Juan Felipe Herrera Continues To Amaze

Book News - The University of Arizona Press For Immediate Release: Holly Schaffer, Publicity Manager # 520-621-3920, hollys@uapress.arizona.edu

Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems JUAN FELIPE HERRERA
Publication Date: July 17, 2008
Camino del Sol: A Latina and Latino Literary Series 288 pages 6 x 9
ISBN: 978-0-8165-2703-8, $24.95 paper + CD

“The rich, chromatic imagery, the lyrical tone, and the flowing rhythm make the reading of this collection a profound experience, an experience not easily forgotten.” —Luis Leal, author of A Luis Leal Reader

For nearly four decades, Juan Felipe Herrera has documented his experience as a Chicano in the United States and Latin America through stunning, memorable poetry that is both personal and universal in its impact, themes, and approach. Often political, never fainthearted, his career has been marked by tremendous virtuosity and a unique sensibility for uncovering the unknown and the unexpected.

Through a variety of stages and transformations, Herrera has evolved more than almost any other Chicano poet, always re-inventing himself into a more mature and seasoned voice. Now, in this unprecedented collection, we encounter the trajectory of this highly innovative and original writer, bringing the full scope of his singular vision into view. Beginning with early material from A Certain Man and moving through thirteen of his collections into new, previously unpublished work, this assemblage also includes an audio CD of the author reading twenty-four selected poems aloud.

Serious scholars and readers alike will now have available to them a representative set of glimpses into his production as well as his origins and personal development. The ultimate value of bringing together such a collection, however, is that it will allow us to better understand and appreciate the complexity of what this major American poet is all about.

Juan Felipe Herrera holds the Tomás Rivera Endowed chair in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. For the last thirty-five years, Juan Felipe has been writing, publishing, reading, performing, leading workshops, and organizing literary broadsides, journals, and publications in home communities and universities in California and throughout the nation. He is the author of 24 books, and he has more than one-hundred articles, poems, reviews, and essays in print.

The University of Arizona Press, founded in 1959, is a nonprofit publisher of about fifty books each year, with over 800 books in print. Publications include scholarly and trade titles in Native American and Latina/o studies, anthropology, archaeology, nature writing and environmental studies, regional history, Latin American studies, and space sciences. The Press publishes two critically acclaimed series in fiction and poetry, Sun Tracks: An American Indian Literary Series, and Camino del Sol: A Latina and Latino Literary Series.

Lisa Alvarado

Bravo, Hermanos y Hermanas and University of Arizona Press!

University of Arizona Press authors from across the nation earn acclaim at 2008 International Latino Book Awards

Since 1999 the nonprofit organization Latino Literacy Now has honored the many positive contributions being made to Latino literature by publishers and writers worldwide through its annual International Latino Book Awards competition. Attracting nominations from publishers across the United States as well as Mexico, South and Central America, and Spain, this competition highlights titles that exemplify literary excellence within the Latino community. Presented at BookExpo America, this year’s awards honored titles running the gamut of subjects from murders of innocent women in Juárez to the history of the Day of the Dead. Four University of Arizona Press titles were recognized as vital contributions to Latino history and culture.

Francisco Aragón’s "The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry" earned First Place in the Poetry in English category. In this groundbreaking collection, readers discover works by emerging Latino and Latina poets in the twenty-first century. Hailed by Booklist as a “ravishing collection,” this work introduces such highly acclaimed writers as Naomi Ayala, Richard Blanco, David Dominguez, Gina Franco, Sheryl Luna, and Urayoán Noel. The poems in this collection traverse tantalizing subjects ranging from living and traveling overseas to the nuances of living in suburbia and navigating life in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. This rich and varied sample of young, talented North American Latino and Latinas embodies a freshness and mastery of language that is not to be missed.

Kathleen Alcalá’s "The Desert Remembers My Name: On Family and Writing" earned First Place in the Autobiography/Memoir in English category. In this delightful and rewarding collection of essays by an esteemed Chicana author, Alcalá lyrically explores the many meanings of “family,” while searching for significance in the histories of her family and other people who have influenced her life and writing. Although the essays are in many ways personal, they are also universal. Through her exploration, readers discover not only why Alcalá is a writer but also why she should be appreciated: because she helps others find themselves.

Blas Falconer’s poetry collection "A Question of Gravity and Light" earned Second Place in the Poetry in English category. In this debut collection, Falconer presents 45 poems that are emotionally forthright and linguistically evocative but written without affectation or subterfuge. Although he is a gay man who embraces his Puerto Rican heritage, he crafts poems that speak to all readers with engaging directness, free of pretense or posturing. In a review titled “The Exiled Voice,” the Nashville Scene calls Falconer an imagistic poet who does “a remarkably skillful job of exploring that space in the mind where passing sights and sounds make contact with the deeply buried self, creating a poignant depiction of a man who finds himself always a stranger in a strange land.”

Rodolfo Acuña’s "Corridors of Migration: The Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600–1933" earned Honorable Mention in the History in English category. In this sweeping history, Acuña—the founding scholar of Chicano history—presents the culmination of three decades of dedicated research into the causes and effects of migration and labor activism. This well-written narrative documents how Mexican workers formed communities against all odds. According to Acuña, “this book is about the resilience of people who have been exploited and how they have overcome it.” In writing Corridors of Migration, Acuña traveled to Arizona, New Mexico, Mexico, and most of the major U.S. libraries and archives in Washington, D.C. The research and insight this book presents will surely make it a seminal study for years to come.

The University of Arizona Press, founded in 1959, is a nonprofit publisher of about fifty books each year, with over 800 books in print. Publications include scholarly and trade titles in Native American and Latina/o studies, anthropology, archaeology, nature writing and environmental studies, regional history, Latin American studies, and space sciences. The Press publishes two critically acclaimed series in fiction and poetry, Sun Tracks: An American Indian Literary Series, and Camino del Sol: A Latina and Latino Literary Series.

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CALIFAS FABULOUSNESS

The Spine of Califas: A Poetic Road Trip
If you only go to one poetry reading this year, this is it! Look at this line-up!

Music:
Los Illegals (Willy Herron, Xiuy Velo)

Performers:
Richard Montoya (of Culture Clash)
Lysa Flores
Jade Ross
Cihuatl-Ce
Paul Calderon
Rafael F J Alvarado
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo
Adolfo Guzman-Lopez (your driver for the night)

It's a night of music and poetry that'll take you on the freeways and by-ways of the state. The poets are the offramps. The music, by East L.A.'s legendary Los Illegals, is the 92 octane that'll power you through a scenic night of verse and song.
Get in, close the car door and put on your seatbelts, the poetry and music is about rev up
(it's cheaper than driving anywhere these days).

When: 8:00 p.m. Saturday, June 14th, 2008
Where: Tropico de Nopal Gallery Art-Space,
1665 Beverly Blvd., Echo Park

For more info: (213) 481-8112

$10


Richard Montoya
Is one third of the unholy trinity known as Culture Clash. Since their founding nearly 25 years ago Culture Clash has become one of the foremost theater troupes in the country, commenting on social, demographic and political changes in plays performed around the country.

Jade Ross
Poet, painter, writer, songstress, designer- Jade Ross is an artist by birth, singer by trade, and emcee in conception. From South Africa to South Central she has performed for hundreds of audiences, capturing the essence of a spirit long lost in music. Early beginnings from Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall to The Temple Bar Santa Monica, her melodies make hips wind like something sexy, her rhythms make heads nod in affirmation that hip hop is more complex than you think, and her content makes you think...... damn!

Cihuatl-Ce
Once a runaway now a youth advocate/outreach worker, her passion for social change can be felt within the energy and urgency of her lyrics using music to reach the people specifically inner city ghetto youth. She brings it raw, uncensored and unstoppable. Educating while empowering and uplifting, fusing hip hop with indigenous sounds in an effort to share some of the ancient teachings that remain after 515 years of colonization so that they may continue to be passed on and never be forgotten.

Paul Calderon & Rafael F J Alvarado
Has been producing poetry shows and hustling poetry for twenty years, He produces most of the shows on the World Wide Word Radio Network & hosts The Moe Green Poetry Hour. He's obsessive-compulsive about poetry & once in a while he manage to host a good show. Now & then poetry finds him and slaps him around.

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo
Is a 28-year-old Los Angeles poet. Writing since she was six, but new to the scene she began seriously pursuing her writing when she was accepted into the MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry program at Antioch University Los Angeles. In addition to working on her writing she is a full-time high school Drama and English instructor and theatre director.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez
Co-founded the Taco Shop Poets in 1994. He's currently the arts and education reporter at KPCC 89.3FM

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A Sunday afternoon of Poetry At
The Amsterdam Cafe
Sunday, June 22
hosted By Rafael F J Alvarado
at 3 pm

Amsterdam Cafe
10905 Magnolia Boulevard
North Hollywood, CA 91601
(818) 506-1938

Featuring:

Amaranth Borsuk
Hélène Cardona
Kate Durbin
John M. FitzGerald


Amaranth Borsuk
Amaranth Borsuk is a Ph.D. candidate in Literature and Creative
Writing at the University of Southern California. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in ZYZZYVA, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art,
Denver Quarterly, POOL, and thedrunkenboat.com. She recently placed
third in The Atlantic's student poetry contest, and her manuscript,
Pomegranate Eater, has been a semifinalist for the Walt Whitman Award
from the Academy of American Poets, the Four Way Books intro prize,
and the Saturnalia Books poetry prize

A citizen of the United States, France and Spain, Hélène Cardona is fluent in English, French, Spanish, German, Greek and Italian. Born in Paris of a Greek mother and Spanish father and raised all over Europe, she studied English Philology and Literature in Cambridge, England; Spanish at the International Universities of Santander and Baeza, Spain; and German at the Goethe Institute in Bremen, Germany.

She attended Hamilton College, New York, where she also taught French and Spanish, and the Sorbonne, Paris, where she wrote her thesis on Henry James for her Master’s in American Literature. She worked as a translator/interpreter for the Canadian Embassy and the French Chamber of Commerce. She is also a teacher and dream analyst and has appeared in many films.

Her first book, The Astonished Universe, an uplifting and luminous collection of poetry about consciousness, is the first bilingual edition in English and French from Red Hen Press. Richard Wilbur writes that “each poem fully exists in two tongues at once, and this adds to the book’s great charm and visionary quality.”


Kate Durbin
Kate Durbin’s first collection of poetry, The Ravenous Audience, is forthcoming from Black Goat Press/Akashic Books in Fall 2009. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Drunken Boat, The Ledge Poetry and Fiction Magazine, The Elegant Variation and Boxcar Poetry Review. Currently, she is a staff writer for Asian American Poetry and Writing (http://www.aapw-la.org). Kate received her MFA from the University of California in Riverside, and is working on a novel.


John M. FitzGerald
A dual citizen of the United States and Ireland, John M. FitzGerald is a poet and attorney
in Los Angeles. He attended UCLA and the University of West Los Angeles School of Law,
where he was editor of the Law Review.

His poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies.
Spring Water, a novel in verse, was a Turning Point Prize selection.
His second book of poetry, Telling Time by the Shadows, came out in April 2008 from Turning Point Books. His other collections include The Mind, The Charter of Effects, and Question of Creation. He has just completed his first novel, Primate, and has turned it into a screenplay.

He has lived in England and Italy, and currently resides in Santa Monica.

Robert Nazarene, editor of the American Journal of Poetry, says
“SPRING WATER is to poetry what The Silence of The Lambs is
to filmdom: a harrowing, horrifying narrative trip which makes for
an absolutely compelling read...brilliantly delivered by one of America's
most promising new poets.”


http://www.helenecardona.com/

And lastly, dear readers, don't miss Monday's guest post by Kathleen de Azevedo

Here's an excerpt....

...I know I am adding to, a literary landscape made rich by other Latino writers. I can pretty much know that for now, what I write is not being duplicated anywhere else. Like a pioneer, the writing experience leaves me both lonely and thrilled...

...I’d like to think I don’t play the identity card, but I do. As writers, we would like to think it is enough just to present our individual visions. But Brazilian as well other Latino writers are faced with a general population that has misconceptions about our culture, so in a sense, we are teachers as well. An added responsibility? Yes. And for this, the door for us to go through has got to be larger. The Latino literature landscape – from Aztlán to Tierra del Fuego – contains many voices begging to be heard.


Lisa Alvarado

Storming Heaven's Gate/What Women Can Do

STORMING HEAVEN'S GATE -- photo by Graciela Iturbide

This is a multicultural anthology of spiritual writings by women. In rediscovering spirituality in a female context, this is ideal source material. By ‘source’ I mean personal soul food to feed my own yearnings, ground water for the wellspring of my daily life. Storming Heaven’s Gate skillfully bridges the everyday with the divine, featuring the writing of Pat Mora, Lucille Clifton, and Audre Lorde. I would like to comment specifically on the work of these women and its impact on my creative life.


Pat Mora’s contribution is a list poem, in which she invokes the Goddess through her many Aztec names. In a cry for wholeness and renewal she calls on Coatlicue, Tlaliyolo, and the Virgin de Tepayac/Guadalupe. Coatlicue is the serpent mother, representing all and nothingness from whence all emerges. Tlaliyolo is the creator/destroyer of worlds, and the Virgin of Tepeyac/Guadalupe is the eternal maiden, ever able to renew herself across the ages. The world springs forth, eats itself, springs forth again, dissolves itself in velvet blackness, and rises again, as one, as many, divine and common. These facets of the divine reflect exactly the kind of sensual, radiant cycle of spirituality that are the hallmark of Storming Heaven’s Gate.

Creatively and personally, I needed to engage the Goddess in a Latin context. In doing so, I found freedom from restrictive ideas of female identity that have been Catholicism's and colonialism's legacy. It is precisely the idea of sin, of the inherent pollution of women’s bodies, that had to be broken through for me to fully claim my creative energy and direct it.

As I continue to try to make new work, I have to reach out for connection in an ever-deepening way. My personal spirituality is being plumbed for imagery, for language, for a way to connect with something larger than myself.

Ironically, and in a way I can only begin to comprehend, this spiritual connection is plumbing me as well. What I mean here is that I can't forget that writing is my tether to something divine. Personal success, critical or audience acceptance needs to remain a secondary consideration, as much as care about those things. ‘What is being worked though me?’ is the question that I have to ask myself, the question that demands an answer at the end of the day.

In 'brothers, part 6,' Lucille Clifton cries out to a silent God who turns a deaf ear to suffering. She asks:

tell me why
in the confusion of a mountain
of babies stacked like cordwood...
tell me why You neither raised your hand
nor turned away...why You said nothing. (p.28)

I can feel my own tears lodge in my throat as I write this. What a terrible beauty exists in her description of both a personal and global apocalypse. Her wound, her grief, the abandoned bodies of nameless children, unsaved, unprotected.


Clifton asks the eternal question of a God she desperately wants connection with but does not understand. I remember my own rage at what I saw at the time as God's silence in the face of my own childhood abuse. I see now that what happened was part of my story unfolding, the catalyst for who I've become. It was a singular gift, a defining moment, in which I had to choose to live and to transform. In my case, that moment is where I encountered a God/Goddess.


Lastly, Audre Lorde illustrates the kind of language and imagery I can only hope to achieve someday. She was poet, theorist, theologian, lover, survivor, and griot - someone who once tore down the Master's house and built a temple to the New/Old Mother. One poem in particular kept speaking to me, even in dreams after I read it for the first time. In it, Lorde writes:

Attend me, hold me in you muscular arms, protect me
from throwing any part of myself away. (p.67)

How perfect this quote is, to its vision of encountering the very dark and moving into the light. How moving it is to hear a call to restoration and rebirth in a woman’s voice, shaped by She-Who-Is.

• ISBN-10: 0452276217

• ISBN-13: 978-0452276215

Lisa Alvarado

Michele Serros: Scandalosa y Fabulosa!

Michele Serros and Scandalosa

Named by Newsweek as "One of the Top Young Women to Watch for in the New Century" and by Tu Ciudad magazine as one of Los Angeles’ “Hip, Hot and Now” artists, Michele Serros is the author of Chicana Falsa and other stories of death, identity and Oxnard, How to be a Chicana Role Model, Honey Blonde Chica and her newest young adult novel, Scandalosa! In addition to being an award-winning poet, Serros has been a featured contributor for the Los Angeles Times' children's fiction section and a commentator for National Public Radio (Morning Edition, Weekend All Things Considered, Anthem, Along for the Ride, Latino USA). She has read her poems to stadium crowds of 25,000+ for Lollapalooza, recorded Selected Stories from Chicana Falsa for Mercury Records and was selected by the Poetry Society of America to have her poetry placed on MTA buses throughout Los Angeles County.

While still a student at Santa Monica City College, Michele’s first book of poetry and short stories, Chicana Falsa, was published. When the original publisher of Chicana Falsa went out of business, Michele continued to sell copies from her garage until Riverhead Books reissued Chicana Falsa and as well as a collection of short stories, How to be a Chicana Role Model. The latter instantly placed 5th on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list.

In 2002, Michele wrote for the ABC television sitcom, The George Lopez Show. "An opportunity," she says, "that hopefully with my contribution opens the door for a wider representation of Latinos in the mass media."

Serros’ work is required reading in U.S. high schools and universities and garners a diverse fan base ranging from Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers ("Michele is the great Californian writer who makes me proud of my state. When I read her books I cry and laugh.") to author Sandra Cisneros ("Michele Serros is the young, sassy writer whose brilliant weapon is her humor.”) The New York Public Library recommends Honey Blonde Chica as a “Book for the Teen Age 2007. Originally from Oxnard, California, Michele is currently working on a new novel, An Unmarried Mexican.

1. Scandalosa is a sequel to Honey Blonde Chica, with Evie a little bit further down the road of adolescence. Without giving too much away, what's going on with Evie?

In Scandalosa, Evie is now two months older than she was in HBC. She has also entered a new semester of school. In teenage years, such changes are paramount! She is excited to celebrate her Sweet Sixteen era and envisions her party to be similar to MTV's Sweet Sixteen but with all the traditional trappings (and birthday checks) of a quinceañera. BUT she is facing an obstacle. Will this obstacle interfere with her party... the pachanga of the school year? You'll have to read to find out!

2. You avoid a romantic portrayal of teens, yet Honey Blonde Chica isn't about the gang girl stereotype offered up as the YA Chicano/a experience. Can you also talk about the decision to write YA and it's significance to you, and your choice of
characters?

YA books saved me as a preteen. I grew up reading Judy Blume, Beverly Clearie, S. E. Hinton, and Louise Fitzhough. My first attempt at YA is an unpublished manuscript under my bed back home in NYC. It's titled Notes from a Medium Brown Girl. My agent has deemed it "took dark" and suggests that maybe I should focus on other projects but I haven't given up on Notes...just yet. The role of Evie is pretty much myself as a teenager. I dressed like a surfer but never flopped my belly on a board, ever. So the next best thing, of course, was dating a surfer. At 17, it was a dream for me to be the girlfriend of the tri-county (Ventura, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria) surf champion -- who was also Mexican (American) like me!

3. You seem to love and have a sense of playfulness concerning our pop icons and pop culture in general...I noticed on your site the gamine pose, where you're covered with chicharrones, as well as having seen a promos for Scandalosa where it looks like you're having fun with charreada and Flor Silvestre. Where does that love and that irreverence come from? How important an element is it for you in how you look at the world and how you approach writing?

Yes! The photo shoot with the chicharrones was for Estylo magazine. The editors had brought up Salma Hayek's Los Angeles magazine cover's version of Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream and other Delights. They suggested we push it a little further and had me wear a dress of pork rinds, rather than whipped cream. It was pretty funny. The photographer's assistant's sole job was to fan flies away and after the shoot, my skin was so greasy. My only regret is that too many people think I'm completely naked under the skins!

4. Who are the writers/artists that move you and how do you think they've influenced you and your work?

Oscar Zeta Acosta made a big impression on my while I was a college student. And Lester Bangs. I have more records and CDs than books and when I was younger I was always trying to write record or show reviews for underground fanzines and rags. One book I loved was I'm with the Band, by Pamela de Barres.

5. Where do you think the challenges lie for you as a creative person?

Discipline! It's challenging to pays bills based on your creativity.

Also, I tend to over think too much. It drives my friends and family crazy.

6. Are there people that act as mentors/sounding boards for you? If so, how does that mesh into how you work?

Oh yeah. I'm afraid that a current boyfriend is always put in the position of being the unexpected sounding board. I pity the man who is dating me in the middle or start of a new manuscript or project. They have to hear me whine about every little sentence that isn't going well. I'm really attracted to men who hold blue collar type jobs -- carpenters, contractors, UPS delivery guys -- men (in my experience) who don't typically read fiction a lot. So it's really good for me to share my work with them, because if they aren't "getting it" it's a sign for me to work a bit harder. Not saying that blue collar men are my entire "demographic" but I definitely don't want to write for other writers or, say, for the editors of The New Yorker. For me, the biggest compliment is from someone who admits that they don't like to read but confess that they actually read one of my books and liked it!

7. Where would you like to see yourself personally and creatively in ten years? In twenty?

I'd like to see Notes from a Medium Brown Girl published. I'm currently working on two manuscripts -- one of them is An Unmarried Mexican. It's about my first year in New York City after being newly separated from my ex-husband.

8. What something not the official bio?

That I was once married to the drummer of the heavy rock Queens of the Stone Age. It's something being a musician's wife. You're like in a little club with all the other band member's wives who can be really catty and extremely insecure. And you know if your man is getting kicked out of the band soon...because little by little all the wives stop inviting you to shop Melrose. This experience, of course, has inspired yet another manuscript I've been working on -- The Hair Club for Men.


Scandalosa
ISBN-10: 1416915931
ISBN-13: 978-1416915935

Michele's MySpace page

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GREAT TEATRO LUNA NEWS!

CURRENTLY PLAYING:

MACHOS

After a sold out run at Chicago Dramatists, MACHOS is moving to the 16th Street Theater in Berwyn, IL, conveniently located near the CTA/Blue Line Austin stop.

Tickets are already on sale, and I hope you will help spread the word!

Here's the scoop:
MACHOS At 16th Street Theater 4 weeks only! January 25 through – February 17, 2008

Fridays at 7:30 PM Saturdays at 5:00 PM Saturdays at 8:00 PM Sundays at 6:00 PM

BUY TICKETS ONLINE at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/25539


Lisa Alvarado