Voices Born In La Pinta

Author and Poet Honored with Luis Leal Literature Award

[press release]

Jimmy Santiago Baca could easily have pursued a life of crime. Sentenced as a young man to five years in a maximum-security prison, he was well on his way. While incarcerated, however, Baca learned to read and write, and found he had a passion for poetry. After serving his time, he chose to leave prison not as a hardened criminal, but as a new writer.

Now an award-winning poet, novelist, and essayist, Baca is the recipient of UC Santa Barbara's 2010 Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature. The award, which is co-sponsored by the Santa Barbara Book Council, was presented at a ceremony at 4 p.m. on Thursday, October 28, in the campus's Corwin Pavilion.

Born in New Mexico of Indio-Mexican descent, Baca is the recipient of several awards and honors, including the Pushcart Prize, the American Book Award for Poetry, the International Hispanic Heritage Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the International Prize, which he received for his novel, A Place to Stand. He has held a Regents Chair at UC Berkeley, The Wallace Stevens Endowed Chair at Yale University, and The Endowed Hulbert Chair at Colorado College.

“From the time I starting writing 32 years ago, Mr. Leal was my inspiration,” Baca said of the scholar for whom the award is named. “I aspired to follow his model in scholarship, compassion, creativity, and commitment, but I soon realized few can do so. He stands alone. It is such a great privilege and honor to receive the Luis Leal Award and brings at least one of my dreams full circle - that my name would be associated with his one day.”

Baca jump-started his writing career in the late 1970s by sending three poems - from prison - to Denise Levertov, a poet herself, and the poetry editor at that time for Mother Jones magazine. His work was published in the magazine and later appeared in a volume titled “Immigrants in Our Own Land,” which came out in 1979 - the year he was released. He earned his general education diploma (GED) a few months later, and then went on to the University of New Mexico, where he completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. In 2003, he received an honorary doctorate in literature from the same university.

“Jimmy Santiago Baca is a voice of Chicano survival in a country that has too often marginalized Chicanos and other Latinos,” said Mario T. García, professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies and of history at UCSB. García is also the organizer of the Leal award.

The author of more than 11 volumes of poetry and three novels, Baca has been a guest on several radio and television programs, including National Public Radio's All Things Considered, Good Morning America, Language of Life with Bill Moyers, and CBS Sunday Morning.

Devoted not only to his craft but to teaching others who are overcoming hardship, Baca established Cedar Tree Inc., a nonprofit foundation in New Mexico that conducts literary workshops in prisons and detention centers, and at community centers and schools for at-risk youth. The organization's mission is to provide underserved communities with the tools necessary to overcome obstacles to learning.

In 2006, Baca received the Cornelius P. Turner Award, a national honor presented annually to a GED graduate who has made outstanding contributions to society in the areas of education, justice, health, public service, and social welfare.

The Leal Award is named in honor of Luis Leal, professor emeritus of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UCSB, who was internationally recognized as a leading scholar of Chicano and Latino literature. Previous recipients of the award include Graciela Limón, Pat Mora, Alejandro Morales, Helena Maria Viramontes, Oscar Hijuelos, Rudolfo Anaya, and Denise Chávez. Luis Leal died in January of this year at the age of 102.

Source: UCSB

Bookstore puts up a fight

The sign reads Resistencia Bookstore, but according to caretaker Rene Valdez, the space inside is more than just a place for selling books.

"It is a space of written resource, but the idea is that it became a safe-space that organizers and activists could come and exchange ideas," Valdez said. "We use ‘bookstore' loosely, but the vision is more a community center to hear people's victories and struggles."

The late Raúl Salinas founded the Resistencia Bookstore in 1982. Salinas was a former adjunct professor who taught in the communications department at St. Edward's University. He is known as a Chicano beat poet and social justice advocate. During his time at St. Edward's, Salinas taught courses about social movements and multicultural communication.

"He inspired so many students and was such a presence to have here," professor Tere Garza said.

Resistencia Bookstore is a part of the legacy Salinas left behind.

"We're a grassroots operation and a mom-and-pop five and dime shop," Valdez said. "We don't aspire to be Barnes and Noble or even a Book People."

Read the rest of this story from Hilltop Views, by Kristina Schenck, at this link.

Ricardo Sánchez

Chicano Timespace: The Poetry and Politics of Ricardo Sánchez
Miguel R. López
Texs A&M University Press, 2001

[publisher blurb]


The premature death of Ricardo Sánchez in 1995 marked the passing of an almost legendary figure in Chicano literature and in the Chicano political movement. A troubadour of Chicano Movement poetry, he established an anti-aesthetic that became the norm. Sánchez's autobiographical poetry forges a link between genres of the past and present and establishes him as the first great tragic figure of contemporary Chicano literature.In a body of work that spanned spatial, temporal, and cultural boundaries, Sánchez dealt with issues of power and of linguistic and cultural barriers between Anglo, Native American, and Mexican American peoples in the United States.While he lived, critics showed reluctance to engage Sánchez's work fully, perhaps in part because of his reputation as a confrontational, even outrageous individual. Focusing on Canto y grito mi liberación and Hechizospells, Miguel R. López examines Sánchez's work and places him in the context of the past, present, and future of Chicano literature. López explains clearly the relation of time and space in Sánchez's prolific work and shows him as a writer committed to his craft as well as to his political stance. In the end, the portrait that emerges is of a poet whose work was linguistically and thematically complex and one who was more passionate, controversial, and forthright in his expression than any other contemporary Chicano writer.

“The poetry of Ricardo Sánchez is here examined with a clinical eye in order to bring out its deep meaning and reveal its multiple values. For the first time the principal works of a major movimiento poet are evaluated in the context of his turbulent spacetime taking into consideration the author’s tragic life. The result is a tour de force seldom equaled in Chicano/a criticism concerned with the study of a single poet.”--Luis Leal, University of California-Santa Barbara.

Later.

Guest Columnist: Jesse Tijerina

If there is a specific literary volume by a Chicano poet that need stand at attention in any public and/or personal library, it most definitely must be titled, Viaje / Trip, by the late raul r. salinas. Although born in San Antonio, Texas in 1934, salinas was raised in the barrios of East Austin and in following the modus operandi of many a Chicano youth growing up in the barrio, salinas succumbed to la vida loca. He would spend nearly 12 years in the span of two decades at four of the country’s harshest prisons; Soledad, Huntsville, Leavenworth, and Marion. The poetry and prose that make up Viaje / Trip led me to ponder whether or not prison life was responsible for crafting such a power house of a human voice. And if so, is it immoral to thank salinas for choosing the life of crime as a young man.

As early as 1964 salinas began producing poetry and prose for The Echo, a prison periodical published at the Texas State Prison of Huntsville. Despite the fact that they were obviously writings of a novice poet, salinas’s words shone bright and speckled with verses of brilliance. It would be on the heels of 1970 while serving a stint at the Kansas Federal Penitentiary of Leavenworth that a group of inmates self-published a prison magazine called New Era. In the heart of the magazine appeared a five page Whitmanesque poem titled, “A Trip Through The Mind Jail,” penned by a pinto named raul r. salinas. A 35 year old poet preferring the lowercase lettering of his name in honor of and inspired by e. e. cummings.

In a written dedication to Black Panther member, Eldridge Cleaver, “A Trip Through The Mind Jail,” would reappear as the introductory poem in the 1973 publication of salinas’s first book, Viaje / Trip. So begins the viaje, “LA LOMA / Neighborhood of my youth / demolished, erased forever from / the universe. / You live on, captive, in the lonely / cellblocks of my mind,” writes salinas. “Neighborhood of endless hills / muddied streets – all chuckhole lined – / that never drank asphalt. / Kids barefoot/snotty-nosed / playing marbles/munching on bean tacos / (the kind you’ll never find in a café) / 2 peaceful generations removed from / their abuelos’ revolution.” With escalated cadence the viaje continues through the poeta’s mind, all at the same time realizing and not realizing solace in its closing words, “Flats, Los Marcos, Maravilla, Calle Guadalupe, / Magnolia / Buena Vista, Mateo, La Seis, Chiquis, / El Sur and all the Chicano neighborhoods that / now exist and once existed; / somewhere…someone remembers…” Seguro que si, we remember. Que Viva the Cockroach Poet!

Viaje / Trip by raul r. salinas published by Hellcoal Press, June 1973

1973 Festival de Flor Y Canto Update: Digitizing U-matic Tape

Michael Sedano

They Exist!

When I return to California from overseas in 1970, a friend tells me about a tiny bookstore over the hill in Monterey Park that sells "Chicano Literature." Well, obviously I knew "Chicano," a word taught me by my Dad from my earliest years. But when I'd left civilization for the US Army in 1969, I had no sense that we produced published literature. So I drive down from Temple City,  over Atlantic and down to the little nook where, after a fascinating conversation with the old guy who owned the place, I laid down $1.25, I think, for a copy of Abelardo's "25 Pieces of a Chicano Mind." With that, the abstraction of "Chicano Literature" began to take on substance for me. (I lent that small pamphlet to a person who kept it. Damn you, I hope you know who you are and gut-wrenching guilt drives you return it to me, along with my El Espejo.)

By 1973, after a couple years working for a living, I am in Grad School at the University of Southern California on the G.I. Bill. Having selected a dissertation topic centering around Chicano poetry, I am tickled brown to see that El Centro Chicano will host a half-week long Festival de Flor Y Canto. I am the Chief Photographer for The Daily Trojan, so I assign myself the joyful task of shooting the event. The DT doesn't send a reporter to cover the event.

As I've described earlier, when Oscar Zeta Acosta gets up to read, he pillories the video company for being a tool of the LAPD, and demands "turn the fucking cameras off". They apparently do so, as the camera operators leave the room. Too bad mine will provide the only record of Zeta's moving reading. That week, I happily fill roll after roll of 35mm film, and the next week I publish a double truck of images and poems in the DT.

Fast forward to Spring 2007. Someone Emails me a link to Acosta reading from Revolt of the Cockroach People. Click. I'm stunned to discover it's Acosta reading at USC! That sneaky Tom Reddin has had the last laugh after all. My appetite whetted, I want to see and hear the other poets and writers I have on Tri-X negatives and a few Ektachromes. Search USC library. Nothing; how surprising. Search UC's Melvyl. Better; the University of California Riverside has 41 videos of individual readers. My plan hatches: to unite my still photographs with the videos as a way to introduce visually, today's students to the history and growth of Chicano Literature. There is already a published anthology of El Festival, now out of print (ISBN: 978-0-88474-031-5 ISBN-10: 0-88474-031-5), and my plan expands to include this as a revised and expanded multimedia publication.

When February 2008 finally arrives, and it's my first month of retirement from the world of work, I call Billy Vela, who heads USC's El Centro Chicano, thinking Billy can help me locate the original tapes. No such luck. Billy has an inkling there was a festival but the institution has not kept records from that period. In fact, El Centro doesn't have a photograph of the original El Centro. Eventually I contact the University Archivist at Doheny Memorial Library and, after a protracted conversation with a variety of gente, in early November, the University grants me permission to digitize UCR's videos into DVDs and use these for my own noncommercial purposes. USC--Doheny Memorial Library and El Centro Chicano, of course, will get a complete set of the DVDs as well as streaming videos to deploy through the university's modern mutlimedia channels. 

Technology Issues

Sony's U-matic videocassette format was once a popular standard for recording and distributing professional video. A 3/4" wide length of metal oxide coated mylar film, U-matic was the cat's meow of television production in the 1960s and 70s. Now, it's all but disappeared.

Juan Felipe Herrera, poet and UCR profe, helps find UCR's only functioning U-matic cassette player. Jim Glenn, Director of the Media Center, dusts off the tapes and sets up a viewing room for me. Fabulous hospitality. Mejor, Jim has already adapted the BNC terminal to an RCA plug. That had loomed as a minor headache. A preliminary visit to UCR verifies everything works, and it's now full speed ahead. 

To make the dub I connect a three-way RCA-to-mini cable to the BNC/RCA adapter and the Left and Right audio outputs. The mini plug goes into a digital video camera's AV port. Now it's a simple matter of starting the camera, starting the U-matic, and letting the cassette play to the finish. Unfortunately, only the right audio channel excites the VU meters.

Most of the Festival de Flor Y Canto performances run ten to twenty minutes, so I can get three or more readers onto a one hour DV tape. Sony U-matic, meet Sony DV. There are glitches, sadly, in several tapes, but overall the video and audio quality are more than satisfying.

I do a little work in Final Cut Pro, but use iMovieHD for the majority of my work. There are a few finer edits, and the creation of full quality and streaming QuickTime media. I use DVD Studio Pro to lay the files onto DVD.

Curiouser and Curiouser Issues

UCR's U-matic cassettes are at least two generations removed from the original programs. This is obvious when I observe some cassettes feature lead-in music, titles, and voice over introductions for two speakers, but only one speaker is on the cassette. Other performances begin with faint lead-in music and VO, a title slide, then the performer.

I remember the big semi-trailer production vans outside Town & Gown where the Festival was held (but didn't shoot them). Tom Reddin Productions would have recorded on 2" Ampex machines, in all likelihood. Where'd the originals disappear to? The gavel-to-gavel original tape is a national treasure. Is it sitting in some archive in New York City? Hollywood or the Valley? Or did Reddin burn off his 3/4" copies then erase the 2" tape--a standard practice of the day.

I contacted Silas Abrego, who headed El Centro Chicano back in 1973. Sy, recently retired from Cal State Fullerton, has no idea. I've had several Email conversations with Frank "Pancho del Rancho" Sifuentes, who stage managed the festival performers (and drove Zeta and Raúlrsalinas through the streets of greater El Lay in a guided tour of western Aztlán), and Frank has no idea (but he had a grand time).

Who sold what to whom? UCR and Texas A&M hold 3/4" videos. Sonoma State, Fullerton, Cal State Bakersfield, Arizona State and University of Arizona hold audiocassettes of the 1973 Festival de Flor Y Canto. The producers of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," who did the DVD of Zeta, acknowledge UCR's help in making their copy. Did USC/El Centro Chicano get royalties? According to Sifuentes, he signed a release, and, Benny Luna, Frank says, remembers getting a check one time.

Status Report

UCR's collection includes 41 titles. Sadly, two artist cassettes are lost; José Montoya and Roberto Vargas. Texas A&M Kingsville has Montoya but not Vargas. Barbara Robinson at USC will inter-library loan the Montoya. Interestingly, Barbara was the librarian then employed at UCR who purchased the Festival de Flor Y Canto materials for the library, named after then-Chancellor Tomás Rivera. Barbara has searched the USC campus from top to bottom seeking the original tapes.

I have recorded and created DVD-ready files of 33 performances, leaving six to complete at my next session. I've done the dubbing in catalog number sequence, so I have numbers 36 through 41 remaining. These include three teatro crews and writers Ricardo Sanchez, Estevan Arellano, and Oscar Acosta.

I've made only a few streaming QuickTime files. I'm pretty sure I'll have to edit the performances to individual snippets, to save on file space and "bandwidth," so the only way for you to view a writer's complete performance, or the complete Festival, will be to get the DVDs from USC.

USC has not decided on a distribution or marketing strategy for the DVDs. My motive when I began the process was to package the DVDs with a revised and expanded anthology, to afford the reader text to follow along with the reading. Just as some gente love to listen to symphonies while following the score, I love to hear a reading while following text. Such media would be beautiful for literacy and speech training, as well as the puro enjoyment of hearing an artist read her or his own work. My next project will be to pursue that out-of-print anthology, update it with work produced after 1973, and augment the collection with work from today's poets and writers. And to hold the 2010 Festival de Flor Y Canto at USC, videotape it, and add this to the record of Chicanarte. ¿Que no?

In Their Own Voice

Here, as promised last week, in appreciation for Karen (Harlow) McClintock's eulogy for her friend Omar Salinas, is Omar Salinas--¡Presente!-- reading Ass. In addition, rrsalinas--¡Presente!--reading a beautiful piece, Songs of Love.

These videos are copyright 1974 and 2008 by the University of Southern California. Please do not make copies of these.

 Omar Salinas

Raúlrsalinas

La Bloga welcomes your comments on this, and every column. Click on the Comments counter, below, to share your observations. When you have a more than a brief response, or a book or arts review, or an extended report on a cultural event, or a writer's own ruminations, remember, La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. Click here to begin the invitation process.

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

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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....

RAULSALINAS DIES

From Our Friends at The Border Book Festival

Dear BBF Friends,

Raul Salinas, known as raulsalinas, that great human being, transformed by life and fire, has died. Raul was a featured poet at the Border Book Festival in 2000. It was a memorable performance as Raul danced, sang and gyrated through the power of his words his English, Spanish and Xicanindio.

His life was hard, yes, as he was incarcerated for many years in U.S. prisons, but those who knew and loved him saw his transformation into a light indescribable--beatific, really. We celebrate his great beauty and his gifts of spirit and words.

We will display his portrait taken by Daniel Zolinsky starting this Saturday, February 16 at 7:00 p.m. at a reception at the Cultural Center de Mesilla for The Love of Arts Month. The evening will feature the portraits of 14 BBF Artists taken by Zolinsky.

In addition, we will offer a program of poetry by Multilingual poets of the Ages with readings in English, French, Spanish, Urdu and Bengali by featured readers: Dr. Richard Rundell, Dr. Jan Hampton, Jorge Robles, Denise Chavez, Sudeshna Sengupta and Ayesha Farfaraz. Musicians Bugs Salcido on guitar and Debarshi Roy on sitar will also join us.

Please join us as Raul has made his way to the Ancestors.

This message comes to us from our friends in San Antonio:

"Words, sounds, speech, men, memory, thought, fears and emotions, - time - all related...all made from one..all made in one" - John Coltrane

Elder statesmen, Xicanindio leader, poet of the people, giver of hope to the oppressed and incarcerated, Raul Salinas passed away last night in Austin, Tejaztlan.

Raul will be greatly missed. His work, poetry, and philosophy will live on in the good works of poets, artists, musicians and cultural centros throughout America. His spirit we lead us all and help us to survive and thrive in difficult times.

His words/poems should serve as maps for us all in our quest to keep culture, heritage and tradition alive in our barrios, cul de sacs, suburbs, ranchos...wherever you/we live.

Thank you, Raul. You have blessed us all.

Manuel Diosdado Castillo, Jr.
San Anto Cultural Arts

A BIO OF RAUL SALINAS

Raúl Roy “Tapon” Salinas was born in San Antonio, Texas on March 17, 1934. He was raised in Austin, Texas from 1936 to 1956, when he moved to Los Angeles. In 1957 he was sentenced to prison in Soleded State Prison in California. Over the span of the next 15 years, Salinas spent 11 years behind the walls of state and federal penitentiaries. It was during his incarceration in some of the nation’s most brutal prison systems, that Salinas’ social and political consciousness were intensified, and so it is with keen insight into the subhuman conditions of prisons and an inhuman world that the pinto aesthetics that inform his poetry were formulated.

His prison years were prolific ones, including creative, political, and legal writings, as well as an abundance of correspondence. In 1963, while in Huntsville, he began writing a jazz column entitled “The Quarter Note” which ran consistently for 1-1/2 years. In Leavenworth he played a key role in founding and producing two important prison journals, Aztlán de Leavenworth and New Era Prison Magazine, through which his poetry first circulated and gained recognition within and outside of the walls. As a spokesperson, ideologue, educator, and jailhouse lawyer of the Prisoner Rights Movement, Salinas also became an internationalist who saw the necessity of making alliances with others. This vision continues to inform his political and poetic practice. Initially published in the inaugural issue of Aztlán de Leavernworth, “Trip through a Mind Jail” (1970) became the title piece for a book of poetry published by Editorial Pocho-Che in 1980.

With the assistance of several professors and students at the University of Washington - Seattle, Salinas gained early release from Marion Federal Penitentiary in 1972. As a student at the University of Washington, Salinas was involved with community empowerment projects and began making alliances with Native American groups in the Northwest, a relationship that was to intensify over the next 15 years. Although Salinas writes of his experiences as a participant in the Native American Movement, it is a dimension of his life that has received scant attention. In the 22 years since his release from Marion, Salinas’ involvement with various political movements has earned him an international reputation as an eloquent spokesperson for justice. Along the way he has continued to refine and produce his unique blend of poetry and politics.

Salinas’ literary reputation in Austin earned him recognition as the poet laureate of the East Side and the title of “maestro” from emerging poets who seek his advice and a mentor. While his literary work is probably most widely known for his street aesthetics and sensibility, which document the interactions, hardships, and intra- and intercultural strife of barrio life and prison in vernacular, bilingual language, few people have examined the influence of Jazz in his obra that make him part of the Beat Generation of poets, musicians, and songwriters. His poetry collections included dedications, references, and responses to Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Charlie Parker, Herschel Evans, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, for example. Academics have primarily classified Salinas as an important formative poet of the Chicano Movement; yet, while he may have received initial wide-scale recognition during the era, it would be unfair to limit a reading of his style, content, and literary influence to the Movement.

There were many dimensions to Salinas’ literary and political life. Though, at times, some are perplexed at the multiple foci of Salinas’ life, the different strands of his life perhaps best exemplify what it means to be mestizo, in a society whose official national culture suppresses difference: his life’s work is testimony to the uneasy, sometimes violent,sometimes blessed synthesis of Indigenous, Mexican, African, and Euro-American cultures. Salinas currently resides in Austin, Texas, were he is the proprietor of Resistencia Bookstore and Red Salmon Press, located in South Austin. Arte Público Press reissued Salinas’ classic poetry collection, Un Trip through the Mind Jail y otras Excursiones (1999), as part of its Pioneers of Modern U.S. Hispanic Literature Series. He is also the author of another collection of poetry, East of the Freeway: Reflections de Mi Pueblo (1994).

Salinas resided in Austin, Texas, were he was the proprietor of Resistencia Bookstore and Red Salmon Press, located in South Austin. Arte Público Press reissued Salinas’ classic poetry collection, Un Trip through the Mind Jail y otras Excursiones (1999), as part of its Pioneers of Modern U.S. Hispanic Literature Series. He is also the author of another collection of poetry, East of the Freeway: Reflections de Mi Pueblo (1994).


En paz descanse. May he rest in peace.

Lisa Alvarado

Alias Olympia

Mind you, gente, there can be no substitute for a Daniel Olivas post, but he's getting a little well-deserved R & R, so consider this a humble placeholder. -- LA

Alias Olympia
by Eunice Lipton

In French Seduction, art historian Eunice Lipton explores her sensual obsession with the icon of France, the pool of memory and the way that obsession is fused to a contradictory history of her childhood and her connection to the Holocaust. But before that, Lipton authored a biography on Degas and in Alias Olympia, she attempts to cast light on a pivotal, but now obscure figure in the Impressionist movement.

Victorine Meurent was the model for Manet’s notorious painting, Olympia. In it, Manet re-stages that ancient pose of the odalisque, however, Victorine appears in the painting as bold, sexually aware and powerful. This caused an outrage in Paris at the time, and sadly, is still the reaction a sexually self-aware woman receives in present time. I stumbled upon this book, looking for more role-models, fodder, inspiration, other lifelines.

I was glad this book found me. The story is so much more than the telling of the painting controversy. Meurent was an artist, a brilliant one in her own right. She and her work were buried in a barrage of lies as result of her posing for Manet. The popular story about Meurent was that she had descended into prostitution, drunkenness and despair. Not so different than the double-standard of scrutiny and criticism that women who push the barriers, especially, barriers of the body and sexuality continue to face. There still is a threat, albeit more sub-rosa perhaps, that in claiming one’s full physical and sexual power, a woman leaves herself open to the psychic version of public stoning for her ‘lewd’ behavior.

While Meurent did know despair, it was one born out of a career thwarted, and a reputation slandered. She lived a ‘comfortable’ life as bourgeois wife, but not one in which she could move freely, express her ideas or create within the confines of women’s roles at the time. Lipton wrote the book in a narrative style, so that it reads and moves like a novel. No stuff of fiction here, but the complex and brilliant story of a women who dared conventions, and was meted out the punishment of a gilded, dulled existence and obscurity as a result.

I was struck with how women are still offered the choice of ‘comfort’ vs. authenticity, with the implied message that an authentic one will surely be the more painful, the one with the greatest social and emotional costs. To the extent that this blackmail is still being played out, Lipton’s book is a sadly cautionary tale.

ISBN-10: 0801486092
ISBN-13: 978-0801486098

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Raúl Niño , author of Book of Mornings will be appearing at:


Rudy Lozano Branch Library,
August, 22 at 7:00PM
1805 South Loomis Street
Chicago, Il 60608
312-746-4329

Please come and enjoy the readings, and diversity of Chicago neighborhoods.


And also.....

In preparation for City of Austin's Mexican American
Cultural Center's grand opening September 15, 2007,
The Public is invited to a MEET AND GREET Sneak
Preview featuring--

AMORINDIO:
Tributo y Celebracion for
raulrsalinas/Fundraiser for Red Salmon Arts:

Join us to honor and celebrate the life of Austin's elder
Xicanindio poet/human rights activist. A veterano of
Chicano literature/letters, raulrsalinas' writing and
activism have earned him international recognition as
a spokesperson for a diversity of political causes,
ranging from prisoner rights and national liberation
struggles to gang intervention and youth arts
advocacy.

raulrsalinas is the author of three collections of
poetry: Un Trip Thru the Mind Jail y Otras Excursions
(Editorial Pocho-Che, 1980; Arte Publico Press, 1999),
East of the Freeway: Reflections de mi pueblo (Red
Salmon Press, 1995), and Indio Trails: A Xicano
Odyssey thru Indian Country (Wings Press, 2006).
Recently, UT Press published a selected collection of
his prison wirtings, raulrsalinas and the Jail
Machine: My Weapon Is My Pen (edited by Louis Mendoza,
2006).

The tribute will feature performances and
presentations by renowned Chicana/o and Latina/o
writers and scholars: Miguel Algarin (NYC), Sandra
Cisneros (San Antonio), Carmen Tafolla (San Antonio),
Norma E. Cantu (San Antonio), Alejandro Murguia (San
Francisco), Rosemary Catacalos (San Antonio), sharon
bridgforth (Austin), Roberto Vargas (San Antonio),
Tammy Gomez (Fort Worth), Celeste Guzman Mendoza
(Austin), Levi Romero (Albuquerque, NM), Tony Spiller
(NYC), Jessica Torres (San Antonio).

Presenters on raulrsalinas' life include: Antonia
Castaneda (San Antonio), Roberto Maestas (Seattle,
WA), and Alan Eladio Gomez (Ithaca, NY). There will
be an opening ceremony by Danzantes Concheros y musica
movimiento Chicano by Conjunto Aztlan.

The celebracion will also include a Silent Art
Auction, curated by Chicana artist Jane Madrigal, with
over 30 pieces by artists throughout the Southwest,
and food and refreshments provided by Alma de Mujer
Catering Dept.

All proceeds will support Red Salmon Arts, a Native
American/Chicana/o based cultural arts organization
with a history of working within the indigenous
communities of Austin since 1983. This event is
sponsored by Red Salmon Arts, Alma de Mujer, PODER,
and UT Press. $10 dollar suggested donation.

Saturday, August 25, 2pm - 7pm.
Mexican American Cultural
Center, 600 River Street.
For more info:
512-416-8885/ revolu@swbell.net.

Donation: Please send to Red Salmon Arts, 1801-A South
First St., Austin, TX 78704 Austin, TX.
For tax-deductible contributions, please contact Rene
Valdez first at
revolu@swbell.net


Bios for Performers:

Miguel Algarin (NYC) is the "poet laureate" of the
Lower East Side - and founder of the Nuyorican Poets
Cafe in New York City, where he has nurtured the
spoken and written word for nearly three decades.

Sandra Cisneros (San Antonio) is an American novelist,
short-story writer, essayist, and poet, whose works
helped bring the perspective of Chicana women into the
literary mainstream. Author of House on Mango Street,
Loose Woman, and Caramelo, among other works.
President and Founder of the Macondo Foundation.

Carmen Tafolla (San Antonio) is an internationally
acclaimed writer and regarded as one of the masters of
poetic code-switching. She often employs the
bilingual idiom of her native San Antonio’s Westside
in her poems. Author of various works, including
Sonnets to Human Beings, Sonnets and Salsa, and
Curandera.

Rosemary Catacalos (San Antonio) is the author of
Again for the First Time (Tooth of Time Books, Santa
Fe, 1984). A past Dobie Paisano Fellow, Stegner
Creative Writing Fellow, and the recipient of an NEA
grant, she has been the Executive Director of Gemini
Ink since 2003.

Norma E. Cantu (San Antonio) currently serves as
professor of English at the University of Texas at San
Antonio. She is the author of the award-winning
Canicula Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera, and
co-editor of Chicana Traditions: Continuity and
Change.

Alejandro Murguia (San Francisco) is is a two-time
winner of the American Book Award, most recently for
This War Called Love: Nine Stories, City Lights Books.
His memoir The Medicine of Memory: A Mexica Clan in
California, University of Texas Press, has been
nominated for the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic
Writing.

sharon bridgforth (Austin) is the Lambda Award winning
author of the bull-jean stories (RedBone Press), and
love conjure/blues a performance/novel (RedBone
Press). Bridgforth has broken ground in the creation
and presentation of the performance/novel and in doing
so has advanced the articulation of the Jazz aesthetic
as it lives in theatre.

Roberto Vargas (San Antonio) is a community/labor
organizer and author of two poetry collections:
Primeros Cantos and Nicaragua, yo te canto besos,
balas y sueños libertad. He was a founding member of
The Pocho Che Collective, a loose coalition of writers
who published some of the first books of the
contemporary Latino literary renaissance taking place
in San Franisco.

Tammy Gomez (Fort Worth) is a native Texas writer and
performance poet, is featured in the PBS documentary
"Voices from Texas." She has published the work of
Yoniverse, a women's poetry group she founded, in the
anthology In a Loud Kitchen (Tejana Tongue Press,
1998); a second anthology, North Texas Neruda Love,
published by Tejana Tongue Press, was released in
January 2006.

Levi Romero (Albuquerque, NM) is an Embudo Valley poet
& author of In the Gathering of Silence (West End
Press).

Celeste Guzman Mendoza (Austin) is a San Antonio
native. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as
Salamander, Poet Lore, and 5 a.m., and in various
anthologies, including Telling Tongues, Red Boots and
Attitude, and Floricanto Si. She won the Poesia Tejana
Prize in 1999 from Wings Press for her chapbook of
poems, Cande te estoy llamando.

Jessica Torres (San Antonio) is a youth filmmaker,
activist, visual artist, and singer/musician. Her
short film, Los Punkeros, Chicano punk rock movement
with a twist of Conjunto, appeared on San Anto TV, a
TV Magazine produced by local youth through the San
Anto Cultural Arts Multi Media Institute (SAMMI).

Bios for presenters:

Antonia Castaneda (San Antonio) is a Chicana feminist
historian, teaches in the Department of History at St.
Mary's University. Her research and teaching interests
focus on gender, sexuality, and women of color in
California and the Borderlands from the 16th century
to the present.

Roberto Maestas (Seattle, WA) is the co-founder and
Executive Director of El Centro de la Raza, a center
for Seattle’s Latino Community. He has long been
involved in the ongoing struggle for civil rights in
the city.

Alan Eladio Gomez (Ithaca, NY) earned a Ph.D. in
History and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the
University of Texas at Austin. A community organizer,
scholar, and radio journalist, Gómez studies post WWII
social movements involving multiracial and
transnational alliances of U.S. Third World peoples,
prison rebellions, political theater, and Latin
American revolutionary movements.


Bio for Conjunto Aztlan:

Conjunto Aztlan (Austin) represents a spiritual and
musical journey expressed through poetry and song.
The Conjunto was born of the Xicano Movement in
Austin, Texas, in 1977. Their purpose is to
celebrate, defend, and expand the musical, cultural,
and spiritual legacy of the Chicano people.

Lisa Alvarado