Dénouement to Negative Pedo. On-Line Floricanto Penultimate Tuesday

Next Steps As Movimiento Photogs Recover Negatives

Michael Sedano


After forty years, it all boils down to a massive misunderstanding. 

“Ask me next month” one photographer replies when I ask if he’s satisfied, now that the negatives and other materials reside in Joe Razo’s office, seventeen cartons of three-ring binders. 

Negative strips in binder sleeves.

The suddenness of events has caught everyone by surprise, the full impact is still sinking in. There’s a ton of work ahead and an immediate critical decision.

Last week, La Bloga reported on the sequestration of photo archives of movimiento newspaper La Raza Newspaper and Magazine. The issue had burned quietly over the forty years since the magazine folded, leaving the archive in possession of the final editor, Raúl Ruiz.

Over time, photographers sought access to their negatives but Ruiz denied access. Once, the photographers were twenty-somethings, the editors in their thirties. Today, those photographers are retired and taking store of a life’s work. In all this time none have seen their youthful images except in memories.

Ruiz' best expression of regret and apology for the years of discord over the negatives is seen in his swift delivery of all the materials. He was wrong, Ruiz acknowledges that. Ruiz includes his own negative files, including those he took during the police riot of August 29, 1970. 

I asked one photographer who had inspected his negatives, if there were images he remembered, that he looked forward to seeing again. “Oh yeah.” The two words burned with the warmth of never-forgotten moments of perfection, like remembering an old novia. “Oh yeah,” he says again.

When Luis C. Garza wrote the Open Letter on the subject and LatinoLA published it Saturday November 10, Ruiz realized his error and quickly recanted.

On Tuesday morning November 13, Ruiz delivered seventeen cartons to former editor Joe Razo’s chante. Garza and Razo estimate they will have 30,000 images once they recover the complete archive. The negatives are sleeved in individual strips and kept in binders. Many of the pages include proof sheets. This means there's an excellent chance the negs have not deteriorated.

Through the years and various relocations, Ruiz kept the archive—which includes editorial material--largely intact. Ruiz promises he’ll find some missing elements, for example, most of editor-photographer Razo’s files are not in the notebooks. 

Properly processed and stored negatives have a long shelf life, especially when professionally organized like the 17 boxes of notebooks. Sadly, indexing was not a disciplined occupation of the newspaper. There’s a ton of work to be done now, identifying the photographer, the date and location of 30,000 frames.

Razo and Garza identify key issues the photographers will decide collectively. The most critical decision, and the one the photographers will address first, is keeping the collection together. What if individual photographers want theirs back? It’s likely they all share a commitment to finding an institution to receive the archive and make the images publically accessible. Photographer and USC professor Felix Gutíerrez can make the conecta with USC’s Digital Library.

UCLA, UCSB, Cal State Northridge, the University of Southern California would make suitable repositories. I recommended the collective favorably consider USC’s Digital Library. I donated my own negatives of the 1973 Festival de Flor y Canto to USC, and know the gente well.

With USC’s extensive collection of Southern California historical images, La Raza Newspaper and Magazine archive makes a good fit. For example, the library is digitizing the files of the LA Herald-Examiner. 

Felix Gutíerrez shares last foto of Ruben Salazar
 with Boekmann Center librarian Barbara Robinson.

The library’s Boekmann Center Collection features an expanding catalog of historic Chicanada materials. 

In addition to the digitized videos from 1973’s Festival de Flor y Canto that launched the floricanto movement, the Boekmann Center Collection is the repository for Ruben Salazar’s personal papers, including the last known foto of Salazar alive, an FBI surveillance shot of the journalist trailing the marchers along Whittier Blvd.

The photographers met last week to launch discussions on the collection’s fate. Scholars who have a pressing need to see the archive can contact Joe Razo. Razo describes his caretaker role of the negatives “completely transparent,” indicating Razo’s commitment to returning these images to history, as well as the photographers.

Massive work and key decision lies ahead.

Technology allows photographers to have their negatives and share them too. I had a hundred or so frames that I digitized myself. I keep possession of my negatives while USC displays the images themselves on its Digital Library. In theory, any library in the world wanting “original” copies of photographic images need only acquire the scanned file and store it on local servers. If someone wants to own a museum quality print of an image, or use a frame in a textbook or documentary, there’s a link to create that opportunity. The photographer doesn’t lose control of one’s own work.

Digitizing is costly. Hardware is cheap; it’s the labor to feed the machine that costs. Non-stop scanning, 35,000 images at a minute per six-frame strip will require almost 500 hours. At $10.00 an hour for one work-study student, that’s $5000 the library must come up with, just to start thinking about acquiring the donation of the archive.

Every frame requires coding. Not just a dewey decimal number or other catalog locator, but libraries keep, inside the files, hundreds of characters of data about every item. That data needs to be verified then keyboarded. Some of this work requires an information professional’s skill. Add another ten grand to the budget and now we’re up to $15,000.

Library administrators don’t budget for such fall-in-your-lap windfalls like 35,000 important historical photographic negatives. Where does a Dean find a source of fifteen thousand dollars to spend on safeguarding the value of La Raza newspaper and magazine’s archive?

This photographic collection is the only one in existence of some of the most important events of recent U.S. history. The images can flesh out, or be the subject, of dozens of dissertations. For a University, such treasures help attract leading scholars, and donors.

USC has a President’s Office and a leader with a long list of friends and a vision for the University. La Bloga calls on President Max Nikias to prioritize USC’s acquisition of this precious resource. Can a president turn a magical money tap and produce fifteen grand just like that?

Problems like that are why universities have presidents. Solutions go with the job.

But first things first. The photographers will decide what to do with the collection. Keep it whole, or break it apart. That’s unlikely, but a possibility. 

In the meantime, the process of making a database of those seventeen cases of negative strips occupies the available energies of the collective, but mostly Joe Razo. Razo's offered access to any academic with a professional interest in the archive. Who knows if academia will beat a path to Joe Razo's door? 



La Bloga On-Line Floricanto, Penultimate Tuesday of November 2012
Odilia Galván Rodríguez, Elena Díaz Bjorkquist, Avotcja, Ana Chig, Alma Luz Villanueva


"Motherland", by Odilia Galván Rodríguez
"Calling Forth the Seeds of Winter", by Elena Díaz Bjorkquist
"Are We Even Listening?", by Avotcja
"INSANIA", por Ana Chig
"Happy", by Alma Luz Villanueva



Motherland
Odilia Galván Rodríguez

far from artificial borders that birthed us
our long toothed roots remain tethered here
to earth red with ancient ancestor's blood
that bloomed future, their generations spread across
these great nations, which was always motherland
long before strangers came, named us foreign
we remain forever citizens of Turtle Island



Calling Forth the Seeds of Winter
Elena Díaz Bjorkquist

Dedicated to my Comadres of Sowing the
Seeds who endured the cold outside on
the porch at our last meeting!

In cold truth, Summer ends,
Seeds prepare to rest.
Something about that cold.
Things come out of it,
Settle in our writer’s heart.

Sun vanishes, temperature drops,
We endure head-clearing cold,
Recall, recognize, honor
The seeds of our wisdom’s harvest.

Winter winds like sacred voices
Call forth abundance,
A time to resurrect
Our natural creativity,
A joy for all.

Time to remember the gifts
From loved ones who’ve gone on.
Time to select seeds of wise actions
To plant for future harvest.

Cold and heat,
Summer and winter,
Seed time and harvest time,
Suggest a definite time of harvest.

But there's no fixed time for harvest,
We can call it forth at will.
The harvest is clear—memories
Reveal the lessons of what's passed.

We become aware,
Accept the creative power of now,
Conceptualize, visualize, energize
A world of beauty, good relationships.

The heart of awareness,
Is the dance of arising worlds,
Soul seeds planted in winter.



Are We Even Listening?
Avotcja

Mother Nature is crying
And as I drink her tears
I ask myself
What can I do to make her smile?



INSANIA
por Ana Chig

Un compás de nieblas nocturnas detenidas en el verde oscuro
Migas de astenia repartidas a los pájaros en la escisión inaprensible de las almas
La ventosa urbana, el cementerio de nubes grises y silenciosas

Todos reunidos ésta noche a contratiempo
Con la médula de cartón humedecida
Orgánica la palabra, luciérnaga el deseo, articulados los sueños,
y un vacío tintineando inquieto en los bolsillos.



Happy
Alma Luz Villanueva

Flowers in fountains,
scented lilies, roses,
beauty, trees, grasses
fed by springs, greeted

"Hola, la agua es muy
rica," this water
always heals me, the
unguarded smiles, laughter,

until the tourists
arrive, smiles but now
polite, butterflies float
in warm November air,

the scented lilies soothe
me, a black crow
struts, a kitten plays with
her mother, as I

eat chicken
fajitas for
breakfast, cold
cerveza with

limes, a pitcher
of coffee, Spanish
cradling my ears,
I'm happy.


BIOS

"Motherland", by Odilia Galván Rodríguez
"Calling Forth the Seeds of Winter", by Elena Díaz Bjorkquist
"Are We Even Listening?", by Avotcja
"INSANIA", por Ana Chig
"Happy", by Alma Luz Villanueva

Odilia Galván Rodríguez, poet/activist, writer and editor, has been involved in social justice organizing and helping people find their creative and spiritual voice for over two decades. Odilia is one of the original members and a moderator, of Poets Responding to SB 1070 on Facebook. She teaches creative writing workshops nationally, currently at Casa Latina, and also co-hosts, "Poetry Express" a weekly
open mike with featured poets, in Berkeley, CA. For more information about workshops see her blog http://xhiuayotl.blogspot.com/ or contact her through Red Earth Productions & Cultural Work 510-343-3693.

Elena Díaz Björkquist, third from right.

“Sowing the Seeds, my woman writers collective has been active in Tucson for 12 years. Each November, we meet at my home to celebrate el Día de los Muertos and for an arts and crafts workshop. This year we decided to invite Doña Rosa from Albuquerque to do a Medicinal Herbs Workshop for us. The workshop was held on my portal. It was a beautiful sunny day that was supposed to warm up, but instead it got colder! I wrote this poem for my freezing Comadres.”

A writer, historian, and artist from Tucson, Elena writes about Morenci, Arizona where she was born. She is the author of two books, Suffer Smoke and Water from the Moon. Elena is co-editor of Sowing the Seeds, una cosecha de recuerdos and Our Spirit, Our Reality; our life experiences in stories and poems, anthologies written by her writers collective Sowing the Seeds.

As an Arizona Humanities Council (AHC) Scholar, Elena has performed as Teresa Urrea in a Chautauqua living history presentation and done presentations about Morenci, Arizona for twelve years. She recently received the 2012 Arizona Commission on the Arts Bill Desmond Writing Award for excelling nonfiction writing and the 2012 Arizona Humanities Council Dan Schilling Public Humanities Scholar Award in recognition of her work to enhance public awareness and understanding of the role that the humanities play in transforming lives and strengthening communities.

Elena is one of the poet moderators for the Facebook page “Poets Responding to SB1070” and has written many poems published not only on that page, but also on La Bloga. She was recently nominated for Poet Laureate of Tucson. Her website is at http://elenadiazbjorkquist.com/.

Avotcja (pronounced Avacha) is a card carrying New York born Music fanatic/sound junkie & popular Bay Area Radio DeeJay & member of the award winning group Avotcja & Modúpue. She’s a lifelong Musician/Writer/Educator/Storyteller & is on a shamelessly Spirit-driven melodic mission to heal herself. Avotcja talks to the Trees & listens to the Wind against the concrete & when they answer it usually winds up in a Poem or Short Story.
Website: www.Avotcja.org
Email: LaVerdadMusical@yahoo.com

Alma Luz Villanueva was raised in the Mission District, San Francisco, by her Yaqui grandmother, Jesus Villanueva- she was a curandera/healer from Sonora, Mexico. Without Jesus no poetry, no stories, no memory...

Author of eight books of poetry, most recently, Soft Chaos (2009). A few poetry anthologies: The Best American Poetry, 1996, Unsettling America, A Century of Women's Poetry, Prayers For A Thousand Years, Inspiration from Leaders & Visionaries Around The World. Three novels: The Ultraviolet Sky, Naked Ladies, Luna's California Poppies, and the short story collection, Weeping Woman, La Llorona and Other Stories. Villanueva's  fourth novel, SCORPION HUNTER, and new book of poetry, GRACIAS, are to be published in 2013. Fiction anthologies include: 500 Great Books by Women, From The Thirteenth Century; Caliente, The Best Erotic Writing From Latin America; Coming of Age in The 21st Century; Sudden Fiction Latino. Her poetry and fiction has been published in textbooks from grammar to university, and is used in the US and abroad as textbooks. Alma Luz Villanueva has taught in the MFA in creative writing program at Antioch University, Los Angeles, for the past fourteen years. She is the mother of four, wonderful, grown human beings.

Alma Luz Villanueva now lives in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, for the past eight years, traveling the ancient trade routes to return to teach, and visit family and friends, QUE VIVA!! And taking trips throughout Mexico, working on a novel in progress, always the poetry, memory.
www.almaluzvillanueva.com

Review: Daniel Cano. Death and the American Dream. Final Report: National Latino Writers Conference. Notes.

Daniel Cano. Death and the American Dream. Tempe AZ: Bilingual Review Press / Editorial Bilingüe, 2009.

ISBN: 978-1-931010-54-2 (cloth) 978-1-931010-55-9 (paper)

Michael Sedano

Charley Trujillo leans into his story. The historical Tiburcio Vasquez had been a fluently bilingual upperclass scion of a Californio familia on the mid-19th century Monterey peninsula. Vasquez ran afoul of the clash of cultures--perhaps because he was too good at moving in and out of his hispanoparlante cultura and his equally educated Englich, I think—and went on the lam from la jura. Escaping a feared Mexican-killer lawman, Vasquez was pinched in West Hollywood by a local posse. In the newspapers of the day, Tiburcio’s personality won the day, but the jury hanged him anyway, no hard feelings, in 1875.

Trujillo, the author of Soldados, and Dogs From Illusion, writes with straightforward power about Chicanos in Vietnam, so his upcoming documentary film on this California legend should prove to be equally compelling. My conversation with Charley at the National Latino Writers Conference highlights the little-known, or mis-known, early history of Chicano culture in California. These people had stories; had newspapers, writers, an information culture, and that was a hundred years ago. So large a story, so small a memory.

Against that historical amnesia comes a much-needed historical novel, Daniel Cano’s Death and the American Dream. Next year marks the centennial of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, along with a starting point in the chronology of Mexican immigration into California. In Death and the American Dream, populated by an unusual protagonist supported by strong women, set against a convincing historical landscape, Cano treats his reader to six years in the life of a fugitive from the Mexican revolution who settles into a Mexicano community, not in East L.A., but a barrio that occupied today’s Brentwood on the tony west side.

Any title with “American Dream” in it has to be writ large, and the main problem with Death and the American Dream is it is writ too short. With success of this novel, it could become one in a series of historical novels tracking the conflicted biculturalism of that revolution-driven Chicano diaspora, in the person of Pepe Rios, who is not yet thirty as the novel ends in 1920. Pepe would be around 80 in 1970, the height of the Chicano Movement. It would be interesting seeing how Cano gets us there.

In 1911, eighteen year old Pepe Rios thrashes away from battle in Juarez to safety on the El Paso del Norte shore, where locals have set up picnics to take in the Mexican fireworks. Soldiering with Pancho Villa, Pepe gets tangled with the federales and believes he’s betrayed both his Villista compañeros and the feds, and killing his brother. Unable to tell his mother of his own role in the brother’s death, Pepe’s guilt launches him into headlong flight from the welter of confusions surrounding the battle and likelihood of execution by whichever side catches him first.

Crossing the river, Pepe kills an opposing soldier. Moving toward California, Pepe gets involved in killing a white man. Then Pepe’s best friend Seferino disappears into the hands of Los Angeles police and dies a suicide because he had it coming. These are the deaths that weigh heavily on Pepe—a son’s debt to his mother; the gallows; class and ethnic aporia--just as he’s about to get his first real taste of the American dream. The year is 1915. Pepe’s changed his name to José San Juan, and after years of subsisting on a steady diet of hard physical labor, San Juan—Cano always calls him Pepe--finds a dream job as a cub reporter at Martín Algodón’s newspaper, El ababar.

Cano puts strong women into Rios’ life. For his part, Pepe is not one of those “el hombre domina” tipos but willingly seeks his woman mentors. Ángela, the severe boss and cultural coach, continues where the priest left off back on el rancho, training the student’s mind. The alluringly beautiful Camilia, who years earlier has mentored Pepe Rios in passion, now his publisher’s wife, has gotten Rios/San Juan the life-changing break. Eusebia, a troubled woman, mother, and intimate confidant, disdains Pepe’s social whorl.

Mentored by seasoned bilingual veterana Ángela Durón, a writing career opens to the skilled letter-scribe and habitual diarist. Pepe hungrily takes to Ángela’s training. Secretly, he hopes one day to investigate Seferino’s murder, expose corruption, and bring a measure of justice to his “Just Us” excluded gente. Cano is spare but effective establishing the pervasive brutality of cop v. comunidad of the period, the Them and Us still extant. There’s no whining in Pepe’s bitterness. Cano allows Pepe and his neighbors seething outrage, moderated for similarly outraged readers by the dramatic irony that Pepe’s role is to be a tool. On one hand, the capitalist running dog Algodón keeps a willing Pepe on a financial leash. On the other hand, the anarchists cynically exploit Pepe, playing his ghosts against his better judgment, driving him to despicable and dangerous acts.

Language is no barrier to the monolingual Pepe. His beat is the newspaper’s society pages and occasional hard news piece. Los Angeles’ Spanish-speaking upper crust society opens to San Juan. Movers and shakers who love seeing their names and faces in the paper welcome the writer into their society, and Pepe’s a natural bon vivant and surreptitious interviewer. He gets good stuff that Ángela turns into interesting copy. Even without his own byline, other editors clamor for the reporter’s news. The money helps. With advanced skill, and notoriety, come danger. Ricardo Flores Magon comes to town to publish the famous Régeneración. In hot pursuit: the cops, the feds, the Mexican feds, judges, anglo media. Magon will eventually get 20 years that cost his life.

Home life offers little comfort to the fatigued and deeply stressed reporter. He’s out late at fancy events, often, in the company of attractive women who seem available. His wife aspires to none of Pepe’s social graces. Her values rest in her home, family, and gente. Eusebia recognizes her indianness as polar opposite to what draws Pepe out of the home. She understands her role. She brought her own children to marriage with Pepe. She knows as does he, that Pepe settled on her, still haunted by the memories of another woman. She recognizes the constant presence of the glamorous ex-lover, Camilia, in Pepe's career.

Cano’s description playing the two women against each other illustrates the dysjunction of Pepe’s torment. His wife has just looked into a mirror noting proudly her Amerindianness:

Pepe saw strength and beauty as he looked into her eyes—not a woman’s socially accepted beauty—bright eyes, curved lips, or shapely body—but something deeper, a chasm that lulled and puzzled at the same time, an enigma that transcended the flesh. Where Camilia, his ex-lover and now the wife of his employer, radiated beauty, intelligence, charm, grace, and poise, Eusebia exuded simplicity and dignity. She existed like the morning sun, a cloud, a wave, a puff of dust, or a blade of grass.

In an interesting writer's tack, Eusebia suffers mental illness. Deep bouts of depression leave her confused and angry. To his credit, Pepe doesn't blame Eusebia for her illness. He doesn't help her, merely tolerating her absences when depression seizes her and family life goes around her. To Cano's credit, he doesn't blame Eusebia either. Conventional writers would say, "pobre Pepe, married to a crazy woman." Eusebia has values, integrity, and thinks critically. Her illness is a fact of life that she manages as best she can. But the illness appears to be winning and we begin to lose Eusebia as a character. This mental illness motif adds interest and value to an already involving story, a unique instance of a good book doing good.

I understand that Eusebia has to play third fiddle to Ángela and Camilia. They stand for power and social mobility; Pepe's chosen slice of the dream. Eusebia connects to home, earth, fecundity, fragility; things Pepe takes for granted, or ignores. And Death and the American Dream, after all, is Pepe's story.

Pepe's workdays and nights bring him superficial contact with strangers. His only close personal connections include Eusebia and a friend he knew in the old days. Lacking much outlet, Pepe seethes in constant outrage at restrictive covenants in housing, heavy-handed lawmen, resentful English-speakers, his publisher’s willingness to publish lies that curry favor with industrialists and anti-unionists of both the US and Mexican governments. Already intoxicated by rubbing up against big shots, he doesn't notice his increasing taste for booze. 

Pepe / San Juan becomes ensnared by the Magon movimiento. Ángela is one of the conspirators, and all along her mentoring has been directed toward Pepe’s recruitment. She reels him in like a fish on Santa Monica pier where Eusebia and Pepe met. The mentor tantalizes and torments Pepe with details of Seferino’s capture and suicide, with knowledge of that long-ago and far away killing. Pepe/San Juan becomes a spy for the Magones. When Ángela asks Pepe to use the publisher’s wife to spy on her husband, Pepe fails to recognize the organization’s manipulativeness. Instead his moral center spins ambivalently between getting the elegant former lover back into the sack, and betraying his obligation to Eusebia and their children. Tellingly, Pepe cannot make a convincing enough case for his wife’s side, but ends up driving the would-be lover into a towering rage that shatters their ties forever. Pepe is absolved of his responsibility to take effective action one way or the other. Is this as good as it gets?

Death and the American Dream is Cano’s second Pepe Rios novel. The eponymous 1991 title from Houston’s Arte Publico calls out “find and read me”, to learn how this current story fits into Cano’s earlier Rios story, and to observe a writer’s growth. This one’s a masterwork so the comparison will prove useful. While at the library, Daniel Cano’s Shifting Loyalties stands tall alongside Charley Trujillo’s as a must-read in United States war literature, and that of Chicanos in Vietnam combat.

The ending of Death and the American Dream will leave readers shaking their heads with surprise and mixed, mostly conflicted, emotions. Historical fiction has to follow the script, so there are no happy endings for Chicanas and Chicanos in 1920. Already the two older Rios boys are school dropouts; if it were 2009, they’d be skateboarders and asshole taggers. But it’s 1920 and the one is in and out of trouble, the other puts in hard physical labor but has begun spinning out of control. The older daughter has begun her own life, picking fruit up the central valley. Her kids will be in their seventies and eighties today, WWII veterans, Korean war vets, too, if she has as large a family as her mother. And medication is helping Eusebia's illness. But then, those are stories for another novel. Daniel?

Final Dispatch from Alburquerque...National Latino Writers Conference Wraps With Promise

I have been remiss and a poor guest in delaying thanking Carlos Vásquez and the National Hispanic Cultural Center for inviting my participation at the 2009 National Latino Writers Conference. Thank you, Carlos, Greta, Katie and the staff of the National Hispanic Cultural Center for a multi-faceted gem of a conference. 

I presented a workshop on reading your work aloud and attended workshops on writing poetry, novels, cultural journalism, screenplays, memoir, children's picture books, and panels featuring publishers, editors, and agents. Saturday morning, I observed the interviews between individual writers and a publisher, editor, or agent. Present a quality work, make a convincing presentation and the writer takes another step toward publication.

Vásquez limits attendance to fifty writers. People attend from across the nation and literary ascendencias. Mexico and Puerto Rico gente attend in good proportions. This year included at least one Colombian, a couple Salvadoreños, and gente I didn't get to meet from otros países. Enrollment cost is a well-kept bargain secret, but transportation is extra. As a result there's a good contingent of New Mexico writers. The conference draws a multigenerational group, from college freshman to retirees, from ex-Marines to ex-GIs. Collegiality is probably the second-most valuable experience writers take home from Alburquerque. It is a hotbed of Chicana Chicano Latina Latino stimulating literary discussion. 

Food service at the NHCC is unsurpassed. Registration includes breakfast, lunch, and banquet. Fruta, pan, burritos, salsa, come fresh to table. Main dishes taste and look good, presentation enhanced by attentive servers who don't let anyone down, even gente with food allergies and vegan writers. The conference program should list the mug shots and names of the key staff in that kitchen. ¡Ajua¡ to the cooks and servers.

Attention to detail--exemplified by the menu, the promptness and ease of getting everyone served and seated, but seen in all facets of programming--accounts for the smooth flow of the two and a half day literary festival. CPT rarely rares its head, events run on time. In the case of Open Mic, to the second. 

Scheduling features tracks for fiction, poetry, movie, children, young adult writing, and the critically important panels. Two or more subjects are workshopped during ninety minute periods. Writers elect a course of study, following a topic or instructor, or sampling broadly as a way of enlarging their writer's repertoire of genre. Workshop presentations range from hands-on writing sessions to lecture-discussion variants.

Some instructors recognize the obstacle of offering more than token feedback and abandon the hands-on notion altogether. Reyna Grande, for instance, breaks a novel into five elements, then uses a metaphor of painting a canvas to discuss writing a novel.  

Demetria Martinez does explication de texte, asserting that artifacts from everyday life are the stuff of memoir, then reading from Mother Tongue, where Martínez validates her assertion. 

Some workshop leaders elect to conduct writing exercises, filling paragraphs or lists to fit schemata of a play, or a character, or a poem. Valerie Martinez, for instance, outlines a view of poetic sensibility, then distributes  magazines and trinkets to foment vocabulary exercises that, who knows, could be, become, a poem? 

There truly is not time to read or get feedback on one's exercises. Workshop leaders who engage enrollees in a lot of writing invariably collect the work and promise to read and get back to the writer. Thankfully for some, a modicum of feedback comes at the tail end of the ninety minutes. The best prepared writers, preferring the focused feedback of considered reading, as opposed to extemporaneous first impression, have mailed manuscripts in advance, for their Saturday interview. One improvement Vásquez and organizers might consider is widening this tarea  model, with workshops springboarding from exercises completed prior to arriving.

One improvement definitely not worthwhile would be upping the limit on enrollees. This would be disastrous to the already minimal feedback provided in workshops. Worse, more gente would profoundly alter the personalized character of this warmly collegial, culture forming event. Aside from this, the NHCC staff is severely stretched to provide portable video projectors and audio for PC and Mac systems. For now, the conference is small enough to videotape, or videoconference. Interposed media like those is a far better method for enlarging the National Latino Writers Conference audience.

I placed my own presentation on "reading your stuff aloud to audiences" on my Read! Raza website. Using video from the 1973 Festival de Flor Y Canto, I illustrate important considerations writers plan for, whenever they get the opportunity to present their work to an audience. This is a talking script, not the fleshed out presentation, which I extemporize a la brava. This is the kind of workshop that would benefit from the tarea model. Bring the writer to Alburquerque with a rehearsed 10 minute reading. Meet in 3 or 4 person workshops for an hour and a half. Videotape, critique, revise, do it again (the next day). The drawback is not doing the illustrated lecture, which is so much fun owing to having so wonderful an audience. Sadly, I did not take my audience's photo.

Among the highlights of the conference is the Keynote Address. Last year, Rudolfo Anaya addressed the shape and place of Chicano writing. This year's speaker was the seminal critic and anthologist, Felipe de Ortego y Gasca. This Keynote, and the reading by the Premio Aztlán awardee, should be videotaped and distributed through the NHCC's website. Thankfully, we have the Web.

Here are four excepts from Dr. Ortego's address, titled, La Tarea Y El Trabajo: Summary And Assessment Of Contemporary Latino American Literature. Click here for a full-text PDF of Dr. Ortego's address.

Over the years that I knew Tomas Rivera, the Chicano author of Y no se lo trago la tierra—first recipient of the Premio Quinto Sol Award in 1972—he would say of his writing, “Ta cabron la cosa,” meaning the task of writing was not always easy. Still, se require el trabajo, the writing must be done. In that sense, all of us who write—especially those of us Latinos who write about our experiences as Latinos—somos trabajadores de la raza. As Paul Tournier, the Swiss physician and philosopher put it in the Meaning of Persons (1957): We are not free of the task, but neither are we free of its responsibilities. The task (la tarea) looms large before us but the work (el trabajo) must be undertaken to complete the task. And what is that task? For us as Latinos and as writers that task is not just to add our literary voices to the chronicle of the human condition but to testify to the presence of our people in that chronicle. That task is formidable, even daunting, but not insurmountable.

. . . .

Given this distinction, the state of Latino American literature today is extraordinarily vibrant made more vibrant by the pulse of Latin American literature. Of course there's a connection. Somos primos. Representing "various Latino nationalities" as Carlos Vasquez has described the participants of this conference, Latino Americans are attuned to the pulse of Latin America. The reverse is not always true. Latino American writers are not as widely recognized in Latin America as Latin American writers are recognized in the United States. Few Latino American writers find their works translated into Spanish for a Latin American literary public. While there is a significant number of Latino American writers who write in Spanish, they are not lionized by that Latin American literary public as Latin American writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar, and Jorge Luis Borges--to name but a few--are lionized in the United States.

. . . .

The point is that the term “Latino Writers” most often directs inquiries to Latin American writers. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that few Americans outside of Hispanic literary specialists know very much about U.S. Latino literature today. To be sure, there are successful U.S. Latino writers like Sandra Cisneros Rudolfo Anaya, Denise Chavez, Piri Thomas, Miguel Algarin, Nicolasa Mohr, Achy Abejas, and Angel Castro. In the main, however, when pressed, uninitiated Americans will ask quizzically: Are there U.S. Latino writers. Who are they? What this points to is the woeful ignorance of Americans about U.S. Latinos despite their long historical presence in the United States. This also points to the woeful inattention to and neglect of Latino Americans in the daily mainstream of American life.

. . . .

In 1970 I sent a piece of fiction entitled “The Dwarf of San Miguel” to John DiStefano at the New England Review. Within a week he called me excitedly hoping I hadn’t commit-ted the story elsewhere. It was a good story, he said, and he wanted to publish it in the very next issue of the New England Review. I didn’t tell him his was the 21st journal I had sent it to. The 20 previous rejections told me they liked the story but that the beginning needed work or that the middle didn’t quite hold the story together or that the ending needed something punchier. For me this epi-sode confirms that a piece finds its publisher and that a writer must hold firm in trusting his or her art. Of the million words I’m sure I’ve written by now I don’t write with a publisher or a reader in mind.

Next year marks the tenth iteration of the National Latino Writers Conference. La Bloga is happy to announce the opening of registration, so be alert for los datos in November or December.

Rigoberto Gonzáles Reviews YA Novel in El Paso Times.

Dan Olivas didn't get a chance to remind readers of Young Adult literature to catch Rigoberto's take on Diana López' Confetti Girl, a novel of a parent's death, adolescent stirrings, with a generous helping of comedy, Gonzáles find it a satisfying book, concluding, 

López weaves Lina's bilingual and bicultural upbringing into the narrative seamlessly, giving young Latina readers an added element to connect with.

"Confetti Girl" is a satisfying read that belongs in the distinguished company of such young-adult Texana titles as Claudia Guadalupe Martínez's "The Smell of Old Lady Perfume."

Click here to review the entire piece.

La Bloga Guest Columnist This Thursday

La Bloga's Tuesday sign-off reminds readers La Bloga welcomes comments on the daily column. Simply clicking the Comments counter below launches the comment program. La Bloga also welcomes Guest Columnists. This Thursday, Lisa Alvarado is happy to share the column with Lydia Gil, a cultural journalist working for the Spanish news agency Efe. Lydia is covering Luis Urrea's reading of Into the Beautiful North at Denver's  Tattered Cover.

A busy Tuesday for me, for you, a Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except You Are Here. Thank you for visiting La Bloga.

mvs

Review: Black and White and Dead All Over

John Darnton
NY: A.A. Knopf, 2008.
ISBN: 978-0-307-26752-8 (0-307-26752-0)

Michael Sedano

Back when I was a kid, someone told me a homophone joke, "What's black and white and
read all over?" A newspaper. Shortly thereafter came the "sick joke" version, "What's black and white and red all over?" A dead nun.

I can't believe it's taken almost sixty years for some writer to use one or the other of those jokes as a title allusion, but it has. The culprit is John Darnton, and he's used both jokes to signal a newspaper-based murder mystery--there's neither convent nor nun. In keeping with the jokester heritage of the title, Darnton writes Black & White and Dead All Over as a roman à clef comedy that's well worth putting up with some cutesy stuff and an early give-away of the murder's identity.

Since a whodunit revolves around characters, Darnton elects to give his silly but often illustrative names. The predator mogul who wants to swallow up the newspaper is a New Zealander, Lester Moloch. The first murder victim is an unpopular editor surnamed Ratnoff. Less obscure, perhaps, are the detectives who unravel the crime. The police investigator is one Priscilla Bollingsworth--attractive but not readily approachable--and the reporter, Jude Hurley. For her, think homophone vulgarity, balling; for him think literarily, Hardy's character Jude Fawley.

After a brisk opening--the first body drops in the first pages--Darnton slows down the action, giving over lots of space to introducing the names of his characters and their foibles. I'm sure there are tons of newspaper in-jokes flying here. Darnton explains the ones that require more than insider knowledge, allows others to fly past. Some of this backgrounding is necessary to the story, like the vicious Ratnoff's penchant for savaging poor reporting, and his hardly compensatory practice of scribbling a one-liner of praise in purple ink. When Ratnoff's body is discovered, the murderer has spindled into the corpse that same one-liner in purple ink. But some of the characters, like Bavardez--such an unusual name--simply disappear, leaving the reader wondering what all the fuss was about.

The title is a bit of a misnomer. There are only three murders, but they are spectacular. The spindled editor in the City Room, the gossip columnist wrapped in bailing wire in the basement, the cook poisoned and flopped into her pear soufflé in the studio kitchen. But then, the "dead all over" could as well archly refer to Darnton's subtext, the death of print journalism and the rise of the internet. With the murders all occurring on the premises, the board locks out the frightened employees. Jude turns to the web-based paper to pursue the case and publish his stories. In fact, Darnton points to tabloids and web publications as reflections of what readers read and where journalism is making its last stand. Jude's paper, The Globe, populated with old-fashioned writers and colorful characters, is on its last legs.

With all the importance names have in this novel, the dead give-away of the fiend's identity comes at the absence of a name. When the gossip columnist sees her murderer, not yet realizing what his presence implies, she recognizes him by announcing, "Oh, it's you." In a world marked by camaraderie and spirited repartee, "you" offers a telling indicator of status and contempt. Then, in the next chapter, Jude has a similar encounter with a character, whom Jude recognizes with the same tell-tale, "Oh, it's you." That's right, "you," it turns out, is the killer. That is not a spoiler revelation. Readers will find Darnton's name play thoroughly enjoyable, so when a person pops into the story and is deprived of a name, that telegraphs significance. Too bad Darnton doesn't name that person Butler.

There are a couple of subplots running--a bastard heir, Moloch's spies, Jude's courtship of Bollingsworth, the impending death of newspapering--that keep the story running at an enjoyable pace. Several laugh out loud moments will be rewards beyond the sense of authenticity--or perhaps comfortable stereotypes--for newspapering Darnton weaves into the fabric of the novel.

It's interesting that there are several outstanding newspaper motion pictures, but not many newspaper novels. Kinky Friedman has a colorful columnist character, but for novels, I wracked my brain. The only other newspaper novel I can remember is The Last City Room, by the LA Times' Al Martinez. It's thus a pleasure now to add one more to the list, John Darnton's Black and White and Dead All Over. Got others? Leave a comment and recommend it.

mvs

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