Guest Reviewer: Breaking Pattern, Black Beauty, My Friend Flicka

Editor's Note (Michael Sedano): Earlier in March, La Bloga-Tuesday when featured Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilara Guest Reviewing Xochitl-Julissa Bermejo's Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites, we promised a review of the reviewer's own book. It's La Bloga-Tuesday's distinct pleasure welcoming Lisbeth Coiman's dicho review.

Breaking Pattern for YA Heroines

Guest Reviewer Lisbeth Coiman. 

Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera. Breaking Pattern. Riverside, CA: Inlandia Institute, December 2023 

In Ponca City, OK during rodeo season, I sat on the bleachers trying to understand whatever was happening in the arena, because the presenter’s Oklahoma droll didn’t help me. Then my neighbor and former Rodeo Queen bought a 40-acre piece of land because she loved horses so much. She needed the space. Soon she was boarding horses, and my son was one of her first students on the ranch. 

 

All those memories came back while reading Breaking Pattern by Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera (link). In Reichle-Aguilera’s debut novel, this Young Adult dramatic tale of junior rodeos happens at the intersection of horses, tender love, family dynamics, gender, class, and mental health. 

 

The main character, Adriana Elizabeth Herrera Bowen, is a 17 year-old girl who dreams of winning the All-around Rodeo competition. She is a junior in high school and enjoys the support of her father but has a conflicted relationship with her mother. 

The seemingly overprotective mother is opposed to Adriana competing in rodeo because of the inherent risk of injury. The reader later learns her parents have been holding a painful secret from her. The mother has been projecting trauma and long lasting grief on her daughter. Thus, Reichle-Aguilera explores mental health issues through the strained mother-daughter relationship.

“I pick up the picture. How did Joseph die?” 

     She takes a deep breath. “At the park. Some kids were spinning the merry-go-round too fast. He lost his grip, hit his head on the metal, and landed on the concrete.” 

     “Nothing your mother could have done.” She looks me in the eyes. “She’s carried that guilt all these years. That’s why she’s afraid of everything.” 

     “That’s why she hates me doing rodeo. She’s afraid I’ll fall off and die.” I slump into my seat and try to stop seeing that baby, my brother, and his fragile little head. “How old was he?”

     “Almost four.””

Besides her immediate family, Adriana enjoys a beautiful supportive network of loving people which includes tía, cousin, and friends. Like her, her friends compete in junior rodeos and help each other overcome obstacles in the competitions. 

 

Along with Adriana, most of these young cowboys and cowgirls come from working class families. Acutely aware of her family’s financial limitations, Adriana takes on extra work to help pay her entry fees. 

 

When presented with the opportunity to join one of the most coveted competitions, team roping, for which Adriana seems to have a natural talent, our young heroine stands for her principles and her friends, rejecting the financial benefit of pairing up with a wealthy, handsome, yet despicable male acquaintance. 

 

Chicanonautica: Once Upon a Time, a 12 Year-Old Chicana was Attacked by a Monster . . .

by Ernest Hogan

Things are so complicated these days. I miss the times when I could simply say, hey everybody, my wife, Emily Devenport, and I have just published a YA fantasy novel, with a Chicana heroine, and here’s where you can buy and order it. That would be so easy. 

Unfortunately, this is the 21st century, and 2016 to boot. Explanations are required. 

The Terrible Twelves by Emily Devenport and Ernest Hogan is not a physical or ebook in the traditional sense (I just realized that I just used the word “traditional” in reference to ebooks -- ay! ay! ay! Welcome to another brave new world.) It’s available through a website called Tapastic, and can be read on phones and other devices.

Yeah, a lot of you are probably thinking: What the hell is Tapastic, and do people really read books on their phones? 

Maybe I should go back the the origin story of The Terrible Twelves . . .

The Terrible Twelves cover art by INOGART

Once upon a time, there was a chain of bookstores called Borders. Emily and I worked in one. Because of Harry Potter a lot of young adult fantasy was selling. I had recently failed to sell both a detective novel and a “straight commercial” novel, my career was floating in the toilet. Standing behind a cash register, I contemplated the situation, frustrated that I couldn’t come up with something to take advantage of the trend.
Then I thought of the classic coming-of-age scenario: What if a monster comes to attack a kid as the hormones kick in? Maybe to go against the grain of the Harry Potter model, make it a girl instead of a boy – an anti-Harry Potter! Soon her parents give her the bad news -- she’s going to have to go live with her aunt and uncle in Arizona! 

Not bad, but that was all I could muster. More frustration. 

So I did what I usually do when I’m stuck -- talked it over with Emily. 

She liked the idea, and had some more of her own having to do with adolescent girl angst that I would have never come up with. We decided to work on it together. I had all this Chicano family stuff, and strange, exotic Arizona was all around us, and then there’s the usual magic that happens when the two of us start bouncing stuff off each other. 

The authors of The Terrible Twelves

Soon we had a novel, but then there was a collapse in publishing . . . Borders died . . . the world still hasn’t recovered. Also, New York didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with us. We retreated to the underground, and experimented with self-publishing. 

Recently, an opportunity came to put something up on Tapastic. We remembered The Terrible Twelves, so we decided to try it out. 

I’ve found that especially when you’re writing quirky genre-type stuff (I don’t mind the sci-fi label, because everything I do seems to be too weird for the mainstream) it pays to try strange new things that come along. Most of my favorite writers originally appeared in things like pulp magazines, paperback books, and other formats that aren’t considered legitimate. I’ve already done Brainpan Fallout that was written to be sent via fax. I’m assuming that this will continue as we cross the new electronic frontiers. 

And Tapastic is something new. It had me confused at first. I just turned 61. I remember manual typewriters, and other ancient technologies. But now that I’ve had a chance to study it, it looks like great way to get things out there. 

They chop the material into bite-sized sections that can be read on a phone. They are connected to the social media. They make it look like manga. Looks like this is a better place to connect with the younger generation than everywhere I’ve been published. They don’t call themselves a publisher, “we are an open platform. Think YouTube.” And they pay through an Ad Revenue Program. 

It’s an experiment. As that guy who recently won the Nobel Prize said, “When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.” 

I’ll let you know how it works out. Meanwhile, check out The Terrible Twelves, it’s way beyond Harry Potter. 

Ernest Hogan is the author of High Aztech, and has been published by some of the most unusual publishers and publications ever, and will probably continue to do so.

A Chicano novelist and his literary works – David Bowles

One characteristic of mainstream Anglo-American literature is separation of literary works vs genre works. Literary is considered superior, more scholarly and artistic, while genre--also called speculative lit, including sci-fi, fantasy, horror and more--is considered something less. Think of it in terms of an Anglo vs POC parallel.

Certain authors and their works have superseded the arbitrary separation belittling speculative literature, like the English author, Neil Gaiman. While Chicano and Latino authors have been producing literature that belies biases against speculative lit, today La Bloga focuses on tejano David Bowles.

The American Library Association recently selected Bowles's YA novel, The Smoking Mirror, as a 2016 Pura Belpré Honor Book.* The award recognizes writing that “best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.” The committee stated: “Bowles creates an action-packed story based on Aztec and Mayan mythology while capturing the realities of life in contemporary South Texas and Mexico.”

Note that his book was not honored in a sci-fi or fantasy category; the Belpré was given for "an outstanding work of literature." Period. People who choose not to read or get this book for their kids because it's not "mainstream," are missing the point of the Belpré award--"Outstanding literature."

Carol Garza character

Bowles's works go beyond this award-winning book. He writes reviews for the establishment press, writes books of poetry, translations of Náhuatl, history, folklore, research and other prose. You can read some of this below or on his website, but the point is that a speculative lit book was penned by a scholar whose literary credentials are wide-encompassing and growing.

Even if you're a Chicano who never liked genre lit, your kids are going to see Hunger Games, The Martian, Harry Potter movies and possibly reading the same. Consider getting them copies of the Garza Twins books, and other books by Chicano and Latino authors that have heroes as brown as them, as Chicano as them, as literarily worthy as the Anglo authors of the films mentioned.

The other twin, Johnny

Synopsis of The Smoking Mirror: "Carol and Johnny Garza are 12-year-old twins whose lives in a small Texas town are forever changed by their mother’s unexplained disappearance. Shipped off to relatives in Mexico by their grieving father, the twins soon learn that their mother is a nagual, a shapeshifter, and that they have inherited her powers. In order to rescue her, they will have to descend into the Aztec underworld and face the dangers that await them." (Garza Twins • Book One)

Synopsis of A Kingdom Beneath the Waves: The Garza family’s Christmas vacation in Mexico is cut short by the appearance of Pingo, one of the elfish tzapame. The news is grim: a rogue prince from an ancient undersea kingdom is seeking the Shadow Stone, a device he will use to flood the world and wipe out humanity. Now Carol and Johnny must join a group of merfolk and travel into the deepest chasms of the Pacific Ocean to stop the prince and his monstrous army with their savage magic. (Garza Twins • Book Two)

Other books by Bowles:

Ghosts of the Rio Grande Valley (The History Press, Sept. 2016)

Border Lore: Folktales and Legends of South Texas (2015)

The Smoking Mirror (March 2015)

Strange Texas Tales That Never Die, Volumes 1-4 (2014)

Creature Feature: 13 Frightening Folktales of the Rio Grande Valley (2013)

Flower, Song, Dance: Aztec and Mayan Poetry (2013)—winner of the Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translation

Mexican Bestiary (2012)—with Noé Vela.

About David Bowles: "A product of an ethnically diverse family with Latino roots, I have lived most of my life in the Río Grande Valley of south Texas, where I teach at the University of Texas. Recipient of awards from the American Library Association, Texas Institute of Letters and Texas Associated Press, I have written several books.

"Additionally, my work has been published in venues including Rattle, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Metamorphoses, Translation Review, Concho River Review, Huizache, Axolotl, The Thing Itself, Eye to the Telescope and James Gunn’s Ad Astra."

For more info on the author and his works: http://davidbowles.us/category/books/author/

PS: it's also David's birthday today, FYI.

* Belpré recipients are selected by a committee of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association, and the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-speaking (REFORMA).