to the new book An Elevated View: Colorado Writers on Writing (Seven Oaks Publishing) will discuss and sign this eclectic collection. Jameson has long been interested in why writers do what they do. He has also wondered how living in Colorado specifically influences the writing experience. So he asked authors, with no rules or boundaries, to share whatever they wanted about their art and lives. This collection offers a peek inside the minds of Colorado authors as they reflect on topics like the writing process, identity as shaped by place, and the stronghold of Colorado’s history as a catalyst for creativity.

Request a signed copy: books@tatteredcover.com

Wanted In Pittsburgh: True Crime Essays

For an upcoming issue, Creative Nonfiction is seeking new essays about true crimes—detailed reports of premeditation, follow-through and aftermath, whether gleaned from police blotters or the news, passed down as small-town legend or family lore, or committed in cold blood. We want true stories of petty theft, identity theft, embezzlement or first-degree murder; of jaywalking, selling (or maybe buying) weed or assault; of crimes and punishments and unsolved mysteries. Think The Devil in the White City (Larson), In Cold Blood (Capote) and "Iphigenia in Forest Hills" (Malcolm); or Half a Life (Strauss), Lucky (Sebold) and The Night of the Gun (Carr).

If it’s against the law and someone—maybe even you!—did it anyway, we want to know all about it. We’re looking for well-written prose, rich with detail and a distinctive voice. Essays can be serious, humorous or somewhere in between. Creative Nonfiction editors will award $1000 for Best Essay.

Guidelines: Essays must be unpublished, 4,000 words maximum, postmarked by September 30, 2011, and clearly marked “True Crime” on both the essay and the outside of the envelope. There is a $20 reading fee (or send a reading fee of $25 to include a 4-issue CNF subscription–U.S. submitters only); multiple entries are welcome ($20/essay) as are entries from outside the U.S. (though due to shipping costs, the subscription deal is not valid). Please send manuscript, accompanied by a cover letter with complete contact information including the title of the essay, word count, SASE and payment to:

Creative Nonfiction
Attn: True Crime
5501 Walnut Street, Suite 202
Pittsburgh, PA 15232

31st Annual Steinbeck Festival: Friends and Foes - Salinas, CA

August 4 - 7, 2011

Join us as the Steinbeck Festival takes on friends, foes and accomplices of all stripes, in literature, arts and ideas, and in Steinbeck. This four-day festival of books, talks, food, tours and visual and performing arts will be based in Salinas, with Steinbeck Festival International Fringe Fest events taking place in cities of letters throughout the world. Please click here for the 2011 festival schedule. Among the many presenters are some familiar names: Tim Z. Hernandez, David Dominquez, Adela Castillo, and José Alejandro Morán. Plus, there are bilingual readings for kids, and a special compare and contrast between Steinbeck and Gabriel García Márquez.

New Crime Fiction From Colorado Author

Enemy in Blue
Derek Blass
Rogue Books, 2011 (self-published)

[blurb from the publisher]

The videotaped murder of an illegal immigrant by a racist police officer draws Cruz Marquez, a young lawyer, into an action-packed journey to preserve the evidence. Cruz teams up with a childhood friend to pursue the video, but finds that many other ruthless people are doing the same to preserve their own lives. Their path crosses Officer Roman Martinez, one of the cops at the scene of the murder, and the three of them form an unlikely alliance in a quest to obtain, protect, and then disseminate the video. Their success depends on surviving the Chief of Police's sinister plotting, assassination attempts by a deranged hit man, and the raw force of Sergeant Shaver-their enemy in blue.

Enemy in Blue is fast-paced and thrilling through the end, when Cruz discovers the depths of the atrocities committed by Sergeant Shaver and the Chief of Police.

About the author:
Derek Blass is an author and attorney in Denver, Colorado. He graduated from Duke University and the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.

In Colorado, Derek has served as the co-Chair of Mayor Hickenlooper's Denver Latino Commission, and was recently selected to serve as a co-Chair of the Denver Chapter of the Colorado Latino Forum. Derek was named as a Colorado Superlawyer "Rising Star" in 2010 and 2011, and was awarded the Colorado Hispanic Bar Association's 2010 award for most Outstanding Young Hispanic Lawyer.

Visit his website at www.rogue-books.com.

Check out his blog on writing at derekblass.wordpress.com.

Lyrics For Country Songs I Haven't Written Yet

©Manuel Ramos, 2011

1. Now that I’m outta your life,
you best be gettin’ outta my bed.

2. Let’s not talk about what might'a been,
stones and glass houses don’t mix.
Not one of us is without any sin,
but I don't judge the things I can’t fix.

3. I was born at night,
but not last night,
is what I should have said.
But more lessons are learned
by the heart
than by the head.

4. What can I do
to forget about you?
And what can I say
that will make you stay?

5. Bought my ticket for the midnight bus,
overstayed my welcome.
Thought there was a chance for us,
she cleared that up, and then some.


Just havin' fun.

Later.