Dos Noticias de Chicago

For Immediate Release:
Leo Suarez, 773.392.9697, info@lastablas.com

Join us for our second installment of Raices (Roots) Fridays, a night of Afro-Latin music and culture with a philanthropic cause

This weekly showcase of some of Chicago’s finest traditional Afro-Latin music ensembles and will benefit a different charity every month. The entire month of April benefits the Chicago AIDS Marathon and The American Red Cross of Greater Chicago has joined the effort to host every Friday in May.

Proceeds of every Friday night over the course of the month will go to the pre-selected charity, including every sale of Las Tablas’ famous sangria, widely acknowledged as one of the tastiest sangrias in the city.




This Friday, 4/17:

OgundaMasá is a performance group committed to preserving and performing various African influenced musical traditions from Cuba. They are the only Afro-Cuban The group is comprised of musicians, educators, and cultural affiliates working as a collective to continue and promote these traditions in Chicago. The group performs folkloric genres such as Rumba and Güiro; which are the musical root of Salsa music.

Next Friday, 4/24:

OgundaMasá will be joined by Nuestro Tambó (1st and 3rd Fridays), a Chicago-based group that is comprised of second and third generation Puerto Rican men and women who hail from the inner-city of Chicago and have committed themselves to the promotion and celebration of the Afro Puerto Rican genres of Plena and Bomba. They are unique in Chicago in that they represent Bomba as a living musical form rather than a folkloric tradition. They will also be celebrating the upcoming release of their debut CD.

Raices Fridays:

Every Friday starting April 3rd
2942 N. Lincoln Ave, 9:30 pm – 1:30 am$5 Mojitos, $5 Donation
$4 Cuba Libre, $5 Donation
All Sangria sales benefit Chicago AIDS Marathon in April and Red Cross of Chicagoland in May
Nuestro Tambó: 1st and 3rd Fridays
Ogunda Masá: 2nd and 4th Fridays

Casa Aztlán

Casa Aztlan is an educational and social center providing cultural activities, community service, leadership development services for teenagers and kids, adult education, citizenship, emergency services and community organization. Casa Aztlan is also on the vanguard of the human rights movement and immigrant's civil rights.

Since its foundation in 1970, Casa Aztlan has participated in organizing the power of the Pilsen community; it has fought for bilingual education, amnesty for undocumented workers, health services for the immigrant community, construction of the Benito Juarez High school and the West Side Technical Institute, development of adult education programs, program Circulo de Lectura Padre e Hijo which was converted into the Telpochcalli pre-school; and has helped create the alphabetical Hispanic council since 1980.

Casa Aztlan has developed an effective after school program for children between 7 and 14 years of age. This program offers kids academic help, sports, recreational activities, and cultural development through music classes and art. During the summer, Casa Aztlan provides community youth with work and safe place to spend free time.

Casa Aztlan also collaborates with many other community and educational organizations in order to better serve the Mexican Latino populations. An example of one such collaboration is the partnership between Casa Aztlan and the Chicago ENLACE program of Northeastern Illinois University which focuses on raising the percentage of Latino student enrollments and graduations in schools.

Casa Aztlan has also also developed a partnership with CALLIE and the Colaborativa Latina de Ciudadania, both of which help people in the Mexican community obtain United States citizenships through soliciting services and through Civics and English classes.

Casa Aztlan also sponsors annual events that incite community participation in the Pilsen neighborhood and immediate area. These annual events include, The Candlelight Dinner, The Viva Aztlan Festival, and La Posada. Aside from the above community events, groups of ceremonial Aztec dancers such as the Nahui Ollin and Quetzal-Yolotl, the Teatro Cuerda Floja, and the master of Folkloric dance Rene Cardoza were based out of Casa Aztlan.

Casa Aztlan also helped organize the largest Latino march in the history of the United States; the historic National March for Civil and Human Rights for Latinos in Washington D.C. in 1996. This event led to other activities in Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., and San Antonio, Texas.

Casa Aztlan also works with the Pilsen Alliance. The Pilsen Alliance is a community project focused on questions regarding public transportation, employment development, and other aspects of life that are important to the community.

All donations are tax exempt.
Visit Casa Aztlan at 1831 S. Racine Ave., in the heart of the Pilsen community. http://casaaztlan.org

Valadez is on the truth

what i'm on

Luis Humberto Valadez

THE BOOK:

Publication Date: March 19, 2009
Camino del Sol: A Latina/Latino Literary Series 64 pages
6 x 8 ISBN: 978-0-8165-2740-3, $15.95 paper

Luis Humberto Valadez is a poet/performer/musician from the south side of the Chicago area whose work owes as much to hip-hop as it does to the canon and has been described by esteemed activist writer Amiri Baraka as "strong-real light flashes."

His debut poetry collection what i'm on is frankly autobiographical, recounting the experiences of a Mexican American boy growing up in a tough town near Chicago. Just as in life, the feelings in these poems are often jumbled, sometimes spilling out in a tumble, sometimes coolly recollected. Valadez's poems shout to be read aloud. It's then that their language dazzles most brightly. It's then that the emotions bottled up on the page explode beyond words. And there is plenty of emotion in these poems. Sometimes the words jump and twitch as if they‚d been threatened or attacked. Sometimes they just sit there knowingly on the page, weighted down by the stark reality of it all.

José García put a thirty-five to me
my mother was in the other room
He would have done us both
if not for the lust of my fear

THE BUZZ:

This new Mexican American/Chicano voice is all at once arresting, bracing, shocking, and refreshing. This is not the poetry you learned in school. But Valadez, who received his MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poets at Naropa University, has paid his academic dues, and he certainly knows how to craft a poem. It's just that he does it his way. Luis Humberto Valadez works as a coordinator and consultant for the Chicago Public Schools Homeless Education Program.

Recordings of Valadez performing his poems can be found at MySpace.com, Reverb Nation, and other Internet sites. VALADEZ BLURBS: “Brave, raw, and exposing of a young mans consciousness. Luis’s work is not confessional in the limited, put-it-in-a-box way that big publishers like to market their material to liberal guilt.” -Andrew Schelling, author of Tea Shack Interior

“In voices colloquial and church, reverent and riotous, serious and sly; in rap and fragment, sound and sin; from gangs and minimum-wage jobs to astrology and Christ, Luis Valadez makes his fearless debut. This poetry is a painfully honest disclosure of identity and anger, and it is as mindful of falsity and as hard on itself as it is playful, loose, and loving. Sometimes the language is clear and cutting, while other times it disintegrates into sonic units and primal utterances: Luis calls upon the whole history of oral and verbal expression to tell his story—going so far as to write his own (wildly funny and disturbing) obituary.” —Arielle Greenberg, author of My Kafka Century

“On the trail blazed by innovators like Harryette Mullen and John Yau, Luis Valadez sends wild, canny, charged, and vulnerable prayers from the hard camp of contested identities. Each line, each word, is a blow against “impossibility” and the heavy pressure to be silent as expected. Interrogations of tradition(s) as well as celebrations, the irresistible poems in Valadez’s first collection exist at the exact fresh moment of deciding to live and to love.” —Laura Mullen, author of After I Was Dead

“Valadez’s work is not simply fierce language poetics… here is a writer—the genuine article—whose style is that of a truth-speaking curandero, offering sacred cantos to anyone interested in illuminating that inner revolution called corazón. To read his work is to discover the future of American poética! “ —Tim Z. Hernandez, author of Skin Tax

“Valadez’s impressions abruptly transport the reader from swaggering elucidation to raw pain. In a sometimes-resigned glance around for divinity, what I’m on triggers equally sudden heart-rippings, laughter, and cinematic naturescapes.” —Claire Nixon, editor Twisted Tongue Magazine

Holly Schaffer, Publicity Manager
University of Arizona Press
355 S. Euclid Ave., Ste. 103 Tucson, AZ 85719
Ph: 520-621-3920, Fx: 520-621-8899
hollys@uapress.arizona.edu
www.uapress.arizona.edu

THE EVENT:



Lisa Alvarado

Don't EVEN Think of Missing July's Palabra Pura

Calling all wordsmiths and lovers of poesia! Don't miss July's Palabra Pura

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 - 7:00pm

Note Corrected Time: Reading starts at 7:00 PM
Cost: Free admission.
Location: Center on Halsted, Chicago's LGBT Community Center, 3656 N. Halsted, Chicago

In 1996, Emanuel Xavier took the New York City spoken word scene by storm, quickly becoming one of the most significant voices to emerge from the neo-Nuyorican poetry movement. Following in the tradition of writers/performers like Miguel Piñero, Xavier captivated audiences with a fresh and poignant brand of art that celebrated sexuality, Latino heritage, and the often brutal streets of New York.

A painful past of sexual abuse at the hands of an older cousin, rejection by a devoutly religious mother, homelessness, and a life of prostitution and drug-dealing, are among some of the experiences that served as inspiration for the vibrant and emotionally raw poems for which Xavier became famous.

Pier Queen, released in 1997, was Emanuel’s debut anthology, which included many of the poems that earned him the Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe Grand Slam Championship.

In 1998, he founded The House of Xavier, a collective of poets, and created the annual Glam Slam which fuses the excitement of the ballroom scene with the energy of the spoken word movement.

In 1999, Xavier released the semi-autobiographical novel Christlike, which garnered a Lambda Literary Award nomination. A year later, these achievements prompted PAPER magazine to choose Emanuel Xavier as one of its “50 Most Beautiful People.”

In 2002, six years after he first graced the stages of smoky cafes and independent theaters that made up New York’s underground poetry scene, Suspect Thoughts Press released his second collection of work, Americano. With Americano, the self-proclaimed Pier Queen grew up. With thirty-five new poems, Emanuel Xavier considered what it means to be American- but Latino; Latino- but gay; Nuyorican- but Ecuadorian; revolutionary- but not an activist. In essence, it was the next chapter in the life of a native son surviving the contradictions of his homeland.

In 2005, he edited Bullets & Butterflies: queer spoken word poetry featuring the likes of Regie Cabico, Alix Olson, Daphne Gottlieb, and Staceyann Chin.

Emanuel Xavier’s publications have also appeared in Drumvoices Revue, Genre, Urban Latino Magazine, James White Review, Long Shot, Men on Men 7, Blood & Tears, Besame Mucho, Virgins, Guerrillas & Locas, Of The Flesh, The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name, Coloring Book: An Eclectic Anthology of Fiction and Poetry and Bad Boys.

Emanuel Xavier has performed as a spoken word artist throughout the country at venues such as: Austin's Resistencia Bookstore and Tillery Street Theatre, San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; New Orleans's Le Petit Theatre; Chicago's DePaul University and the University of Chicago; Brown University; Hartford Public Library; University of Massachusetts; New York's Lincoln Center, Riker's Island Prison, Central Park Summerstage, Washington Square Park, The American Crafts Museum, Barnes & Noble, Queensborough Public Library, Dixon Place, Columbia University, St. Mark’s Poetry Project, Irving Plaza, The Henry Miller Theater, Bar 13 Lounge, The Blue Ox Bar, Joe's Pub, Aaron Davis Hall, Bowery Poetry Club and Nuyorican Poets Cafe, where he became a two-time Grand Slam winner.

He has also appeared on PBS's In The Life and Russell Simmons presents Def Poetry on HBO (Seasons 3 & 5). He will also be featured in the forthcoming Wolfgang Busch documentary about the ballroom community, How Do I Look? and Maurice Jamal's independent feature film, The Ski Trip. The spoken word CD, 5 Past 13- a little bit LOUDER: Volume 1, features a live performance of his poem, "Americano."

He has produced several spoken word events in New York City such as: OUTSPOKEN, the Realness & Rhythms monthly series at A Different Light Bookstore, the House of Xavier’s annual Glam Slam competition and the Words To Comfort benefit which brought together poet laureates, spoken word artists and celebrities such as Lou Reed and Claire Danes to raise money for the World Trade Center Relief Fund. He has also hosted the Lambda Literary Awards, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors and an episode of PBS's In The Life.

Emanuel Xavier is recipient of the Marsha A. Gomez Cultural Heritage Award for his contributions to gay and Latino culture and received a City Council Citation for his contributions to the gay and lesbian community of New York City.




After working as a cubicle drone and toiling away vainly under bad fluorescent lights and glass ceilings Irasema Gonzalez combusted. The mid-twenties melt-down that followed resulted in extraordinary things: she quit her job, awarded herself a sabbatical, and ultimately opened Tianguis, the bookstore she always longed to walk into. She is a founding member of the Proyecto Latina reading series, a collaborative between Tianguis Books, Teatro Luna and Mariposa Atomica Ink. Her poems appeared in Between the Heart and the Land, an anthology by March Abrazo Press featuring Midwestern Latina poets. She is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago where she earned a B.A. in journalism and creative writing. She resides in Little Village with her husband and two cats.


Lisa Alvarado

From the Tips of my Fingers to the Tips of My Toes

This is about my hands and feet. Actually it's about work and its remnants, about being working-class, Chicana, about going where you don't belong, or where you think you don't belong, or no matter where you go there is always some part of you on the outside, watching, seeing what gets played out, wondering how you fit in, what you need to do. This has been the story of my life, even in childhood. Is it a requisite for me becoming a writer? I think in a way it is.

I no longer have a job. That in and of itself puts me in line with millions of people in this country who aren't experiencing a slow-down, they're experiencing a screeching halt. Karmically, was it time to go? Yes, but you can't eat new opportunities for growth, and there's not really much in the storehouse. This has been both a blessing and one of those opportunities I just mentioned.

Since finishing graduate school I'd been trying to get work as an editor or as a teacher. (The decision to seek something more meaningful, I also realize, is not one that millions of people even have a chance to consider.) What I had to acknowledge was that the search while at one level was intense, it wasn't intense enough. Better put, there was a piece of me that held on, even though I was unhappy.

Circumstances came together a couple of weeks ago to relieve me of my complacency. What does this have to do with hands and feet? What no longer having my job has meant is that I had to stop hiding, that I had to step up and step out, that I had to make myself more visible, and I had to face that the part of me that wanted to stay back, stay hidden. Part of what's been required in this job search is to start attending networking events, that in my mind 'people from the other side' populate. What I mean here, is that in my mind, these are the 'happy shiny people' with homes (which I don't have) and cars, (which I don't have), and retirement funds. (Again, I think you already know what I'm going to write here.) Never mind that those folks have mortgages and debt lines and feel sorrow and loss and joy, too.

But back to the hands and feet issue. What I've been experiencing is a sense of shame. Shame that the tips of my fingers and the soles of my feet are calloused from a life where I worked on assembly lines, cleaned other people's houses, cared for sick patients. Dressed to the nines, smile and firm handshake in place, passing out those smart business cards, part of me feels I will be found out before the canapes are done circulating.

And it never escapes me that I am served by Mexicanos y Mexicanas, like me, and not like me and that somehow I am also standing, watching and knowing that I am supposed to write this and not forget.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

FROM JUAN FELIPE HERRERA:

Gente, JFH continues to rock the house with his national tour of his tour de force, 187 Reasons Why Mexican Can't Cross The Border. Take a look here at pics from his odyssey.

GREAT EVENTS IN AZTLAN DEL NORTE (CHICAGO)

SER'S ANNUAL BENEFIT -- MANY SERVICES FOR CHICAGO FAMILIAS

ART AND ARTMAKING IN THE HANDS OF YOUNG PEOPLE, WHAT A CONCEPT!

A LA VIDA RAISES MONEY TO FIGHT LEUKEMIA



PLUS, TEATRO EN CHICAGO!!!!!!!!

AND FINALLY, A PERSONAL DELIGHT:

Last Saturday, I was lucky enough to have lunch with a fantastic writer that I interviewed a while ago, Ulises Silva, who brought his companion and fellow writer, Angela. They were funny, warm and engaging, and we discussed the state of Latino literature, what is and isn't canon, indy presses and his upcoming release: Inventing Vazquez. They were in town to do location research for the novel and I was the beneficiary. For those of you unfamiliar with his work, let me direct you here.

Lisa Alvarado

Palabra Pura Celebrates Poetry Month

Palabra Pura Series:
Lorna Dee Cervantes and Rigoberto González
Wednesday, April 16, 2008 - 7:00pm

Note correction to starting time of event

Time: Doors open at 6:00 PM,
Reading begins at 7:00 PM
Cost: Free admission.
Location: Center on Halsted, Chicago's LGBT Community Center,
3656 N. Halsted, Chicago, IL


Lorna Dee Cervantes is an internationally acclaimed Chicana poet from San José, California. Her poetry has appeared in nearly 200 anthologies and textbooks, including The Norton Anthologies of Modern, American, English, Contemporary & Women's Poetry. She is a recipient of many honors, awards & literary fellowships including the NEA, Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Award and a Pulitzer nomination for DRIVE: The First Quartet. A fifth-generation Californian of Mexican and Native American (Chumash) heritage, Lorna Dee Cervantes was a pivotal figure throughout the Chicano literary movement. In 1976, she founded the influencial small press & Chicano literary journal, MANGO Publications, which was the first to publish well-known writers such as Sandra Cisneros, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Ray Gonzalez and many others. Cervantes holds an A.B.D. in the History of Consciousness and was an Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She currently resides in San Francisco and teaches at SFSU and offers intensive poetry workshops from her home, the Mission Poetry Center. She is readying several new books of poetry for publication and completing her novel and a full-length screenplay. Visit her on her blog at http:lornadice.blogspot.com

Rigoberto González is the author of seven books, most recently of the memoir, Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa, winner of the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. A story collection, Men without Bliss, is forthcoming. The recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, and of various international artist residencies, he writes twice a month a Latino book column, for the El Paso Times of Texas. He is contributing editor for Poets and Writers Magazine, on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle, on the Board of Directors of Fishouse Poems: A Poetry Archive, and on the Advisory Circle of Con Tinta, a collective of Chicano/ Latino activist writers. He lives in New York City and is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University/Newark.

And reasons why I love them both:

Poem For The Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, An Intelligent, Well-Read Person, Could Believe In The War Between Races
--- Lorna Dee Cervantes

In my land there are no distinctions.
The barbed wire politics of oppression
have been torn down long ago. The only reminder
of past battles, lost or won, is a slight
rutting in the fertile fields.
In my land
people write poems about love,
full of nothing but contented childlike syllables.
Everyone reads Russian short stories and weeps.
There are no boundaries.
There is no hunger, no
complicated famine or greed.

I am not a revolutionary.
I don't even like political poems.
Do you think I can believe in a war between races?
I can deny it. I can forget about it
when I'm safe,
living on my own continent of harmony
and home, but I am not
there.

I believe in revolution
because everywhere the crosses are burning,
sharp-shooting goose-steppers round every corner,
there are snipers in the schools...
(I know you don't believe this.
You think this is nothing
but faddish exaggeration. But they
are not shooting at you.)

I'm marked by the color of my skin.
The bullets are discrete and designed to kill slowly.
They are aiming at my children.
These are facts.
Let me show you my wounds: my stumbling mind, my
"excuse me" tongue, and this
nagging preoccupation
with the feeling of not being good enough.

These bullets bury deeper than logic.
Racism is not intellectual.
I can not reason these scars away.

Outside my door
there is a real enemy
who hates me.

I am a poet
who yearns to dance on rooftops,
to whisper delicate lines about joy
and the blessings of human understanding.
I try. I go to my land, my tower of words and
bolt the door, but the typewriter doesn't fade out
the sounds of blasting and muffled outrage.
My own days bring me slaps on the face.
Every day I am deluged with reminders
that this is not
my land

and this is my land.

I do not believe in the war between races

but in this country
there is war.


Cactus Flower --- Rigoberto González

It's a sweaty forty-minute walk through the desert from the main road to the wooden shack. Though the desert is flat and Rolando thinks he can see for miles into the faded blue horizon, the shack remains invisible until it suddenly shoots up from the ground, becoming distinguishable from the clumps of golden tumbleweeds and the sand hill leading up the ravine, everything blanketed by the brightness of the sun. The leaves of the fresh head of lettuce he brings from the fields wilt inside his oily fingers. He thinks about his toes shrinking back from the steel-tipped boots, his scrotum pulling away from his sticky underwear. The smell of dirt rises pure off the ground. His hand trembles at the thought of an empty shack, of nobody inside to open the door for him and take the lettuce from his hands, of no one to gasp in gratitude to assure him that despite the journey through the sweltering heat the leaves at the center are cool and crisp. His fears dissipate with the presence of his wife standing at the doorway, still as a cactus flower in her diaphanous white blouse, which she wears not so he can peek at her small white bra or at the pudgy abdomen he likes to grab while she's washing her hair bent over a bucket of water. She wears it, she tells him, to let the faintest breeze blow on her blouse, so she can spread her arms and cool her sweaty undersides. She's posing that way now, arms outstretched, but this far back it's hard to tell if it's the desert breeze come her way or if she's greeting him. He looks forward to tonight when they will feed each other lettuce leaves and chew them slowly as caterpillars devouring the moisture. Suddenly his eyes go blank, victims to the beads of sweat mixed into the dust he picked up from the fields, giving the sweat a more powerful sting. He rubs his eyes with the sleeve of the blue flannel shirt, taking in the sharp contrast of the smooth cloth to the coarse skin of his brown hand. Out of focus, he tries to reclaim the image of his wife in her white blouse, and then saddens, thinking Mirinda may not have seen him coming at all because she no longer stands at the entrance to the shack and the door is shut, the padlock hanging heavy like a heart gone solid and cold.

The candle flame twitches violently, threatening to leave him blind. The weather changed during his nap, and he woke up surprised in the dark. The wind hurls small stones against the wooden walls and bumps the window shutters repeatedly. Only when the wind blows is Rolando painfully aware of the imperfections in the small one-room home he built for himself in the middle of the desert, what the residents of the nearby town call "el dompe" because they drop off their useless vinyl couches and urine-stained mattresses into the nearby ravine though this area is no longer a county landfill and no longer uninhabited. The whistling and hissing of the dust storm outside disrupt his concentration so he sits without a word in his throat, slurping the Campbell's soup as loud as possible to convince himself that the silence the wind has forced on him has not upset his late-evening meal. Mirinda remains expressionless, staring across the table at the way his large hand holds the tin spoon too delicately, as if she knows he's scooping properly to please her. Even with the dim light she's beautiful, her features sharply defined and smooth as mariposa lily petals. The shadows make her face grow thin, distant as a portrait; but the flickering flame dancing gracefully in the deep ebony of her eyes keeps her within reach. She is tangible and touchable like before. She is here again to disregard the shadows as they flutter wildly like moths above her head. If they flee they will take her with them. But until then they soothe him, giving him this gift, this light, this woman, who said she was going to leave him and who didn't leave him completely. Forgotten are the elbow cramp, the stiff neck and aching shoulder blades. He has the urge to find the pretty marigolds he promised her when she agreed to follow him here to this desolate place, far from the run-down trailer camps and low-income housing projects where beauty like hers withers and dies. No, instead they are closer to the ground they left behind in the deserts of Chihuahua, a space so large it is like living inside breath itself. The peaceful evenings are long and familiar. The peaceful evenings bloom with stars. Stars love Mirinda so much they confuse her for the moon and crown her head. Suddenly the wind breaks in and snuffs the candle out. Mirinda disappears. He wants to stand and ask her to forgive him for those pretty marigolds. The wind roars. He keeps quiet, knowing that with such a wind his plea is weak and will remain unheard.

The wind grows stronger when he rises at four in the morning to pack his lunch and set off on his forty-minute trek back to the road where the bus picks him up to deliver him to the lettuce fields. When he opens the door the moonlight bursts in, lighting up the wooden table, the tiny unmade bed with the yellow faded sheets, the gas-tank stove, and Mirinda's white dresser. The looking glass Rolando gave her stares out the door, confronting the moon with its own light. He squints at the glare, grabs his denim jacket and tries to find the stone silhouette of his wife standing near the darkest corner. He shuffles out swiftly and doesn't catch a glimpse of her. At dawn the desert is cold. He shivers at the thought of the weary march getting back after work. Red flashlight in hand, he walks behind the shack, bends over the broken-down Pinto to check for damage on the windshield. The green paint looks clean, smooth as skin, so he rubs his hand across it then draws back quickly when a nettle on the surface stings his thumb. Suddenly he's alarmed to be outside. The landscape of desert rocks and manzanita patches appears shrunken, pulled in toward the shack, which becomes its dead center. He feels trapped, like the snowman in the glass bubble Mirinda enjoys shaking up at the swap meet to watch the tiny white particles drop. For him the particles strike sideways, strike hard. He moves quickly back around inside, exchanges the jacket for a thicker coat and grabs the brown paper sack, tightening the grip to remind himself how many of yesterday's burritos he will have for lunch. He steps out and shuts the door. The padlock snaps. He wishes to retreat, crawl beneath the yellow faded sheets, which will always smell of Mirinda's nape, of a strong sunlight filtered in through the dampness of her long black hair. He walks a few paces forward, hesitating because there's something he forgot. He's afraid to turn around, afraid that when he looks the shack will have vanished and he will find himself alone and vulnerable as the snowman or the palo verde that looks twice as solitary at night. He keeps on walking, sensing his distance from his home, a length that doubles when he thinks Mirinda's not inside stirring like the delicate perfume she rubs into her earlobes so that any sound she hears is savory and sweet. Mirinda, savory and sweet, desires no earring over this, the lip clamp of his mouth that nibbles nibbles nibbles on the flower-scented skin above her jaw. He dares to grin; he's compelled to whistle. He remembers he didn't eat the lettuce.

Rolando doesn't wait long for the bus. It's an old school bus painted over in white with the agricultural company's name on both sides. He doesn't have to see it to know it's coming because it's backfiring all the way down the road. In the early mornings the sloppy paint job looks clean until it stops in front of him and the old yellow coat shows through the wild strokes of white. The doors squeak open and the fat driver in a red plaid shirt greets him with a nod of the head, shifting into gear before Rolando finds a seat. Rolando paces reluctantly toward the space next to Sarita Mendoza, who wears a sweatshirt with words in English neither of them can read. She likes to save a place for him near the front. Before he takes a seat, Rolando nods at the other lettuce pickers. Don Carlos calls him by the wrong name. He wants to relax for the next twenty minutes until he arrives at the fields. He wants to tilt his head back and listen to the small transistor radio don Carlos behind him is holding. But Sarita Mendoza wants to talk.

She likes asking questions. She asks about his wife because she suspects Mirinda doesn't exist. She accuses him of lying to keep her from making a match of him with one of her daughters. Today she invites Rolando and his wife to a family bautismo. He politely refuses. She asks why. The glassy look of her eye makes him nervous. The bus hits a bump on the road and he hears the blades of the short-handle hoes rattle in the back. He wants to look down at the oval blister beginning to callus on his right palm. He wants to pick at it but doesn't, imagining a more intense pain against his hand as he thrusts the hoe into the ground. Instead he traces Sarita Mendoza's chapped lips, smiles and tells her he'll be celebrating his third-year anniversary this weekend. She jokingly says he's a liar. Rolando laughs with her, trying to think up an answer in case she asks where he's taking his wife to celebrate. She asks. He still hasn't thought of anything, so he simply says it's up to Mirinda. Can Mirinda travel to México? Sarita Mendoza leaves her mouth open, the dry lips are cracked at the corners; one corner is clotted with blood. He answers no, though he should have said yes because now Sarita Mendoza says he should have married a woman with papers. All of her daughters have their documents in order and they can all work in the fields, cook in the kitchen and perform both chores in bed. Rolando shakes his head. He should try to stop by the bautismo anyway, she suggests, since she's never met this mysterious woman he keeps hidden away in "el dompe." She's heard so much about Mirinda she's willing to wear out her old huaraches on a trip to the middle of the desert just to meet her. And if there isn't anyone there it won't matter because she will bring one of her daughters along just in case. Rolando looks away, embarrassed. He watches his cut lip grin on the dirty window. He didn't comb his hair. He forgot his baseball cap. The red bandanna in his back pocket has been used on his nose all week.

He wants to correct Sarita Mendoza and tell her she's heard very little about Mirinda, that woman, that goddess, that light. Mirinda, passion and appetite, can eat a whole coconut by herself, using up an entire afternoon with a dozen limes and a bowl of rock salt by her side while his heartbeat races to compete with that fervor she has for breaking the shell with her hands—a fever that finally peaks with him taking her fingers in his mouth and pressing his tongue beneath her nails to suck the salty juice. Mirinda, fury and fire, becomes as silky as her sleeping gown when he braids his limbs into hers, sweating off the humidity from their skins, surrendering themselves like cactus owls on that tiny bed that prompts them toward one another no matter what direction they stretch. Mirinda can touch every place on him at once and make each place jump twice. Mirinda is more than a woman, more than a wife—she took his body in her fleshy arms exactly three years ago and she still holds him there. And when she said she was going to leave him, she said she was going to dissolve his soul, so he didn't let her leave, not entirely, taking her neck in his hands and widening her mouth and forcing his power on her love until it burst into the air like a puff of dandelion seeds, an explosion of stars in the sky, an outbreak of marigolds. Such beautiful flowers. He's dizzy. Sarita Mendoza gazes at him and he blushes.

When the bus finally stops she leaps up and hurries to the back, her gray sweatshirt coming up on her stomach. She wants to get a good hoe, one with a clean sharp blade that won't give her trouble when she's digging into the ground. The rest of the workers scurry right behind her. Everyone hops off through the emergency exit door. Rolando looks past the window and at the lettuce fields, the heads looking cool and bright. Beyond the lettuce fields grow the grape fields and next to them sit the onion fields and rise the orchards, all of them blossoming so majesticly in the desert. He works this land year after year, intimate with its furrows and soils, yet he despises it for breaking his body down, for keeping him alive and sucking back all that strength. He imagines returning the following season, the fields lush and ripe again, displaying no evidence that he ever touched them. He imagines Mirinda, buried beneath the broken-down Pinto, unable to comb her long black hair or unable to darken her plucked eyebrows slim as marigold stems or unable to redden those fleshy points in the middle of her upper lip. She left her reflection behind in the looking glass. She returns to the desert to reclaim it and be whole again, then she thins out into air to become that void he sees when he holds up her mirror. When the white-haired foreman taps on the window, Rolando slowly rises from the seat, unashamed to be the last off the bus. The air is chilly and smells of soil freshly watered, the scent of cool lettuce lifts off the ground. On the other side of the road lies the barren desert. At the other end of the desert Mirinda's ghost waits patiently inside the tiny shack for him to step inside and breathe her scent of dusty wood. When he arrives each afternoon, the shack listens carefully, detects his slightest movements, excites its joints and rusty hinges and entreats Mirinda to respond.

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

The Bearable Lightness of Being

In Being Bodies, Lenore Friedman and Susan Moon offer the perspectives of a variety of women with varying Buddhist practices. The result is a contemplative and compelling work dealing with what it means to be female, what it means to fully and consciously inhabit the female body.

The last wave of the Western women’s movement critiqued the idea that a women was her body. In fact, a major focus of that movement was the position that biology was not destiny. This was primarily a response to the social construction of women’s identity, the objectification of a women as nothing more than physical self. However, there was little offered to support women in learning to fully live in that physicality, to know it as both vessel and endpoint. Being Bodies offers a view that a woman’s self-knowledge is rooted in the flesh. Women’s awareness is based in surrendering to the body’s impermanence, its joy, its suffering, and its death. One of the most thought-provoking essays is Linda Chrisman’s "Birth".

In it, she describes the process of labor, and giving birth to her son. What's striking about this experience was how Chrisman was both deeply enmeshed in that process and separate from it. The most telling lesson, for both Chrisman and the reader, occurred at the height of labor. Here she realizes that all her physical conditioning, all her contemplative practice would not save her from pain. This selection beautifully illustrates the message of Being Bodies. There may be another path for women, rooted in surrender to the fullness and limits of the body. Through that choice, a woman may find self-knowledge and ultimately, freedom. While the focus of Being Bodies is the female experience, it is a universal and object lesson about Buddhist ideas of impermanence, and becoming fully present in every moment by letting go. I was moved to tears reading this book. It reminds me that true beauty is the sum of both pleasing things as well the scars.

I feel such a strong, visceral connection to the stories of the women profiled in this anthology. (Interesting that "visceral" is the only word that comes to mind in reviewing a book dealing with the experience of being grounded in the body and the odyssey of transcendence.) This book is a pivotal one as I try to develop a deeper spiritual practice - moving East in order to come West, hoping to re-encounter and reinterpret my own ideas of embodiment, spirituality and existence.

ISBN-10: 1570623244 ISBN-13: 978-157062324

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Acentos and AWP Conference News

On Tuesday, January 29th at 7pm, we break from our normal schedule to bring you ACENTOS on a FIFTH TUESDAY, in conjunction with the Bay Area's own Craig Perez and Achiote Press.

The featured poets that night will be two amazing young writers:

Marina Garcia-Vasquez, acontributor to the press' ACHIOTE SEEDS, Volume 2, and Javier O. Huerta, author of the acclaimed debut collection, SOME CLARIFICATIONS Y OTROS POEMAS. As always, the Uptown's best open mic will precede the festivities, and your host will be John Rodriguez.

On Thursday, January 31st at 6pm, the Con Tinta collective presents its annual awards dinner and reading.

Lifetime achievement awards are to be presented to Nuyorican writers Sandra Maria Esteves and Tato Laviera. The dinner will take place at Mojitos', located at 227 E. 116th Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenue. The reading will be held in conjunction with PALABRA, a journal of Chicano and Latino literary arts. Your hosts for the evening will be Urayoan Noel and Rich Villar.

Finally, on Friday, February 1st at 6:30pm, El Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños presents ACENTOS: A Gathering of Latino and Latina Poets.

The event is slated to take place at the School of Social Work at Hunter College, 129 E. 79th Street, at the corner of 79th and Lexington. A lineup of more than 20 emerging and nationally recognized Latino and Latina poets are set to take the stage, including Martin Espada, Sandra Maria Esteves, Brenda Cardenas, Aracelis Girmay, Willie Perdomo, and many more.

It's going to be a busy January for your crew at Acentos, and we wouldn't have it any other way. Keep an eye on this list for further updates, news, features and even more poetry events for the '08, as well as information about our fifth anniversary show in March.

Details for all our January events are listed below. See you all there!

Peaces,
Rich Villar
for the Acentos crew.

Tuesday, January 29th @ 7pm ACENTOS Bronx Poetry Showcase A reading in collaboration with Achiote Press featuring JAVIER O. HUERTA and MARINA GARCIA-VASQUEZ plus the Uptown's Best Open Mic

The Bruckner Bar and Grill One Bruckner Blvd. (corner of Third Ave. and Bruckner Blvd.) 6 Train to 138th Street Station Hosted by John Rodriguez FREE! ($5 suggested donation) Thursday, January 31st @ 6pm Con Tinta's Annual Award Ceremony and Reading Honoring the work of Nuyorican poets SANDRA MARIA ESTEVES and TATO LAVIERA Mojitos' Bar 227 E. 116th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Ave.) 6 Train to 116th Street Station Hosted by Urayoan Noel, Rich Villar, and the Con Tinta collective FREE and open to the public.

Friday, February 1st @ 6:30pm ACENTOS: A Gathering and Celebration of Latino and Latina Poets Presented by El Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños at Hunter College and Acentos Bronx Poetry Showcase

Featuring over twenty emerging and nationally recognized Latino and Latina poets:

The School of Social Work @ Hunter College 129 E. 79th Street (corner of 79th and Lexington) 6 Train to 77th Street Station, two blocks north to 79th and Lex. FREE and open to the public.

Acentos: The Bronx's Premiere Spot for Poetry

http://www.louderarts.com/acentos

"Acentos is one of the best audiences, one of the best venues, I've ever seen. The organizers do a great job, not only in terms of spreading the word, but also in terms of creating anticipation. I feel like I'm part of a community, part of a movement. Aquí estamos y no nos vamos." Martín Espada

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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

Palabra Pura Kicks Off Its Third Year

ariel robello and Juan Manuel Sánchez

Gente! Exciting poetry news here in Chicago...Palabra Pura kicks off their third year January 16th, 8:30 PM, at their usual local, California Clipper, 1002 N California Ave.

For those of you unfamiliar with this superb salon of Latino poetry, here's an interview I did with one of its founders, La Bloga friend and excellent poet in his own right, Francisco Aragón. Believe me, a Palabra Pura experience is NOT to be missed, and it's been my pleasure to be part of the local steering committee, especially in the company of the likes of Ellen Placey Wadey, Mike Puican, Mary Hawley, y La Divina, Johanny Vazquez. Below is the first line up of what promises to be a stellar year of local Chicago poets paired with poets who've made their mark on the national scene.

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In her debut collection of poems, My Sweet Unconditional, ariel robello meets us at the horizon, where worlds blend in the blush of sunrise and sunset, where land meets sea, air – earth, and where man and machine interrupt the natural ebb and flow of life. Unapologetic, she declares her faith in a love that defies borders and with each poem she weds herself to a belief that unconditional love can still be found in the cracks of a urban sidewalk, dancing above puffing smoke stacks, behind a guerrilla’s mask, in the worn paint brush of an island love, blundering below a street lamp in Ensenada, spelled out in daisies on a Veteran’s tombstone, in the stitch of a huipil and most importantly—deep inside one’s own reflection. With language as radiant and dangerous as broken glass ariel robello cuts away at the political dogma and superficial beauty of a world unhinged to reveal a bloody but dignified glimpse of love in the hands of a New World survivor.

Having earned her chops on both the stage and the page, ariel robello represents a generation of poets as concerned with performance as they are with line breaks. ariel robello received a PEN West Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship in 2002 and published her first collection of poems, My Sweet Unconditional in 2005 with Tia Chucha Press. The inspiration for her poetry stems from her work as a poet-in-residence and mentor to teens, advocate for immigrants’ rights, and teacher of English in schools, sweatshops, juvenile detention centers, and most recently at the community college where she now lives with her hijito in Tampa, Florida.

“Effortlessly, swimmingly, yet every line a ‘florescent ember’, seething and praying, these poems mark the debut of a powerful woman of letters; young yet wise, weary yet hopeful. ariel robello is the revolution in verse we’ve been waiting for – the spoken unspoken, the dreaded effervescence of truth conspiring with our souls. Chicana voices have always pushed deeper into the emotional terrain of conscience and witness, ‘My Sweet Unconditional’ does what poetry collections should always do – pull us into a universe so familiar yet frighteningly unknown with poems that awaken us to the political and personal traumas of our times, yet sweetened by the beauty of word and verse.

—Luis J. Rodriguez is an award-winning poet, journalist, memoirist, children’s book writer, essayist and fiction writer. He is author of the critically acclaimed “Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.”

"Ariel Robello's My Sweet Unconditional is never insincere or sentimental. This first collection of point-blank narratives of the heart never misses. Playful and reasoned, witty and serious, My Sweet Unconditional's insinuation beckons and disarms. Ariel Robello's voice is one of a kind."—Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

"Poetry Lover, beware the fire-and-ice urban joys of Ariel Robello! These are brutally savvy and deliciously vicious paeans to life, relentless in their celebrations of love, sacrifice and sex--and once beheld by the eyeheart, humbles rescues redeems."
—Wanda Coleman, poet, Los Angeles

"Ariel Robello has crafted remarkable poems that demand no less than a pure appreciation of art from you, even as they break your heart. There is nothing easy here: the music is grafted from a painful if illuminating life, but they shimmer with a rage that is transformative.
A voice to watch for." —Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and Dog Woman.

www.nupress.northwestern.edu

Paper -1-882688-29-5 $13.95

Available for sale on www.amazon.com

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Juan Manuel Sánchez was born and raised on the US side of the San Diego/Tijuana border. He holds an MA in Literature from UC San Diego and is currently in the final throes of his MFA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has worked as an assistant editor for Ninth Letter, has lectured at various universities and is now Lecturer of Spanish at the University of Chicago. His work is forthcoming in Pembroke and in the anthology Junta: Avant-Garde Latino/a Writing.

Lisa Alvarado