Gratitude, Martín Espada and Acentos


1. Give what you want to receive. The flow of Abundance is already all around you. To step into this flow is easy. Give to someone else the very thing you would like to receive. And give it freely without expectations of receiving, as if you already had more than enough. If you want more kindness in your life, be kind to someone, if you want more happiness in your life, make someone else happy, if you want more money in your life, share a little of what you have. Give it away easily, like you already had all that you need and there is plenty more from where that came from. 


2. Trust and know. The next step is to trust and know you have just stepped into the flow of abundance and are now aligned with what you want. Know there is more than enough to go around. 
 


3. Take Action. Participation is an important part of Abundance. While you are knowing you are now aligned with the flow of the abundance you want, it is also important to participate and help make things happen. Follow your inner knowing and your intuition and do your part to help create the abundance you would like to have. Continue to participate until you are receiving what you want.
 


4. Be Grateful. Gratitude is a vital step in the flow of abundance. It is a powerful magnet which keeps us in the flow and aligned with receiving all the wonderful things we desire. Fill yourself with gratitude all the time, even about the small and seemingly simple things in your life. There is always something to be grateful about. When you notice a little of what you want flowing to you, take a moment and be grateful for what you have received, regardless of how big or small it may be. Be grateful and say thank you. 



5. Pass it on. When you receive a little abundance take a moment and pass some of it on and assist someone else in feeling a little more abundant. When you pass on some of what you receive, do it easily as if you already have more than you need, expecting nothing in return. When you pass it on in this way you are now starting the process all over again and have once again taken the first step to "give what you want to receive." In this way the flow of abundance continues and becomes more and more each time.

Martín Espada 

From Our Friends at Acentos:

Acentos Writers Workshop welcomes Martín Espada 

Eugenio María de Hostos Community College 

Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 7pm.

Acentos Writers Workshop welcomes Martín Espada to Eugenio María de Hostos Community College on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 7pm sharp. FREE!

We are extremely excited to announce that Martín Espada will facilitate a workshop for Acentos. Called “the Latino poet of his generation” and “the Pablo Neruda of North American authors,” Martín Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1957. He has published sixteen books in all as a poet, editor, essayist and translator, including two collections of poems last year: Crucifixion in the Plaza de Armas (Smokestack, 2008), released in England, and La Tumba de Buenaventura Roig (Terranova, 2008), a bilingual edition published in Puerto Rico.

The Republic of Poetry, a collection of poems published by Norton in 2006, received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Another collection, Imagine the Angels of Bread (Norton, 1996), won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Other books of poetry include Alabanza: New and Selected Poems (Norton, 2003), A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen (Norton, 2000), City of Coughing and Dead Radiators (Norton, 1993), and Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover’s Hands (Curbstone, 1990). He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Robert Creeley Award, the Antonia Pantoja Award, the Charity Randall Citation, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, the National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award, the Premio Fronterizo, two NEA Fellowships, the PEN/Revson Fellowship and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

His poems have appeared in the The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, The Nation and The Best American Poetry. He has also published a collection of essays, Zapata’s Disciple (South End, 1998); edited two anthologies, Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination from Curbstone Press (Curbstone, 1994) and El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry (University of Massachusetts, 1997); and released an audiobook of poetry called Now the Dead will Dance the Mambo (Leapfrog, 2004). His work has been translated into ten languages. A former tenant lawyer, Espada is now a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he teaches creative writing and the work of Pablo Neruda.

Espada will facilitate a 2 hour poetry workshop for free. Yes, I said free. We are welcoming the community at large. Yet, there will not be massive chaos. There will be a registration process. If you have not e-mailed Fish@louderarts.com to register, you will not be able to take the workshop. Notice, this workshop is on a Friday evening at 7pm. Bring your pens, bring your paper, bring your hearts. Palante papi, Siempre palante.

Eugenio María de Hostos Community College Savoy Building, 120 East 149th Street, corner of Walton Ave, Multipurpose Room, Second Floor New York 10451 • Phone 917-209-4211 7pm sharp! Directions to Hostos Community College

Hostos Community College is located at a safe and busy intersection just steps from the subway station and bus stop. By subway: take the 2,4,5 IRT trains to 149th Street (Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard) and the Grand Concourse.By bus: take the Bx1 or cross-town Bx19 to 149th Street (Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard) and the Grand Concourse. By car:From Manhattan, take the FDR Drive north to the Willis Avenue Bridge to the Major Deegan Expressway (87N). Proceed north to Exit 3. Take the right fork in the exit ramp to the Grand Concourse and proceed north to East 149th Street (Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard) From Queens, take the Triborough Bridge to the Major Deegan Expressway. Continue north to Exit 3. Take the right fork in the exit ramp to the Grand Concourse and proceed north to East 149th Street (Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard).From Westchester, take the Major Deegan Expressway south (87S) to Exit 3.

Turn left at the light. Turn left again at Grand Concourse and proceed north to East 149th Street (Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard) .From New Jersey, take the George Washington Bridge to the Major Deegan Expressway south to Exit 3. Turn left at the light. Turn left again at Grand Concourse and proceed north to East 149th Street (Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard)


Fish Vargas 917-209-4211

Lisa Alvarado

Martín Espada, A Writer's Life

Martín Espada

Dear Readers:

I was teaching an Intro to Lit class the other day and afterward one of my students approached me, wanting some one-to-one discussion time. This particular student is 6'4", about 225 lbs -- a working class guy who'd had a variety of jobs before ending up in my class. With some digging in of his heels, he'd grudgingly begun reading the assigned work for the poetry section of the class.

With a laser beam smile, he told me that reading Federico's Ghost altered his whole view of poetry. He said he previously thought it was irrelevant to everyday people, hard-to-understand, fussy and precious. (Which frankly, I told him, was a fairly accurate assessment of a good deal of it.)

However, Martín Espada changed what he thought and what he was going to read in the future. He went on and on about the use of images that got under his skin, images that made the labor and the suffering a visceral, unforgettable experience.

(Ah, we poets, we teachers, live for that!)

Please take a look at that life-changing work and a repeat look at my review of his Pulitzer Prize nominated book, The Republic of Poetry.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Federico's Ghost

The story is
that whole families of fruitpickers
still crept between the furrows
of the field at dusk,
when for reasons of whiskey or whatever
the cropduster plane sprayed anyway,
floating a pesticide drizzle
over the pickers
who thrashed like dark birds
in a glistening white net,
except for Federico,
a skinny boy who stood apart
in his own green row,
and, knowing the pilot
would not understand in Spanish
that he was the son of a whore,
instead jerked his arm
and thrust an obscene finger.

The pilot understood.
He circled the plane and sprayed again,
watching a fine gauze of poison
drift over the brown bodies
that cowered and scurried on the ground,
and aiming for Federico,
leaving the skin beneath his shirt
wet and blistered,
but still pumping his finger at the sky.

After Federico died,
rumors at the labor camp
told of tomatoes picked and smashed at night,
growers muttering of vandal children
or communists in camp,
first threatening to call Immigration,
then promising every Sunday off
if only the smashing of tomatoes would stop.

Still tomatoes were picked and squashed
in the dark,
and the old women in camp
said it was Federico,
laboring after sundown
to cool the burns on his arms,
flinging tomatoes
at the cropduster
that hummed like a mosquito
lost in his ear,
and kept his soul awake.

from Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

¡Viva la República!

Martín Espada's The Republic of Poetry reminds me of Oscar de la Hoya's boxing. Beautiful to behold, it's unerring in its aim. Pared down to the essential--it's body blows to the chest, to the gut, head blows that annihilate the opponent and leave the viewer stunned, reeling, gasping for air. Democracy subverted in Chile and by implication, everywhere, reverberates on every page.

The Republic of Poetry is not an elegy, it's an upper cut to complacency, a left hook to amnesia. Wake up, remember what was, see what's happening right in front of you. The comparison of Espada to Neruda, to Whitman are many, but to me, what comes to mind is poet warrior, able to fight and raise an army with the power of his words.

But in case you're not convinced, here is some additional praise for this remarkable book.

“What a tender, marvelous collection. First, that broken, glorious journey into the redemptive heart of my Chile, and then, as if that had not been enough, the many gates of epiphanies and sorrows being opened again and again, over and over.” —Ariel Dorfman

“Martín Espada is a poet of annunciation and denunciation, a bridge between Whitman and Neruda, a conscientious objector in the war of silence.” —Ilan Stavans

“Martín Espada’s big-hearted poems reconfirm ‘The Republic of Poetry’ that (dares) to insist upon its dreams of justice and mercy even during the age of perpetual war.” —Sam Hamill

“Martín Espada is indeed a worthy prophet for a better world.” —Rigoberto González

This is tight, muscular writing. Espada make his point with an economy of language, concealing a dense terrain of imagery and meaning. In this universe, the dead are not ghosts, but fully fleshed--staving off the soldiers, marching in the battlefield, struggling in the streets, and inspiring new generations. Read these and you'll see what I mean.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The Soldiers in the Garden

Isla Negra, Chile, September 1973

After the coup,
the soldiers appeared
in Neruda’s garden one night,
raising lanterns to interrogate the trees,
cursing at the rocks that tripped them.
From the bedroom window
they could have been
the conquistadores of drowned galleons,
back from the sea to finish
plundering the coast.

The poet was dying:
cancer flashed through his body
and left him rolling in the bed to kill the flames.
Still, when the lieutenant stormed upstairs,
Neruda faced him and said:
There is only one danger for you here: poetry.
The lieutenant brought his helmet to his chest,
apologized to señor Neruda
and squeezed himself back down the stairs.
The lanterns dissolved one by one from the trees.

For thirty years
we have been searching
for another incantation
to make the soldiers
vanish from the garden.

The soldier leaves, not because the poet is super human, but because he's supremely human. Poetry taps into a power that no bullet can halt nor cancer eat away. Armies of everyday people have been set loose with words like Neruda's. Then and now, the men in power with bloody hands know it's dangerous, know it's subversive. But in the end, it remains unstoppable.

Black Islands
for Darío

At Isla Negra,
between Neruda’s tomb
and the anchor in the garden,
a man with stonecutter’s hands
lifted up his boy of five
so the boy’s eyes could search mine.
The boy’s eyes were black olives.
Son, the father said, this is a poet,
like Pablo Neruda.
The boy’s eyes were black glass.
My son is called Darío,
for the poet of Nicaragua,
the father said.
The boy’s eyes were black stones.
The boy said nothing,
searching my face for poetry,
searching my eyes for his own eyes.
The boy’s eyes were black islands.

What possibility dwells in those black eyes? What page of history will be written for him to read, and what page will he write himself? Knowing that Espada is a father, I can only imagine how many times he's asked himself those questions in the still hours of the night, watching his own child sleep. Toward the end of The Republic of Poetry, Espada meditates on the "smaller" world of family and relationships, personal joy and private grief. Every fighter has his scars, and every poet, his pleasures.

Now, stop reading this, it won't get the job done. Go. Get the book. Read that instead.
It's time to wake up.

The Republic of Poetry W. W. Norton

• ISBN-10: 0393062562
• ISBN-13: 978-0393062564

Lisa Alvarado

Achy Obejas, Renaissance Woman, Cuban Style

ACHY OBEJAS

My Note:

Poet. Novelist. Translator. Teacher. Journalist. Achy Obejas is a bright light in our literary firmament, nationally and internationally. On a personal note, many years ago, she and I read with such glowing stars as Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, Norma Alarcon, at a long-defunct women's bookstore, Jane Addams on Michigan Avenue, here in Chicago. Her work exudes a keen sense of humor, of irony, of compassion and is laced with the infinite small moments that make her poetry and her novels sing with the breath of real life.

THE BIO:

Achy Obejas was born in 1956 in Havana, Cuba, a city that she left six years later when she came to the United States with her parents after the Cuban revolution. She grew up in Michigan City, Indiana, and moved to Chicago in 1979. At the age of thirty-nine, Obejas returned to the island of her birth "for a brief visit and was seduced by a million things". The Cuba of her imagination and experience recur throughout her writings.

An accomplished journalist, Obejas worked briefly for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1980-81 and then for the Chicago Reader. She has also written for The Windy City Times, The Advocate, High Performance, and The Village Voice. Her coverage of the Chicago mayoral elections earned her the 1998 Peter Lisagor Award for political reporting. She currently is a cultural writer for the Chicago Tribune, where she has worked since 1991.

Obejas' poetry has appeared in a number of journals, including Conditions, Revista Chicano-Rique, and The Beloit Poetry Journal. In 1986, she received an NEA fellowship in poetry. Her short stories have also been widely published in journals and anthologies. Her novels include We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This? (1994) and Memory Mambo (1996), both published by Cleis Press. Memory Mambo won a Lambda Award, and her third novel, Days of Awe (2001), also won the 2002 Lambda Award for Lesbian Fiction.

Although she has lived in the Midwestern United States since she was six, Obejas has always identified with Cuba. She says in an interview:

I was born in Havana and that single event pretty much defined the rest of my life. In the U.S., I'm Cuban, Cuban-American, Latina by virtue of being Cuban, a Cuban journalist, a Cuban writer, somebody's Cuban lover, a Cuban dyke, a Cuban girl on a bus, a Cuban exploring Sephardic roots, always and endlessly Cuba. I'm more Cuban here than I am in Cuba, by sheer contrast and repetition.

As an activist and writer, Obejas continues to explore her Cuban identity and experience, earning her an important place in the literature of the United States.

(Courtesy of Voices From the Gaps)

THE BOOK:


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

RUINS a novel of Cuba by Achy Obejas
$15.95, 300 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1-933354-69-9
Publication date: March 2009, A Trade Paperback Original, Fiction
A selection of Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers program

*Scroll down for 2009 author events

A true believer is faced with a choice between love for his family and the Cuban Revolution.

"Daring, tough, and deeply compassionate, Achy Obejas's Ruins is a breathtaker. Obejas writes like an angel, which is to say: gloriously . . . one of Cuba’s most important writers.”
--Junot Díaz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

"In the Havana of Ruins, scarcity can only be fought with ingenuity, and the characters work very hard at the exquisite art of getting by. The plot rests on the schemes of its weary, obsessive, dreamy hero--a character so brilliantly drawn that he can’t be dismissed or forgotten. A tender and wildly accurate portrait, in a gem of a novel."
--Joan Silber, author of The Size of the World

USNAVY HAS ALWAYS BEEN A TRUE BELIEVER. When the Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959, he was just a young man and eagerly signed on for all of its promises. But as the years have passed, the sacrifices have outweighed the glories and he’s become increasingly isolated in his revolutionary zeal. His friends openly mock him, his wife dreams of owning a car totally outside their reach, and his beloved fourteen-year-old daughter haunts the coast of Havana, staring north.

IN THE SUMMER OF 1994, a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the government allows Cubans to leave at will and on whatever will float. More than 100,000 flee--including Usnavy’s best friend. Things seem to brighten when he stumbles across what may or may not be a priceless Tiffany lamp that reveals a lost family secret and fuels his long repressed feelings . . . But now Usnavy is faced with a choice between love for his family and the Revolution that has shaped his entire life.

ACHY OBEJAS is the author of various books, including the award-winning novel Days of Awe. She is the editor of Akashic’s critically acclaimed crime-fiction anthology Havana Noir, and the translator (into Spanish) for Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Currently, she is the Sor Juana Writer in Residence at DePaul University in Chicago. She was born in Havana and continues to spend extended time there.

Praise for HAVANA NOIR edited by Achy Obejas:

"[A] remarkable collection . . . Throughout these 18 stories, current and former residents of Havana deliver gritty tales of depravation, depravity, heroic perseverance, revolution and longing in a city mythical and widely misunderstood."
--Publishers Weekly

2009 AUTHOR EVENTS:

--Sat., February 21, 2pm--EVANSVILLE, IN--Barnes & Noble, 624 S. Green River Rd.

--Tues., February 24, 8pm--MIAMI BEACH, FL--Books & Books, 933 Lincoln Rd.

--Sat., February 28, 3pm--MISHAWAKA, IN--Barnes & Noble, 4601 Grape Rd.
*Cosponsored by the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame

--Thurs., March 5, 7:30pm--CHICAGO, IL--Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark
*Book release event

--Sat., March 7, 3pm--LAFAYETTE, IN--Barnes & Noble, 2323 Sagamore Parkway S.

--Mon., March 9, 7pm--MADISON, WI--Barnes & Noble West, 7433 Mineral Point Rd.

--Tues., March 10, 7pm--IOWA CITY, IA--Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St.

--Wed., March 18, 7pm--ST. LOUIS, MO--Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid Ave.

--Thurs., March 19, 7pm--CINCINNATI, OH--Joseph-Beth Booksellers, 2692 Madison Rd.

--Fri., March 20, 7pm--ASHEVILLE, NC--Malaprop's, 55 Haywood St.

--Sat., March 21, 3pm--DURHAM, NC--Barnes & Noble, 5400 New Hope Commons

--Sun., March 22, 6:30-8pm--WASHINGTON, DC--Busboys and Poets at 5th & K, 1025 5th St. NW
*With Achy Obejas (RUINS) and Robert Arellano (HAVANA LUNAR)

--Mon., March 23, 6:30-8pm--BALTIMORE, MD--Enoch Pratt Free Library (Central Branch, Poe Room), 400 Cathedral St.
*With Achy Obejas (RUINS) and Robert Arellano (HAVANA LUNAR)

--Tues., March 24, 7pm--NEW YORK, NY--Bluestockings, 172 Allen St.
*With Achy Obejas (RUINS) and Robert Arellano (HAVANA LUNAR)

--Wed., March 25, 7:30pm--NEW YORK, NY--92nd St. Y, 1395 Lexington Ave.
*With Achy Obejas (RUINS) and Robert Arellano (HAVANA LUNAR)

--Thurs., March 26, 8pm--METUCHEN, NJ--Raconteur Books, 431 Main St.
*With Achy Obejas (RUINS) and Robert Arellano (HAVANA LUNAR)

--Fri., March 27, 7:30pm--PROVIDENCE, RI--Ada Books, 717 Westminster St.
*With Achy Obejas (RUINS) and Robert Arellano (HAVANA LUNAR)

--Tues., May 5, 7:30pm--PORTLAND, OR--Powell's, 1005 W. Burnside
*Akashic All-Stars event with Achy Obejas (RUINS), Maggie Estep (ALICE FANTASTIC), and Robert Arellano (HAVANA LUNAR)

--Thurs., May 7, 7pm--SAN FRANCISCO, CA--City Lights, 261 Columbus Ave.
*Akashic All-Stars event with Achy Obejas (RUINS), Maggie Estep (ALICE FANTASTIC), and Robert Arellano (HAVANA LUNAR)

--Fri., May 8, 7pm--LOS ANGELES, CA--Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd.
*Akashic All-Stars event with Achy Obejas (RUINS), Maggie Estep (ALICE FANTASTIC), and Robert Arellano (HAVANA LUNAR)

--Sat., May 9, 7:30pm--SAN FRANCISCO, CA--Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St.
*Part of the "Writers with Drink" reading series

Contact: Johanna Ingalls/Akashic Books
232 Third St., Suite B404
Brooklyn, NY 11215
Tel: 718-643-9193/Fax: 718-643-9195
johanna@akashicbooks.com
www.akashicbooks.com

Lisa Alvarado

Valadez is on the truth

what i'm on

Luis Humberto Valadez

THE BOOK:

Publication Date: March 19, 2009
Camino del Sol: A Latina/Latino Literary Series 64 pages
6 x 8 ISBN: 978-0-8165-2740-3, $15.95 paper

Luis Humberto Valadez is a poet/performer/musician from the south side of the Chicago area whose work owes as much to hip-hop as it does to the canon and has been described by esteemed activist writer Amiri Baraka as "strong-real light flashes."

His debut poetry collection what i'm on is frankly autobiographical, recounting the experiences of a Mexican American boy growing up in a tough town near Chicago. Just as in life, the feelings in these poems are often jumbled, sometimes spilling out in a tumble, sometimes coolly recollected. Valadez's poems shout to be read aloud. It's then that their language dazzles most brightly. It's then that the emotions bottled up on the page explode beyond words. And there is plenty of emotion in these poems. Sometimes the words jump and twitch as if they‚d been threatened or attacked. Sometimes they just sit there knowingly on the page, weighted down by the stark reality of it all.

José García put a thirty-five to me
my mother was in the other room
He would have done us both
if not for the lust of my fear

THE BUZZ:

This new Mexican American/Chicano voice is all at once arresting, bracing, shocking, and refreshing. This is not the poetry you learned in school. But Valadez, who received his MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poets at Naropa University, has paid his academic dues, and he certainly knows how to craft a poem. It's just that he does it his way. Luis Humberto Valadez works as a coordinator and consultant for the Chicago Public Schools Homeless Education Program.

Recordings of Valadez performing his poems can be found at MySpace.com, Reverb Nation, and other Internet sites. VALADEZ BLURBS: “Brave, raw, and exposing of a young mans consciousness. Luis’s work is not confessional in the limited, put-it-in-a-box way that big publishers like to market their material to liberal guilt.” -Andrew Schelling, author of Tea Shack Interior

“In voices colloquial and church, reverent and riotous, serious and sly; in rap and fragment, sound and sin; from gangs and minimum-wage jobs to astrology and Christ, Luis Valadez makes his fearless debut. This poetry is a painfully honest disclosure of identity and anger, and it is as mindful of falsity and as hard on itself as it is playful, loose, and loving. Sometimes the language is clear and cutting, while other times it disintegrates into sonic units and primal utterances: Luis calls upon the whole history of oral and verbal expression to tell his story—going so far as to write his own (wildly funny and disturbing) obituary.” —Arielle Greenberg, author of My Kafka Century

“On the trail blazed by innovators like Harryette Mullen and John Yau, Luis Valadez sends wild, canny, charged, and vulnerable prayers from the hard camp of contested identities. Each line, each word, is a blow against “impossibility” and the heavy pressure to be silent as expected. Interrogations of tradition(s) as well as celebrations, the irresistible poems in Valadez’s first collection exist at the exact fresh moment of deciding to live and to love.” —Laura Mullen, author of After I Was Dead

“Valadez’s work is not simply fierce language poetics… here is a writer—the genuine article—whose style is that of a truth-speaking curandero, offering sacred cantos to anyone interested in illuminating that inner revolution called corazón. To read his work is to discover the future of American poética! “ —Tim Z. Hernandez, author of Skin Tax

“Valadez’s impressions abruptly transport the reader from swaggering elucidation to raw pain. In a sometimes-resigned glance around for divinity, what I’m on triggers equally sudden heart-rippings, laughter, and cinematic naturescapes.” —Claire Nixon, editor Twisted Tongue Magazine

Holly Schaffer, Publicity Manager
University of Arizona Press
355 S. Euclid Ave., Ste. 103 Tucson, AZ 85719
Ph: 520-621-3920, Fx: 520-621-8899
hollys@uapress.arizona.edu
www.uapress.arizona.edu

THE EVENT:



Lisa Alvarado

Martín Espada on Barack Obama

Litany at the Tomb of Frederick Douglass
Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester, New York
November 7, 2008

This is the longitude and latitude of the impossible;
this is the epicenter of the unthinkable;
this is the crossroads of the unimaginable:
the tomb of Frederick Douglass, three days after the election.

This is a world spinning away from the gravity of centuries,
where the grave of a fugitive slave has become an altar.
This is the tomb of a man born as chattel, who taught himself 

to read in secret,scraping the letters in his name with chalk on wood;

 now on the anvil-flat stone a campaign button fills the O in Douglass. 

The button says: Obama. This is the tomb of a man in chains, 

who left his fingerprints on the slavebreaker’s throat so the whip 

would never carve his back again;  now a labor union T-shirt drapes itself 

across the stone, offered up by a nurse, a janitor, a bus driver. 

A sticker on the sleeve says: I Voted Today. 

This is the tomb of a man who rolled his call to arms off the press,
peering through spectacles at the abolitionist headline; now a newspaper
spreads above his dates of birth and death. The headline says: Obama Wins.

This is the stillness at the heart of the storm that began in the body
of the first slave, dragged aboard the first ship to America. Yellow leaves
descend in waves, and the newspaper flutters on the tomb, like the sails
Douglass saw in the bay, like the eyes of a slave closing to watch himself
escape with the tide. Believers in spirits would see the pages trembling
on the stone and say: look how the slave boy teaches himself to read.
I say a prayer, the first in years: that here we bury what we call
the impossible, the unthinkable, the unimaginable, now and forever. Amen.

~~~ Martín Espada

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Tips for Better Life

1. Take a 10-30 minutes walk every day. And while you walk, smile.
2. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day.
3. Sleep for 7 hours.
4. Live with the 3 E's -- Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy.
5. Play more games.
6. Read more books than you did the previous year.
7. Make time to practice meditation, yoga, and prayer. They provide us with daily fuel for our busy lives.
8. Spend time with people over the age of 70 & under the age of 6.
9. Dream more while you are awake.
10. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
11. Drink plenty of water.
12. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
13. Don't waste your precious energy on gossip.
14. Forget issues of the past. Don't remind your partner with his/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your present happiness.
15. Don't have negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment.
16. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
17. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar.
18. Smile and laugh more.
19. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don't hate others.
20. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
21. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
22. Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present.
23. Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about. Don't compare your partner with others.
24. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
25. Forgive everyone for everything.
26. What other people think of you is none of your business.
27. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
28. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.
29. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
30. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
31. The best is yet to come.
32. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
33. Do the right thing!
34. Call your family often.
35. Your inner most is always happy. So be happy.
36. Each day give something good to others.
37. Don't over do. Keep your limits.
38. Share this with someone you care about

Lisa Alvarado

Words to Live By

Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself
William Hazlitt

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.
Denis Diderot

Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it.
Hannah Arendt

Poetry
makes nothing happen.
It survives
in the valley of its saying.
Maxine Kumin

Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them.
Dennis Gabor

Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.
Audre Lorde

To help kick off the poetic year, I would like to feature ACHIOTE PRESS

Achiote: a shrub or small tree indigenous to Central and South America. Introduced to the Pacific and Asia by the Spanish in the 17th century, Achiote now has firm transnational roots. Achiote produces pink flowers and red spiny seed pods. Peoples have used the seeds as a dye for clothing, arts and crafts, as body paint in times of war and celebration, as spice and coloring for food.

The editorial board named the press after the Achiote tree because they believe poetry has the very same powers to enrich our surroundings, inspire our passions, enhance our senses, and heal our wounds. Achiote represents the unrepresentable, transnational, migratory, and adaptive. Achiote Press asks what it means to bear witness, to use adaptation as resistance, to cross borders, to map ourselves onto a dislocated world, to speak in exile, and to suffer diasporic hunger.

Achiote Press was founded in 2006. Every season, they publish two chapbooks: a single-author chapbook and a chap-journal featuring poetry, prose, essay, or translation by authors from diverse cultural and aesthetic backgrounds. In addition, we publish special project chapbooks, including chap-anthologies and collaborative work.

The press is not currently reading manuscripts. Please query if you would like to be considered your poetry or your artwork for a future issue. Achiote Press is located in Berkeley, California.

Craig Perez, Editor
Jennifer Reimer, Editor
Jason Buchholz, Art Director

Ballast (excerpt below)

Ballast IV: Flung Out Like A Fag-End

The ships that sank never really stood
a chance; the captured in the holds, less.
In water, gravity numbed at the cost of oxygen
made their breaths catch for a taste
of weightlessness; space, centuries before
the Buzz became news. Odd, how we explore
the high and deep, rarely the middle - that belt
of rarefied air which balloons occupy, where
the brutal cargo would have avoided the fury
of waves. Battered, at worst, by hurricanes, there
was still the likelihood of a short period of calm
at the axis - a respite from evil winds - before
the centrifugal drag of the eye wall: a flutter of
freed bodies floating to the ends of the world
to feather new nests, a basket falling, an envelope
drifting, a fire augmenting the speed of migration
from Africa beyond a fast-fingered jazz solo, minus
the 500 years of insult: in the bodies, fire;
in the basket, gifts; in the envelope, odds on whether
the seeds of the scattered would have avoided Katrina
- the dancing wind that exposed the unchanging water
-borne illness of prejudice caught in the holds of
the ships that made it across the sky's reflection two
centuries before the eerie shimmer of a hot air balloon.


Ballast X: Final Cries

If the river cries blood, it is not the sun's
reflection rosy beneath a retiring light, it is
not riverside berries, betrayed by skins too gorged
to contain the sweetness of their juice. It is not
a dream. It is our forebears, battered and branded by gain-
seekers, dripping iron, rusting, as they hover tethered
in baskets strung to sun-shaped fabrics that consume
fire to rise above the desire for freedom. Their voices -
like them - know nothing of the borders to come, slip
between clouds to metamorphose into birdsong. They
inhabit the air, absorb its language by osmosis, observe
its scattering versatility - the way it hisses and dances.
Some escape, diving into the spaces where hurricanes are
sown, to learn the equations that govern pressure; how
the cold air is enough to make them pop like champagne
bottles on ice. The fliers bequeath the inheritance of falling
gracefully; a blessing for dancers, a curse in love. Yet
in the end the method matters little. The sea being mirror
to the blue of the skies, the ship is the genetic cousin
of the balloon - both anchored to the Xs of density,
surface area and flotation. The question is of ballast,
that which gives weight to the ship, balloon, story; and this
interpretation is a vessel to reclaim the history of love, a history
of hatred, discrimination, survival, science, music... language.



Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a writer of poetry, prose and articles, and author of the poetry chapbooks: eyes of a boy, lips of a man (1999) and M is for Madrigal (2004), a selection of seven jazz poems. A former associate writer-in-residence for BBC Radio 3, and writer-in-residence at California State University, Los Angeles, he is also the Senior Editor at flipped eye publishing - where he has overseen the production of four award-winning titles. Nii is the current International Writing Fellow at the University of Southampton and his debut novel, Tail of the Blue Bird, will be released in June 2009 by Jonathan Cape.

Cover art by Ketzia Schoneberg. Ketzia Schoneberg creates portraits of individuals of other species in order to show the viewer a mirror - an image of the earthy, biological and spiritual origins we share with other creatures. She does not sketch before beginning a painting; when entering the studio she doesn't know beforehand what her subject or palette will be. This approach keeps her work honest both technically and energetically. She uses live models and photographs as starting points for all of her work. Ketzia's educational background includes undergraduate work at the San Francisco Art Institute, art studies at Kibbutz Yavne in Israel, a BFA from San Francisco State University and graduate work at New Mexico State University. She has been showing her work nationally for over 15 years, and makes her home in Oregon. View more of Ketzia's work online at www.ketzia.com.

Teaching Thinking

Hugo García Manríquez. Author of two books, No Oscuro Todavia, (2005), and Los Materiales (2008). His work has appeared in Mandorla, Damn the Caesars, New American Writing, and others. His translation of William Carlos Williams' poem, Paterson, will be published in Mexico next year.

Originally from Strasbourg, France, François Luong currently lives in San Francisco. Other work of his has appeared or is forthcoming in Cannibal, Parthenon West Review, New American Writing, Mirage #4/Period(ICAL), and elsewhere. He is also working on a translation into English of Chutes, Essais, Trafics by Rémi Froger and into French of Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists by A. Rawlings.

Evie Shockley is the author of A Half-Red Sea (2006) and two chapbooks,31 words * prose poems (2007) and The Gorgon Goddess (2001). Her poetry and critical pieces appear in numerous journals and anthologies, recently including Foursquare, The Southern Review, No Tell Motel, Ecotone, PMS: poemmemoirstory, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, Mixed Blood, Center, and Jacket. She currently serves as co-guest editor (with Cathy Park Hong) of Jubilat. A Cave Canem graduate fellow and recipient of a Hedgebrook residency, Shockley teaches African American literature and creative writing at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

Roberto Harrison edits Crayon with Andrew Levy and the Bronze Skull Press chapbook series. Two full-length collections of his work appeared in 2006: Counter Daemons (Litmus) and Os (subpress). Elemental Song, a chapbook, also appeared in 2006 through Answer Tag Home Press. Recent work can be found in Chicago Review, Brooklyn Rail, Court Green, War & Peace 3: The Future, Cannot Exist, and string of small machines.

Cover art by Mary V. Marsh. Mary V. Marsh has exhibited paintings, drawings and artist books in many venues, including solo shows at the San Jose Museum of Art, Berkeley Art Center, and the San Francisco Public Library. She received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1992. Old library books and checkout cards are reconstructed to explore memory, propaganda, and consumer society.

Lisa Alvarado

Soy Judia: Soul Food, Pomegranates, and Finding My Way Home

I'm not only Chicana, I'm what was formerly referred to as marrano or converso. What I am is Anusim, a descendant of my mother, her mother, and her mother before her, and on and on, spiraling toward a distant past. Anusim, an unbroken chain of Jews hiding in plain sight en Mexico, con sudor y corazón, con shabbat candles lit in secrecy.

My family had many secrets, but these were ones of joy, ones that braided me to four generations of women living under one roof. They bound me to a great-grandmother and grandmother who taught me to take challah, to have a house sparkling clean by sunset every Friday, to kill chickens in a proscribed way, to a mother who would have been delighted to hear my friends calling me Leila Shulamit.

It's been a long trip, weaving my way through a childhood difficult and full of well-meaning Catholics, yet remaining unclaimed and untouched. It was years of attending shabbat services alone from the time I was sixteen, unable to speak, but able to let the swirling words of yet another tongue talk to me in the ways beyond language. And it's only recently that I fully gave birth to myself, living purposefully and clearly as a Jew.

I keep shabbat now, in the open, and sit with loved ones and allow the sacred of Friday night. I set my own table, light my own candles and recite the bruchas, las bendiciones. I attend shul, although not as often as my rabbi would like. And I have started on the next leg of this journey, finding other people like me, with my past, with my joy.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

New Mexico's Crypto-Jews: Image and Memory

Cary Herz , Photographer
Essays by Ori Z. Soltes and Mona Hernandez

University of New Mexico Press ISBN
( hardcover ) 978-0-8263-4289-8 ISBN

( paperback ) 978-0-8263-4290-4

While photographing the Congregation Montefiore Cemetery in Las Vegas, New Mexico, in 1985, Cary Herz first heard whispers about "the other people." Thus began a twenty-year search for descendants of crypto-Jews, the Sephardic Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism during the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions centuries ago. Many openly professed Catholicism, but continued to practice the Jewish faith privately. Herz's photographs and the accompanying essays honor the people whose ancestors, through families' oral histories and genealogical records, knew about their heritage. Other New Mexican Hispanics have recently begun to explore their families' customs and are only beginning to examine their possible blended lineage.

To help complete her exploration, Herz sought out symbols--gravesites, artifacts, and icons--that might point toward the presence of the descendants of crypto-Jews who came to the New World. There has recently been a renewed interest in crypto-Jews, as DNA tests have revealed the Jewish heritage of a number of Hispanic New Mexicans.

New Mexico's Crypto-Jews was named Best Nonfiction Book--Religion for 2008 by the National Federation of Press Women. Cary Herz was also presented with the New Mexico Press Women's Communicator of Achievement Award, 2008, for exceptional achievement in the communications field and service to the community.

". . . New Mexico's Crypto-Jews is a work that merits a special place on every bookshelf of New Mexico history."--La Herencia

"If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Herz's photos speak volumes on a neglected and shadowy aspect of New Mexican history. Her book is a visual feast that will be of interest to specialists and general readers alike."--Catholic Southwest

"In New Mexico's Crypto-Jews, Herz has accomplished her goal: 'to put a face on the invisible ones, the Anusim, to open a small window into their world, to show their pride and diversity.'"--Hadassah Magazine

"The photographs and essays herein exhibit the strength, passion, and devotion that move the pride of Jews throughout the world."--Jewish Book World

"[New Mexico's Crypto-Jews] is a book rich in images, memory, and longing for connection, as well as thoughtful text. . . ."--Taos Horse-Fly

"[New Mexico's Crypto-Jews] is a welcome prize. . . . The fact that Herz is a descendant of Holocaust survivors means that she brings a rare and poignant Jewish sensitivity to a subject that is more often examined through Hispanic lenses. . . . Concise essays and commentaries accompany Herz's striking photographs of modern residents of New Mexico and Colorado who retain tatters and shards of Jewish religiosity and custom."--Intermountain Jewish Times

"[A] compelling book of photos. . . ."--NA'AMAT WOMAN Magazine "[A] fascinating book . . . handsome and empowering. . . ."--Bloomsbury Review

"[Cary] Herz's photography book is the first visual exploration of the descendants of Jews who fled the Iberian Peninsula during the Inquisition and traveled with Spanish colonial settlers to what is today New Mexico. [New Mexico's Crypto-Jews] introduces a unique community whose Jewish identity is grounded in the Catholicism that characterizes the traditions of the American Southwest."--Forward.com

Cary Herz, 1947-2008, was an award-winning professional photographer specializing in corporate and editorial photography. She was a New Mexico photo correspondent for the New York Times and worked with a variety of editorial clients, including TIME, PC World, People, Ms., Garden Design, Hispanic Business, The Discovery Channel, The Dallas Morning News, and The Houston Chronicle's Texas Magazine. 9 x 9 176 pages 115 duotones, 1 map

To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico

Stanley M. Hordes

Columbia University Press

Paper, 376 pages, 12 maps; 16 photos

ISBN: 978-0-231-12937-4
Cloth 376 pages, 12 maps; 16 photos

ISBN: 978-0-231-12936-7

In 1981, while working as New Mexico State Historian, Stanley M. Hordes began to hear stories of Hispanos who lit candles on Friday night and abstained from eating pork. Puzzling over the matter, Hordes realized that these practices might very well have been passed down through the centuries from early crypto-Jewish settlers in New Spain. After extensive research and hundreds of interviews, Hordes concluded that there was, in New Mexico and the Southwest, a Sephardic legacy derived from the converso community of Spanish Jews.

In To the End of the Earth, Hordes explores the remarkable story of crypto-Jews and the tenuous preservation of Jewish rituals and traditions in Mexico and New Mexico over the past five hundred years. He follows the crypto-Jews from their Jewish origins in medieval Spain and Portugal to their efforts to escape persecution by migrating to the New World and settling in the far reaches of the northern Mexican frontier. Drawing on individual biographies (including those of colonial officials accused of secretly practicing Judaism), family histories, Inquisition records, letters, and other primary sources, Hordes provides a richly detailed account of the economic, social and religious lives of crypto-Jews during the colonial period and after the annexation of New Mexico by the United States in 1846.

While the American government offered more religious freedom than had the Spanish colonial rulers, cultural assimilation into Anglo-American society weakened many elements of the crypto-Jewish tradition. Hordes concludes with a discussion of the reemergence of crypto-Jewish culture and the reclamation of Jewish ancestry within the Hispano community in the late twentieth century. He examines the publicity surrounding the rediscovery of the crypto-Jewish community and explores the challenges inherent in a study that attempts to reconstruct the history of a people who tried to leave no documentary record.

Remnants of Crypto-Jews Among Hispanic Americans

Gloria Golden,

Edited by Andrea Alessandra Cabello and Sohaib Raihan

Floricanto Press ISBN: 0-915745-56-9

Hidden deep in the heart of the American Southwest among the larger Hispanic population are descendants of the Sephardim, Jews from Spain and Portugal. Five hundred years after their expulsion from Spain remnants of Judaism are still practiced within Southwestern Hispanic communities.

Often unaware of their origins, conversos have revealed, through oral history, how the ancestral faith of the Crypto-Jews has been passed on from generation to generation. "Five hundred years after the Inquisition, Gloria Golden manages to turn the little-known subject of crypto-Jews into an inspiring tale of identity. The rich portraiture and captivating oral histories offer a poignant view of what it means to discover and embrace one's Judaism." Elana Harris, Managing Editor, B'nai B'rith Magazine "Gloria Golden's images and text provide a valuable insight into the Crypto-Judaic world.

All who are drawn to this fascinating subject will find great rewards in this volume." Rabbi Joshua Stampfer, Founder and First President of the Society for Crypto Judaic Studies "The impact of these photographs and related interviews cannot be measured. Surely, through their existence, we touch a part of our past, and preserve it for our children's children. It is another piece in the great puzzle of our scattered people." Flora Sussely, Director, Adult Programs, Mittleman Jewish Community Center

Pomegranate Seeds: Latin American Jewish Tales
Editor, Nadia Grosser Nagarajan
Introduction by Ilan Stavans
University Of New Mexico Press
( paperback ) ISBN 978-0-8263-2391-0

Pomegranate Seeds is the first collection of the oral tradition of Latin American Jews to be presented in English. These thirty-four tales span the 500 years of Jewish presence in Latin America and the Caribbean. The folktales and cultural oral narratives were often based on actual events, recorded not only from the Ashkenazi perspective but from the Sephardic and Oriental as well. Like dispersed pomegranate seeds, all the stories come from a common cluster, yet each is a separate kernel.

The stories are short, between five and fifteen pages, and each is carefully annotated. In addition to gathering stories from eleven Latin American countries, the author found material in the United States and Israel. Regardless of their origin, several tales have to do with personal feelings, emotional insights, and interpretation of the protagonists, while others deal with happy or traumatic events that cannot be forgotten and dreams that have not been fulfilled.

Not surprisingly, trauma and bigotry are common threads through some of the stories. These are tales, as Nadia Grosser Nagarajan says, "concealed by tropical greenery, encircled by vast jungles and flowing majestic rivers that echo many voices and reflect many views and visions."

From "Seeking Wisdom,"
a tale in Pomegranate Seeds

"Many years ago, when the forests south of the river Bio-Bio were still impenetrable, there lived in the beautiful lake district of Chile a very poor family. The father and mother had two children, a girl and a boy, who helped them to fish in the lakes and gather pine nuts in the woods, and thus they had a very simple yet happy existence. . . ."

National Jewish Book Awards, 2006, 2nd place in Sephardic Culture category.


"Pomegranate Seeds is a fascinating book filled with rich oral narratives of wisdom, experiences, folk imagination, journeys, history, folktales, customs and traditions--and adventures. . .This splendid collection will never stand on a shelf after a first reading--but rather it will become a favorite travel companion."--Jewish Book World

"This collection of folk tales, legends, and true stories that have been handed down by generations of Jews of Latin America are not only of great interest and humor, but also of great inspiration. In addition, through these tales the reader gains an insight into the lives and customs of Jews from Latin American countries."--Multicultural Review

"[Nadia Grosser Nagarajan] has created a rich and important cultural history of Jews and Jewish life in Latin America."--Hadassah Magazine


Nadia Grosser Nagarajan is also the author of Jewish Tales from Eastern Europe. She lives in San Jose, California.

5.5 x 8.5 207 pages


Lisa Alvarado

Memento Mori

Studs Terkel, prize-winning author and radio broadcast personality was born Louis Terkel in New York on May 16, 1912. His father, Samuel, was a tailor and his mother, Anna (Finkel) was a seamstress. He had three brothers. The family moved to Chicago in 1922 and opened a rooming house at Ashland and Flournoy on the near West side {LISTEN}. From 1926 to 1936 they ran another rooming house, the Wells-Grand Hotel at Wells Street and Grand Avenue. Terkel credits his knowledge of the world to the tenants who gathered in the lobby of the hotel and the people who congregated in nearby Bughouse Square, a meeting place for workers, labor organizers, dissidents, the unemployed, and religious fanatics of many persuasions. In 1939 he married Ida Goldberg and had one son.

Terkel attended University of Chicago and received a law degree in 1934. He chose not to pursue a career in law. After a brief stint with the civil service in Washington D.C., he returned to Chicago and worked with the WPA Writers Project in the radio division. One day he was asked to read a script and soon found himself in radio soap operas, in other stage performances, and on a WAIT news show. After a year in the Air Force, he returned to writing radio shows and ads. He was on a sports show on WBBM and then, in 1944, he landed his own show on WENR. This was called the Wax Museum show that allowed him to express his own personality and play recordings he liked from folk music, opera, jazz, or blues. A year later he had his own television show called Stud's Place and started asking people the kind of questions that marked his later work as an interviewer.

In 1952 Terkel began working for WFMT, first with the "Studs Terkel Almanac" and the "Studs Terkel Show," primarily to play music. The interviewing came along by accident. This later became the award-winning, "The Studs Terkel Program." His first book, Giants of Jazz, was published in 1956. Ten years later his first book of oral history interviews, Division Street : America, came out. It was followed by a succession of oral history books on the 1930s Depression, World War Two, race relations, working, the American dream, and aging. His latest book, Will the Circle Be Unbroken : Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, was published in 2001. Terkel continued to interview people, work on his books, and made public appearances until his death. He was Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Chicago Historical Society.

(Courtesy: http://studsturkel.org)

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Tony Hillerman was born in 1925, in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma. Although he was raised among the Pottawatomie and Seminole Indians and studied at an Indian boarding school, Tony Hillerman is not Native American. He attended Oklahoma State University (1943), the University of Oklahoma (B.A. 1946), and the University of New Mexico (M.A. 1966). He worked as a journalist in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico (1948-63), lived in Albuquerque, and taught journalism at the University of New Mexico (1976-85).

He has written numerous mystery novels drawing on Native American culture, the most successful featuring Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police. His many bestselling novels include Sacred Clowns, Coyote Waits, and A Thief of Time. Hillerman is a past president of the Mystery Writers of America and has received their Edgar and Grand Master awards. His other honors include the Center for the American Indian's Ambassador Award, the Silver Spur Award for best novel set in the West, and the Navajo Tribe's Special Friend Award. He lived with his wife, Marie, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

(Courtesy: http://mysterynet.com)

Lisa Alvarado

Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to The X-Files

"Everything is some kind of plot, man." - Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

Agent Scully: "What makes you think that is a conspiracy? That the government is involved?" Kurt Crawford: "What makes you think it isn't? - Memento Mori / The X-Files

"The paranoid person is in possession of all the facts." - William Burroughs

Conspiracy theories are a particular and salient feature of post World War II America. From McCarthyism to postmodern novels, The X-Files, and gansta rap to feminist polemic, there is widespread suspicion that sinister forces are conspiring to take control of our national destiny, our minds, and even our bodies. Conspiracy explanations can no longer be dismissed as the disorganized ramblings of far right crackpots, the left wing intelligentsia, and the techno cognoscenti.

Particularly as evidenced by the popularity of a show like The X-Files, mainstream America became more than willing to embrace the idea that there is a cabal of men planning our futures, that we cannot trust institutions, that the enemy is closer than we were taught to believe. We have lived through grassy knolls, Cointelpro, the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, infiltration and disruption of a host of Chicano groups, especially La Raza Unida Party, as well as CIA-led coups in Chile, Iran, Namibia. Events of the last decade bear witness to this brave new world.

While the major spin on 9/11 identified virulent Islamic terrorist bent on destroying us, there were still news threads that linked the Bin Laden family with the Bush family and the Bush family to international oil interests. We had Dick Cheney heading the shadow government from deep in the bowels of the earth, and FEMA hawking duct tape and plastic sheeting as protection from invisible enemies. Can anyone say "WMDs"?

Conspiracy Culture author, Peter Knight, a lecturer in American Studies in Manchester, attempts to provide his own analysis using such diverse sources as Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, Don DeLillo's Underworld, Oliver's Stone's JFK, and soon his new flick, W, The X-Files, and a host of internet sites.

He explores how conspiracy theories developed from the 1960's through the 1990's. The focal points of these theories range from the Kennedy assassination, alien abduction, body horror, AIDS, crack cocaine, the New World Order; as well as what he terms "the usual conspiracies...of patriarchy and white supremacy." I found this level of research, its detail, and its scope impressive.

Beyond this, we part company. When it comes to his analysis as to why ideas of conspiracy have proliferated, Knight is completely ahistorical. He posits the growth in the wider acceptance of conspiracy as policy to intellectual inferiority and sloppiness, poverty, and a spiritual paucity. I was astounded at this polemic disguised as dispassionate deductive reasoning. I personally remember when, in the late 70's in Chicago, Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was murdered in his bed by Chicago police - police who were aided and abetted in that execution by moles paid by the FBI through the Cointelpro program of "neutralization."

Semiautomatic assassination appeared to be a fairly neutralizing force in communities and the community of social change as a whole. That level of challenge to the government, to capital, to imperialism and its domestic and international control has yet to be re-created, although perhaps we see the seeds of its rebirth in the resistance to the Iraq war. Rather than Knight's position that a conspiracy theory's popularity is solely due to a lack of sophistication, education, and contemplation, I believe the proponents are literate, distrusting the narrative of authority, and suspicious of the authorized narrative as to the health of the body politic. In a nutshell, what message may be taking root in a deep and irrevocable way is: Trust no one.

See Scully, I told you this was coming.

ISBN-10: 0415189780

Bad news:

Journalist Teresa Puente was laid off from the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board Today. She was the only Hispanic on the board and also wrote a twice monthly column. Puente also was the only writer at the Sun-Times that regularly covered Latino issues and immigration.

Also, her colleague, Deborah Douglas, the only African-American writer on the editorial board, was laid off Wednesday. This means there are no people of color on the editorial board any more.

To voice an opinion on this matter please send an email to:

Michael Cooke, Sun-Times editor, mcooke@suntimes.com

Tom McNamee, Editorial page editor, tmcnamee@suntimes.com

Cyrus Freidheim, publisher, cfreidheim@suntimes.com

Finally, GOOD NEWS:

The National Museum of Mexican Art celebrates Folk Art Week!

October 17 - October 26, 2008
10am - 4pm

1852 W. 19th Street, Chicago, IL.
For more information, please call 312-738-1503 or visit www.nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org



Artist Demonstrations:

Ceramic Sculptures by Demetrio Garcia Aguilar, Ocotlan de Morelos, Oaxaca
Textile Weaving by Celia Santiz Ruiz, San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas
Huichol Yarn and Beadwork by José Benitez Sanchez, Santa Catarina, Jalisco
Wood Carvings by Jacobo & Maria Angeles, San Martin Tilcajete, Oaxaca
Wooden Masks by Orlando Orta, Tocuaro, Michoacán
Amate Paintings by Marcial Camilo Ayala, San Agustin Oapan, Guerrero
Sugar Skull Demonstrations by Alejandro Mondragón Arriaga, Elvira Garcia Zinzu & Elvira Mondragón Garcia, Toluca, Estado de México




Wishing for more good news,


Lisa Alvarado