Support the 16th Children's Poetry Festival, Manyula

https://www.gofundme.com/f/ypxmgm-support-the-16th-childrens-poetry-festival

From Jorge Argueta:

Dear friends and family, I am honored and happy to announce the XVI Children’s International Poetry Festival Manyula. For the past 16 years with the help of fellow poets and writers I had organized and participated in this amazing festival. I hope you can help us continue bringing the joy of reading to our children in El Salvador.  We had created a Gofoundme campaign. I hope you can help us.  Leer es Maravilloso.

The International Children's Poetry Festival, Manyula, has been held in El Salvador every November since 2010. Bilingual published authors and poets from the United States and El Salvador conduct presentations and writing workshops for Salvadoran children and youth.

The children that attend love to read books, write stories and dream big for a better future. Unfortunately, many are from rural areas where their parents work hard to provide for them and often there is not enough money to buy books or school supplies.

 This Children Poetry Festival brings hope to more than a thousand children in the country. They are exposed to children's books, poetry and author presentations. Each child receives a festival tote bag with school supplies and gifts. A delicious lunch is also provided during the Fiesta Educativa.

Your collaboration will help us to organize and make the 16th International Children's Poetry Festival, Manyula possible.

What We Need:

The 16th Children's Poetry Festival is fundraising for $2,000. This money will help us purchase the gifts that each child will receive. including books, supplies and snacks. Children will be grateful for your collaboration. Please consider making a donation in any amount.

The Impact

The 16th International Children’s Poetry Festival, Manyula will help children to discover the world of poetry. The festival will give children’s books, poems and a wonderful experience with the literary world. We encourage children to dream big as we promote the importance of education.

MACONDO CELEBRATES NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

  

From Macondo Writers, https://macondowriters.com

 

 

We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Northern Arizona Book Festival in celebrating National Poetry Month! As in the past, we will be hosting an online Zoom webinar reading, MACONDO CELEBRATES NATIONAL POETRY MONTH SCHOLARSHIP FUNDRAISER, on Sunday, April 14th at 5PM MST / 6 PM CST / 7PM EST, featuring a wonderful lineup of poets including: Rigoberto González, Diana Marie Delgado, Sherwin Bitsui, Yaccaira Salvatierra, Saúl Hernández, and hosted by Josslyn Luckett. We invite all members of the Macondo community to please join us for this special event. Register to attend by clicking 

https://nau.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIqf-ivpz4qH9KkvnIntYFCgG9q_JWRS6Ro#/registration

 

Please share the link to this event with your network. Macondo would not be what it is without the support of Macondistas and those who believe in our mission. We encourage you, to urge your friends and family as well as your social network to donate to this summer’s scholarship fund for the Macondo Writers Workshop. Your generosity helps us provide a nurturing space for creativity to flourish, benefiting both emerging and established writers working for social change in their community. Since its inception, the workshop has been sustained by the generosity of our membership and supporters. Your donation, whether it's $25, $250, or even $2,500, or a gift of any amount will go directly to support full and partial scholarships for this year’s workshop participants. Our goal is to match 100% of the need-based scholarship requests. 

 

Help us achieve this by making a tax-deductible contribution, here today.

https://securelb.imodules.com/s/1599/giving19/giving.aspx?sid=1599&gid=2&pgid=402&cid=1056&dids=375

 

 If you prefer to donate by check, please make it payable to Trinity University and include "Macondo Writers Workshop" in the note section of your check, and mail it to:

 

Prof. Norma E. Cantú

Northrup Hall 244

Trinity University

One Trinity Place

San Antonio, TX 78212

Macondo Celebrates National Poetry Month

The Macondo Celebrates National Poetry Month is taking place this Friday, April 28th at 6:30pm CST!  

Here is the link to sign up for the webinar:

https://trinity.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_aHd-iDi0RFukbgmKDcHvyA

This virtual reading and scholarship fundraiser will support writers attending the 2023 Macondo Writers Workshop in San Antonio this summer.  Please support your fellow Macondistas by attending, donating and spreading the word far and wide.

Thank you so much,

Board Members

Norma Elia Cantú

Olivia Mena

Charles Rice-Gonzalez

Pat Alderete, Applications Administrator

The Macondo Writers Workshop is an association of socially-engaged writers working to advance creativity, foster generosity, and serve community. Founded in 1995 by writer Sandra Cisneros and named after the town in Gabriel García Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, the workshop gathers writers from all genres who work on geographic, cultural, economic, gender, and spiritual borders.

www.MacondoWriters.com

Tía Chucha’s End of the Year Fundraiser

 

 

A message from our Executive Team!

 

Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural has been transforming community in the Northeast San Fernando Valley and beyond through ancestral knowledge, the arts, literacy, and creative engagement for the last 20 years. We thank you for your support and look forward to many more years with you!

 

To support our mission and our big move donate here

 

https://www.tiachucha.org/donate

 

The Northeast San Fernando Valley has a population of about 500,000 – the size of the city of Oakland – yet it had no bookstores, art galleries, or full-fledged cultural spaces until Tía Chucha's opened its doors in 2001. Thankfully, various local organizations have for decades provided services to address the many survival needs of a large number of economically insecure families and individuals in this area. Believing that it is also everyone’s right to explore and develop their innate creative gifts, Tia Chucha’s founders set out to correct the historic absence of life-enhancing artistic and literary options for this sector of the population. Melding vision with conviction, Tia Chucha’s was created as a space to embrace the equally important artistic development of our lives as human beings.

 

Tia Chucha’s began as a café, bookstore and cultural space owned and run by Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez, his wife Trini, and their brother-in-law Enrique Sanchez. In 2003 Luis, along with singer/musicologist Angelica Loa Perez and Xicano Rap artist Victor Mendoza established a next-door sister nonprofit to incorporate a full range of arts workshops. When in 2007 the cultural café and bookstore disbanded as an LLC, it donated its assets, including inventory, shelves, equipment, and more to the nonprofit to carry its mission forward. Tia Chucha’s cultural center now provides year-round on-site and off-site free or low-cost arts and literacy bilingual intergenerational programming in mural painting, music, dance, writing, visual arts, healing arts sessions (such as reiki healing) and healing/talking circles. Workshops and activities also include Mexica ("Aztec") dance, indigenous cosmology/philosophy, and two weekly open mic nights (one in Spanish, the other in English). We host author readings, film screenings, and art exhibits as well.

 

Reunite an immigrant parent with their child

To donate visit https://www.facebook.com/donate/490507544717085/1748410341880386/

MATCH ALERT: this fundraiser has been matched up to 260K by several private donors. Thank you, matchers!! We're still looking for more matching donors - PM an organizer if you can help!

FAQs about how RAICES gets the money, other ways you can help: https://bit.ly/2M4yWMm


We are collectively revulsed at what's happening to immigrant families on our southern border. In times when we often think that the news can't possibly get worse, it does -- we learned last night that 2000 children (many of them infants and toddlers) have been separated from their parents in just six weeks under President Trump's "zero tolerance" policy. 

These children don't know where their parents are. Their parents aren't allowed to communicate with them while in custody. The government hasn't set up a system to reunite separated parents and children if one or both are ultimately released. In many cases, parents have been deported without their children -- sometimes, young children are deported without their parents.

Until the election, I think there's little chance of a political solution to this grave American moral failing. But there is still something we can do. Today we are raising money for RAICES (https://www.facebook.com/raicestexas), the largest immigration legal services provider in Texas. For years, RAICES has been working with some of the most vulnerable members of our society to ensure they receive advocacy and fair legal representation. They have two key goals at this time:

-directly fund the bond necessary to get parents out of detention and reunited with their children while awaiting court proceedings

-ensure legal representation for EVERY child in Texas' immigration courts (last year, 76% of kids (over 13,000!) did not have representation)

Bonds are set at a MINIMUM of $1500, and are usually in the range of $5-10K, even for asylum seekers without any criminal history. We are starting our goal at $1500 and will see how far we get.

Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Winner Book: Somos como las nubes/We Are Like the Clouds

The Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award is named for the internationally renowned educator, poet, anthologist and passionate advocate of poetry for young people. Established in 1993, the award is presented annually to an American poet or anthologist for the most outstanding new book of poetry for children published in the previous calendar year.

Selected by a panel of authors, librarians, teachers and scholars, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award was the first award of its kind in the United States. The Pennsylvania Center for the Book, the Penn State University Libraries, and Lee Bennett Hopkins share joint administration of the annual award. 

For more information visit

https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/awards-contests/lee-bennett-hopkins-poetry-award?field_award_year_value=2017

This year’s winner is “Somos como las nubes/We Are Like the Clouds” written by Jorge Argueta, published by Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press. Jorge Argueta will accept the award and the $1,000 prize, courtesy of Lee Bennett Hopkins, at Penn State this fall.

Judges' Comments

In few words and brief poems, Argueta is able to capture the safety of home and the mundane with the pain of not knowing what awaits on the other side. A refugees' journey is a difficult topic to present in poetry, but Argueta's words are able to balance the struggles, happiness, uncertainty, sadness, fears, and the mixture of feelings that the child narrator experiences. The pictures perfectly complement the rich poetry.

In Somos como las nubes /We are Like the Clouds, the reader is pulled into the story visually from the beautiful illustrations and rhythmically from the poetic language. The bilingual aspect adds authenticity to the story and connectivity for more children. 

Somos como las nubes /We are Like the Clouds helps bring the idea of immigration to a more personal and relatable reality by beautifully expressing hardships, uncertainty and hope.

The poems are imaginative, musical, and beautiful, conveying a message of empathy and hope that is powerful and significant.  The bilingual format makes these poems accessible to more children than any single language book could reach.

Argueta takes young readers on the harrowing and heartwarming journey of so many children.  In musical language we experience the emotional range of migration—from gangs to the ultimate destination of American. The imagery of clouds threads through a story told with rhyme, repetition, and wonderful pacing.

Library of Dreams

https://www.gofundme.com/library-of-dreams

From the author, Jorge Argueta,

Please consider making a donation in any amount.

For a donation of a $100 or more, you will receive a signed copy of my most recent book, We Are Like the Clouds. This book recently received the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award from the University of Pennsylvania.

The Library of Dreams, a library that opened in November of 2016 in San Jacinto El Salvador to promote reading and writing for children living under means and in vulnerable areas.

Our children in El Salvador love to read, paint and sing. At The Library of Dreams we do this and much more. Soon we will start planting vegetables, and finishing the murals we have already started. This is a beautiful project that needs strengthening and growth in order to continue to provide our children with these services, which they need so much and help them grow healthy and positive minds. To continue with these services I need your support. I have begun the process of converting The Library of Dreams into a non-profit organization. This is a process that will take one or two years. As we wait for non-profit status, The Library of Dreams wishes to continue supporting our children - for this reason I have created this campaign.

Pariahs For All of Us. News 'n Notes.

Review: Sarah Rafael García and mónica teresa ortiz, Eds. pariahs. writing from outside the margins. Nacogdoches, Texas: Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2016.
ISBN: 978-1-62288-100-0

Michael Sedano

The murders of 300 people by U.S. Army marauders, at Wounded Knee in 1890, stands as the bloodiest mass shooting in U.S. history. Corporate news and lazy writers drool all over themselves to anoint the shooting deaths this month of 50 people in Orlando as “worst” because ugly news sells advertising, but more so because indigenous gente were pariahs, easy to overlook and deliberately devalued.

It’s an obscenity that elements of our national communication infrastructure feel the necessity of counting and rank ordering mass murders. From the slaughter of children, women, and aged people in the 19th century to now, every life matters. Let us not devalue lives simply because fewer lives were taken elsewhere, or killings happened a long time ago.

Our country is good at killing, whether 300 defenseless Indians targeted by a company of trained soldiers, or 50 happy partiers slaughtered by a lone killer brandishing a lethally efficient, easily-obtained gun.

Our culture is just as efficient killing spirits, using a pernicious misanthropy to make pariahs of people. Out of hatred, unthinking ignorance creates a strategy of driving souls into Otherhood, isolation, forced anomie.

Nowadays, that soul-extinguishing power has begun to wane. The excluded, the Othered--the pariahs--have weapons to fight back, to armor themselves with hate-resistant shields of words, of art. And thus, ever-so-slowly, pariahs begin to emerge into the open, not merely as survivors, but winners.

It’s not overstatement to declare pariahs writing from outside the margins, edited by Sarah Rafael García and mónica teresa ortiz, is one of those weapons fighting back against hatred and exclusion. The collection exemplifies reason, emotion, determination. It offers its own unity and a way of winning the public ear, the hearts and souls of the good people among us.

It’s important to get a copy, to read it, to share pariahs writing from outside the margins with friends and family, to get it into libraries, so perfect and not-so-perfect strangers will find themselves, their friends, their familiars, in the pages. Here they are.

pariahs writing from outside the margins is a modest effort—only 96 pages of text interspersed with a handful of monochrome art. You’ll read it in one sitting. Then you’ll think about what you’ve seen, people you know. And you’ll read it again, this time stopping at a page or paragraph, one of Rax’ drawings, or re-reading a poem or story that moved you. A lot of them will move you, no matter who you think you are.

You’ll compare two essays, first, editor Sarah R. García’s emotionally wrought essay on the misery of living through an MFA program staffed by cretins and fatuous asses, then Reyes Ramirez’ more nuanced essay about his experience in a similarly spirit-killing MFA program and experiences with “famous” writers.

Garcia’s experience will make you instinctively angry at the big shot who responds to complaints about an all-white visiting writers roll, “I don’t see color, I only see writers.” Then you’ll nod approval at Ramirez’ analytic examination of the result of blindly exclusionary literary politics:

If young writers aren’t being given access to successful writers of color (if they are, they are taught in a way acceptable to white, mainstream standards) or taught to them as part of the American canon, then how can writers of color ever feel welcome to participating in that conversation with their writing? By extension, can white writers identify with and respect writers of color if they are barely forced to read them?

The raison d’etre of a collection like pariahs is to explain the ways of exclusion to the excluders, but also to share the experiences of the excluded with others like them, to comfort, assure you are not alone, don’t give in and don’t give up.

Like the happa girl who doesn’t look Korean and catches shit for it. She observes, in a wondrous prose-poem painting the rainbow colors of discrimination, experiences like this:

“I dated this Asian chick once, but she was kinda uptight. You know those Asian girls,” he
says.
“I’m Asian,” the woman says.
“No you’re not,” he says, smiling. “You’re kidding, right?”
A secret witness, sometimes she appears white.

Like the transitioning man who attracts the desire of a local woman. They banter and enjoy one another’s company until a moment of truth, of negation, of Othering:

I pulled away. “Listen,” I said, “I’m not like other guys.” I don’t know what came over
me. I just wanted to be seen, what’s the matter with that?
“I wasn’t born a man.”
There, I’d said it. The suit fell off, and underneath stood a transexual––the mythic creature
of perversion, or the self-made man?
“I don’t know what that means,” she said.
“I was born a girl.”
“Holy shit.”
“I know,” I said laughing and shaking my head, but when I looked back up at her, she
wasn’t laughing.
“You’re a liar.” She buttoned her pants and backed off the porch.
“Josie,” I said, my heart raced, “it’s weird for me too, ok?”
“I was...does that make me...you tricked me.” She sneered.

Like the transitioning woman whose one-night stand was never more than that, but lived a magic moment of possibility, never to be forgotten:

He came from Georgia and I called him my sweet Georgia peach; but I never saw him
again. I still go back to that picture saved on my laptop. I now see it as a moment of resistance,
as a moment he couldn’t resist me. With this he became my nostalgia, and I can only assume, I
perhaps became his.

Kismet, exactly as if he had been born he, like she she. But we’re not there yet

Every story and poem García and ortiz selected for pariahs serves to remind the reader that Othering wreaks horrible consequences on both sides of the divide, that there’s an individual behind that public face who is genuine, that as a society our understanding of identity and sexuality remains a one-sided equation.

Too often people kill what they do not understand. People kill because they hate, and hate because they don’t know the place of many people’s heart. Literature is an important avenue to open one’s eyes, heart, and mind to another’s spirit and soul, so we can understand one another, stop fearing, stop hating. Stop killing.

Sarah Rafael García and mónica teresa ortiz’ anthology pariahs writing from outside the margins —the lower case is intentional--is a necessary step on a path toward mutual understanding not just for writers but for us as humans. For those facts, pariahs writing from outside the margins, needs to be read widely.

Order copies of pariahs writing from outside the margins from your local independent bookseller. Ask your local library to acquire the title.


Texas Summit on Integrating Mexican American Studies June 18

La Bloga friend Juan Tejeda shares the following via email:

Statewide Summit on Integrating Mexican American Studies in Texas Schools to be held at the San Antonio College McAllister Auditorium on Saturday, June 18

For information or registration, contact Dr. Christopher Carmona at christopher.carmona@utrgv.edu or 956.854.1717.

National Association for Chicana & Chicano Studies Tejas Foco
Committee on Mexican American Studies Pre-K-12 presents a
Summit on Implementing Mexican American Studies in Texas Schools
Saturday, June 18, 2016
9:00am–5:30pm
San Antonio College McAllister Auditorium
1300 San Pedro Ave, San Antonio, TX 78212

Opening Reception & Registration: 9:00–10:00am (McAllister Auditorium Foyer)

- Check in and registration with light breakfast.

General Assembly: 10:00–11:15am (McAllister Auditorium)

- Dr. Vela/SAC President, Welcome (10 mins)
- Dr. Christopher Carmona, Summit Goals/Thanks to sponsoring organizations & dignitaries (10 mins)
- Dr. Marie Miranda & Dr. June Pedraza present organizations from around the state
Introduction to Juan Tejeda (15 mins)
- Juan Tejeda, Orientation/Breakout Sessions (30 mins)

Press Conference: 11:15am-12pm (McAllister Auditorium)

- Speakers will give statements on goals of Summit & Textbook issue
- Questions/Answers

Lunch- 12:00–1:00pm

- Lunch will be provided.

Working Breakout Sessions: 1:00–4:00pm (Classrooms)

- Information & Data Collection
- Media/Promotions
- Political/Legislative
- Community
- Elementary Pre-K-5th Grade
- Middle School
- High School

General Assembly: 4:00-5:30pm (McAllister Auditorium)

- Breakout Session Reports (10 minutes for each Breakout Session)
- Action Plans
- Closing, Dr. Christopher Carmona

Closing Reception: 5:30-6:30pm (McAllister Auditorium Foyer)

- Light Food & drinks will be provided.


Origins Journal Raising Funds

La Bloga friend, Dini Karasik, shares news of a push to make Origins a leading journal of important writing. Dini writes:

Dear Neighbors, Friends, Family & Origins Contributors,

I want to let you know that we've launched an Indiegogo campaign to jumpstart the next phase of our growth. 
I hope you'll check it out! We've got some fun perks at a variety of giving levels. Many of you have supported us in the past with generous donations and I thank you!

I'd appreciate it so much if you'd support us today with a contribution and/or by spreading the word on social media.

Thank you!

Sincerely, 
Dini Karasik 
Editor & Publisher 
Origins Journal

For more information, click here to visit the fundraising site.

Children in El Salvador are waiting for the 4th Poetry Festival

Talleres de Poesia is a group of writers and volunteers who organize an annual poetry festival in El Salvador. Our goal is bring 4 bi-lingual children's book authors to El Salvador where they offer poetry readings and writing workshops to approximately 800 children from all corners of the country. We also include 4 Salvadoran authors in the festival. It is a 3-day event held at the National Library in San Salvador. We work with 2 non-profit organizations in El Salvador that coordinate bringing the children to the library on buses from all over the countryside. 

For more details visit http://talleresdepoesia.weebly.com

The authors are ready for the 4th Poetry Festival in El Salvador. It will take place at the National Library Francisco Gavidia in San Salvador this November 13-14.

And the authors are...

From Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, Margarita Robleda "Croack"

From El Salvador, Manlio Argueta, Mario Noel Rodríguez, Silvia Elena Regalado, Jorgelina Cerritos and Ricardo Lindo

From California, Francisco X. Alarcon, Rene Colato Lainez and Jorge Tetl Argueta

Children and teachers from different corners of El Salvador will have fun in this Poetry Festival.

Fundraising Event in Los Angeles

If you are in Los Angeles area this Saturday, please come and enjoy a yummy salvadoran dish.