Anaya. Old Men. Death, Dying, Sorrow.

Michael Sedano

After my wife's diagnosis of dementia of the Alzheimer's type I sent myself into a spiral of shock, sorrow, suffering, endurance and all-around general aporia. It didn't help I was disabled from both shoulders and I was totally unreliable in event she fell. And she fell a lot.

She went to live in a locked door memory care unit, then had surgery for an infected leg. Five weeks in a superb skilled nursing facility and Barbara regained alertness and energy. She walked steadily and confidently. I healed and have strength in my arms again. I brought her home.

Nothing's going to change. Alzheimer's is a "progressive" disease. Aporia is worse than mere depression. It's helplessness mixed with keen awareness of why, aporia blends sorrow suffering irresolution into one nauseating bundle. It is what it is.

Enduring this mishmash of peccant humors wears you down, aguantando doesn't help, don't just stand there and take it, find places to keep growing.

 Aguantar doesn't work. I remind myself I know that, after painful experience. I remind myself also that pain and misfortune are universal. Reading how others passed into and through profound loss creates time you didn't know you had, when a reader gets lost in contemplating her or his own experience like those reflected through words, realizing "it's not just me."

For myself, early in our diagnosis, I read stuff to fit the mood and our progression, poets like Donne and Hopkins, poems like "Invictus," and "Do not go gentle". Caregivers I know delved deeply into nonfiction, medical and neurological books and resources.

One book I recommend to all, now in the hour of our suffering, or out of interest in literary fulfillment--but you'll need it one day--is Rudolfo Anaya's The Old Man's Love Story. Own your own copy and read it regularly. It's important.

Here's a link to the publisher's direct-sales website. 

Back in 2016, Jesus Treviño and I took a roadtrip to Alburquerque to interview Rudolfo Anaya on his most recent books at the time, including this important contribution to United States letters. We had fun. Anaya had read my review and affirmed my view of it. I had to restrain myself from a Sally Field "he likes it!" moment, but that added to the fun. I excerpt the interview addressing The Old Man's Love Story to conclude today's colum. Here's a link to a Latinopia video from that interview.

To begin today, I resurrect my review from 2015 of the story. La Bloga's first review is Manuel Ramos' review of The Old Man's Love Story in the May 17, 2013 La Bloga-Friday (link)

From La Bloga-Tuesday, February 10, 2015 (link)
Rudolfo Anaya. The Old Man's Love Story. Norman: U Oklahoma Press, 2013.
ISBN: 0806146486
Michael Sedano

Everyone dies. My grandmother died. My mother died. I died. In Rudolfo Anaya’s The Old Man’s Love Story, the old man’s wife has died. How do you go on after death? What of your own? Where do dead souls go?


The widower struggles with grief, memory, and life after death. This is Anaya’s own story--he pulls no punches--but elects to tell this deeply personal story from the safe distance enabled by a third person narrator.

The third person voice allows the mourning man to step outside himself to address an audience, organize the events and relate what happened to a character called “the old man” as he goes about resolving the consequences of life and death.

In this voice, Anaya crafts a barely-controlled narrative of his own roiling emotions, enriches the text with literary flourishes, allusions, motifs, and keen detail, ultimately presenting a meaningful look at death, grief, and living. Beyond its profundity, The Old Man’s Love Story is a scream of pain you need to hear.

It’s not a fun read. Some readers won’t be ready for The Old Man’s Love Story, especially younger people who see themselves invincible. Nor will those with a low tolerance for cultura “get” it. The book deals with issues those people haven’t dealt with, they have no skin in the game. So it goes.

Near death experience patients like me, readers in serious infirmity, and generally, gente aware of cucui and other spirits are ready for The Old Man’s Love Story. It won’t haunt you but starts a conversation that’s probably overdue. Carpe diem. The old man is not afraid of dying but frustrated at everything he’s going to miss.

The old man has spirits in his life and many moments of communion. New Mexico cultura informs the old man’s spiritual and metaphoric view with cloud formations, water, land, soul, various people’s gods. He views his own memory as thrusts from a hellenistic muse whom the old man names Memoria.

The old man's wife speaks to him, offers comfort, and urges him to go on living. He cannot summon her but with a sense of normalcy accepts her presence whenever she appears. “Magic realism” outsiders might term such moments in the narrative. For the old man, and Anaya, conversations with the wife are the most normal things a grieving man does.

Grief comes with memory. Random events and artifacts trigger memories of courtship, travels, life together, her personality, having sex. Each memory fills the old man with pain at her absence magnified by his understanding of the finality of this emptiness. Because grief and memory intertwine but are not the same, the widower finds himself unable to unravel the tangle. He cannot control memory and his grief is inconsolable.

As the old man’s suffering persists unabated, a reader begins to sense thoughts of suicide in the old man’s struggle, notes of surrender that would leave writer and reader deadened with depression. No one wants to read that. Yet, a fleeting thought, a word here, a conclusion there, Anaya sets the reader on edge, the outcome for the old man in no way assured.

As the book begins, with the old man’s bereavement finding its first expression, it comes with a sense of excitement for the dead wife’s next self:

Her journey into the world of spirits was a new adventure, but damn! He knew nothing of that world! He could only imagine it! Like imagining heaven. He worried. Was she okay? What if she lost the way? But she loved adventure. It was part of her nature. Now she had entered a country of spirits, from which no one returned.

Her spirit had lingered a while. Shortly after she died he had seen her walking down the hollyhock path. Dressed in a flowing Mexican skirt, the bright colors she loved, and a white blouse, stepping as lightly as an angel. She had turned and looked at him. 43

But the old man struggles with being separated. His wife’s disappearance from his garden, the hollyhock path, their time, has made his life chaotic, him irrational. At one manic point he surrounds himself with photographs, lies on the floor a shaman willing her back from death, Mictlán, the other side, wherever, just come back. Therapy doesn’t help.

He seeks refuge in reasoning and science. The old man learns about brain chemistry and the brain’s engrams, the loci of memory. He is not consoled that surgery or time will erase memories. Once the memories are gone, she is gone. The old man desperately needs the life memory sparks in him, memories don’t hurt all the time. He persists until he can answer ill-understood questions.

He questioned his own concept of the spirit world.
“It’s not out there,” he whispered. “It’s in me. The world of spirits is my memory—I am the world of spirits!”
Why was he surprised? He had searched for the meaning of life and death, the knowledge that was the bedrock of so many cultures, the truths written in esoteric gospels, a faith held in the human heart since the beginning of time.
He had known this all along. One of his characters, an old woman on her deathbed, had told a child, “I will live as long as you remember me. I live in your memory.” 130

Anaya arrives at this consolation for the old man via a stream-of-consciousness narrative that spills freely out of the writer. The loose style that flows from idea to idea looking for a logical connection can pose a challenge to inattentive readers. This is the way the man’s mind works, how a writer thinks. It’s best to pay attention.

The constrained rambling style of The Old Man’s Love Story stands in tribute to Anaya’s late wife, who was the writer’s editor. The writer is allowed free rein on this manuscript. Anaya seems to be telling his readers, this style is appropriate to this occasion so she’s letting me slide on some of my excesses and more abstract ruminations.

Students of Chicana Chicano Literature will find The Old Man’s Love Story illuminating for its insights into elements of the writer’s life and career. Readers curious about Sonny Baca’s heightened spirituality across the four novels of that series see its origins in the author’s lifelong relationship with spirits and spiritual practice. Anaya accepts that La Llorona frightened him as a boy, perhaps in the guise of grasping ramas in the bosque, but that was La Llorona pulling his hair in the darkness.

Writers will note Anaya’s sense that his characters spring sui generis from their own dimension. Just as spirits are, characters are.

And it’s true, that was his background but the more he wrote the more he felt the pull of the spirit world. The voice of the story was not completely his. He was moved to write the tragedies and comedies of those characters who came to visit him. 54

It’s that sense of spirits and literary characters that lets the grief-stricken mind lose itself in beauties of a garden path before a moment later seeing his dead wife pulling weeds. He’s comforted by their conversations, her advice about getting a girlfriend, helping him close doors and open others in efforts to define the old man’s loneliness and depression, and find a way onward.

Which he does. That is not a spoiler but a final reason to read The Old Man’s Love Story. The last handful of pages, when the issues have reached what resolution exists for one man, sparkle with vision. The old man finds his respite not in a particular spirit but the spirit of life itself, and with that final rainbow along the hollyhock path the old man understands.

His ancestors had come and stayed to raise crops in the land of the pueblos. We worked hard, the old ones said. Our backs broke and our hands were stained with blood. But one afternoon lived beneath this sky provides enough beauty to fill our souls for another day’s toil. The earth provided, the sky rewarded. 168

Order The Old Man’s Love Story from your independent bookseller or via the publisher's website.

NDE Addendum. Anaya's speculation about whether, and what the other side is like are right on. The other side is there. I saw it last July during emergency surgery. I returned with the ancestor's message on my lips, struggling to share it. "Sage" they said without speaking. "Burn sage" I finally said when I found voice. The old man's conversations with his wife don't surprise me but I envy them. Souls cross back and forth for important reasons. In early January I was certain an upcoming surgery--a consequence of July's--would kill me again, this time for sure. In December I was saying good-bye to people, cooking last meals, doing uncharacteristic things, walking on eggshells. One morning I smelled my dad's smell in bed next to me, felt him holding my hand--my dad never held my hand tenderly or otherwise--and in the instant felt assured I would live because he told me, again without speaking. A few days later I went through the operation easily and near painlessly.

Excerpted from La Bloga-Tuesday August 9, 2016 (link)
Interview with Rudolfo Anaya: The Old Man’s Love Story and The Sorrows of Young Alfonso.
Michael Sedano, with Jesus Salvador Treviño

Jesús Treviño and I arrived at Rudolfo Anaya’s house mid-afternoon and spent several delightful hours videotaping (link) while we chatted about Rudy’s four most recent publications, Poems From the Rio Grande, Randy Lopez Goes Home, The Old Man’s Love Story, and The Sorrows of Young Alfonso. . . . 
This interview transcript picks up in mid-conversation. We had been discussing the connectedness between three novels, poetry, and how themes, images, and ideas recur and parallel one another in Anaya’s career and especially these most recent publications. As the Latinopia video illustrates, Anaya reflects on the soul, creativity, and his body of work.

•mvs: The themes are coming back, like you say, it’s a cycle. As a preamble, a couple questions on The Old Man’s Love Story. Some people say writing is a form of therapy. Was The Old Man’s Love Story a therapy for you?

•RA: Was The Old Man’s Love Story therapeutic for me? Absolutely. The Old Man’s Love Story is about grief, and my wife had just died, I was going through grief. A woman came here, you know they have grief counselors. She gave me pamphlets, that didn’t do it for me. Some people said get into a group that is talking about grief. I thought, no my grief is too personal. I don’t want to talk about it, to other people. And so I started writing, using the tool I have used all my life, writing. What I know best was the way to express my grief, was to write about it, was to write these passages that the old man goes through. Yeah, that’s therapy.

•mvs:The old man wondered before his wife died, what she saw. He’s in a part where he’s talking about soul and how imagination is pure, like the soul is pure. Have you found out what the old man’s wife was seeing before she died, was it soul?

•RA: We’ve been discussing the idea of soul, the idea of essence. And I have written many places, “The creative imagination is the soul.” My and yours and everybody’s imagination that creates is soul. Soul creates. And on a personal level, in The Old Man’s Love Story, I would say that my wife was a very creative person. She was very intelligent very loving. She was into reading esoteric stuff that was very interesting, building up her soul. That’s what we all do, we build soul. We build soul. Like a brick at a time. Absolutely, she was building, she still is.

•mvs: The soul is eternal. In the hollyhock garden the old man spoke with her soul in the hollyhock garden. He was looking for it. Can one produce that communion by looking for it, or does it simply appear because it appears?

•RA: For me the communion with my wife is always there. It’s not that I ask for it, it’s just there. The scene in the garden, the hollyhock garden, I can take you to the back yard where I have a little ramada with grape vines and a nice swing. And I’m sitting there, and my wife appeared. And she started walking down. In June I have beautiful hollyhocks out there, beautiful; the whole garden is full of color. And she started walking down the hollyhock path and that's when she turned and told me she was going. So she knew all along. We know all along. It’s not a secret. Some of us don’t pay attention to our soul, to our creative imagination.

What did Wordsworth say, “this world is too much with us, late and soon getting and spending, little we know that is ours.” Getting and spending, and not paying attention to that which is ours, the soul. And it’s always there. It’s like I am sharing something with you very personal. That my wife is always with me. She is in this room, she’s in the photographs, she’s in the chair that she loved to sit in to read. On and on, it doesn’t go away.

And it gets better when I’m gone and I go to her. Then we’re gonna take a trip. The first trip we’re gonna do is take us to Mazatlán. We loved the beach in Mazatlán. We loved the people. We had such good time. We already made a deal, the moment I’m gone like that, vamonos, we’re gonna fly to Mazatlán.

•mvs: It’ll be a good trip.
•RA: Oh man, la playa de Mazatlán, the gente. Beautiful.

Guest Columnist: Alma Luz Villanueva Interviews Anita Endrezze

Alma Luz Villanueva


In the late 90s I traveled to Sonora, Mexico, to research my family landscape. I wanted to get a feel for the desert and the ocean near Guaymas, San Carlos, and Cuidad Obregon. I took a bus and noticed how the drivers personalized their vehicles, including taxis. The deer is a symbol you’ll find all over Sonora because it is a Yaqui symbol. The Yaqui Deer Dancers are famous. In this painting I hid a deer head...see if you can find it...and added a pelican because they flew over the beach of Bacochibampo, or the Bay of Sea Snakes, in Yaqui. I also added a dog because I saw many stray dogs as I traveled the area. The Virgin de Guadalupe was another recurring symbol. I painted myself to the left: the brown haired woman with sunglasses. - Anita Endrezze

© Anita Endrezze. Acrylic on paper.

I first got to know Anita Endrezze’s multi-genre creative talents via her book, Throwing Fire at the Sun, Water at the Moon, 2000. In this book she weaves together poetry, short stories, essays and her marvelous paintings, creating a universe of her own, with roots firmly within her Yaqui, European heritage.

With the focus, in this book, on the Yaqui ancestors, people, I was drawn to this book as I was raised by my grandmother, Jesus Villanueva, a full blood Yaqui curandera from Sonora. She taught me dreaming, poetry and stories in the Mission, San Francisco.

I was right at home in Anita’s universe- the curiosity that drives her journey throughout this book, and the beauty she always reveals. Side by side with hard truths, always the beauty. Anita’s paintings as her witness.

"Butterfly Moon" © Anita Endrezze

And then, recently I read Butterfly Moon, 2012, a collection of short stories that include Yaqui and European myth/truth, that beauty. Anita’s painting graces the cover, the butterfly moon. When I finished reading these magical stories, where myth/reality dance, I realized she had merged/married the Yaqui/European into a mysterious, coherent whole. Each story bleeding into the next one, and finally creating an alive, breathing, singing, weeping wholeness.

On page 89, ‘Choices,’ I came upon a wise, Yaqui grandmother named Alma Luz- I laughed with delight. “Jessica’s grandma, Alma Luz, once told her that Yaquis knew how to face life’s hardships. It was part of their creation story. Those ancient people who couldn’t face the future were allowed to leave the human race. Some ran into the desert and became ants. Others waded into the waves and became dolphins or sea mammals. Only her ancestors decided to face life. They did it with wisdom and courage.”

My grandmother, Jesus, used to tell me, in Spanish, “If you have one drop of Yaqui, you are all Yaqui.” Anita evokes this dreaming wisdom in this wondrous, alive, magical book of stories- spanning, including, all of her ancestors. Into wholeness. And so, here’s the interview- from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (where I now live), to Everett, Washington (where Anita lives). This sacred Turtle Island.


Alma Luz Villanueva: WHERE are you from? Tell a childhood story.

Anita Endrezze: I was born by the Pacific Ocean in Long Beach, CA. My mother was second generation American: she’s north Italian, German, and Slovenian. My father was Yaqui Indian, a tribe/Nation from Sonora Mexico. His parents came from Mexico. I was born with a displaced hip and wore a cast for a year. My leg never healed right and it was an omen of future ill health.
We lived in Merlin Oregon for a couple of years. My parents logged their acreage to make money. My little sister and I would nap in a tent, play with twigs and moss to make little houses, and watch out for snakes. I have never forgotten the sweet strawberry smell of dried pine needles.


ALV: WHAT were you born to write about- your driving themes.

AE: When I was too young to read, I told stories about the Great Pacific Northwest. It was important that that phrase start every story. And yet, in spite of that early idea of location, I’ve written more about the spirit and especially, the female spirit, passion, and ….oh, whoa! here it is: a woman’s relationship to the earth. So, I guess, I do write about place. Now that I’ve gotten older and sicker, though, I write more about the temporal body, my body, that is a failing location of my soul.
I have MS and I’m in Stage Two which means I can barely walk and my legs hurt. I am weak all over. House bound and basically, chair bound, my location is in one spot 24 hours a day.


ALV: YOUR first memory of writing. And since you’re also a gifted painter, your first memory of drawing.

AE: I don’t remember my first written work. I do remember drawing. I drew rainbows over hills that resembled sleeping women: all broad hips and round shoulders. I drew teepees and horses. I drew with lots of color, using crayons. I loved reading the names of the crayon colors on their slips of paper: Spring Green, Blue Violet, Brilliant Rose. In 1958, when I was 6, new colors were added making the box total of 64. My mother worked as a draftsman on Terminal Island. She brought old office papers and blue print sheets for us to draw on.


ALV: TELL a vivid dream.

AE: One of the recurring dreams I’ve had for 40 years is of a house. The house represents my body, with the attic being the Light, the Spirit. The basement is either my genitals or my subconscious. About 20 years ago, I started dreaming of a greenhouse attached to the house. The greenhouse was full of dying plants. It was always on the left of the dream house and I now know that it was my body weakening from MS, since my left side is weaker.
I loved the dreams, though, where I’d wander through an infinity of rooms. I liked the houses where there was no end to discovering another room.


ALV: WHAT subjects do you consider to be taboo- who are your ‘critics’... as in parents, children, spouse, minister etc.

AE: I generally don’t censor myself although I would think twice about writing something involving my family. I seldom swear in my writing, even though I do swear otherwise! I don’t have any taboos.


ALV: YOUR favorite novel, character in fiction- why?

AE: I enjoyed reading Octavia Butler’s books, especially Kindred, and the trilogy of Lilith’s Brood. The characters of the alien third gender, the ooloi, were mind-bending when I read them back in the 90s. I also like reading the Jack Reacher novels, a loner ex-military cop. I read all of the Number One Ladies Detective Agency books, all of Harry Potter books, and the Twilight series when my daughter was young. One of my favorite authors is Luis Alberto Urrea.

I just finished reading Wild and now am starting A Fistful of Collars by Spencer Quinn...a dog detective!

I loved the book, The Art of Racing in the Rain. Terribly Loud and Incredibly Close was another book I liked.


ALV: YOUR favorite poet(s), why?

AE:I have always loved Neruda. His passion and seductive words enthrall me. I also like Leonard Cohen. I didn’t know he was also a musician until I was in my 40s!


ALV: MAKE three wishes.

AE: I wish for health. I’m very sick. With health I could be a part of my life instead of just existing. I could visit my family. I could touch the earth with my bare feet. I could see a sunrise. I could walk under the stars and moon at night. I could be ME instead of being weak and hurting. And I could let my family free of worrying about me.

I only have one more wish and that is that my children have happiness in their lives and can do things to make the world a better place.


ALV: ONE more… List the ‘top twenty’ most transformative moments of la vida, more if you want, of course. Maybe write it via una poema…

AE: My life in twenty versions
I was born a chamber of the sea. I was a particle of salt and tar, motion and shore.
I was a little girl with a crooked leg, skipping in puddles that cradled clouds.
My mother lay on the ground, a tree across her back, while my father ran for help, and she screamed he tried to kill her.
We drove through the snowy night, leaving him, carrying bundles of clothes and fears.
An “uncle” touched my small breasts while I was swimming, swimming, or in bed while I was sleeping, sleeping, and I drowned in my skin.
I was married, one two three. And each time, I thought it would be the last, he’s the One, although their faces blurred.
I have two children, a boy I was terrified of since I knew nothing of men and love. And a girl I was terrified for, knowing men and love.
The third marriage is good, better than good, and my children grew up to be stronger than I am, and beautiful. My fears were for nothing.
Except they were fears more terrible than monsters in the bed or under it. The fear was real: I was diagnosed with MS.
Broken bones from falls, crooked arm, fractured cheek and wrist. Bent spine, weak legs, weak torso. Blindness, paralysis, voice broken.
I am like a shell that washes up on shore, battered against the foamy rocks, the roiling surf, and the pearly sheen of my skin is a bruise.
I’m an artist and a writer, but I’d give it all up to be healthy.

No, sorry: my life doesn’t have twenty versions. Now all my selves
sit in a chair all day and watch TV or read, talking to the Other Fears in my head. I’m house-bound, in a chamber of skin and bones, far from the stars or beach.

My dreams are twenty windows,
all shut and sealed.


ALV: Anita, I’ve loved all of your answers, especially your final one, although it contains much pain, this is your truth, your courage, gracias.

I have one more question after reading your wondrous book of stories, Butterfly Moon, which seems to contain all of your ancestors, Yaqui to European. I especially love the ones where the ancient myths (truths) come into play. The final story in the collection, ‘The Dragonfly’s Daughter,’ features Desetnica GoLightly. At the end of the story she learns she was born with the tenth child’s blessing, to become a roaming storyteller as her mother was. Desetnica meets three magical women who tell her the destiny of the tenth child, as they call her magical name, Dragonfly’s Daughter. They give her a “carved with runic symbols and other wondrous images” walking stick. “This is a storyteller’s walking stick. All will recognize you by this,” they tell her.

They give her an amber necklace with a tiny dragonfly inside: “You will take your father’s spirit with you, for his ashes drifted into the creek. The dragonfly formed its larvae from your father’s bones.”

“‘And here.’ They circled me, placing their hands on top of my head. ‘We give you our blessings, Desetnica GoLightly.’

“Their hands felt like a wreath of shining stars on my head. ‘Thank you, ladies.’

“‘We will meet again one day, child….Remember that you do sacred work. Death can be its own blessing.’

“I took a deep breath. ‘I do not understand my fate, but I accept it.’

“‘And that’s as it should be...Now, go forth and tell stories.’”

As I read this wonderful story, I recognized myself as the tenth child of my lineage. And I recognize you as the tenth child of your lineage, Anita GoLightly. I think I just answered my final question, via the excerpt from the story, above.

You went forth and told/wrote the stories, Anita. You’ve gifted us with your marvelous poems, magical stories, and powerful paintings. GRACIAS for your very necessary voice and vision.

© Anita Endrezze

Anita Endrezze’s web site with a full listing of all her books, artwork and a biography. www.anitaendrezze.weebly.com

Alma Luz Villanueva is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Gracias 2015, and four novels, most recently, Song of the Golden Scorpion, 2013.

She’s taught in the MFA in Creative Writing program, Antioch University Los Angeles the past sixteen years.

Mother of four grown children, and Mamacita to five grandchildren, two Greatgrandhijitos. Has lived in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, for the past ten years, returning to teach, visit la familia. www.almaluzvillanueva.com




New Theatre For Now at LATC
Michael Sedano

Over a recent weekend, Los Angeles theatre-goers exulted in the grand spectacle of a world-class raza ensemble bringing a twenty-two hundred year-old play to life, Plautus' La Olla - The Pot of Gold. Plautus is so old, he's brand new--in the hands of the incredibly talented players of the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

Energized by a brilliant adaptation, sparkling improvisations, code-switching hilarity, actors comfortable in roles including a miser, some bad guys, colorful samberos, and denizens of nightclub society, kept the heavily subscribed house laughing. All in all, LATC's La Olla at the Malibu Getty offered a wonderfully absurdist noir.

 Now this same theatre company presents its 2015 season that features local work and local talent,  along with visiting companies who, like the locals, work at the leading edge of world theatre. Years ago, the phrase "New Theatre For Now" signaled an exciting season that lived up to its name, bringing brand new plays to off-the-beaten-path locations.

Season after season, the Los Angeles Theatre Company evokes that long-ago feast for theatre-goers, with the plus of the LATC's deluxe auditoria, convenient parking, and a lively street scene.

"East of Broadway" is both a geographical and a cultural referent. The gorgeously refurbished theatre complex, located at 514 South Spring Street, a block east of Broadway, is a showcase of glass and shiny metal and architectural appointments. 

Culturally, the LATC theatre site is not far from LA's historic Bunker Hill, the quondam cultural center where the Mark Taper Forum once supported local talent and new work not just via the NTFN series. Today, LATC stands as one of the jewels of a surging arts district coming to life east of Broadway.

Visit LATC's website for subscriptions and opportunities to support the teatro.

Getty Malibu ceramic

Tejano Conjunto Festival Coming in May

The thirty-fourth annual musical extravaganza returns to San Antonio Texas with free and fee events for all ages.

According to organizers, "Cucuy accordionists will be invading San Antonio this May when the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center presents the 34th Annual Tejano Conjunto Festival en San Antonio 2015 from May 13-17 at the historic Guadalupe Theater and Rosedale Park."

Visit the festival website for the current schedule of events.

Interlopers, Inductees, Ides of January On-line Floricanto.

Review: In the Country of Empty Crosses
Michael Sedano

Arturo Madrid (author), Miguel Gandert (photographs). In the Country of Empty Crosses. The Story of a Hispano Protestant Family in Catholic New Mexico. San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9781595341310

The handful of protestant kids in Arturo Madrid's rural New Mexico public school struggled to voice their own prayer. Their pastor had forbidden them to participate in Catholic practices. "Forgive us our debts" the protestant kids insisted, while the Catholics prayed to be forgiven "our trespasses."

When Europeans first trespassed into indigenous tierra that would become New Mexico, those Mexican Spaniards set into motion a pattern for dominating what was there before they came, that would repeat itself when Anglos trespassed onto hispano land. Arturo Madrid’s memoir, In the Country of Empty Crosses. The Story of a Hispano Protestant Family in Catholic New Mexico, recounts impacts of that dominance.

Just as indios found themselves marginalized by the gente from down south, hispanos and their Catholic religion found themselves, too, squeezed out by foreign language-speaking interlopers as prickly as the barbed wire they strung after seizing land. Former landholders got their only compensation in the sound of a judge’s gavel echoing the Terminator’s command to the helicopter pilot, “get out”.

Interloper. As the old order changed yielding place to new, Arturo Madrid’s protestante familia found themselves interlopers in their own tierra not once, but doubly.

In the hispano community, they were outliers owing to their election of the anglos’ religion.

In anglo churches, hispanos were targets for missionary work, separate and unequal; bilingual hispanos attending the mainline services found themselves only a little more tolerated but advantaged as intercultural negotiators for gente who'd become interlopers on their own tierra.

Madrid opens the memoir with a telling illustration of hispano exclusion. Taking a sentimental journey to his familia’s former tierra searching for vestiges, the cosmopolitan Madrid—he is a Professor of Literature comfortable in elite Unitedstatesian circles—meets a local vato Madrid terms “the Marlboro man.”

The visitor asks the local if he’s familiar with a location, the long-abandoned places his bisabuelos settled. Madrid especially wonders where the old familia camposanto lay. The Marlboro man corrects the outsider, “you mean the campo herejes.” To some Catholic hispanos, protestantes remain heretics, 400 years after the last inquisitor left New Spain.

Madrid recounts a telling encounter with the anglo minister’s wife in Chama. Performing a self-imposed Christian obligation, Madrid and his mother knock on the parlor door with an offering of fruit and vegetables waiting in the truck. The woman cracks the door and gestures her visitors to go around to the back door. At the back stoop, the pastor’s wife asks through the door what she can do for the two Mexicans? Madrid’s mother issues a sharp rebuke, “do something for yourself” by accepting the crates of fresh fruit and vegetables loaded in the pickup.

We cut across the lawn and make our way ccarefully through untended shrubbery still wet with dew. The warm air smells of pine needls and pinesap. As we enter the shade at the back of the manse, the fresh smell of pine is displaced by the acrid odor of moist coal cinders. The backyard is dark and bare. Tall firs cut out the light, making it cold and dank as well. I am glad to be wearing a light jacket. The manse has a screened back porch, and my mother pulls on the handle to the entry door, but it is latched. (155)

Details like these add to the rich texture Madrid’s elegant prose creates throughout In the Country of Empty Crosses, the Story of a Hispano Protestant Family in Catholic New Mexico. Madrid has not written with retribution in mind, however near to revenge some incidents sound. Indeed, the author sets forth incidents as facts, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions about the cultural fusions and transitions that would create contemporary mores of his tierra.

A few years later, Madrid encounters the Marlboro man’s brother, and receives a decent welcome and useful information. Back at the manse, as they drive away from the Chama parsonage, the rude woman seems to be abjectly ashamed. And she’ll have to schlep the heavy crates by herself.

Madrid’s literary occupation shines brilliantly in this readable text. The writer avoids easy sentimentality, packing detail and telling incident without imposing a political stance that might deflect from the memoir element. For example, recounting that his boyhood home in Tierra Amarilla was the site of a raid by chicano nationalists, Madrid doesn’t mention the murder of the anglo forest ranger nor name Reies Tijerina as the shooter. Since Madrid no longer lived in Tierra Amarilla when he learned of the tragedy, the event is not part of his cultural debt.

Throughout his 213 pages, the author doesn’t wallow in regret that the rural New Mexico of Madrid’s youth doesn’t exist anymore, despite his subtly pointed illustration of inexorable change. The retrograde attitudes of the various brands of Christianity on display in the author’s memory probably continue to divide communities today, but that may be a function of individual venality rather than culturally imposed norms. Madrid chooses to omit such considerations.

Chicanas Chicanos who, like me, grew up in rural Catholic settings outside New Mexico will recognize Madrid’s tierra and its denizens, and that’s another good reason people will enjoy reading the memoir.

Raza are more alike than different, though differences inevitably crop up. “The manse,” for example, is the pastor’s home. The term jumps out at me for its unfamiliarity. Madrid notes the Baptists were ascendant in the local protestant community; I wondered if the sect had subtly imposed a plantation mentality to go along with their manifest destiny?

I asked a preacher’s kid what his family termed their home. It was always “the parsonage.” Other friends told me they knew “the vicarage.” “Rectory” is the priest’s abode in Catholic parishes. Webster’s tells me “manse” is common usage among Presbyterians, and Madrid’s gente followed Presbyterian dogma, diluted by that Baptist influence.

Madrid’s writing flows elegantly, a tapestry of memory he weaves or unravels thread by thread, laying patterned motifs with a word or image on an earlier page that the writer expands into paragraphs and rich chapters later. Readers will note lilacs, railroads, sunflowers, smells and landscape motifs. The story so richly textured becomes deeply engaging to the point the book’s liberal display of excellently wrought photographs becomes invisible. Once noticed, however, the fotos enhance the pages, illustrating more the ambience of the chapter than necessarily a single sentence. Photographer Miguel Gandert’s captions appear in the afterpages.

The book itself is laid out like an art book, so much so that designer Kristina Kachele places the CIP page at the back instead of obverse the title page. She provides ample white space via wide margins, generous leading, a pleasing serif font, and a page size that sits the palm without burdensome bulk. The publisher elected a medium weight bright white coated stock that not quite ideally supports the photographs, but nonetheless holds much of the detail and care Gandert invests in his exposures.

Cultural baggage being what it proves to be, I did not “get” the title’s “empty crosses.” Catholics display the crucified Christ on a cross, protestantes don’t. Madrid sees the empty cross, too, as a symbol of redemption, though who’s redeemed remains ambiguous and subject matter for spirited discussions In the Country of Empty Crosses, the Story of a Hispano Protestant Family in Catholic New Mexico is sure to engender.

Interview With Author Arturo Madrid

The past couple years it's been my pleasure to chat with Arturo Madrid at the National Latino Writer's Conference in Alburquerque. When María Teresa Márquez advised me Arturo's memoir was available, I looked forward to reading it and chatting with him about sundry matters surrounding our mutual experiences as country boys who fled their rural roots for big city life. The following approximates our recent telephone conversation. Any errors or mischaracterizations are entirely of my doing.

Michael Sedano (mvs) - You tell about that resentful anglo boy who challenged your selection to lead a school ceremony. Did you see the memoir as a chance to get even with tipos like him?

Arturo Madrid (am) - Laughs. No, although friends have told me there may be elements of that. But I want to recount accurately as far as I remember. There is so much in our history that bears examination I have no time nor interest in getting back at people.

MVS - You write about the pressures of being a principal's kid (his father) and son of a local government official (mother), how you were constantly under observation by all eyes. Did your research lead you to read the book Preacher's Kid, about the same phenomenon?

AM - Several people told me about the book, so I might. I wanted to convey a different sense of history so my work didn't require much of that type reading. There are many contradictory tensions that come more clearly out of experience, observation, conversation.

MVS - The principal theme of the book is being an interloper. The anglos were interlopers on your tierra, yet you see yourself and before that, your parents as interlopers into protestant worlds. You don't spend a lot of energy investigating their motives nor addressing a justification for their determination to become cultural blenders.

AM - That was so far in the past and difficult if not impossible to know. They were biliterate and bilingual;  their parents were literate people. That is what their society needed.

MVS - The Tierra Amarilla raid  by La Alianza Federal de Mercedes was an awful event. You don't mention the murder or Tijerina.

AM - I heard about the incident while driving in my car, so it wasn't part of my experience. I met Tijerina years later and found him interesting and companionable. I didn't go into the raid because I was living in Texas and Tierra Amarlla wasn't my story.

MVS - You populate the book with lots of synaesthesia and visuals, there's a sense of longing in your narrative focus. What do you miss about your tierra?

AM - Living 20 years in San Antonio, in the city, I miss the open spaces and being able to see long distances, see mountains. I miss the smells of New Mexico, the piñon forest, the creosote bushes, the mix of smells after a rain.

MVS - Has time healed the divisions you recount? Have gente managed to subsume the hard feelings or do these divisions remain, perhaps as krypto cultural norms exacerbated by propinquity?

AM - In rural New Mexico people are occupied making a living and manage to put aside such divisions out of self-interest. It's different in the city where divisions remain and probably don't improve much because of propinquity and the nature of big towns.

MVS - What are you reading now?

AM - I'm reading Hilary Mantel's book on the French revolution, A Place of Greater Safety. She's a wonderful historian and writer who won a Booker Prize. I enjoyed Wolftrap. I'm also the judge for the Texas NACCS Book Award, and have five titles to read.

MVS - Miguel Gandert's photographs illustrate the book beautifully. But I got wrapped up in the story and tended to ignore the fotos the first time through.

AM - I've had that response from several friends. Miguel's photographs are so striking that originally the publisher wanted to limit illustrations to just a few but the images demanded to be included.

MVS - What do you want readers to know about Arturo Madrid as a result of reading In the Country of Empty Crosses?

AM - I want them to think this guy can tell a good story, that he has a good sense of language, and beyond that he knows how to use language to create a wonderful environment.


My 44th Anniversary

January 15, 1969 was a Wednesday. If I slept the night before, I don't remember. I had a 0700 appointment at the Santa Barbara bus terminal.

That final night my three best friends and I--Barbara, Mike, and Bryan--cruised the streets of Santa Barbara for one final look-see. At a stop sign--would I go south to Haley Street, or north and back to Isla Vista--a cowboy hat in the rearview mirror honked impatiently then he rammed his clunky pickup truck into us when I didn't pull away. Pulling around me, he honked and gave me the finger, screaming, "Fuck You, Four F." I exploded in laughter.

In the morning, with a Josh White tune running through my head, "there's a man going round taking names,"someone called my name. I hugged my wife and kissed her good-bye. I stepped onto the bus and in a few minutes, it pulled away. Barbara had kept up a brave mien all week as the clock ticked away. I glanced out the window to see she'd finally given in to her tears. Her hands covered her downturned face and she missed seeing me wave goodbye.

Forty-four years ago today, I reported as ordered by President Richard M. Nixon and accepted involuntary induction into the United States Army.

I was lucky that day. As a gruff Sergeant herded our skivvy-covered asses upstairs to the final set of examinations before taking the Oath, one Draftee sat red-faced under the sign that read "United States Marine Corps."


The Gluten-free Chicano
Las Dos Gildas Make Tortillas de Harina

Last week's Gluten-free Chicano segment exulted in finding the palo his mother used in rolling tortillas de harina. Because wheat is poison to the gluten-afflicted, the GF chicas patas shared the recipe for egg and tortillita as alternative to making flour tortillas.

This week, Las Dos Gildas, the renowned cooking site, provides a suitable recipe for those forbidden treasures. Gilda Valdez Carbonaro has amended the recipe to feature vegetable oils rather than the lard that produces the authentic flavor of homemade tortillas de harina.

The Gluten-free Chicano recommends using lard in the same volume of oils. Click here for Las Dos Gildas' recipe. Rolling a perfect tortilla with your mother's palo will have to be a matter of trial and error.

http://dosgildas.com/tortillas-de-harina/

On-Line Floricanto. Antepenultimate Tuesday of January 2013


Lacerated Dreams by Xuan Carlos Espinoza-Cuellar

Mother in Chains by Colleen Whitehorse Krinard

A veces ~ Sometimes by Lupe Rodriguez
The Stadium by Kenneth Salzmann
Dream Warriors by Dde TheSlammer


Lacerated Dreams
by Xuan Carlos Espinoza-Cuellar

it ain’t got to be so complicated
knowledge should be available
free and running like water streams and shit

love should not be incarcerated
neither should dreams be lacerated
amongst barbed wire fences and shit

no body parts should feed the desert
no last breaths should be taken at the edge of dreams

why is it gotta be so damn complicated?
Filling out papers and shit
Singing hymns and chants to the empire
Why should some hide their red
While others call it patriotism?
Yet, the sinister of their practice is glorified and praised and shit
Praised like Jesus.. en el nombre de Cristo Jesus

A pregnant woman left to starve
While pedestrians watched
And children recorded
Children,
Children beaten by life
Children who beat other children unconscious
Drug dealing children
Prostitute children
Illegal alien children
Poor children
Poor colored children

Why has shit got to be so complicated?
We as a society feed off their flesh
Their voice, their fall from grace
We feast off their broken spirits
Cash checks over their corpses
And we demand more

What type of society are we
That we demand doom
While claiming privilege and shit?



Mother in Chains
by Colleen Krinard

bleeding silently at the edge of the road
mother stands weeping, watching, waiting.

they have stripped her naked.
and with greedy joy have bound and raped,
pillaged and plundered
her wholeness into tiny grains
of dust and rubble turned
to profit
by the kings
and queens of
paper green
and silicon ink.

her tears of broken waters fall
on muddied treaties trampled long ago
by a destiny so manifest
that it has lost itself
in lives of
ruin and contempt.

her soul yet waits for eyes of passion
and hearts of fire
to listen
and to hear her song
of coming home.

with ears of yearning
and arms outstretched she knows
this dance is not yet done.

come to me now
oh my children and friends
who know the joy of the
sounds of sunrise and
the quiet of the dancing stars and moon.

take your places around the table
once set long ago by dreamers
much like you.

find each other,
and in celebrating your homecoming,
restore us all.



A veces ~ Sometimes
by Lupe Rodriguez

I hear the voices of elders
in dreams
so close to me
I can feel their breath....
their warmth....
their touch so soft...
afraid to awaken...
to lose...
their touch and presence...
I remain.....
eyes shut even when awoken...
my palms extended and awaiting....
a touch no longer....almost forgotten...
es un sueno...just a dream...
A veces....sometimes I wish.....
I'd never be awoken of that dream....
que bonito sueno fue.....
what a beautiful dream it was.....



The Stadium
by Kenneth Salzmann

This is no game, remember,
Because the elevated rumbles still
Through the kitchen smells of each
Wave of ever-dark-eyed strangers
Ever cooking up strange dishes
Strangely spiced, and all the while
Slipping strange words
Into the spiced atmosphere
Hovering over 161st Street
To rise above the
Train's insistent jazz,
To swell into an unequivocal
Roar that will be joined by ghosts
As surely as forgotten ancestors
Will never let us go.
America is dark-eyed, too,
Against all its wishes,
And speaks in tongues,
And can't subdue
Its hunger for a common language.

(previously published in New Verse News [Oct. 2, 2006])

Copyright 2006 by Kenneth Salzman

Dream Warriors
by Dde TheSlammer

We came to live the American dream
We just found some nightmares along the way
We want the dream for our families
The good job
Shoes for our kids
Food in the home
Walls that are built
Not just shacked together
But sometimes when you dream
The events of your days
Can shift your dreams into nightmares
Meantime we work honest jobs
Making it ironic that we have 2 jobs
Yet make half the pay
Working twice as hard
Dreaming of the America we were lied about
The America we would have died about
The America that is a daily bout
Of us vs your lack of acceptance
But lately nightmare ideologies
Are creeping into our daily lives
Making even our accents suspect
To these Freddy Krueger “protectors”
Carrying batons that resemble
Razor blades bound in leather gloves
Used to slice our innocence like we were children
Molesting our freedom
Uniforms that look like sweaters
Stained from the black oozing
From their standard issue hearts
And red stripes from the blood splatters
Of mandatory beating quotas
Faces burned with the fire
Of their hatred for us
But we are dream warriors
Using our wishes to give us the tools
To fight back against the deformed society
That says we disgust them
But I know why you really hate us
Its because we are living
The first American dream
The one we were introduced to
The daily celebration of Columbus Day
To arrive in an inhabited land
And say we live here now
and in response you tell us
Papers please
Star of David
Skin tone mentalities
Arizona acted initially
To be in the middle
Of Nazi regime
Papers?
Please by all means
Because instead of wrapping smallpox in blankets
We wrap weed in the papers we use
To keep you manageable
Your government has its papers for us
We have our papers we govern to you
No wonder you throw us in joints
That’s why we drive low-riders
To prove we aren’t always high
We're well grounded
As in not going anywhere
Hell isn’t a place you leave
Just to go back because
Our wings got tired
We are angels who didn’t fall from grace
We had our land ripped from under us
You opened the ground
And it swallowed us
It was just a matter of time
Before we ascended again
Without the use of rope
We aren’t the bane of your existence
We are the dark knights of your redemption
Robin you of your false sense of superiority
And you two-faced jokers
Who like to use and abuse us
You are out of our league
Our shadows shine brighter than you
We illuminate the American dream
So you can wake up and see
That finally
We have come back home


BIOS

Lacerated Dreams by Xuan Carlos Espinoza-Cuellar

Mother in Chains by Colleen Whitehorse Krinard

A veces ~ Sometimes by Lupe Rodriguez
The Stadium by Kenneth Salzmann
Dream Warriors by Dde TheSlammer

Xuan Carlos Espinoza-Cuellar. Xuanito identifies himself as a third world xueer/ista, mexican@, artivista, izquierdista, radical, proud person of size, estudiante y poeta. a person who believes in social justice and that poetry has the potential to revolutionize the world, cada palabra is a spark of consciousness, cada poema una transformacion profunda. A highly recognized poet and performer who dares to interrogate issues impacting our queer and immigrant communities. his performance ranges from cabaret to slam poetry. Xuanito has performed at several venues such as universities, gay clubs, book stores, pupuserias, glbt centers, straight bars and art galleries. his/her vision is one of reclaiming art from and to the margins, dignifying our forms of expression and use laughter to fight oppression and exploitation.

"Xuanito will slap you with knowledge and truth, and leave you wanting more."

Colleen Whitehorse Krinard, mother of six amazing and now grown life companions, has been writing songs and poetry since 1978. Singer, songwriter, poet, composer, writer, psychotherapist, social worker, energy intuitive, shaman, curandera, she has been called by one of her teacher-mentors, Dr. Arturo Ornelas of CEDEHC, Cuernavaca (Centro de Desarrollo Humano Hacia la Comunidad AC) ‘la bruja blanca que vuela con el viento’. Since being welcomed into this circle south of the border, her awareness of the history and current social-political issues pertaining to immigration and the relations between México and the Estados Unidos continues to grow and develop along with her process of moving towards fluency in Español.

Colleen holds degrees in Anthropology, Music, Social Work, and the School of Life. She has studied esoteric, metaphysical and healing traditions from around the world for over forty years, and utilizes and teaches her eclectic mezcla of this material in her Transformational Energetics sessions and classes. She has spent over twenty years working with people struggling with mental health, medical, and addictions issues in public clinics, offering specialized support in the treatment of trauma.

In the early years her work focused on personal themes; her poetry and songs were her way of coping with her experiences of becoming a single mother, a developing depression, and living with the after-effects of PTSD in her life. Pivotal changes occurred when she was exposed to a more global perspective of human history, economics and suffering through doctoral level coursework in Anthropology at the California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco, Ca where she learned about the creation of poverty and debt in the post-colonial Global South through the enforcement of fiscal structural adjustments and other colonizing economic policies.

Under the guidance of Dr. Wynne DuBray, Lakota Sioux, professor of Cultural Diversity and Mental Health in the MSW program at California State University, Sacramento, Colleen had the opportunity to identify and reconnect with her indigenous roots and values through a guided journaling project. Later, while working at Consolidated Tribal Health Project, a Pomo consortium in Mendocino County, California, between 2002 and 2005 she learned first-hand through the stories of her clients and their families of the traumatizing effects of racism, past and present affecting the People. At this time she also took classes in Native American studies at Sonoma State University, in Cotati, Ca, learning about both the legal-historical perspective of traumatization in a class on California Native American History taught by Raquelle Myers, Pomo, and David Lim, of the National Indian Justice Center in Santa Rosa, Ca, and also experiencing directly the resilience and creativity pouring out through Native American literature and poetry with Duane Big Eagle, Osage, Ok.

During this same timeframe Colleen was privileged to be in conversation with Edwin Lockhart, Sherwood Band Pomo, regarding local social justice issues as well as hearing about his personal shamanic process with fire circles, and how he was learning through dreams and visions, before his early passing.

Finally it was hearing John Trudell and his band, Mad Dog, in Boonville, California in live performance where the torch of passion lit the fire in her heart and planted the seeds for the application of her music and poetry to social justice issues.

Recently returned from five months living in Oaxaca, Mexico, she currently lives in Belen, NM, and works in a medical clinic in nearby Los Lunas, NM.

Colleen shares the following foundational concepts which guide her life and work:
we are not alone …
everything is energy …
everything is inter-connected …
life is a magnificent learning journey …
nature heals and sustains us and we owe a debt…
the full-meal-deal of life includes the light and the dark …
we learn by trying things out, mistakes are a good thing …
our obstacles are often the signposts highlighting our paths along the way …
we have an emergent need to learn ways to live increasingly in constructive and respectful relationship with nature in our modern lives …
why not smile, listen, share, learn, love and laugh as we go on our ways …

Kenneth Salzmann is a poet and writer who lives in Woodstock, New York. His poetry has appeared in such journals as Rattle, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Comstock Review, Home Planet News, and many more, and in such anthologies as Beloved on the Earth, Reeds and Rushes, Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers, and Child of My Child. He blogs at www.kensalzmann.com.

DDE The Slammer is an Indianpolis, IN native, but is born in Cancun, Mexico. He has been consistantly performing at opem mics and slams for the past six years. He has performed in several parts of the US as well as Germany. With poems ranging fom Mexican viewpoints (one of these poems had him practically banned from a restaurant in Indianapolis after he performed it) to video games to human trafficing to gas station danishes, his versatility can only be matched by the energy he brings. Self-titled leader of the "Bellyswag" movement, which is a movement that requires little movement, he has a large presence on stage in a figurative and literal stance. His CD entitled Common Sense Shoryuken holds a variety of poems and yes, the cover does have the button combo for a Dragon Punch

We Will Miss You: Ellen Levine

In the summer of 2003, I flew to Montpelier, Vermont for the first time. I was accepted to the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults! I was so eager to learn all the writing skills to become a better children's Book author.  Ellen Levine was my first workshop leader. She read and critiqued my work and gave me the bienvenida to Vermont College.  During my two years at Vermont College, Ellen was always there with open arms to guide me into the field of children's literature. Ellen left Planet Earth on May 26, 2012. Ellen thank you for all your books! There are a treasure for all our niños and niñas around the world. 

To read her obituary visit http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=ellen-levine&pid=157842058

I had the privilege to interview her in La Bloga in 2007. Here is the interview again for el recuerdo. 

Interview with Author Ellen Levine 

About Authenticity on Children's Literature

Ellen Levine is the author of several picture books including I HATE ENGLISH!, HENRY’S FREEDOM BOX, and IF YOUR NAME WAS CHANGED AT ELLIS ISLAND.

What does a picture book need to have in order to be multicultural?

Multiculturalism is by the cleanest definition the recognition of multiple cultures/ethnicities/races in a society. This, to my way of thinking, can only be a good thing: first, it recognizes reality; second, it reminds the dominant culture's institutions to work to reflect that reality.

When the term multiculturalism is invoked here (USA) about a piece of literature, it usually refers to a book centered around a world and characters who are not of the dominant white protestant world, although white protestants can certainly be part of the story. Although I haven't thought a great deal about this, I'd say off the top of my head that such a book generally has a viewpoint character who's not of the dominant culture/ethnicity/ race of the country in which the book is published. I'd be careful how much further I'd go in defining the category.

The problems arise to my way of thinking when rules are set forth and arbitrary standards mandated. Have you looked at Hazel Rochman's book AGAINST BORDERS: PROMOTING BOOKS FOR A MULTICULTURAL WORLD? In her introduction she writes about moving "beyond political correctness" both because it's stifling in itself and because it often provokes a backlash of reactionaries. Usually I myself avoid the term "political correctness" because it is used most often as a weapon by the right wing to stifle discussion. Call something "pc" and we all smile uncomfortably and don't discuss the substantive issues. But I acknowledge there are legitimate issues to discuss -- who can write about what. Actually for me, there's not much discussion when the question is phrased that way. 

Can an author write books outside his/ her culture?

My answer is anyone can write anything. And we all reserve the right to critique a work based not on the skin color or ethnic origin of the author, but on the accuracy, power, and beauty of the story. 

What do these authors need to do in order to write an authentic multicultural picture book?

Most important, and this applies to whoever writes the book: the same criteria exist that make any book good (or by contrast, unsuccessful or poor)-- no stereotypes and no socio-political-cultural errors. My point is if you think about it, we use these criteria even when we don't call a book "multicultural." To be sure, these criteria do take on meaning contoured in slightly different ways when we talk about nondominant cultures. Prejudice is often deeply embedded in socially-accepted images that are really reflections of the dominant culture's values and not accurate reflections of the culture portrayed. And so we get "lazy" Blacks or "chattering" and "noisy" Hispanics, or "stingy" and "inscrutable" Asians, etc. The reverse danger is that we romanticize or sentimentalize and keep "pure" and make "perfect" our minority protagonists and their stories. Both are to my way of thinking equally unacceptable.

We're often quick to question the motivation of the writer who's not a member of the group depicted if he or she has written of the characters with open eyes, that is, the ugly along with the beautiful. We should demand the same (rounded characters, real stories) of writers who are of the group they're writing about. The imperative is for accuracy, and this applies to fiction or nonfiction. There are many Hispanic, Black, Asian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, etc., sub-societies. No one person ever can speak for all. If writers are of the group they're writing about, then they start out with some bona fides, but they must recognize that notwithstanding their "insiderness," they still can't automatically count on being accurate, i.e., there are too many variations in any large social/ethnic/racial group.

If writers are not of the group they're writing about, they must have explored it deeply enough to reflect and reproduce it with accuracy and understanding. I don't know about the market in general; I tend to think about books one at a time, so I'm not much good to you there.

What inspired you to write I HATE ENGLISH!?

I can tell you a few things about I HATE ENGLISH! I spent several years working first on a television documentary about Chinatown in New York (we covered a little of San Francisco, but were really focused on NYC) and then tutoring Chinese immigrant kids at a Chinese community center. I even served a term on the board of the organization. I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours with Chinese immigrant young people, tutoring, counseling, sharing cups of tea and coffee, celebrating triumphs, sharing sadness, etc. When years later I sat down to write I HATE ENGLISH!, I was able to travel back in my mind and heart to those days.

And here's an interesting twist. The publisher decided to run the manuscript by a Chinese-American editor on staff. Her comments, as I told my editor, made little or no sense. And this wasn't surprising. She was born here to upper middle class parents and lived in that world, not the world of Chinatown with its immigrants and first generation kids. And so she didn't know the world I was writing about, even though she was of Asian background and I wasn't.

Another story: a Danish-born American I know (caucasian) wrote a children's book about the Hopi Indians. The first fan letter she got was from a Hopi couple who loved her book and, as they said in their letter, assumed she was Hopi. What she was in fact was a good researcher and writer.

My Shoes and I- Interview by 3rd-grade students

On May a group of 3rd grade Latino students critiqued my book My Shoes and I. You can read the critique here.

Muchas gracias niños and muchas gracias to maestro Rudy Garcia for your words and lindas palabras for My Shoes and I.

The students also sent me some questions. With mucho placer, here are my answers. :)

BryanG: How did you ever do this wonderful book?
Ever since I was trying to publish my first book, I wanted to write my story of crossing three borders. Yay! Now it is a book!

Have you gone through these things in your life?
This is my real journey from El Salvador to the United States. All the incidents in the book happened to me. I can still remember the dogs chasing me and discovering the holes on my shoes.

Nancy: What inspired you to do this book and how did you think of so many good ideas?
My journey to the United States was my inspiration to write this book. This journey and my life as a new immigrant child in the United States are my treasures of inspiration. Every time I want to write a new story, I look into my treasures and always find great stories.

Marianay: How did you come up with the story?
I lived the story. A famous Latin American author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, wrote that you have to live in order to tell the story. Writing this book was like writing in my own personal journal.

Adal: Where did you get all this information?
I got the information while I was walking, taking buses and crossing borders. The journey was scary and exciting at the same time. Scary because you never know what can happen on the road and exciting because I was going to see Mamá and escaping war. Every moment was recorded in my mind.

Lesley: Did you really need to cross the border when you were young?
Yes, because we did not have the right papers to fly to the United States. My family was poor in my country and the only way to come to the United States was to cross three borders.

Questions from several kids:
Do you like sad or happy endings?
I like happy endings because at the end of every book, I want to know that the main character will be fine or that there is hope to accomplish his/her dreams, but sometimes sad endings teach us valuable lessons. We can always learn from positive and negative experiences.

Do you ever write scary stories?
Yes, I do! In college I wrote the short story Blood Tears. A group of theater students loved my story so much that they created a play. It was great to see my story in action.

Writer/writing questions
Lesley: What made you interested in writing?
My mother’s uncle Jorge Buenaventura Laínez, a Salvadoran author, inspired me to dream that I could be a writer in the future. Also, every time I read a book, I am transported into a new world where anything can happen. Tío Jorge is the seed of inspiration and the books are the water that nurture my imagination.

Alan & Ruben: How did you become a famous writer?
Thanks for thinking that I am famous . I submitted my stories to many publishers. Some publishers said no, but I did not give up. Piñata Books said yes and published my first book, Waiting for Papá.

Alex: when did you start to write books?
I wrote my first poem when I was seven years old. In high school and college I wrote many stories such as Blood Tears. When I became a teacher, I started to write children’s stories.

Marianay: How does it feel being an author?
It is great to know that my books are reaching many hands and that entire families are enjoying them.

Other questions
BrianC: Do you have a special writing room? Did someone help you write this?
My special writing room is always a library. I write better in a silent place and the library is perfect because I am surrounded by books. I write my stories but my editors help me to edit them when they are ready to become books.

Brisa: What do you like to read?
I love memoirs and books that are based on real stories. Also, I like to read fantasy and adventure books.

Sarahy: Did you ever treat something like a person, like the personifications in your book?
Yes I do! I always say beautiful things to my computer because I need it to write my stories. When I am looking for something, I always say “Beautiful and wonderful _________. Where are you? In this way, I always find what I am looking for.

muchos saludos,

René Colato Laínez