Chicanonautica: Marvel Meets Maya

by Ernest Hogan

When I posted a picture of a South American merman-like creature from an anthropology book, Prehistoric Man in the New World on Facebook, Ed Hall told me I needed to see Black Panther: Wakana Forever. I was confused. 

Then I saw a photo of Tenoch Huerta who played Namor in Mayanoid regalia. Hmm . . . 

I waited until Disney+ streamed it. I enjoy the MCU movies but have mixed feelings about them. Back in the 20th century, Marvel was one of the underdogs of pop culture, and wasn’t as corporate, and closer to folk art. Now the entity is more environment than anti-environment, as Marshall McLuhan would put it. For me, it feels weird for these comics to have become the center of our emerging global civilization. 

Also, the tendency to make Atlantis Mayan by latter-day mystics bothers me. Nobody offers any solid evidence of an Atlantis/Maya connection. Though amusing–Augustus Le Plongeon’s Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx is fun, but he provides no conclusive evidence. I file this stuff with hollow earth and ancient astronaut crapola.

There’s a meme going around with Plato saying, “Atlantis was a metaphor . . .”

Fortunately, the film’s conceptualization crew had the good taste not to even use the A-word. This Namor lives in Tlalocan— a lost colony of Maya mutated by a vibranium meteor for underwater living. It actually works—they did some research and the Mayan decor is gorgeous. 

There is, however, a problem.

Tlalocan is Nahuatl, meaning “the place of Tlaloc” the Aztec rain god. That’s Aztec, not Maya. A different culture and language. This is like mistaking French for German.  A Mayan equivalent would have been Chactenango, Chac being the Mayan name for the rain god, tenango meaning place.

I also feel uneasy about DisneyMarvel’s attempts to appeal to the worldwide “Latin” (not just Chicano) audience. If you hadn’t noticed there’s been a whole lota corporate takeover of pop culture this century. I miss the days when our superheroes and mythologies weren’t corporate intellectual property.

For a long time, before the other streaming services, DisneyMarvel has been releasing its movies globally, in all kinds of languages. I guess they don’t have any preColumbian culture scholars working for them. Their reaching out to black and “Latin” audiences is a search for wider audiences and bigger profits, not the empowerment of “minorities.” 

I suppose they could do damage control by having Namor, who’s supposed to be centuries old, fighting the Aztecs as well as the Spanish, forming alliances, learning languages . . .

And also, Africa and Latin America both have folk/superhero traditions of their own . . . 

Other than that, it’s not a bad flick. The special effects are spectacular, as expected these days. It follows the epic/operatic formula of the genre, building up to a long, climactic battle where you can get up and go to the bathroom without missing any plot development, and after it all, reassurance that the sacred franchise will continue for your worshiping pleasure.

I’m already forgetting the parts that didn’t irritate me. 

Environment versus anti-environment, as Prof. McLuhan said. 

Someday soon, selected parts of our superhero mythos will be reedited into the holy book of the future, like the King James Bible.

Meanwhile, I recommend watching Santo Contra Blue Demon en Atlántida and Mistero en Las Bermudas for a little variation on this theme.

Ernest Hogan will be teaching a class, Papí Sci-Fi’s Ancient Chicano Sci-Fi Wisdom at the Palabras del Pueblo Writing Workshop, for all you Latinoid writers who dare to let loose your rasquache imaginations.

Chicanonautica: Seduced, Hallucinating Tex(t) And/Or Mex

by Ernest Hogan

When William Anthony Nericcio gave me a copy of his Tex(t)-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the “Mexican” in America he struck out his name for the title page, the way Carlos Fuentes taught him to, and autographed it, and added a cartoon balloon that made Speedy Gonzales, with “not Chicano” on his sombrero say: For Ernest Hogan, whose trippy novel High Aztech blew my mind!

Which is the effect I intended my novel to have on the reader. I am happy to report that Tex(t)-Mex had a similar effect on me.

It's rare that I find ideas similar to mine in books. Tex(t)-Mex not only echoes my twisted reality, but provides material that I wasn't aware of. Nericcio must be more obsessed with this stuff than I am.

And just what is this “stuff?”

Why, the bizarre ways that “America” perceives “Mexicans,” of course!

And by “Mexicans” we mean all Latinoids, be they o/a, a/o, x, or whatever newfangled, unpronounceable suffix the current identity crisis spawns.

“America” has trouble seeing us. We are distorted by a haze of stereotypes and prejudices. Tex(t)-Mex dives in and does rocking, rasquache riffs on some prime examples, Orson Welles’ border fantasy Touch of Evil, ethnic Frankenstein sex monster Rita Hayworth, cartoon mini-superhero Speedy Gonzales, vomiting suicide Lupe Vélez, and even feminist/hipster goddess Frida Kahlo as documented by Gilbert Hernandez.

Yes, even when “Latinos” depict their own, it gets seductive and hallucinatory.

The problem is that America has trouble seeing “Mexicans.” Hollywood always gets us wrong. Even recent popular movies have token Latinoid as comedy relief with funny accents. And if you show up in real life, and are too different from the stereotypes that the society holds dear, things get . . . weird.

I know. Back in the twentieth century, nobody seemed to have any use for a Sci-Fi Chicano. Publishers didn’t see any money in it--New York still treats me like an illegal alien. A lot of my fellow “Latinos” thought that I was being traitorous working in a genre that celebrates technology, that they all knew was a tool of the oppressors.

Why couldn’t I write about our reality?

Our reality is different from Anglo reality. Documentary accounts of our lives get called “magical” realism. My attempts at journalism--with a little tweaking--often can pass for science fiction.

Which is why Tex(t)-Mex was such a pleasure. See? It’s not just me. There’s a major culture disruption here that we all have to learn to navigate.

Tex(t)-Mex, in all its postmodern, seductive hallucinatory glory, with lots of visuals that could trigger bouts of post-McLuhan nostalgia, is valuable for both Anglos and Latinos in becoming educated for the upheaval to come.

Besides, political correctness is just creating new stereotypes. Just as seductive and hallucinatory as ever, still steering away from reality.

I wonder if they’ll ever be able to see us? Maybe if we take off the sombrero, and the mask, shave the moustache, peel off the face, crack open the skull, expose the brain. . .

Ernest Hogan is scanning the mutating landscape, writing, drawing, and otherwise attacking 2019.

Same Old Sh_t, different pendejos

Top 10 Reasons Not To Wear A Culturally Appropriating Halloween Costume
(with thanks to Freddie Fagula, a Facebook friend, for the initial text)

10. That shit is tired and you’re more creative than that. You can be anything.

9. You don’t wanna be “that guy/that girl” at the party.

8. You won’t be endorsing a history of domination, colonization, and genocide through your flippant, cartoonish, or stereotypical portrayal of cultures other than your own.

7. People of color won’t have their night ruined by your costume.

6. No one else will have their night ruined by your costume.

5. People who you’ve never met won’t take one look at you and decide to avoid the ignorant person who would wear THAT.

4. Your odds of getting laid will be dramatically increased because you won’t have offended half of the people at the party.

3. You aren’t an unfeeling jerk who likes to insult and hurt people.

2. You won’t be asked to leave the party because you are a white person dressed in black face or as a “native,” a Nazi*, Mexican, Indian, gypsy, geisha, Orthodox Jew, Arab terrorist, sheik, or hula dancer, etc.

1. You are an awesome, deep, conscientious individual who understands the importance of respecting the life, experiences, culture and ethnicity of people different from yourself.

*Yeah, I know it’s not technically “appropriating” but please, not okay.

Here is how wikipedia defines cultural appropriation: Cultural Appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It denotes acculturation or assimilation, but often connotes a negative view towards acculturation from a minority culture by a dominant culture. It can include the introduction of forms of dress or personal adornment, music and art, religion, language, or social behavior. These elements, once removed from their indigenous cultural contexts, may take on meanings that are significantly divergent from, or merely less nuanced than, those they originally held.

Obviously, there are many ways to create an offensive costume that may not be pointed out above or fall into the cultural appropriating category. If you’re wondering whether your costume will offend someone than it probably will. If you’re still thinking about wearing it, ask your more thoughtful friends to weigh in on it. I realize this is a multi-faceted topic deserving more attention than once a year on Halloween, but this is as good a time as any to bring it up.

I believe it’s healthy for people to want to transform themselves, and Halloween encourages that. It gives people a sense of possibility. It’s a creative outlet in a culture of full rules about who can make legitimate “art.” It’s the extra nudge one may need to let go and be someone else. Even if it’s just for a laugh. It’s an opportunity that I wouldn’t want to deny anyone. What I do want is a Halloween where one persons liberating costume is not another persons insult to their life, experiences, culture, or race.

Please give it some thought and don’t be “that pinche pendejo/a” on Halloween.



Thanks,

Lisa Alvarado

Art Is Not Business!!!!

I've been thinking a lot about art-making, about ownership of art and the internet. One of the things I love about the 'net, and here I mean NON-PROFIT blogging, non-profit journals, etc., is the way in which it frees the creation and analysis of culture from corporate control. It unchains creatvity and criticism from the side of the elite, snatches it from the dominant culture and puts it in the hands of everyday people. It is incredibly democratic, populist, and as such, subversive.

I remember in graduate school catching high holy hell for my love of sampling, of the ways that hip hop artists take from the past and fuse it into something else. (And yes, Virginia, where there's a buck to be made, I wholeheartedly support recording artists, visual artists and writers getting their due.) But there is something about participatory culture, communal creation that keeps grabbing people by the throat, blurring the boundaries, something irresistible.

A while back I read a book that made me think about art as commodity, art as communal property and here are my thoughts about the book and its ideas.

"Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk." --- Henry Jenkins

"Get a life," William Shatner told Star Trek fans. Yet, in Textual Poachers, Henry Jenkins makes the case that fans already have a "life," one that gleans from popular culture, then revisions and redrafts its ownership into something akin to new mythology. Further, it is a consumer-driven culture, one outside the control of the corporate universe. I was initially drawn to this book in its exposition, when I read Jenkins' repudiation of fans as cultural dupes, social misfits, mindless TV and movie junkies. Jenkins, Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, author of: Textual Poachers, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, makes a well-argued case than fans are active participants in a burgeoning underground of cultural consumerism as "owners."

These owners are skillfully producing new genres, i.e., fan fic, as well as being a kind of nomadic poacher, constructing mythology, alternative social communities, and cultural representation. Having attended fan conventions, corresponded with fans via websites and Listservs, he offers an insider's perspective. Approaching this as an ethnographic study, Jenkins is able to identify major areas of fan interest (Star Trek, Beauty and the Beast, Alien Nation, etc.)

Given the date of publishing, Jenkins did not have access to the blowup in fandom that occurred after the first two seasons of the X-FIles, when it moved from cult favorite to cultural phenomena, to say nothing of the fandoms surrounding today's cult hits, Battlestar Gallactica, Lost, Heroes.

In addition, he describes the fan community as initially white and female. Although now, more and more men and people of color are swelling the ranks of fanfic, and there seems to be gender and racial parity in the blogging community. Further, according to Jenkins, fan groupings contain more working-class and middle class people than other "art" related constituencies. He goes on to say some more intriguing things.

That the fan community sees itself in opposition to the capitalist control of culture, choosing to create what he terms meta-stories. Meta-stories are the online writing of non-industry people, based on television shows and movies. Through these meta-stories or fan fic, fans clearly express alternative "ownership," and in fact, have begun to impact the original "producers." For example, Jenkins reports that several studios monitor fan websites in order to gauge trends when considering television or movie sequels.

In addition, fic writers push the envelop for what themes their favorite icons now contain. Fic writing has dealt with: alternative endings/or plot extensions of film and televison series, explicit sexuality, queer-oriented alternate plots, gender roles, and the construct of emerging literary genres, etc. And we have only to look at the surge of interfacing today between "hard" network broadcasting, pod casts, film and TV episode downloads with alternate content, to see a major shift in how pop culture, already underway full steam, is experienced.

As a fan (X-Files) and fic writer myself, I found it a useful delineation of a fiercely loyal, now international, subculture of renegade consumers of culture. Everyday people are becoming outlaw storytellers, seizing modern-day archetypes and making them our own.

Lisa Alvarado

Goddess of the Americas: Looking Back to Create the Future

Writer extraordinaire, Ana Castillo

photo/mixed media by Alma Lopez

This a brilliant collection celebrating the love of and devotion to the enduring influence of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Castillo includes male and female writers, agnostics, traditional Catholics, feminists, and Santeras in this eclectic homage. This anthology contains essays, memoir, poetry and rhetoric celebrating a complicated relationship with a folk deity, one that is much less European, and traditionally Catholic, much more than that. This is a deity that is full-bodied, sensual, actively involved in the thrum and unraveling and reclamation of the world. In the preface, Castillo writes that this brown-skinned Mary appeared in 1531; but in reality, existed as Tonatzin, a thousand years before the conquest. The thread that weaves these essays together is the fascination with the ways in which Tonatzin, the moon goddess, morphed into this particular image of Mary.

She is essentially Latina, essentially an emblem of indestructible indigena roots, which survived through a syncretic practice. (Much like the ways Mejicanos/Chicanos themselves survived the conquest.) Authors such as Elena Poniatowska, Luis J. Rodriguez, Sandra Cisneros, Denise Chavez, and Gloria Anzaldua write with clarity, precision and grace, depicting a 'Virgin' that has survived the conquest and embodies a multiplicity of identities, based on the multitude of goddesses that are her antecedents. Shaped in their image, this goddess is rooted in the indestructible, the indigenous. Each of imbue this goddess with qualities the colonizers could not imagine, let alone control.

This Virgin is an amalgam of mother, consort, liberator, guardian of the living and the dead, and wellspring of the revolutionary. Of particular interest to me was Sandra Cisneros' essay entitled, Guadalupe the Sex Goddess. In it, she traces the Virgin's pre-Columbian roots as icon of fertility and sexuality, central to a cosmology in which female sexuality was valued, not denigrated. In that cosmology, Guadalupe's antecedents included Tonatzin, the moon Goddess who embodies the feminine principle of cyclical re-creation. She (Guadalupe) is also linked to Tlazolteotl, patron of sexual pleasure and Tzinteotl, goddess of the rump. Lastly, there is a connection Tlaelcuani, the filth-eater, she who transforms the ugly, the corrupted, into the sanctified and renewed. Cisneros on her significance:

When I look at the Virgin of Guadalupe now, she is not the Lupe of my childhood, no longer the one in my grandparent's house in Tepeyac, nor is she the one of the Roman Catholic Church...Like every woman who matters to me, I have had to search for her in the rubble of history. And I have found her. She is Guadalupe the sex goddess, one that makes me feel good about my sexual power, my sexual energy, who reminds me I must...speak the most basic, honest truth...write from my panocha.

This is the vivid imagery, the hidden history I need in order to shape a reconstruction of identity, one woven with both Catholic and more ancient threads. The is the Goddess that saves and transforms sexual violence and abuse, celebrates the sacred, sexual body. A formidable read. This book has helped me think about what in means to be a Latina, in a personal and epic sense.

Noticias:

Check out what's happening around pop culture, racial stereotyping, social commentary, and William Nericcio here.

Lisa Alvarado

Ulises Silva, Tragical Mirth, and Pushing the Envelope

I recently posted an article about a piece of speculative fiction, Solstice. It's a novel that's sharp-edged, haunting, and has some kick ass-heroines.

The following is a conversation with Ulises Silva, its author, and the founder of an independent press, Tragical Mirth Publishing.

(If you missed my piece, you can read it here.)


1. Tell me about the genesis of Tragical Mirth Publishing. Do you see yourself as a niche publisher? If so, what do you feel are the strengths of that? The downside?

Tragical Mirth Publishing is the independent publishing house I established in order to self-publish Solstice in 2007. I took the dreaded self-publishing route primarily for creative control.

After all, one of the earlier comments I got on an earlier draft of Solstice was that the characters’ names (i.e., Itztli, Jai Lin) were too difficult and different for most audiences, and that I should change them. I think that’s what I feared the most about going through a traditional publisher—that they’d want to change the characters’ ethnicities and names in order to make them more commercially appealing. That would have defeated the purpose of writing this story. So I took the chance and created Tragical Mirth to self-publish, and it’s a gamble that’s surprisingly paid off. Despite it being a self-published book, Solstice received positive reviews in Booklist, Library Journal, SciFiNow magazine, and now here at La Bloga. I see TMP as a niche publisher in the sense that I want to focus on giving authors of color an entry into the crowded literary marketplace. While I’mnot yet ready to publish other writers, I do hope to eventually start working with authors of color and let them tell the stories they want to tell.

I want them to see TMP as an alternative to the big publishers that seem naturally inclined toward labeling anything written by us as Urban Fiction or what have you. I think that focus on letting writers of colors tell the kinds of stories they want to tell is our greatest strength. Hopefully, down the line, TMP will be a very viable publisher with a full roster of good and promising writers of color. The downside, of course, is that TMP is an independent publisher, and not currently set up to publish anything. And, assuming I can ever get to the point where I can publish other people’s works, writers will still need to temper their expectations. I doubt we’ll ever be about giving someone a $10,000 advance and promise to get their book into every top review magazine and best-selling list. But if a writer is willing to work with us and be willing to take some of the risks with us, then hopefully we can accomplish something special. And considering the unexpected success of Solstice, I truly believe we can achieve anything.

2. Your novel is a piece of speculative fiction. How does that sync up with popular ideas of 'Latino/Chicano' fiction?

A lot of ‘Latino/Chicano’ fiction is based on telling stories from our historically marginalized point of view. We tell stories that, while familiar to Latinos, might seem alien to most everyone else. They’re stories about growing up as hyphenated Americans, about Latino/Chicano political activism, about all our experiences on the fringes of mainstream American consciousness.

They’re about telling the stories no one else can or cares to tell. Solstice, although grounded in speculative fiction, is deeply influenced by this aspect of Latino/Chicano writing. The notion that Scribes can use the English written word to literally manipulate reality is based on my belief that mainstream media has the power to invent our reality and historical awareness (or, in some cases, efface it altogether).

So it’s no coincidence that the Editors tasked with watching over these Scribes are all people of color, people who operate in the shadows and whose native languages serve as a defense against Scribes. Solstice’s protagonist, Io, is a Mexican-Japanese anti-heroine. She’s the best of The Editors, but she moonlights as a vigilante, and her mantra is that only cruelty can destroy cruelty.

But she’s haunted by the loss in her life, including the loss of her parents and her own normalcy. She carries a reminder of this loss with her—a copy of Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street given to her by her mother as a reminder of “where she came from.” Although her character is adrift at the start of the story—caught between two distinct ethnic identities, occupying the fringes of common law, trapped in the purgatory that is her own aimless vigilantism—it’s her mother’s book that keeps her oriented, even if she doesn’t know it.

And, of course, there’s Nadie, the novel’s antagonist. She’s the Scribe who decides that humanity is irreparably corrupt and destructive and must therefore be exterminated. But she wants the world to know why it’s being destroyed, which is why she sets out to tell a story—in her own unique way—that recounts history’s many unpunished crimes, including the horrors of colonialism. It’s one of the book’s ironies that this young girl whose name means "no one" is the one who brings these crimes to light and issues her final judgment.

3. In Solstice, you create a world similar to Dick's Blade Runner. Talk about that as a landscape for your characters, and the decision to pit Scribes and Editors against each other as the central theme.

The story is set in an alternate near future where the U.S.’ power and influence have eroded following three catastrophic military ventures (there are vague references throughout to Iraq, Iran, and Taiwan). I wanted the story’s landscape to present an uncanny glimpse into a foreseeable future, where government corruption has gone unchecked thanks to stolen elections, interest groups, and widespread apathy. Part of this landscape, of course, are Scribes, people with the power to make whatever story they write come true. Scribes are meant to reflect the notion that the written word, in the hands of certain people, can create reality. We see it in history books, of course. How many of us have heard that it was Mexico that provoked the war of 1846 -- a war Americans call the Mexican War and that Mexicans call La Invasion Norteamericana?

But consider this also: If we think on the ways mainstream media helped the current administration launch its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and how they invented for all of us the reality of Iraq’s nuclear stockpiles and willingness to use them against us, then we can see that the written word really does have power. It’s no coincidence that I make references throughout to a Scribe named Don Poinsettia, a Scribe Io takes down with the help of a Chinese Scribe, Xiu Mei Xiang. Poinsettia is a Murdoch/Rove figure who’s used his powers and his MIX media empire for personal gain.

The suggestion is that he single-handedly brought about the U.S.’ downfall. I actually plan a prequel to Solstice that will focus on him and Io’s attempt to hunt him down. She’s the top Editor, after all. Editors are, in essence, a representation of post-colonial theory. So much of what Latinos and other writers of color do is write the stories that colonial and mainstream texts have skipped or effaced. I wanted the Editors—all people of color whose native languages serve as a defense against a Scribe’s powers—to represent that ongoing struggle.

4. Solstice is populated by strong female characters, outside the 'norm.' Can you share what motivated you and what you hope you engender in the reader with that choice?

It really began with my mother, a strong Mexican woman who never backs down from any fight, and who always taught me to respect women’s rights and equalities.

From a very early age, she let me see the inherent ludicrousness of the machismo that was (and perhaps still is) rampant in Mexico and Latin America. I remember seeing Aliens for the first time, and seeing the Ripley and Vazquez characters in action, and being totally awestruck by them.

I think that was the first time that I saw a female character that kicked butt with the best male characters, and the first time I started to ask myself why we didn’t see more characters like them in movies. We’ve all seen male action heroes, but not nearly enough female ones, at least not many that weren’t just Barbies with guns (e.g., Lara Croft). I’ve always believed that, as a writer, you should embrace the control the written word offers you. As writers, we can tell whatever stories we want with whatever characters we want. That’s why, when it came time to start writing my stories, I always featured a strong female lead, because those were the kinds that I always appreciated the most.

With Solstice, I saw an opportunity to create Io, a heroine who’s very strong, very independent, and not just a sexualized, hot-blooded LatinAsian woman bowing down to stereotypes. I wanted her to have real layers, real depth, and real flaws. And despite her troubled beginning (she really is a monster at first), I wanted readers to sympathize with her plight, and appreciate her eventual redemption. Maybe more importantly, I wanted people to read her and the rest of the characters, and say to themselves, “why aren’t there more characters like these in books and film?” I wanted to give Latino/a and Asian audiences a set of strong central characters they could appreciate and even embrace. And I wanted to show other audiences that a Latina/Asian woman could have other roles than the ones people are used to seeing them in.

5. What are the themes you find yourself returning to? What's their significance personally and creatively.

Creatively, I’m fascinated with end-of-the-world scenarios, maybe too much for my own good. I guess, growing up in the 80s and thinking that the Emergency Broadcast Network was going to come on at any moment, I thought the end of the world could really happen. So I migrated to these kinds of stories. I was always fascinated with the human response to apocalypse, and especially how the media would react and spin stories if an end-of-the-world scenario began to unfold. That’s why there are many instances in Solstice where Io and her companions are listening to the radio or watching TV; they’re forced to watch the horrors of Nadie’s actions through the filters of network news and talk shows. Personally, I’m just as adamant about writing stories featuring people that look and act like us. Growing up, I didn’t see a whole lot of Latino/a protagonists that were strong or three-dimensional or even law-abiding.

So it’s important to me, as a Latino writer, to create characters we can relate to. Because I genuinely feel that our people, especially our younger audiences, still don’t have a whole lot of positive portrayals in mainstream media to inspire them. There aren’t enough characters like us out there that make us think we can be heroes or awe-inspiring or even strong. I’m just one person, but I make it a point to always feature strong, central Latino/a characters in all my fiction. With Solstice, it’s Io.

With my next novel, Inventing Vazquez, it’s a Chicana named Liliana Vazquez. With my next speculative fiction novel, The Mourning Syndrome, it’ll be a Chicana writer named Clara Solis. That will always be my goal: to have real characters that we, as Latino/as, can readily identify with, and maybe even be inspired by.

6. Share with Bloga readers where you hope to take them with Inventing Vazquez.

From the writer that brought you Solstice, a dark, apocalyptic novel, comes…a light-hearted comedic satire. That’s going to be a nightmare to try and market, but… In any event, Inventing Vazquez is my new novel (with a release date sometime late 2008 or early 2009) that takes
on an issue very important to me: the (mis)portrayal of Latino/as in American cinema. Like I said before, I don’t think our people have a lot of positive examples to look up to in film. Most of the time, we’re portrayed as gang members, or domestic servants, or crime victims. And even when films do cast Latino/as, half the time they play non-Latino roles. It’s like America Ferrerra said in Ugly Betty: "Mexicans don’t have action heroes. All we have is a fast little rodent."

So Inventing Vazquez is my little critique of the whole industry. (As an aside, even the title of the book is in reference to the Vazquez character from Aliens. Yes, the same one I mentioned earlier. I eventually learned that the actress wasn’t even Latina; it was a non-Latina actress with brown contact lenses, bronzed skin, and a fake accent. I was so discouraged, because for so long, I’d really liked that character and what I thought she represented.)

The story centers around Liliana Vazquez, a mousy Chicana who’s hired by a major film studio to serve as a “Hispanic Sensitivity Issues Consultant” following the widespread outrage among Latino/as over a recent film. She’s hired to read scripts and alert the studio if she thinks it’s going to offend Latino/a viewers, but she comes to realize that the position is a token one. She, like the Asian Sensitivity Issues Consultant and the Arab Sensitivity Issues Consultant (a Sikh man), is just a PR gimmick.

And although she starts off as soft-spoken and mousy (she’s ashamed of her voice because it’s so girly despite her being 29), she has to find her voice—literally and figuratively. The story is about her finding a way to make her voice heard among people who don’t want to hear it. It’s a comedic satire, so I hope to make audiences laugh. But I also hope to get people to think about the issues I raise. Because although the films mentioned in the book are loosely based on real-life films (e.g., “Empire of Blood” instead of “Apocalypto”), some of them should resonate with the audience (i.e., “yeah, I can see them making a movie like that”) despite being so off-the-wall silly (like one film, “Latin Lover,” about a guy that gets women to fall for him when he bites into a magical habañero pepper).

7. Where would you like to see Tragical Mirth in ten years? Where would you like to see yourself?

Ideally, I’d like Tragical Mirth Publishing to have a full roster of writers of color, and a full line of good books that tell good stories about us. And I’d like to be able to work with writers, and give them the kind of encouragement and feedback they’ll need to keep writing. Because I genuinely believe that people of color, especially Latino/as, need to write more, and we need to start creating the kinds of stories and characters that mainstream media won’t. So hopefully, with enough lucky bounces and maybe some more commercial success with Solstice and my future novels, I can work toward this.

As for myself, writing is what I love, so I plan to keep writing. I always said that to simply publish Solstice and present it to my family as mygift to them (because nothing says “I love you, mom, dad, and brother” like a novel about the end of the world) was my only goal; anything after that would be gravy. So I’m just enjoying the ride, and embracing the joy that is writing fiction. Hopefully, in 10 years, I will have published a few more: Inventing Vazquez, The Mourning Syndrome, a sequel to Solstice, and maybe one or two more. And I genuinely hope that, by then, the kinds of characters I like to feature won’t be ‘outside the norm’ anymore.

8. Tell us something not in the official bio.

Some things that may or may not be true about me:

• I stay up until 2 a.m. every night writing, drawing, or watching horror films. This despite the fact that I have to be at work at 8:30 a.m. I started my writing ‘career’ in earnest with an Anime fanfic entitled, Nightmares in the Apocalypse, which was so horrid and badly written but nonetheless made me somewhat popular among a small group of teenage readers.
• I can make a mean guacamole.
• I write music on the side, and play bass guitar, electric guitar, and drums. All at once. Really.
• I’ve been in a punk band, am currently in a blues band, and am now trying to form an indie rock band.
• I draw pictures of my main characters to get a sense of who they are and what they look like. And all these pictures are done in Anime style.
• I don’t do windows.
• Having grown up in NYC, I naturally root for the Detroit Tigers, the Arizona Cardinals, the Miami Dolphins, and the Buffalo Sabres.
• I hate powdered laundry detergent.
• Having grown up in NYC, the city I most want to live in is San Francisco, or Chicago, or Toronto. Which is why I’m in Michigan.
• Being Mexican-American, naturally, my favorite kind of music is indie rock and Japanese rock.
• I was actually a terrible grad student, probably because I spent all my time writing instead of studying.
• Being Mexican-American, my favorite film of all time, naturally, is Lost in Translation.

Tragical Mirth Publications -- http://www.verytragicalmirth.com/index.htm

Solstice -- http://www.verytragicalmirth.com/solstice.htm

Lisa Alvarado

Empty Space: Ideas of Theater

In The Empty Space, director Peter Brook outlines his theories on the theater by exploring four different meanings of the word theater - Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate.

Deadly Theatre is the theatre of commerce set up to make money for its producers. It's the theatre of imitation, trying to mimic the box office successes of the past. This affects all aspects, permeates every level. The Directors rely on the old clichés and gimmicks of the past without exploring the texts for their deeper meanings. The Actors do not move past the emotional facades of the roles, playing the surface knee-jerk reactions that they get from text, resulting in stereotypical portrayals. The Audience accepts this Deadly Theatre because they have sought out an honest experience, and rather than accept the disappointment of the less than authentic encounter, they feign excitement and appreciation. Brooks posits that the Audience would rather acquiesce here in order to avoid feeling left out of a cultural loop designed by an elite who have embraced Deadly Theatre. The Critics play the society column game of declaring the big budget shows as overwhelming hits without any true critical analysis. Deadly Theatre is the theatre of repetition.

Holy Theatre is "The Theatre of the Invisible - Made - Visible."

This is what theater and all art making should be addressing- the bringing to light the dark recesses of the human experience; to perform rituals that ask the questions about why we are the way we are; how can we change or accept the less damaged aspects of human nature; what does being in community with others mean.

Religious teaching - including Zen - asserts that this invisible-visible cannot be seen automatically - it can only be seen given certain conditions. Holy art is an aid to this, and so we arrive at at definition of Holy Theatre. A Holy Theatre not only presents the invisible but also offers conditions that make its perceptions possible, according to Brook.

The strengths of a Holy Theatre are also what limit its appeal - the desire to answer the truly personal needs of those who are in the process of creating it. This is not the theatre of mass appeal. Brook explains the processes of three artists who are engaged in the creation of holy theatre - Merce Cunningham, Jerzy Grotowski and Samuel Beckett. All three are well known in their respected disciplines, but have limited visibility in popular culture.

To underscore this, read Brook on the three:

"They each start from their hunger, each works to lessen his own need. And yet the very purity of their resolve, the high and serious nature of their activity inevitably brings a colour to their choices and a limitation to their field. They are unable to be both esoteric and popular at one and the same time."

Rough Theatre could be seen as the antithesis of Holy Theatre by misinterpreting it as anti-intellectual. It is cruder, more popular and doesn’t require any "great study."

Brook again:

"It is always the Popular Theatre that saves the day. Through the ages it has taken many forms, and there is only one factor that they all have in common - A roughness. ...theatre that is not in a theatre, ...on carts, on wagons, on trestles, audiences standing, drinking, ... joining in, answering back."

Or perhaps El Teatro Campesino or Culture Clash. Ultimately, Rough Theater is indeed intelligent in its grasp of social interaction and the community at large, unerring in its ability to lay bare social issues. I would say "Real" is the key word here, rather than "Rough."

In the last chapter, Brook discusses his personal experiences in creating theater. He describes this as Immediate Theatre because theatrical "common reality" exists only in the moment of performance and is lost once the lights go out. It then becomes something different in the minds of each who experienced it. It is this immediacy that draws people to the theater, the liveness, the closeness to reality. Immediacy is the quality that makes theater unique.

ISBN-10: 0684829576
ISBN-13: 978-0684829579