In Memoriam, Oscar Hijuelos. On-line Floricanto With Luivette Resto

Michael Sedano

This week's La Bloga-Tuesday stops to honor the memory of Oscar Hijuelos. As La Bloga recognizes the loss of an established literary voice--Hijuelos is a Pulitzer Prize winner--we are incredibly happy to present one of our brightest emerging literary voices, Luivette Resto. Luivette selects five poems from her 2013 collection, Ascension, which we feature in this week's On-line Floricanto.

Late-breaking News
In Memoriam: Oscar Hijuelos

La Bloga friend Tom Miller shares his sorrow at news of Oscar Hijuelos' death at age 62 on Saturday the twelfth of October. QEPD.

Miller thought back to an exchange with Hijuelos regarding Miller's book about Cuba, Trading with the Enemy, in which Miller tries to find locals who knew the Castillo brothers in Santiago de Cuba. Los Castillo were fictional, like Hijuelos' Pulitzer Prize-winning Mambo Kings title characters.

Oscar Hijuelos wrote Miller when Hijuelos' Beautiful Maria of My Soul came out and Miller had  shared some notes after reading an advanced readers copy. Hijuelos' email reply gives a sense of the late author's literary personality. [Miller adds clarifying notes in square brackets.]

Subject: RE: BMOMS
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2010 14:26:22 -0400

Hey Tom --

Thank you so much -- yeah, it's a crazy little librito [refers to Beautiful Maria of My Soul] -- but you should read the finished version -- which by the way has the correction about Obispo [a Havana street whose location he misplaced] in it -- I did catch it-- but then that ARC was really just a first draft that I'd done my best to get into shape because of a schedule thing -- put in about another six weeks of work into it -- reflected in various changes and expansions, like the ending, though with a few little things taken out that I now regret-- like dropping the names of certain plants -- like yarez-- which I'd come across in some old Cuban tome-- which the copy editors threw a fit over because they couldn't find it on the internet ( as if anyone would have cared) -- and I regret that, pressured for time, I went along with them.

By the way, I did this reading at Union Square B&N the other night, with a friend of mine providing music-- it kind of worked pretty well -- but it so happens that I mentioned your book, Trading with the Enemy-- in the context of how charmed I was by the fact that you were carrying MKs with you while traveling through Cuba and that you had met a few folks somewhere (in Santiago?) who claimed to have once heard the MKs -- it happens that I've had similar experiences along the lines of "And whatever happened to those guys?" as if they really existed (perhaps they did.)
In any event, the fact that some folks really believe that the MKs had been around, sort of led me, in a very roundabout way, to the notion that a real Maria has existed all along-- and so there it is.

Again, I thank you for your kind words-- and, by the way, I'd love to get back down to Cuba sometime --

Take care
Con un abrazo--
Oscar

Qepd, Oscar Hijuelos

Pasadena's 15th annual Latino Heritage March and Jamaica will be the area's largest celebration, after the annual Rose Parade and a football game. Not even the silly "Doo-Dah" parade comes close. But read the newspapers or watch teevee news, people would think the doo-doo and the desfile de las rosas were the city's only major parades.

For a decade and a half, La Pintoresca Park and branch library in the city's northwest has filled with the excitement of drill teams, marching bands, gritos and games. For the 15th year now, the event returns, free and open to everyone who loves a parade. And a jamaica.

And this year, a literary event.

Kicking off at 12:30 is Rick Najera, who signs his new book until 1:25. Thereafter, two panels of raza writers entertain and inform inside the charming La Pintoresca Library.


1:30-2:10, PANEL 1, TELLING OUR STORIES IN POETRY & PROSE
Michael Sedano (moderator and panelist) introduces panelists Andrea Mauk, Randy Ertll, Ricardo Acuña.

2:15-3:00, PANEL 2, OUR INSPIRATIONS & PURPOSES
Thelma T. Reyna (moderator and panelist) introduces panelists Alex Moreno Areyan, Luis Torres, Gerda Govine Ituarte.

3:00-3:30, BOOK SIGNINGS & "MEET & GREET" MIXER WITH AUTHORS AND AUDIENCE.



LOCATION OF SITE:
On the 210 Freeway that passes through Pasadena, take the Fair Oaks exit, North.
North, or toward the mountains, drive up 1.5 miles to Washington Blvd.
You'll see the park and La Pintoresca Library on the northeast corner.
Street parking provides the only challenge to attenders.

Calaveritas Literarias Contest for DDLM

Día de los Muertos celebrations in the United States parallel those of Mexico in many dimensions. One missing element from US-based DDLM observations is the poetic tradition of light verse calaveritas literarias. Often quatrains--but no formal requirement--the calavera takes a satiric poke at the living in the context of eulogy, or simply expresses actitud about death, dying, and burial.

Mural, Boyle Heights, circa 1978.©msedano

La Bloga's Contest: Send up to three calavera poems in English, Spanish, or mezcla to win inclusion in the October 29, On-line Floricanto, and perhaps one of the prizes TBA.

Place your calaveras literarias in the body of an email (no files, please) and be sure to include your name and mail address in event your work wins one of the fabulous TBA prizes. Click here for the address, which is calaveras@readraza.com.



On-line Floricanto for Mid-October: Luivette Resto

Luivette Resto's 2013 collection, Ascension, from Tia Chucha Press, is distributed by Northwestern University Press. Order publisher direct by clicking here. At $15.00, Ascension makes a fabulous gift.


Luivette Resto was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico but proudly raised in the Bronx.

Her first book of poetry Unfinished Portrait was published in 2008 by Tia Chucha Press and later named a finalist for the 2009 Paterson Poetry Prize.

She is also a contributing poetry editor for Kweli Journal, a CantoMundo fellow, and the hostess of a monthly poetry reading series called La Palabra located at Avenue 50 Studio in Los Angeles.

Her new book Ascension was published in April 2013 courtesy of Tia Chucha Press.








Leave It To the Weathermen
to make predictions of tomorrow
with talks of jet streams and
minus ten wind chill factors
bringing me back to our first nor’easter
stranded on the right shoulder of I95,
your index finger calmly swirling her initials
on the passenger’s side window.

Leave me with the memory of
an aurora borealis sending yellow
and green ribbons across the Manitoba sky
when I recognized who I needed to be
and who you never were.




Surrender
You were sexier than
a trumpet solo
in a salsa song.
Why would anyone
say no.

Pink Balloons
With only a bounty of pink and purple,
existing against his collage of darkness,
she plucked from her helium bouquet
a solitary soft pink balloon,
as the Atlantic Ocean applauded
the random act of kindness
witnessed on its boardwalk,
once saturated with $5 women,
peddlers, and morally questionable
business men.

Sea gulls wondered
if the boy will remember the lace
at the bottom of the girl’s dress or
the black bow buckle of her patent leather shoes,
will she remember the coldness of his fingertips or
the silhouette of his sullen face
as the sun set on both of them.

Constellations
Adding dizzying color
like a kaleidoscope
to his inertia,
he gravitated towards her.
As she asked to be part
of his constellation of paramours
and unfinished paintings.

Liberating one another
like a Cardenal poem.

Yes
Is it true that my womb
will never feel the soft pushes of an infant’s feet?

Is it true my femininity has been severed
for population control?

Is it true the pill my comadre took this morning
will cause cysts to grow in her ovaries like magnolias in May?

Is it true that Atabey weeps in a petroglyph
like la Virgen
like a mother on wedding days
like a child’s first seconds in this world.

On the Passing of Alfredo Arteaga

Chicano poet and essayist, Alfred Arteaga, has passed away. Alfred was an extraordinary multi-lingual poet, often writing poems through in English, Spanish, French, German and Nahua. He was the author of several books of poetry (Cantos, Red, Love in the Time of Aftershocks) and of cultural studies (Chicano Poetics and An Other Tongue). His latest book of poetry, Frozen Accident, came out in fall 2006 from Tia Chucha's Press. He was Professor of Chicano Studies at UC Berkeley, an institution he somehow managed to survive as a poet and a human being. He remains online at alfredarteaga.com.

And from Juan Felipe Herrera, this note says more than I could possibly hope to:

Lisita,

Another great hermano, poeta, literary critic pioneer has passed away. A swashbuckling, handsome, mind wrestler and heart igniter, Alfred, Xicano Apollinaire, pioneer, clarinet-voiced, a word-painter, and logos-creator, so humble and so strong at the same time, one of the Bay Area Latino Literary Renaissance giants --

ahh, those sweet years. Gracias Alfred for your palabras, your love giving, you good spirit smile, may light, blessing falls upon you in your new path of peace

tu carnal Juan Felipe

raulrsalinas, luis omar salinas and now, Alfred Arteaga - three pillars, three blazes of sun


Lisa Alvarado

My Mother, Lost and Found

La Perdida

It’s winter Mamí, and I’m thinking of you. Not Mother’s Day, and not your birthday --- on an icy, white, nameless day in the heart of winter. Through the cold that seems like it will never end, my thoughts turn to you and that memory --- the last happy time.

We’re in Geneva, near the Wisconsin border, tobogganing, with abuelo and silent, angry Daddy. I’m four, I think, and you are kneeling in the snow, your hair in a French braid, your fur coat billowing around you as the wind blows. I’m in my blue snow suit, chubby and smiling, and loving you, loving you so very much. How could I know that you would soon start to leave me by degrees?

Each time I remember the snow, your beautiful face, I ache. I want you. I want a woman. Only a woman. This longing is about the hunger only a woman can feed. I want what I want. I want what I can’t have. I let a woman hold me. It is something. It is never enough.

It was about a year ago, on a spring day like a lot of spring days in Chicago; the sky, overcast, the color of slate, the color of mourning doves. The wind was blowing cool and damp, making me shiver. I was standing in Queen of Heaven Cemetery, looking down at a mound of dirt, an unmarked grave. It was where Rita Alvarado, my mother was buried. So much had happened between us, so much said and unsaid. I laid down on top of the dirt and opened my arms to try to hold her one last time.

People have asked me how would I describe my relationship with her. I tell them this. A little girl and her mother are flying on an airplane, when something happens and the plane starts careening toward the ground. In a rush, the mother searches for a parachute and finds only one. Placing it on the girl, she carries her to the open hatch. The child wails and screams, begging her mother not to let go. But the mother, with infinite love, takes that last step, and releases her daughter to the open sky, to the world, to her future.

Everything I am today is because my mother gave me a parachute.

My mother was a woman who spoke little of the past, and when I became a teenager I became more curious about her life before she got married. I’d asked her to tell me the story of how she named me. (In 1956, the year I was born, Lisa was not a popular name.) To my surprise, she told me that it came from Club De Lisa, a popular jazz club on the south side. (I’ve come to find out that it had a national reputation, and was a hub for cool jazz.)

After some prodding, I found out that she had a very different life then. I only knew her as an unhappy housewife, someone who doted over me when I was little, but disappeared into alcoholism and drug addiction before I was 12. She told me a story of a completely different woman, a model with the Pat Stevens Agency, who made all the rounds at the chic clubs, dated musicians, and was a former print ad model for Maybelline mascara and eyebrow pencils.

One day, after what she thought was her best shoot, the art director told her that it was too bad --that this was as far as she would ever go because she was so Mexican-looking. (The ads only featured a tight shot of her eyes, avoiding her strong Indio nose, and were altered to make her skin seem lighter).

Little details about my childhood seem to make more sense. I remember her crying after making a princess costume for me...she’d cut down her only good suit...silk shantung, which I found out after the revelation was one of the last vestiges of her modeling days. I had access to some more of her life, her true life, the one she in which she was happy before it all went to hell.

It didn't change her limited choices, didn’t change how an abusive marriage trapped her and eroded her soul. Knowledge here, did not mean freedom, either for her or for me.

I was never able to save her.

I am looking for you, mother, looking for you everywhere.
In the corridors of dreams, windowless, empty.
I look for the door that will lead me to you.
I look, but I never find it. I am looking for you, mother.
On these hard streets and cracked sidewalks,
I run past carnicerías, babies dressed for bautizos,
family parties in back yards.
But you are never there. I am looking for you, mother.
I play Billie Holliday just like you did. I
think if I close my eyes and wait long enough;
I will smell your perfume and you will finally be here.
But you never come.
Doctors took you away.
You took yourself away with pieces of paper
neatly lettered with milligrams and the proper dose.
They help you forget that once you were almost celebrated
almost called beautiful by people who thought
it was a shame that you were so Mexican looking.
So you give the man the paper and he gives you the pills.
The pills help you.
The pills have stolen you from me.

I am looking for you, mother
A woman kisses my hand,
I think it is you. A woman holds me,
I think it is you.
My lover tells me he thinks I am beautiful.
Not almost.
I think about you.
I wonder if I will ever find you.
I wonder if you will ever kiss me.
I wonder if you will ever hold me or tell me I am beautiful.
I wonder if you’ll ever know that I wrote this for you.

Juan Felipe Hererra on raulsalinas

photo of raulsalinas by Bruce Dye

From Lisa, La Blogista: We hope this stirs and ignites you. Please leave a comment and more importantly take raulsalinas' example to heart....Gracias to Juan Felipe Herrera

hail raúlrsalinas :: 1934 – 2008 :: hail liberationlove raúlr was in red. he came in lower-case, strutting down thru the brown cadre in red, a red bandanna across his forehead & taut around his black tresses down to his shoulders, smilin, boppin’ slow & glowin’ hard, in blue tramos planchados & curled to show the calcos spit-shined black solid, bluish tattoos, turquoise rings & gold medallions, a slung-fine chain swingin’ down the black spaghetti-thin belt, under the amber light in the center of the waiting audience, this is where the street-royal carnal found his calling, throttled the mic & peered into the brown cadre huddled on the floors, some of us squeezed against the shadowy aisles, the rest of us in crescent shaped circles, in strange awe, smeared hot against each other’s shoulder bones, the dark jeweled man in red stood under that first-time sparkle-light, his veined muscled arms swayed at his sides, then, he spoke, his bold baritone sounds found a silky-river way into our head, then coursed through our blood as if we were one blood, what was he all about? what was happening to us? where were we headed, now that we had been set off in motion? raulr was riffin’, blowin’, boppin’, snappin’ spittin’, talkin’-singin’ for the new freedom-body, without the locks, fetters & guards of officialized history, policies, and summations of our multi-dimensional self. november 13th, 1973, raulr appeared in the morning, at the floricanto first national chicano literature conference at USC, thirty-eight years old, one year after he had finished doing his time at leavenworth penitentiary, i sat in the center row, dressed in a tzotzil tunic i had brought back from chiapas in ‘70, miguel mendez, tomás rivera, teresa palomo acosta, zeta acosta by the doorway, then raulr popped the mic again & flowed into “un trip thru the mind jail y otras excursions,” he was speakin’ black, caló, tex-mex, chicano & some kind of san francisco beat mantra chakra choppin’ language meant to pierce your awareness: who are you? who did you think you were? what is oppression? how is it constructed? how many of your rooms does it occupy? who else resides in these chambers? is there a way out? then, the baritone voice slid back into the crimson body under the lights – raúlrsalinas ambled away, into the fresh trembling borderless nation. raúlr’s nation was borderless, he had crossed it, on foot as on the page & the stage, speaking, riffin’ & teaching human verses & unity actions – from working class “barbed-wired existence” barrios, from the land of high school force-outs, from grave stones of bullet-riddled camaradas, from “narcotic driven nerviosidad,” from suicided “colonias” & familias, to “ex-convictos activistas doing good in cities of chavalos gone bad,” to “trenzas indigenas,” dedicated to a revitalized indi@ collectivity, to “cantor de cantinas, pasándole poems a perennial pachukos prendidos, hoping to ease their pain,” “cantando colores de flores in arco iris danza,” ”learning en la lucha,” honoring the oak tree at the margins of a desolate collective capitol, honoring “indias, comadres wearing ski-boots so essential para caminar.” raúlr too was a walker, a walker-writer of the chican@ inferno & finder-seer of "rainbow people spirit." raulrsalinas was a true liberator: a kind fire-word man of soul-jazzed languages, a writer within & without prison walls, a socio-political mind-jail wall-breaker-scribe-singer, a collector, reader & translator of stolen cultura-tablets, a speaker of & for tender homage & eulogy to the invisibilized, a fearless warrior seeking the paths to our indigenous selves, lands & pueblos, relentless in responding to the “animales transnacionales” & militarized hydra machines, a shaman in demin, re-conjuring herstories of unwritten pachuka murders & oppressions across the southwest & pacific northwest, undoing the anthropological & sociological tyrannies of el pachuko, that is, all of us, in lower-case motion – raulr sings in a mid-fifties bebop alto & baritone gold-gilded sax voice, from pine ridge to chiapas, from el barrio de la loma to the diné rez, from shoshone & arapaho tierras to la selva lacandona, healing-gathering, healing-working – “respeto, paz y dignidad,” raúlr offers his life-quest harvests to all of us. what else, raúlr? you were speaking of lower-case love – everything we all are, have been & will ever be. in liberation --juan felipe Herrera, 2/25/08

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And from poet Oscar Bermeo:

Just wanted to pass along that last week, there was a tribute to raulsalinas


Among the readers sharing their thoughts and presenting the work of Raul

Alejandro Murguía
Tomás Riley Francisco
J. Dominguez
Marc Pinate
Naomi Quiñones
Leticia Hernández-Linares
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Nina Serrano
Jack Hirschman
Darren de Leon

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More teatro news, Denver-style

The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare Thursday – Saturday, February 28 – March 1 Thursday – Saturday, March 6 – 8 7:30pm King Center Rawls Courtyard Theatre Auraria Campus, Denver Tickets: $12 General Admission $5 UC Denver students Sponsored by: Theatre, Film and Video Production Department.

José Mercado, new Assistant Professor of the Theatre, Film & Video Production Department, directs a contemporary telling of a classic comedy driven by mix-ups, coincidence and slapstick humor, with the events confined within the action of a single day. The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s earliest, shortest and most farcical play. It tells the story of two sets of identical twins and the wild mishaps that occur through mistaken identity. Before joining the faculty at UC Denver, Mercado was head of the theatre department at North High School where he directed "The Zoot Suit Riots", the first high school production to play at Denver Performing Arts Center’s Buell Theatre. Prior to teaching, he worked as an actor in Los Angeles after earning his Master of Fine Arts degree in Theatre from UCLA. He is a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild and Actor’s Equity Association. He is also a member of the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs.

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Women and Creativity Conference/Lisa Alvarado Shameless Self-Promotion Department

Gente: I've been blessed enough to have been asked to perform The Housekeeper's Diary at the conference -- Friday, March 7, at 8 PM at the National Hispanic Cultural Center's Roy E. Disney Center for the Performing Arts, as well as a reading for high school students at the Center's Wells Fargo Auditorium, Monday, March 10th at 10 AM.

Conference Info: Women and Creativity 2008 is organized and presented by the National Hispanic Cultural Center in partnership with more than 25 local arts organizations, artists, writers and independently owned-business. This year, we have an inspiring offering of more than 50 exhibitions, performances, workshops, classes, and engaging discussions in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

Women and Creativity partners invite you to dedicate an afternoon, evening or entire weekend in March to attend events and workshops that awaken and nourish your own creativity and support the creativity of our communities. Although we shine a special light on women’s creativity during this festival, we invite and encourage the participation of men at all events.

The National Hispanic Cultural Center, along with our partners in Women and Creativity 2008, believe that creativity, art and self-expression are central to sustaining healthy individuals, organizations, business and communities – so, join in and celebrate the creative women in your community and the creativity inside yourself.

There will also be a fabulous PEÑA FEMENINA Sunday, March 9th at NHCC's LA FONDA DEL BOSQUE;

Other Artists:
Alma Jarocha,
Leticia Cuevas, Anabel Marín, Otilio Ruiz, Victor Padilla

Jessica López

Bailaora Xicana, Flamenco
marisol encinias, vicente griego, ricardo anglada

Lenore Armijo

Angélica
Cuevas

National Hispanic Cultural Center 1701 4th St, SW Albuquerque, New Mexico

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Teatro Luna Fabulousness!

Teatro Luna has a BRAND NEW SHOW opening on March 6th, but you can catch it now! This Saturday and Sunday see a sneak preview of Teatro Luna's most intimate show yet... SOLO TU, a collection of four interwoven solos all about different women's experiences with PREGNANCY.

One woman thinks she's finally built the perfect family - Mom, Dad, Cute Kid- until an invasion of mice makes her wonder what's really going on. Another woman finds herself caught up in the worst kind of Baby-Daddy-Single-Mama Drama. Meanwhile, a woman in her third year of trying to get pregnant decides her pregnant friends make her want to vomit, and her close friend wrestles with pro-life activists, hospital robes, and how she feels about having an abortion in her 30's.

Saturday @ 7:30 pm and Sunday @ 6pm

SHOW RUN: March 6-April 6 2008
Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays @ 7:30 pm
Sundays @ 6pm
Chicago Dramatists 1105 W. Chicago Ave, at Milwaukee
Tickets $15, Student and Senior Discount on Thursdays and Sundays only, $10
$12 Group Sale price, parties of 8 or more
For tickets, visit www.teatroluna.org

Lisa Alvarado

raulsalinas lives

Juan Felipe Herrera will grace La Bloga next week with some
thoughts about raulsalinas...

Here's some things to ponder....

Politico, Prisoner, street poet...aside from these obvious roles,
what is the lasting impact of raulsalinas?

What are both the specific and universal messages in his work?

What were his spheres of influence as a writer and poet?

How has he personally affected your writing, your ethos, your sensibilities?

How would you summarize his example as to what it means to be a man,
a Chicano (a), a creative person, a spiritual person?

Share your thoughts and your stories here with us next week....