Seriously, kids. Writing op. Just published.

Back in June I reviewed Go the F∆ck to Sleep, written by Adam Mansbach and illustrated by Ricardo Cortés. If you haven't heard about this fokkin' hilarious blockbuster, you must've just awakened from a year-long coma, because it's been all over the Internet. Anyway, given the use of fokk and bullshit profanities in the text that was meant for adults, some parents ad-libbed lines in the book and used G-rated prose to read to their kids. So, in response to the first book's incredible success, next month Akashic Books is issuing a children's version entitled Seriously, Just Go to Sleep.

The difference in the versions is primarily replacing the profanity, like this:

Adult version:
"I know you're not thirsty. That's bullshit. Stop lying.
Lie the fuck down, my darling, and sleep."

Was changed to this in the children's version:
"I know you're not thirsty. You just had a drink.
Stop goofing around now, and sleep."

I don't have little kids to test out Seriously, so I can't say whether it would help you get your kids to sleep or would instead encourage their aberrant insomniac behavior. But, since the first version reads as if it were a children's book, it does make for a good kid's story.

Cortés illustrations are basically the same as in the Go the Fokk, with two major changes. One is toward the end of the story [no page numbers in these books; don't know why]. The dad who's creeping away was replaced by a dead-ringer illustration of Samuel L. Jackson, who did the audio version of Go the Fokk. On the recording he even claims he used to tell his daughter "Go the fokk to sleep" when she was little. Him, I'd believe.

The other illustration change is that the adult who's asleep on the couch at the end of the story is a woman, in the children's version, as the dad escorts the kid to the bedroom. In real life, I don't know that this plays realistic, since we all know it's a mom talent that gets kids to go sleep.

Given Bryce Milligan's guest column yesterday about how Amazon intends to destroy independent publishing in the Internet world, instead go to Akashic here to order a copy or get it from some independent source. Then you can go the fokk to sleep.


Writing op and just published

Label Me Latina/o
Deadline: May 15

Label Me Latina/o Journal seeks scholarly essays focusing on Latino literature, as well as creative literary pieces in English, Spanish or Spanglish. For more information, go here.

Recently published:
Latina/Chicana Mothering provides a glimpse into the journey of mothering within the diverse spectrum of the histories, struggles, and stories of Latinas and Chicanas. Here, the Latina/Chicana mothering experience emphasizes the need for various conceptualizations of mothering, especially in regard to the conditions which shape the lives of Latinas and Chicanas, such as race, gender, sexuality, culture, language, social status, religion, kinship, location, and migration. The book has four sections: testimonios (narratives), links between motherhood and communities, mothering challenges, and literary and cultural images of Latina/Chicana mothers.

To learn more or order copies of this title, go here. 
For media review copies, contact info@demeterpress.org

Just published:
El Gusano de Tequila by Viola Canales is the Spanish translation of the novel The Tequila Worm, which won the 2006 Pura Belpré and PEN USA Awards and has sold over 50,000 copies.

Sofia comes from a family of storytellers and here are her tales of growing up in the barrio, full of the magic and mystery of family traditions: making Easter cascarones, celebrating el Día de los Muertos, preparing for quinceañera, rejoicing in the Christmas nacimiento, and curing homesickness by eating the tequila worm. When Sofia is singled out to receive a scholarship to an elite boarding school, she longs to explore
life beyond the barrio, even though it means leaving her family to navigate a strange world of rich, privileged kids. It's a different mundo, but one where Sofia's traditions take on new meaning and illuminate her path. Viola Canales's warmhearted novel draws readers into an affectionate and humorous world full 
of memorable characters. For more information, click here.

© Latinidad®

Arellano curses the names

New book:
Curse the Names by Robert Arellano
Mystery/Fiction
Trade Paperback l 200 pages | $15.95
ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-030-4

If any of my novels ever get published, my favorite publisher will either be whoever published my first book or whoever published my latest. In the meantime, Akashic Books out of NY keeps making me wish I had more time to read. I love their slogan: "reverse-gentrification of the literary world," resonating with chords of Euro lit, instead of the egocentric thing we call American. Plus, nobody likes the gentry in us, except the gentry.

Anyway, La Bloga has featured some of Akashic's best, like Go the Fuck to Sleep by Adam Mansbach & Ricardo Cortes, and Like Son (here and here). Since we're just getting review copies of Robert Arellano's new book, below is a preview from the publisher. It reminds of Rudy Anaya's Sonny Baca battling the Raven, which makes me wonder if Arellano was influenced any by Anaya. Maybe we can ask in a future interview.

From the publisher:
"Robert Arellano, author of the Edgar-nominated crime novel Havana Lunar, returns with another spine-tingling noir from Akashic Books.

"High on a mesa in the mountains of New Mexico, a small town hides a dreadful secret. On a morning very soon there will be an accident that triggers a terrible chain reaction, and the world we know will be wiped out.

"James Oberhelm, a reporter at Los Alamos National Laboratory, already sees the devastation, like the skin torn off a moment that is yet to be. He believes he can prevent an apocalypse, but first James must escape the devices of a sensuous young blood tech, a lecherous old hippie, a predator in a waking nightmare, and a forsaken adobe house high away in the Sangre de Cristo mountains whose dark history entwines them all. A massive bomb is ticking beneath the sands of the Southwest, and time is running out to send a warning. James has to find a way to pass along the message--even if it ruins him."

Robert Arellano is the author of the Edgar-nominated noir Havana Lunar and two earlier novels, all published by Akashic Books. Writing as Eddy Arellano, he collaborated with three artists on the graphic novel Dead in Desemboque from Soft Skull Press, and as Bobby Rabyd he created the Web's first interactive novel, Sunshine '69. He lived for seven years in the small mountain town of Dixon, New Mexico, and he now teaches in the College of Arts & Sciences at Southern Oregon University.

Reviews:
"In this unsettling mix of noir and paranormal obsession . . . Arellano displays a sly, Hitchcockian touch." – Publishers Weekly

"Arellano pulls off the not-inconsiderable feat of making the disintegration of his hero more compelling than the end of the world as we know it." – Kirkus Reviews

"Readers, fasten your seat belts for this one. Arellano's novel is a dizzying Thompsonian concoction of noir crime thriller and alternately nightmarish and comic surreal psychodrama, spiced up with a heaping handful of local northern New Mexico flavor. A noir novel short enough to read on a two-hour airplane ride and sufficiently satisfying to make you feel glad you read it." – Albuquerque Journal

Events for Robert Arellano & Curse the Names:
Mon., March 19, 7:00pm
St. Mark's Bookshop, 31 Third Ave., NY, NY
Akashic All-Stars event featuring Robert Arellano, Bernice L. McFadden, Eliza Factor and Sterling Watson

Tues., March 20, 7:00pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Brookline, MA
Akashic All-Stars event featuring Robert Arellano, Bernice L. McFadden, Eliza Factor and Sterling Watson

Thurs., March 22, 7:00pm
Books on the Square, 471 Angell St., Providence, RI
Akashic All-Stars event featuring Robert Arellano, Eliza Factor and Sterling Watson

I never had to say "Go the F∆ck to Sleep, Hijos"

My two kids are in their 30s now, so I don't know how gawdawful late they stay up and whether they get enough sleep, although when Marika comes around she tends to yawn a lot, either because her dad's stories are too blasé or, well, you now.

I do remember that as toddlers they never had trouble going to nor staying asleep. No, I didn't use my curandera mamá's ancient sleeping poultice. We just had a few simple things we followed.

Going to bed is fun. Our approach to bedtime was to consider it neither a chore nor something to be feared, it was just a matter-of-fact way of ending the day. No anticipation, no anxiety. Everything was good about it, we'd tell the kids. The covers were cozy, the pillow was their favorite, their pet teddy bear would get to sleep, too (and he was tired). Singing a song, reading a book, hearing a funny made-up story were all a part of it.

Same thing went for daytime naps, with Michael sometimes falling asleep on my chest, and me often following suit and waking up to find this lump of a baby boy on top of me (until he got too heavy to bear). Later it included getting to select clothes for the next day as part of the fun, which served us well in getting them ready for school. No problem.

Staying asleep is easy. We inoculated our kids against noise to accustom them to sleeping through anything. Their bedroom doors were never closed at night. We asked visitors NOT to lower their voices when the kids were asleep and we didn't turn down the TV or stereo no matter what hour it was.

Sleeping anywhere works. During their early years, if we were at someone else's home and nap or sleep time came up, we just set the kid in his carrier or stroller and pushed it into a corner where no one would step on it. The kid slept. At a bar, the carrier would be set in a booth or under a pool table, since I shot a lot of pool then, and the kid slept through the jukebox playing. Same thing for parties at other houses: find an empty bed and lay the kid out and zoom!--Michael's asleep. To my knowledge both kids still retain the ability to zonk out within a few minutes. It worked and made having them a lot easier than some stories I've heard from other parents.

Since then I've occasionally tried to share this wisdom, with my audience usually acting like if I was describing how to properly conjugate ancient Quechua verb tenses. I rarely ask that why all the disinterest after hearing me expound my sleep-wisdom. Why they continue tiptoeing, shutting bedroom doors and shushing people while their kid tries to sleep. Yeah, I know kids are different and parents are territorial about them, but it escapes me how certain parents can deliberately set up conditions that might be creating light sleepers. The incredible difficulty encountered with certain kids fighting bedtime is part of a world that I just don't personally connect to.

Not so much for those of you who have no problems getting those niñitos to sleep, but for those who need my curandera mamá to mail them that ancient sleeping poultice, there's a book from Akashic Books by Adam Mansbach to hold you over until the shipment arrives.

Go the F∆ck to Sleep. Really, that's the title of this book, although the cover has a full moon instead of a triangle. The inside has the whole word FUCK, so yeah, it's not a book to read to your hyperkid to get him to zap out, unless you were brought up in a 60s commune with goats next to, and Che posters over your crib. Otherwise, as the cover says, consider it "a bedtime book for parents."

Here's the publisher's blurb: "Go the Fuck to Sleep" is a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don't always send a toddler sailing blissfully off to dreamland. Profane, affectionate, and radically honest, it captures the familiar--and unspoken--tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night. Beautiful, subversive, and pants-wettingly funny, Go the Fuck to Sleep is a book for parents new, old, and expectant. You probably should not read it to your children."

And here's a taste of the text:

"The eagles who soar through the sky are at rest

And the creatures who crawl, run, and creep.

I know you're not thirsty. That's bullshit. Stop lying.

Lie the fuck down, my darling, and sleep."

Akashic Books is one of the great American small presses and we've reviewed some of their fine imprints throughout La Bloga's history. This one is not one of the great literary works. It's a fun one. It's funny. It's outrageous. It's everything but sacrilegious, and author Adam Mansbach would have had fewer sales if he'd gone there too, but it's still hilarious enough that you gotta read it. A couple of time the meter left me hanging some, but the read is knee-slapping. So long as you have little trouble saying the word FOCK, however you spell it.

Brooklyn artist Ricardo Cortés's illustrations are great and fitting for the children's rhyme theme. (He's involved in other works, including a kids' marijuana book and one on Coca-Cola and cocaine, so if you like walking this trail of irreverence, you can continue with him.

My advice is to read the book out loud out on the patio. The dissonance of reading children's rhyme along with the word Fock works better if done orally rather than silently reading it to yourself. Or have some friends over and take turns reading stanzas. Drinking Negra Modelo at the same time will guarantee you laugh harder with each new page. Then neighbors come over and you gotta share.

There's an intriguing background to how the book reached publication and its history since then. You can go here for the NY Times review and here for the New Yorker's detailing some of that.

Maybe in one of those or others you'll find a psychological analysis of why irreverence and profanity in the context of toddler-trouble can make Americans laugh so deeply, whether it's an indication of the generational brink we've allowed our society to bring us to, or if parents the world over delight equally in such extreme humor. I won't attempt that here.

As the publishers say, the book's for anybody. It's just been released in paperback and you can get it for about $8. Order extras 'cause it's a great perfect cheap gift you can have ready to turn those baby showers to-come into something genuinely human, in the American way. Or it could be therapeutic for already-parents who tiptoe creepily past that shut door throughout the night; they probably could use a poultice like this.

Es todo, hoy

RudyG

Review: Indian Country Noir. Call for Poets Arizona. Unapologetic Mexican.

Michael Sedano

Sarah Cortez and Liz Martínez, eds. Indian Country Noir. NY: Akashic Books, 2010.
ISBN: 9781936070053 (pbk.) & 1936070057 (pbk.)

Isn't that a marvelous cover? It shouts out loud, "Indian Country!" New Mexico's magnificent Ship Rock outlined against towering thunderclouds. I looked at the cover and thought, Jim Chee, Joe Leaphorn, House Made of Dawn. Ira Hayes, maybe.

As the adage goes, do not judge a book by its cover. Because anyone looking at the cover art of Akashic's Indian Country Noir and thinking Southwestern United States has misled themselves. Indeed, in what comes as a pleasant surprise, most of the tales selected by editors Sarah Cortez and Liz Martinez take place in a broader conception of America as indian country--the entire northern continent, in fact.

Tony Hillerman isn't even an afterthought, nor are N. Scott Momaday nor Sherman Alexie. True to the noir series convention, the current iteration of Akashic's run of outstanding titles features fourteen writers--seven women, seven men--you may not yet have come across, and a few you have, but in other contexts. The pleasure, mostly, is all yours, in this case.

The most-published, and perhaps best known, writer in the collection is Lawrence Block. He's no Indian, attesting to the editors' decision to include stories featuring North American Indians in one way or another, rather than adding a stricture that the writer also must be an Indian.

That's a tough break for some India Indio writer looking for some ink by breaking into an "Indian" anthology. But then, some writers' or stories' conecta to Indiohood are tenuous. There's Mistina Bates, who declares herself the "great-great-grand-daughter of a full-blooded" Cherokee who served as a Texas Ranger. I bet family reunions were interesting in that familia. Then there's Block's story, "Getting Lucky," the oddest, most inappropriate selection in the anthology. It's a sex story featuring a con woman posing as a Yupper Indian who suckers a lucky gambler into an orgiastic tryst before scalping him alive. Plenty noir, but not at all "Indian." Tough break for that hungry writer whose place Block takes. Maybe it's a deliberate irony, the phony India and the usurping Anglo writer.

One of the more touching stories introduces Ira Hayes, as the old song goes, fighting drunken Ira Hayes. The Mt. Suribachi flag-raiser is on a war bonds tour in Chicago, in Liz Martínez' account near the close of the book. Hayes feels comfortable only when he hits the bar. The military has assigned a minder to ensure Hayes gets his drinks and stays out of too much trouble. And that's what goes down, until Hayes, in a drunken stupor has a flashback to hand-to-hand combat back on Iwo Jima. Unfortunately, his enemy is a Chicago cop, who ends up shot dead, along with an innocent bystander. It's a perfect crime.

A couple of other stories stand out for tension or noirish wit. There's David Cole's "JaneJohnDoe.com" set in Tucson, Arizona. A narcotraficante on the lam from the latest crack down on smuggler murderers kidnaps a woman whose specialty is creating phony identities. The narca, a lusty woman, gets hers in the end with a faked identity that would pass muster from even the most racist Arizona cop's "reasonable suspicion" that the narca is in the country illegally. The noir twist in the ending, where the victim gets the one-up on the villain, is the fun part. Not all is ideal with Cole, however. In a gaffe, his bio at the back of the collection claims he writes about "illegal immigrants." That's not noirspeak, thats puro offensive talk, no matter Cole wrote it well in advance of the current fascist pedo in Arizona.

Reed Farrel Coleman's "Another Role" has its roman à clef moments and a delicious comeuppance for the bad guys. Harry Garson looks muy Indio but he doesn't have a clue what kind. Ni modo, he's made a grand living playing chiefs and warriors in a string of western movies, in roles Iron Eyes Cody doesn't land. Garson's big break came years ago as Chief Smells Like Bearstein, in the teevee farce "Crazy Cavalry." Now Garson's down on his luck hitting the bottle too hard.

Readers will enjoy how Coleman has lots of fun playing against Hollywood stereotypy. Coleman gives down-on-his luck Garson one final Indio role, one that brings a hit man after him. In a heart-warming twist, the Indio gets to discover his tribal identity, using it to turn the table on the crooks who hired him. When the hit man stares down at Garson's body, he has a flash of celebrity recognition, a "cute meet" in reverse. "Bearstein!" the hit man whispers, "Sorry, chief."

One of my dad's favorite family stories is about his two uncles, footloose boys in Redlands, an orange-picking town east of Berdoo. The local cop didn't care for Mexicans nor Indians, and made it his business to kidnap the boys for transport to Riverside's Sherman Institute, a boarding school for Indians. Every time the cop took my great uncles to Riverside they'd show up back in Redlands in a day or two. Finally the cop gave up and the family remained together.

Few Unitedstatesians realize that Indians invented forced busing when the government kidnaped Indio kids and shipped them off to Indian Schools like Sherman Institute or the well-known Carlisle school where Pop Warner coached football and where Charley Bear, AKA Indian Charley, was housed until he ran off. Charley is Joseph Bruchac's character in "Helper," the anthology's opening story. It's a good choice for Indian Country Noir, replete with humor, depravity, revenge, and justice.

Carlisle may be familiar to sports fans and movie goers as the place where Burt Lancaster as Jim Thorpe begins his fabled athletic career. The school for Charley Bear is an ugly place that sends kids into slavery and sexual exploitation on local farms. Charley Bear gets a small measure of revenge on a family of monsters, an act that comes back to threaten him decades later. Bruchac loads his story with the Indian obbligato of war heroism, exploitation, a friendly white man, closeness to mother earth. Despite these commonplaces, from the opening lines readers will recognize a masterful writer who'll keep you reading despite the stereotypy: "The one with the missing front teeth. He's the one who shot me. Before his teeth were missing."

Akashic Books has not failed me yet with its noir series. While I haven't read every title in the series--I wish I could--each one that I've read has been a genuine pleasure that fulfills expectations for mystery, detection, suspense, humor, in a word, noir. The occasional gaffe borne of thoughtless bio shorthand, or the persistent image of drunken Indios, are a couple of those irritations one unwillingly suspends in pursuit of story and fun, and, in this case, enlarging one's acknowledgment of America as Indian country.

Arizona Institutionalizes Hate. Call for Poets.

Recent legislation by Arizona law-passers has the country in furor. Breathing while brown and walking while brown join the de facto crime of driving while brown, under Arizona legislation requiring law enforcement to demand papieren from anyone who looks like they are in the state without proper immigration documentation. I'm sure refugees from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano are quaking in their boots, along with the state's Indians and Mexican origin gente, and habitués of tanning salons.

Is ability to pronounce Eyjafjallajokull reasonable suspicion for arrest?

Francisco Alarcón, joined by Alma Luz Villanueva and Antoinette Nora Claypoole, have issued a Call for Poets to write about Arizona's current status. La Bloga Tuesday will publish selected submissions beginning next Tuesday, May 4 and continuing. Alarcón, Villanueva, and Claypoole are investigating turning the submissions into a hard copy anthology.

Submit work by posting a Note to Facebook at Poets Responding to SB 1070.

The Unapologetic Mexican

When I was a kid, the cultural praxis related to ethnicity enforced a fantasy history that called Chicanas Chicanos "Spanish" or "American of Mexican Descent," or plain old "American." Among courteous people, it was impolite to accuse someone of being "Mexican." Among the pigs and haters, "Mexican" was, at best, a slur, akin to such counterparts as "White asshole", "Okie", "Arkie", "white trash." Among la palomilla, we called ourselves Mexicans or Chicanos, and the anglos were Americans, or Anglos. Lurking silently in the background was that etiquette of self-denial. Not even el movimiento erases all of that.

Meet The Unapologetic Mexican. It's a web presence as well as the persona of its author, Nezua. Make that personae. Nezua has taken his persona through at least two iterations. The earliest presence offered puro confrontational art; intellectual, reasoned, informed, distinctly nationalistic Xicanismo. A few years later, the site morphed into a self-consciously higher tech version. Since that opening of Act II, the UMX has become El Machete that sees its responsibility to provide information with a "Latino-Centric" perspective. As such, the site merits your attention and recognition as, if not an antidote to "mainstream" media's blowhard portavozes for hate, at least a worthwhile counterstatement to all that crap.

I find interesting the four year history of the site as a time-compressed mirror of the movimiento. Chest-pounding, fire-breathing indictments of every racist xenophobe exact a price in personal exhaustion. Xicanismo is not free. And after a while that stuff grows old. I'm reminded of Cicero's insight in De Senectute, that bitter old men are not bitter because they are old but because they were bitter young men. I'm not sure some veteranos of el movimiento ever learned that. But it seems something of this dawned, if obliquely, on the Unapologetic Mexican. I see this in the quiet, controlled delivery of Nezua's most recent video. I like this approach--though as an old public speaking teacher I'd like to see more engagement from the speaker--and will look with interest to see how the Unapologetic Mexican handles the pedo from Arizona. Click the various links in the above and take your own tour of Nezua's endeavor, and please leave a comment on what you think.

Book Give-Away Winners, News & Notes Reminder

Last Tuesday La Bloga posted a quiz that produced two 100% correct answers to 100% of the questions. In return for their perfection, Hachette Book Group mailed a free copy of Iris Gomez' Try to Remember to:

1. Linda Rodriguez of Kansas City MO

2. Mariana Marin of Carmichael CA

Here's the quiz and the correct answers:

1. The Los Angeles Theatre Center current season is called _East of Broadway_.

2. Dan Olivas' reading technique is notable because _he stands away from the lectern.

3. The La Bloga columnist who is an oral communication teacher and "read your own stuff" coach is named _Michael Sedano_.

4. Juanita Salazar Lamb writes mystery stories featuring a character named __Sara Garcia_.

5. The title and author of the book you'll receive if you're among the first three to answer all these questions correctly are _Try to Remember_ by __Iris Gomez_.

Congratulations to winners Linda and Mariana. I'm crossing my fingers one or both of you winning La Bloga readers will contribute a guest review. A ver.

CSULA Selects May 14-15 for Annual Octavio Paz Conference

La Bloga friend Roberto Cantú invites scholars, students, and people interested in the Mexican nobel laureate to the 2010 edition of the school's annual celebration of the writer's career. The 2010 meeting, titled, World Civilizations, Modernity, and Octavio Paz: A Plurality of Pasts and Futures opens in the Golden Eagle Ballroom on the El Sereno campus near East LA. The event is free, although conference organizers warn that campus cops enforce parking regulations 24/7.

For information on the conference, visit the Paz blog or contact Dr. Roberto Cantú at the Department of Chicano Studies, California State University, Los Angeles, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90032. (323) 343-2195. rcantu@calstatela.edu.

That's the final Tuesday of April, a Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except You Are Here. Thank you for visiting La Bloga. Over half a million people have visited La Bloga since we started counting. That was a year or more after RudyG, Manuel Ramos and I launched La Bloga.

Thank you for reading. Nos wachamos next week in the month of May.

mvs

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Review: Mexico City Noir

Mexico City Noir. Edited by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Translated by Achy Obejas. NY: Akashic Books, 2010.
ISBN-13: 978-1-933354-90-3

Michael Sedano

When Akashic Books' Tim McLoughlin and Johnny Temple hit on the idea of a city themed collection, commencing with Brooklyn Noir, it must have seemed like a good idea. Now, with dozens of cities all over the world noired, it's obviously an idea whose time has come and keeps on coming. How deliciously endless its possibilities!

I'm waiting for Redlands Noir and Isla Vista Noir, and how cool would it be to see Hwa-ak-ni Noir? For now, however, I'm more than happy to take a walk on the dark side of one of my favorite non-hometown cities, el Defie, la Capirucha,"the best city on the planet," per the introduction by writer extraordinoir Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Mexico City.

Taibo, and his translator, the accomplished Cubana noirista Achy Obejas, do not make a very good case for that sentimental ascription. As TaibObejas note, if you were assaulted on the streets of Mexico City you wouldn't call a cop. "What do you want, to be assaulted twice?"

The editor collects his material in three parts featuring four stories each. Part I, Above the Law, spotlights four stories that reinforce that implict indictment of D.F. cops' murderous venality with a variety of cop lowlifes. The opening story, from Colonia Narvarte, offers a fevered monologue of a homeless vato who, brutalized in the course of witnessing a cop crime, pushes his shopping cart in a vain journey to escape the memory and a second encounter with the cops. Taibo's own story, "The Corner" set in Colonia Doctores, plays with point of view that beguiles with misdirection. A writer, Fierro, friendly with Manterola, the local beat cop, banters about this crime and that criminal, and the single most crime-ridden corner in the city. Fierro is engaged by the "top dog" of the city's police establishment, seeking ideas on how to change that locus of danger. Fierro's first suggestion, give the corner to sister city Los Angeles, gets a chuckle. The next suggestion, send the cops on vacation to Acapulco, doesn't. But a cultural festival with poetry and music and conga lines is the writer's answer. The story's also Taibo's in-joke, adding to the grim fun of the piece. There's a store named the Flor de Gijón--Taibo's hometown; Fierro gets several chapters out of the corner in a novel, i.e., this story; and the bad cop loses an eye to some angry convict, an echo of Taibo's one-eyed detective, Hector Belascoaran Shayne.

Part II, Dead Men Walking, presents first person narratives by witnesses or victims. An interesting piece, Myriam Laurini's "Violeta Isn't Here Anymore," could as readily fit into part I. Purporting to transcribe audiotapes of witness statements, the reader stares aghast at cold cynicism of a cop willing to trash the lives of anyone involved in a crime just because he can. Adding interest to the story is Laurini's ascent into surrealism when the cops begin to see parallels between the investigation and a Borges story, "The Aleph". By the wrap of events, elements of the Borges story overlap the crime narrative leaving everything hanging in a literary ambiguity.

Part III, Suffocation City, contains an abysmally dense experimental story, Eduardo Monteverde's "God Is Fanatical, Hija," involving transgender priests and nuns, buggering cops, and cannibalism. So thoroughly weird and wild, I hear echoes of William Burroughs' drug-spawned Naked Lunch rippling through the depravity of Monteverde's plot. It's deeply disturbingly strange. Taibo rewards the reader for patience with Monteverde with a finishing pair of more conventional tales, Victor Luis González "Of Cats and Murders" and Julia Rodríguez' RENO. In the former, echoes of the JFK assassination reverberate, in the latter the victim of gang rape may have ended up in tamales.

Mexico City Noir is one of those volumes that cries out for facing page translation, if for no other reason than to enjoy the vituperative resources of Defie Spanish. Obejas usually resorts to "fuck" in a variety of settings that leave me wondering how the conversation goes down in the writer's own idiom. Obejas elects an easy-going narrative style that sounds the same voice from story to story. To her credit, the translation has few of the intercultural irritations seen in less able translations. Obejas recognizes that some things can be said in only one language, so a cabrón is a cabrón, a .45 caliber bullet pulverizes 20 centimeters of one's heart, not 7-plus inches, but Temeraria is reckless, including italics in a clever reversal of the "foreign word" orthography rule of Unitedstatesian publishing.

Readers will enjoy experiencing numerous Mexicano and two Mexicana writers likely unknown to U.S. or Canadian readers. Taibo, of course, is well-known, as perhaps twice-Hammett prized Rolo Diez, whose excellent cop novel, Tequila Blue was translated by the British publisher Bitter Lemon Press. The author thumbnails at the end identify Julia Rodríguez as among the first Mexican noir writers, and Laurini as one of the first women noir writers in Mexico. Per the back cover, many of the stories are brand-new for this collection.

Last time I was in Mexico City, the locals advised I not wear a wrist watch, to blend in better. My digital camera obviously fooled everyone but one taxi driver who relentlessly asked if I came to Mexico loaded with cash. "Nel," I told him, I'd come to borrow money from relatives. Wonder if I woulda called the cops if the cabrón had pulled a knife?

That's the view from Mexico City this second Tuesday of December. A Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except You Are Here. Watch out for those tamales with rings in them, it might not be a simple children's story.

Les wachamos.

mvs

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Frisco Noir 2 / Inauguration of UCR's Tomás Rivera Archives

Review: San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics. Edited by Peter Maravelis. NY: Akashic Books, 2009.
ISBN-13: 978-1-933354-65-1

Michael Sedano

The City, as its devotees object, should never be called ‘Frisco. The term offends the sensibility of loyal San Franciscans, or something classic Chronicle columnist Ralph J. Gleason must have written long ago. Similarly, stuff that isn’t classic shouldn’t be called “classic,” as does the subtitle of Akashic’s San Francisco Noir 2, The Classics.

To me, “classic” suggest a pair of standards. First, age. Second unusually distinctive quality. It’s not enough that a piece have age, nor even mere quality. Memorability, distinctiveness, adaptation to a particular readership, any combination marks the boundary between merely good old stuff and something Classic with a capital “C”.

These values might not be readily apparent, as in Mark Twain’s “The Black Hole of San Francisco,” from 1865. It’s an uninteresting satire of a courthouse so devoid of justice it emits horrible smells. Editor Peter Maravelis wisely hides this third, following two other old pieces, Ambrose Bierce’s “A Watcher by the Dead,” from 1889’s North Beach, and Frank Norris’ “The Third Circle,” set in 1897 Chinatown. They are entertaining work, not necessarily each writer’s most notable, and charitably allowing a huge stretch to comprehend including the Twain piece at all.

These are, however, old. Hence, the oxymorons “unappreciated classic” or “classic-in-waiting” come readily to mind to account for such editorial decisions as skipping ahead from Dashiell Hammett’s 1925, “The Scorched Face” to 1953’s “The Collector Comes After Payday,” by Fletcher Flora.

Two thirds of the collection comes from a roster of noted late 20^th century writers. After the mid-century stop, Maravelis skips ahead 11 years to 1966’ “The Second Coming” from Joe Gores, then to Marcia Muller’s 1987 “Deceptions.”

Akashic and Maravelis have put together a worthwhile anthology, despite the less than felicitous subtitle. Two stories frame the quality well.

In his ’53 piece, Fletcher Flora reflects the machismo and incipient violence of his era. The male criminal enjoys slapping around his trophy wife. Frankie lives the 1950’s fantasy life. A 120-pound weakling and born loser, Frankie’s luck turns around completely. He gets rich, gets the girl, enjoys wealth on the seamy side until he falls for a younger woman. Frankie’s last gasp exits a .38 hole in his chest, his irony the abused wife finally finding her backbone.

By 1987, Marcia Muller has a woman investigator tracking down a missing woman, a possible suicide. But it appears a plan by a clever woman looking to continue her life someplace else. A park ranger is the victim, lured and abandoned by the missing woman. Her irony is being found hacked to pieces in an old cistern, the betrayed paramour’s revenge. The murderer himself plunges to his last gasp after pursuing the female dick to a dead end, where her lucky desperation produces the killer’s fatal stumble.

One story merits special notice, Janet Dawson’s 1998 story of children in peril, “Invisible Time.” A tense nightmare of two homeless children surviving on the streets around Union Square. Greta, a ten-year old girl takes care of her 5-year old brother Hank. Homeless after their alcoholic mother abandons them after one hard knock after another, the children steal or eat leftovers from lunchtime trash barrels. It’s a no happy endings story, truly frightening. Dawson has one of the best lines in the book, when, after expressing Greta’s growing desperation, “She was doing the best she could, but she didn’t know how long she could keep it up.” Avoiding the skid row of the Tenderloin and South of Market region, remaining in Union Square, the nicer area north of Market. Then comes a gem of pure beauty:

"Greta couldn’t remember when Mom left. A few weeks, a month, two months, it didn’t matter. After a few days, the hours all ran together, like a stream of dirty water chasing debris down the sewer grate. She only remembered that it didn’t used to be like this.”

A classic metaphor line like that more than enough compels reading more Dawson. And  piques interest in revisiting the other writers, too. The familiar ones. For instance, the Hammett. Although not noir per se, I would like more readers to laugh at Hammett’s hilarious bronco buster short story from The Continental Op II.

There is one jarring note that still bugs me. There’s a story with a Chicano character, John Shirley’s 1991 “Ash.” But the Chicano’s weird. Not just a street weird-o, a Santero, or a Santeria apparition of some strange sort.  I’ll be embarrassed to learn Shirley’s a nom de plume of a Mexicano a todo dar, but from the looks of this character, either I haven’t been to Frisco for too long, or Shirley needs to learn more about Chicanos before dropping one into the middle a story. Ash, a middle-class guy has been laid off due to the current recession. He meticulously plans to stick up an armored car. When the heist goes south, the Chicano appears, the crook gets tangled up with the street person, the crook plugs the guard. The murder sends the robber into a psychedelic episode that ends only when Ash, the character, ends, at the bottom of an elevator shaft. Strange ending to an odd story and a fitting final page in an excellent collection.

If only they hadn’t stretched matters and called it “Classic.”

Foto Platica at UCR – Inauguration of UCR’s Tomás Rivera Flor Y Canto Archives.

The elevator ride to Special Collections leads to Tomás Rivera Library’s top floor, but opens onto an anonymous dark hallway. A few turns and I’m at the twin glass doors. The entry corridor is lined on both sides with matted photographs mounted on the wall. (Click images to enlarge.)

The dramatic Oscar Acosta images greet me on my left. The shot of Tomás Rivera with Ybarra-Frausto and Hinojosa-Smith holds the initial space of the right wall. The photos are hung with ample wall space between them so each can hold its own focus of attention. At 19” by 13”,  viewers can stand back and take in the full frame with easy comfort. Research Librarian Gwido Zlatkes has labeled each image. He smiles pointing to the photo of rrsalinas. Gwido, a research librarian to the bone, wanted to know more about these Chicana and Chicano writers. Somehow, the ex-Tecato poet has joined the family of a recent Mexican president, Salinas-Gortari. Gwido makes a quick trip to the word processor and in a moment rr rejoins his own clan.

Dr. Melissa Conway, Head of Special Collections & Archives does the introduction. I’m preceded to the lectern by Elihud Martinez, a wonderfully informative talk on Miguel Leon-Portillo’s work in Nahuatl philosophy, the term, “flor y canto” and its place in understanding chicano literature and the brief moment of the floricanto movimiento that began with the 1973 USC gathering.

After my time on the platform—the performance was videotaped—the audience adjourned to a side room for chocolate, café, pan and conversation. Doña Rivera was elegantly charming. Meeting her today, after photographing her late husband in a candid moment thirty-five years ago brought me an unexpected sense of completion.

Dr. Melissa Conway’s staff and the efforts of Professor Juan Felipe Herrera, putting on the entire conference, made the afternoon a rewarding experience for me. Sitting in on a few moments of the screenwriting workshop brought home the value of this 22d Annual Tomás Rivera Conference to the community. Ligiah Villalobos, as successful a Hollywood screenwriter as you’ll find among la Chicanada, bringing her time and knowledge to all who chose to attend, at no charge. 

There's the ultimate Tuesday of April 2009, a Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except you are here. Thanks for visiting La Bloga. 

mvs

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Trinidad Noir, Cheech & Chon

Review: Trinidad Noir
Trinidad Noir
edited by Lisa Allen-Agostini & Jeanne Mason
NY: Akashic Books, 2008.
ISBN-13: 978-1-933354-55-2

Michael Sedano

Trinidad is an island entire of itself, and, together with Tobago and 21 other Caribbean islands, makes up the nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Googling the country uncovers a wealth of detail about its mineral and natural wealth, its lively music and colorful festivals, its potential as a tourist destination. Then, at the bottom of a page billing itself as the “definitive guide”, comes a sober reminder to the would-be traveler:

Trinidad has a crime problem: armed robberies, car thefts, kidnappings and murders are depressingly common. To minimise the risk of trouble, common-sense precautions need to be taken.


Such a prominent warning might be enough to persuade a traveler to put off a visit to T&T until some future date, but the would-be traveler need not avoid the island entirely. There is no frigate like a book, no? The armchair traveler/reader can get a gritty taste of Trinidad in Akashic Books’ 340 page noir anthology dedicated to Trinidadian writers, Trinidad Noir.

Eighteen stories, most of them completely enjoyable, make up the collection. For a United States reader, the cultural milieu will be the most striking character of the work, followed by the patois of its characters. Crime, murder, mayhem, and irony, will be in abundance, since these form the heart and soul of noir fiction. The challenge for the anthologist is to provide fresh work and clever twists, and, failing that, unique settings.

Editors Lisa Allen-Agostini & Jeanne Mason give the anthology a light-hearted sensibility in its opening two stories, Lisa Allen-Agostini’s “Pot Luck”, and Kevin Baldeosingh’s, “The Rape.” Both stories feature working-class folks who get caught up in events.

In the first story, an unemployed rasta fellow stumbles across a marijuana plantation, which he steals, smokes, shares, and sells. The plot grows complicated when he sells a goodly supply to a local dealer’s worthless brother. That the brother has stolen the pot thief’s girlfriend makes for an amusing dissonance, but one that turns deadly.

In the second story, two women feel the pressure of a crime wave of kidnaps and rapes that seems headed toward their end of the island. As their stress grows, a jogger makes a daily appearance that captures the women’s attention. The author allows readers to suspect the runner could be a rapist casing his victims, or he could simply be an attractive male. The women, “for health reasons”, take up jogging themselves.

The writer gives a deft touch to the women’s light-hearted pursuit of the unknown jogger. When a hit-run driver leaves the jogger unconscious, crumpled in an out of the way cane field, the bolder of the two women sees her opportunity and mounts the priapic victim. Convincing her lonely friend to avail herself of the man’s availability, the story’s title comes alive in a masterstroke of irony when the unconscious stranger comes out of it with the reluctantly persuaded woman astride the mysterious “dougla” (halfbreed) stranger.

The two leading stories are well chosen for their imaginativeness and colorful events. The sixteen remaining stories provide similar or smaller pleasures. Writing dialect poses a challenge to chicana chicano writers that appears as puro Spanish, the occasional code-switch, and only rarely a phonetic representation that may or may not require a splanation. Trinidad Noir’s narratives—with one glaring exception—present fluid standard grammar. Characters speak similarly, with a liberal though not overdone dose of dialect, such as this conversation in Darby Maloney’s “The Best Laid Plans”:

“I hope yuh not lying to me.”
“Of course not,” Honesto said quickly.
Maybe too quickly, Andre thought. “Because I really counting on that money,” he continued slowly. “Where Mary working they closing down by the end of the month, and I have to keep up the installment on this car.” He paused. “And yuh know long time we putting off Brandon operation.”

Readers with a descriptive linguistics bent will enjoy seeing the grammar and phonetics of island speech, and will find nothing unintelligible. Except one unreadable story. Writers make a horrible mess of a text when they attempt to capture the actual sound of dialect. Fortunately, only Robert Antoni has been foolish enough to attempt it. He fails miserably, producing a story so unreadable I suspect most readers will give the epistolary “How to Make Photocopies in the Trinidad & Tobago National Archives” a page--maybe a paragraph--or two before abandoning the effort:

“now as i have lil chance 2 catch me breath & cool down some after all dem boisterous carryings-ons of las night, of which i can only admit shameful 2 have play my own part in dem, my womanly desires catchin de best a me unawares much as i fight dem down, cause lord only know dis pussy aint get a good airing-out like dat in many a long day, & now it finish at last wid all dat amount a pulsatin & twitchin-up so sweet & i could collec meself little bit & sit down cool & calm & quiet enough dis morning 2 write u out dis email”

Racial and ethnic tensions and identity issues provide ongoing stress for many characters. These come from skin color and interactions among East Asian/Indian, black, and anglo peoples. There’s a clear sense of inclusion-exclusion in the various personae, but spoken without strident political protest. The jogging women, for example, are interested that their target is “dougla” or mixed. That’s the way things are, seems to be the prevailing attitude of the writers and their characters. Rarely do the writers convey a movimiento-type sensibility and characters express only a minor outraged sense of injustice. Rare is the writer with a moral axe to grind, as in Tiphanie Yanique’s coming of age and getting your just desserts story, “Gita Pinky Manachandi.” Mostly what we get in Trinidad Noir is plain old fun, mostly familiar situations in an unusual setting.

That this Trinidad anthology is a bit run-of-the-mill with the occasional gem is completely acceptable, given the larger picture of what the publisher is bringing to market. Akashic Books is gathering a wonderful collection in its noir series. Already in the series have been twenty-three cities including Baltimore, Bronx, Brooklyn, Havana, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto. Upcoming are at least thirteen more including Barcelona, Delhi, Istanbul, Lagos, Mexico City, as well as Phoenix and Portland. This speaks well for the genre, as well as the publisher. Who gets it in the end is the real winner, and this is readers who enjoy the irony, chagrin, schadenfruende, and juicy crimes that hallmark the noir body of work.


Cheech Marin and Chon Noriega: A Conversation at LACMA
Actor, comedian, art collector Cheech Marin joined the chair of UCLA's Chicano Studies program, Chon Noriega, in an hour-long colloquy at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Marin's collection fills several gallery rooms with breathtaking work, principally paintings. The collection is reproduced in book form, Chicano Visions: Painters on the Verge.

It was a highly entertaining and illuminating hour. Marin speaks of his collection as representing a Chicano School of art, distinguished by subject matter, professional execution, and characteristic use of color. Linked above are several pages about the collection, including Marin's essay on the Chicano School.

Noriega kept the hour focused on Marin's collector persona, thus did not address the second "chicano" show running at LACMA, the Noriega et al-curated Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement. La Bloga alluded to the collection in an earlier post.

What an interesting contrast. In Marin's collection, nearly every wall holds masterpiece after masterpiece. Obviously some are more powerful than others, but almost every single canvas kicks you in the gut with its expressive power and sheer beauty.

Phantom Sightings is exactly the opposite. Wall after wall of dreary stuff. A few imaginative pieces like a deconstructed sarape here, there an artifact of a performance piece satirizing street people's beggarly signs that makes everyone stop and laugh. Many well-executed but uninteresting photos.

The show celebrates a couple of absochingaolutely breathtaking artists--Julio Cesar Morales' immigrants; one disguised as piñata another upholstered into an auto seat. There are too few of Shizu Saldamando's striking portraits. But the high quality work scattered here and there is overpowered by work of such creative poverty that a great benefit emerges from the Phantom Sightings show. So often writers and painters decry their categorization as a "chicana chicano" artist, lamenting they cannot be considered merely "artists." Phantom Sightings proves the old adage, "be careful what you ask for, you might just get it." The majority of work in the Phantom Sightings show is "just art."


There's June's final Tuesday. Good health to all, and, as it's a vain hope to wish you eternal youth, here's to growth and maturation.

mvs

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Review: South by South Bronx.

Michael Sedano

Abraham Rodriguez.
NY: Akashic Books, 2008.
ISBN-13: 978-1-933354-56-9

What do you do when a barefoot woman in a wet minidress sneaks up the fire escape? If you’re a male writer with writer’s block, you start writing inspired prose. If you’re a male painter with painter’s block, you start painting superb new work. If you’re a burned-out ladies man and you wake up with that woman naked in your bed, you wonder if she’s an alcohol-induced hallucination, roll over and go back to sleep.

Until you wake up and she’s still there, her minidress drip-drying in the shower, and you still can’t remember where she came from.

That’s the basic set-up and some of the outcome of Abraham Rodriguez’ unlikely detective story, South by South Bronx. The woman is real. She’s fled a mysteriously powerful operative-- maybe he’s CIA? At any rate, he’s a killer who’s just slaughtered the woman’s lover and wants to capture millions of dollars the dead lover consigned to the woman. That the killer planted the woman in the lover’s business only to have the woman double cross the killer instead, adds exciting complication to the story of the artists helping this lady in distress.

Add into this mix of characters a disaffected cop, good friends with the dead guy, the dead guy’s brother, and their crime family, and Serpico-like alienated from other cops. When the powerful killer drafts the detective to track down the woman and the money, you have a convoluted and parallel chase, one that couples a reader to another question--with an easy answer: what do you do when a great new noir mystery novel falls into your hands?

Read it voraciously. Turn every page anxious to learn the next complication and plot twist. Odd stuff. Humor. Paranoia. A great "summer read" any time of the year.

Although presented as a sex object to open the story, this woman’s no fool. There’s that pistol in her purse, for example. She’s fully aware of the killer’s power and manages to play the artists against the killer against the cop. The cop, meanwhile, distrusts his own motives only a little less than he mistrusts the powerful outsider’s motives. Moreover, the cop is busy playing his own game against the killer, against his dead friend’s family, and is after the money for himself. Or is he? Much of the pleasure of noir fiction comes from conflicting expectations like those played out here, and the fact something is happening every minute to keep the story advancing.

If you, as am I, are not a New Yorker and don’t know what “Bronx” refers to, Rodriguez does the favor of drawing out the exposition with language, characterization and setting. In West Coast terms, this part of New York City is what East L.A. is to El Lay. Except substitute Puerto Ricans for Chicanos, and give characters public transportation instead of cars. And fire escapes.

Rodriguez provides ample local color to make the novel a treat for the ears as well as the imagination. Rodriguez constructs a grammatical style built on sentence fragments and mid-thought irruptions that suggest the jumpiness of various characters’ moods and intentions. The author peppers the earlier pages that way, then as the story matures, uses the style sparingly for good effect. More obvious is his typographical convention, a serif font for the story of the woman and the artists, a sans serif for the detective’s side of the chase. Rodriguez trusts his characters and uses “he said, she said” tags sparingly, interchanging conversation to narration, from third to first person, keeping the reader oriented and on edge. It all works to propel the story to a satisfyingly tidy finish. It’s a good mystery, so enough said.

Publisher Akashic Books opened the 2008 book with an April through May splash, so hopefully your local bookstore has copies in hand for you. Visit the publisher’s webpage for purchase information if your local independent bookseller somehow is out of the loop or uninterested in your money. I like how Akashic defines itself on its webpage, “reverse-gentrification of the literary world.” Abraham Rodriguez’ third novel certainly offers proof of the sincerity of Akashic’s claim.


Note. A couple weeks ago, I reviewed Roberto Bolaños' The Savage Detectives. Several writers expressed perplexity that I seem not to have revered the writer his due. Asi son las cosas, but maybe I'm the only one impatient with the late writer's work. For instance, I came across the following in an email from Media Bistro:

MONDAY JUN 09, 2008
OMG, I Forgot to Write a "Hot Galleys of BookExpo" Post!
I knew there was something I forgot to include in last week's BookExpo America coverage...

So, yeah, everybody wanted to get their hands on FSG's thick galleys for 2666, the posthumous novel from Roberto Bolaño—in fact, I heard rumors that every single mockup of the three-volume slipcase edition of the 900-page novel that went on display in the FSG booth was swiped by eager readers (who would eventually discover that their ill-gotten gains were filled with blank pages).


Nine hundred pages, three volumes? Uau, talk about magnum opus. At any rate, here we are, the second Tuesday of June 2008. Until next Tuesday, thanks for visiting La Bloga.

ate,
mvs

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