Suerte Sirena. ¡Presente!

Michael Sedano

The Los Angeles Times book section surpised me joyously on November 27 as writer Christopher Soto introduces millions of people to our La Bloga colleague, tatiana de la tierra, qepd.

Soto is completely accurate in his call for more recognition of the work of our colleague. Today, La Bloga-Tuesday offers links and material Soto's research missed.

Here's a link to the article with hopes it's not behind a paywall. 

Soto offers a thoroughly interesting story about tierra's literary activism and supportiveness for other writers, her own creative work in writing, fashioning libros cartoneros, publishing. The Times and Soto missed tierra's conecta to La Bloga.

Ni modo. Here are two La Bloga columns, and a video link, remembering our colleague. The first, by this link (please click here),  comes from by Amelia ML Montes, collecting memories of our colleague upon her transition.

The second, reproduced in full, by Olga García Echeverría, relates the news that readers today enjoy free access into tatiana de la tierra's website and extensive materials for study and enjoyment.

Olga García Echeverría




Fotos: Rotmi Enciso

http://delatierra.net/

Shortly after tatiana de la tierra passed away in the summer of 2012, her website went down. My brother managed to temporarily put it back up. Later in the year, though, the link was dead again. For the past two years, the website has flickered in and out of existence. Mostly, its been dormant.

Not having full access to tatiana on the Web drove me mad, as I'm sure it did many people who love and miss her. tatiana had invested a great deal of time and effort in her original website. She had a particular aesthetic too--clean, simple, bonito. In the spirit of Literature for All, she had also carefully selected a wide range of previously published materials to share on the site. Anyone could visit delatierra.net and read "Mujeres con barbas," "Visions of Colombia," "Big Fat Pussy Girl," and so much more.

I don't know much about websites, so the job of resurrecting tatiana's electronic domain mainly fell on the shoulders of my brother, Mario Garcia, and my girlfriend, Maritza Alvarez. They both are pretty busy individuals, juggling work, deadlines, and just plain old life, but like me, they both loved tati, and she loved them.

On the surface, it may seem very simple. A website goes down? Put it back up. Ya estuvo. But it wasn't so easy. tatiana's website resurrection project was emotional at the core. Yes, we have always known how important it was to get the site back up and share it con todos, but the loss of tatiana in 2012 left us all a bit spellbound, mourning. Also, tatiana was ultra picky. Because we respected her and her work so much, we knew we needed to be realistic and take our time verus rushing to put something/anything up.

What we had when we embarked on the journey of reconstructing tatiana's site were files of the old website (almost all of them) and also the memory of what the site looked and felt liked. We also had everything she and her mother Fabiola had left us--boxes of papers, libros, fotos, muebles, piedras, lamps, Colombian casitas en el campo, ojos de Dios, bath salts, so, so, so many things. We were surrounded by tatiananess, especially at my brother's office where tatiana herself had, during her final weeks, designated box after box be sent to "La Oficina de Mario."

http://delatierra.net/

Since I had witnessed tatiana's initial website journey--she was meticulous and obsessed about cada detalle--I had a pretty good idea of what she wouldn't want and what was important to her. I knew that reconstructing her website would have to be done como ella lo hubiera querido, and because we did not want to run the risk of injecting too much of our own ideas and aesthetics into it, we made an agreement to make the site as close to the original as possible.

My job during the process was mainly to be a bossy overseer. I wasn't at my brother's office regularly. I just showed up every now and then and made comments or suggestions. Yes, I was super annoying. Imagine, "No, no, no, tatiana wouldn't like that. Asi no era el original. tatiana always had a site map. We have to add a site map. tatiana..." I got exasperated miradas and sighs from Maritza and Mario, who were putting in the real labor whenever they had the time, but mostly my tati-demands were met with patience and understanding.

I asked Maritza what working on the website was like for her, and here is what she shared. “Being a part of the collaborative process to relaunch tatiana's website was both an honor and a unique opportunity. It was also a memorable and special experience. I recall several times sitting in front of the computer for hours as I read through her writings and browsed through her photos. Often there were moments when I blurted out 'damn, she's bad-ass!' Then my eyes would swell up with tears because I was better able to understand why she was so terribly missed by so many. I also found myself laughing aloud because she had such an unapologetic rhythm and rhyme to her writings! All these things I had heard of from you, Olga, but revamping her website felt like I was personally discovering them for myself. And those were definitely special moments! I will always appreciate and cherish them. Who wouldn't?”

My brother had the following to say (I believe it's partly in tatiana-Mario code because they shared a special bond).

"mono cosmico azul, sirena, tomate, hermana shamana, puro fuego
blue cosmic monkey, mermaid, tomato, shamanic sister, pure fire

tatiana was a great friend and teacher, so I feel honored that she chose me to be one of her keepers...amongst the many boxes, writings, artwork, furniture, bed sheets, and such...tatiana lives among us, when we sit in her rocking chair at the office, stare at the Botero painting, read her poems, and especially when I have to carry her very heavy boxes (insert happy face)."

Bueno, this is our bloga for today and here is the website link again, in case you missed it.

http://delatierra.net/

http://delatierra.net/

Please visit it and share it! If you knew tatiana, you will surely be delighted to read or re-read some of her classics. If you didn't know tatiana and are wondering why I am always mentioning her in my blogs, check out her work and enjoy. All of the tabs on the site, the chosen literature, and the general organization of the materials are from tatiana's original webpage. The exception is the tab entitled Suerte Sirena, where we have added a picture of tatiana taken by Rotmi Enciso and Ina Riaskowa, a quote from me, and links to tributes to tatiana. There are still a couple of future tabs to be added, one that will feature links to tatiana's blogs here at La Bloga, and another one that will connect visitors to tatiana's archives at UCLA. But all of that is for Resurrection delatierra.net Part II.

Hasta next time, gracias and happy Sunday!

=== === ===

tatiana de la tierra performs (link, please click here) at the 2010 Festival de Flor y Canto, University of Southern California

https://digitallibrary.usc.edu/asset-management/2A3BF113W3W3?WS=SearchResults

Words On A New Decade: On With It.

Editor's Note: With 2020 the beginning of a new decade, La Bloga looked at the last time we entered a new decade. tatiana de la tierra, QEPD, launched the decade of the 2010s. 

Changes, futures, consequences, perspectives; we lived with them. "I barely know what’s in store twenty-four hours ahead of time and make no claims about the future."

It's an honor to share this La Bloga column for a new decade a decade age, by our brilliant friend. 

tatiana de la tierra? 
¡Presente!

tatiana de la tierra

It’s a new decade and times are grim as we head into the scripted doomsdays, with 2012 just around the corner. Will the world (as we know it) end with the Mayan calendar? Will there be a massive shift toward higher consciousness that will lead the planet to true healing? Or will humanoids continue to limp on amidst wars, poverty, corporate deceit, and rampant consumerism? Religious zealots are talking cataclysm and spreading the word with glossy pamphlets urging sinners to give it up for the Lord. Others are chanting for peace, meditating on divine love, and gearing up with vibrational healing tools.

I barely know what’s in store twenty-four hours ahead of time and make no claims about the future. But let me suppose that things will stay on the same course at least a bit longer. Today’s hot issues—unemployment, global warming, gay and lesbian marriage, health care, war, education, hunger, and immigration, to name a few—are also tomorrow’s. And they’re not going to magically go away as long as corporate interests continue to reign or as long as misogynist (mostly white) men are making decisions to affect us all.

What to do? If you’re tired of waiting for social justice or if you’ve lost all hope for change, you can take a few things into your hands. Make your own change, or speed up the process of deterioration so that the prophetic transformations can finally take hold. There’s a magical spaceship out there—there has to be.

Meanwhile, as a public service, I offer up some ideas of things you can do in times of doom.

1. Become a communist. Republicans claim that having health care for everyone is a sure sign of socialism. They’re right! Want health care? Go socialist!

2. Join the military. Out of a job? Can’t get into college? Can’t afford a gym membership? If you’re young and in your prime, the military is a great option for getting in shape, learning discipline, and being part of the brotherhood. Sure, you may lose a limb or end up with post-traumatic stress syndrome, but if you make it through, you might have a shot at an education.

3. Buy an illegal immigrant. They’re great for taking care of your house and kids. They can cook, clean, build things, do errands. And they’re cheap since there’s no comprehensive immigration bill being considered and they have no guaranteed rights. It’s the deal of the century!

4. Have more babies. Disposable diapers do a great job of choking up landfills, are wonderfully toxic, deplete the earths’ resources, and take a few hundred years to decompose. Want to push pollution and global warming along? Use disposable diapers!

5. Heal yourself and others. Medical doctors are great at diagnosing and prescribing pharmaceuticals, but they’re out to lunch when it comes to herbs, supplements, nutrition, and energy medicine. There are a zillion alternative healing modalities you can train in, such as homeopathy, Reiki, Quantum Touch, acupuncture, Tong Ren, crystal healing, sound healing, shamanism, Emotional Freedom Technique, midwifery, and naturopathy. They’re fabulous, low tech, and cost-effective modalities that people are tuning into more and more.

6. Learn Chinese. Want to be forward-thinking and speaking? Already a quarter of the earth’s population, the Chinese have a commercial and economic edge and will be a dominant force in the future. Learn the Mandarin mother tongue to get in step with the times, ahead of time.

7. Become a reverend. Gays and lesbians are busting to do the “I do’s” and more and more state legislations are permitting same sex unions. Who’s going to marry all these queers? Who’s going to baptize all their babies? If you become a reverend, you can be the one to do the honors.

8. Get a medical marijuana license. Who knows when we’ll have a health care plan that favors the people instead of insurance companies, medical doctors, and the pharmaceutical industry. Until then, you can get high and alleviate stress and pain with a few tokes.

9. Feed hormonized oversized chicken breasts to your children in order to accelerate their puberty. Babies are pumped with endocrine-disrupting chemicals in utero and throughout their childhood. Add recombinant bovine growth hormone found in milk and the ubiquitous pthalates and bisphenol-A to the mix and the result is demasculanized boys and prematurely feminized girls. Don’t want your children to fall behind? Give them their hormone disrupters!

10. If all else fails, become a breatharian. With practice, you can become plant-like and live off of sunlight. Perfect for hunger and homelessness!

This Week's Lesson: Even Bad Art Has Soul

Olga García Echeverría

Angel was stalling at the door. I could tell by the way he was fidgeting with his backpack, waiting for his classmates to leave, that he had something he wanted to say. Once everyone was gone, he leaned into the classroom. “That’s what I don’t get about this literary analysis thing.”

“What don’t you get about it?” I was shutting down the computer station and putting my things away, but he had my attention. 

“How people can read something and then say they hate it. Or visit a museum and say the art sucks.”

“Do you like everything you read or see, then?”

“No, I guess not. But I think that writers pour their souls into their stories and artists into their art. That’s their soul, man. How can anyone say, ‘I hate your soul? Or your soul sucks?’ That’s why even if I read something that doesn’t speak to me directly, I say, ‘Thank you for sharing your soul, man.’ "

Angel’s words lingered in the classroom long after he’d waved goodbye and disappeared into the hallway. I have follow-up questions for Angel, like “Do all artists always put their soul into their work or is that merely an assumption, a romantic notion?” That will be another conversation on another day, but I got the gist of what Angel was saying at the end of class on Wednesday, Even bad art has soul.

Into The Woods: A Super Bad Review

I’m ashamed to admit I paid money to see it, but on New Year’s Day I gave Into the Woods a try. I blame Meryl Streep. I’ll see anything she’s in. I didn’t go into the movie theater completely blind; “Disney musical” says a lot. Nothing, though, could have prepared me for the horror of Into the Woods.

The movie is a medley of several of Grimm's classic fairy tales, such as Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack and the Bean Stalk. It is clear from the onset that there is an attempt to deconstruct or subvert the original plots; however, this effort not only feels forced, it bores. Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), who keeps running to and away from the prince and singing about it, comes across as an indecisive tonta. Her golden slipper finally gets trapped in tar on the steps of the castle and it's too bad the tar didn't turn into a giant monster, like in The Blob (a really good "bad" movie by the way), and swallow her up. Johnny Depp, the Big Bad Wolf, is only In the Woods for what seems like a minute. Too bad. The charming princes (yes, there's more than one) are a royal drag.
Actually, there is a scene where these two prince-charmings, both in tight jeans, are pussyfooting around a river, singing “I wish, I wish...” They're fantasizing about their beloved princesses, wishing they were with them. My friend Persephone and I couldn't help but filter this scene through a queer lens. We were desperate and the popcorn and chocolate Raisinettes were all gone. “This looks like such a gay scene,” we whispered to each other, perking up for a minute. Wouldn't that be something? Two princes trapped in Grimm's fairy tales. They're expected to fall in love with, save, and then marry pinche princesses, but it turns out these two charming lads are really in love with each other. At the river, away from all the social and cultural pressure, they leap around like energetic ranas, singing “I wish, I wish, I wish I could marry a prince instead of a princess...”

We're So Gay! Let Us Out of This Hetero-normative Fairy Tale!

My student Angel would disapprove of me saying so because I am sure many people put their soul into this production, but aside from Streep and her fantastic blue hair and make-up, this movie sucked beyond belief. I give it three negative stars because the only thing worse than a bad movie is a bad movie being sung to you, badly. The fact that Into the Woods got nominated for both Golden Globes and Academy Awards is baffling, and yet a reminder that 1) Disney can do whatever it wants 2) You can't judge a movie by its nominations or awards and 3) Bad is truly in the eye of the beholder.

Perse and me killing ourselves cuz Into the Woods was THAT bad

La Drag Asesina: When It's So Bad It's Kinda Good

Speaking of killings, drag, bad art, and soul, Ed Wood Jr. wrote Killer in Drag in 1963. The copy I have was translated into Spanish by Tatiana Escobar and Olatz Acosta in 1999. This was tatiana de la tierra's book. I want to say I vaguely remember it in her house, lying around entre sus cosas and among all her other libros. Aside from being a writer and avid reader, tatiana was also a librarian, so she always had books lying around. Queer libros en español were a must, since this was one of tatiana's main areas of personal and professional interest. When she passed away in 2012, her books were dispersed. Many were donated to libraries, others kept by family members or given to friends. La Drag Asesina went from tatiana's home in Long Beach to Cat Uribe in El Sereno. In our endless recycling of tatiana's special things, Cat recently passed the book onto me.

At the Beach with La Drag Asesina and...tatiana? Is that you, tatiana?

I would love to spend an afternoon at the edge of the beach, talking to tatiana about La Drag Asesina, about the main character Glen/Glenda, and his/her sexuality. About the pulp crime sex genre that Wood was well known for in the 60's and 70's. About his low-budget sci-fi horror flicks of the 1950's. I imagine we would poke fun and laugh at the fact that Ed Wood was posthumously awarded a Golden Turkey Award as Worst Director of All Time. How the hell do you get nominated for something like that? We'd ask, and we'd fantasize of one day getting a Worst Algo award. These are the types of things we could have a lot of fun with.

tatiana unfortunately isn't here in the same way she used to be, so I can only imagine what her take on the book would be. One distinction/critique I think she would have made about La Drag Asesina is that it isn't organic queer lit en español. It's not Spanish-speaking Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Florida, East LA speaking of/about/to queerness. It's Hollywoodish, 1960's pulp queerish sexploitative fiction translated from English into Spanish. This doesn't necessarily make it all bad, though, just imported and perhaps somewhat distorted. And yes, La Drag Asesina is a bit contrite and predictable, ridiculous at times, yet it's also fascinating. Going back to the suppression of obvious (or at least potential) gayness in Into the Woods, Ed Wood Jr. was doing in the 60's what Disney wouldn't dare do today! Even in its badness, the soul of Killer in Drag was way ahead of its time. Because of this, La Drag Asesina has won me over. Why else? The short chapters, perhaps. The quick-moving plot; you can see the progression of the action in vivid scenes. The author's obsession with women's clothes is also a bit contagious. Thanks to Ed Wood, I now really want an angora sweater. The Spanish is also a plus. Mostly, though, I think it's the protagonist in the book that hooks. Glen/Glenda, the tender-hearted killer in drag who's dragging around his/her double identity in a suitcase because he's/she's on the run after witnessing the murder of the rich old maricon that he/she was just about to screw for social/economic mobility when...

I won't spoil it. If you haven't read this bad book yet, I highly recommend it, especially in Spanish. They translate toast as "tostada," but that's okay. I can deal with that. It's still a classic in the world of bad art, and it does have plenty of soul. The back cover sums it up perfectly, La Drag Asesina es “Un libro poco recomendable pero que nadie debe perderse.”

Tatiana and Me Full of Soul & Wearing Really Bad Wigs
Buffalo, NY Circa 2001

 

 

Breaking Up With Los Angeles: Queer Little Chapbooks Part II

Olga Garcίa Echeverrίa

The latest chapbook that arrives in the mail is Raquel Gutiérrez’ Breaking Up with Los Angeles. The large stenciled-looking title, all caps, is painted in opaque gold.  On my copy, some of the initial letters appear partially cut-off. When I turn the book around, though, I see that the letters bleed onto the back cover. I wonder if this is intentional or if it is one of those lovely imperfections that comes with chapbook making. Anyone who has ever made chapbooks knows it can be highly laborious and at times painful. Fingers can get stapled or cut. The layout of the text can go berserk. Pages can accidentally get glued or inverted. Living space begins to look like a messy workshop full of scattered papeles and art supplies.

Photo "borrowed" from Raquel Gutierrez' website

Looking at Raquel’s cover, I can’t help but get nostalgic about my own chapbook making aventuras. The last time I put together a poetry chapbook was in 2010 with tatiana de la tierra. Inspired by the cardboard books of Latin America, we set out to make a limited edition of self-published cardboard poetry books. For months, cardboard book-making ruled our worlds. We loved cardboard. We explored its strengths and weakness. We folded it. We punctured it. We painted it. We hoarded and fought over it. We slept near our growing piles of cardboard; carton thoughts and energy seeped into our dreams; we were one with the cardboard, tatiana and I. And despite the cardboard cuts and mess, these little poetry books filled us with utter joy and self-publishing power. Of course, we blogged about it: http://labloga.blogspot.com/2010/05/cardboard-creations-homemade-libros.html

tatiana eating cardboard poetry

Raquel's chapbook isn't made out of cardboard, and it has its unique estilo and presence, yet it reminds me of tatiana de la tierra, Myriam Gurba (whose chapbooks I blogged about a couple of weeks ago (http://labloga.blogspot.com/2014/03/queer-little-chapbooks.html), and every other hardworking two-tongued, two-spirited escritora/artista out there creating arte a su brave manera. In the end, despite todas las diferencias, it's the same general fuerza that propels us forth and fuels creation, poesίa, self-published libritos. Locura. Passion. Because you have to be kinda crazy and in love with words to make your own books. Resilience is a must, and humor is a definite plus. There's no big bucks earned here. You can purchase Raquel's Breaking Up With Los Angeles for a very affordable seis dolares: http://raquelgutierrez.net/chapbook/ Or Gurba's latest A Flower for That Bitch for a muy barato $3: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Lesbrain. That's freshly made literature for the cost of a couple of tamales and a café or a champurrado. There's no glory or guarantees in rasquachi book making either. The writer usually distributes and hustles. Libritos! Libritos! Calentitos y deliciosos! Compren sus libritos! It's like blogging or writing a poem or knitting a bad-ass scarf or sweater. You may pour out your heart into your arte, spend countless hours refining the finished product, and get back a, "That's cute."

Photo by Kevin Campbell

Having moved from LA to the Bay Area a little over a year ago, Gutiérrez shares that her new chapbook Breaking Up With Los Angeles marks a “habitual haunting” of the city she broke up with. In her blog (http://raquelgutierrez.net/blog/) she writes: "This project is simply the receptacle for the ache...of leaving home...Poetry has always functioned as a site of no rules...A small holder of my psychic messes. A document. A textual object. Or an embrace for when all other embraces fail to keep me safe."

Using numbers instead of titles, Gutiérrez delivers 22 poems about loving, living in, and leaving Los Angeles. In poem #11, she write:

Partner with loss
Embrace change
Resist nostalgia

It's a mantra that thematically echoes throughout the collection. Whether she's recalling a nightclub in Hollywood full of joteria and Naco Power, a sighting on Silverlake of a truck with "lavender colored testicles hanging so low," the haze of Sour Diesel, her mother's laughter welcoming her home, or the busquedad of her "Ole Dad" and herself in cantinas, Gutiérrez weaves in and out of the cityscape, gathering poetic fragments of the distant and recent past, re-membering/re-constructing that which has been lost or broken, all the while resisting nostalgia.

But where one lives and loves, there are always those glimpses of nostalgia, no? In poem #7, Gutiérrez recalls a few of "the good things:"

telling white people to not speak Spanish to me
having everyone at Homeboy Industries know me by name

I want to stay..

Despite the grappling with grief and loss, and the resistance to nostalgia, there's a sense of love and longing for Los Angeles. For example, in poem #13, Gutiérrez leaves behind a poetic directive of her last rites:

scatter me in the mouth of Los Angeles
her stomach the desert 
her ass the sea
her shoulders the mountains
and her womb
the east Los Angeles freeway interchange

for the 5 brought me all of California
while the 101 took me to where it was possible
impossible on the 10 during rush hour
and the 60 carried my broken teenage heart home

Tributes to the recently deceased are also found in Breaking Up With Los Angeles. In poem #8, LA poet Wanda Colemen who inspired so many of us is remembered, the impact of her loss deeply felt:

Photo by Mark Savage

I mourned her from a lonely bedroom
Deep in the East Bay
Her departure underscoring
an exile from Angels
a burn, a light and tender

a severe degree
that severs me










Although this is her first chapbook, Gutiérrez isn't knew to the arts. She has long been a performer, curator, playwright, and cultural activist. She was a co-founding member of the now retired performance ensemble, Butchlalis de Panochtitlan (BdP), a community-based and activist-minded group aimed at creating a visual vernacular around queer Latinidad in Los Angeles. Raquel also co-founded other Los Angeles-specific art projects: Tongues, A Project of VIVA and Epicentro Poetry project. Raquel's work has been published in The Portland Review and Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing (edited by Lázaro Lima and Felice Picano). Poems are forthcoming in Sinister Wisdom and Huizache next year.

During the past two weeks, I had an opportunity to ask Gutierrez a few questions over email. Here are my questions and her responses:

Can you share a little about your current transition from performance to poetry? Are you still doing both?

I like the insularity of writing poems. Performing relies on collaboration and a certain familiarity. Being in a new place, living away from Los Angeles, made me retract, reflect...I think I am done with the stage for now but when I read some of these poem aloud, there's a different rawness present that isn't so much about proving myself as an artist. I'm regenerating in a new way.

When I was in El Paso, Texas all I did was write about Los Angeles. I found that the distance and desert allowed me to write about LA in ways that I may not have been able to do had I still been at home. Did you have a similar experience when moving to the Bay Area?

When I was living in New York I couldn't write anything about L.A. The distance of course helps, but I don't know if being in a new city leads to being able to produce writing about L.A. I think a new place coupled with the ability to inhabit certain truths makes the writing come easier.

What do you miss most about Los Angeles?

I miss the 24-hour-ness of L.A. The thrift store near the old Sears. La Estrella's fish burritos. The 110 freeway tunnel from Chinatown into Figueroa. The sun coming up on Bandini Boulevard.

Literary rockstars that you admire?

Rubén Martinez, Wanda Coleman, Charles Bukowski, Roberto Bolaños, Helena María Viramontes, John Rechy, James Baldwin, Chris Kraus, Ali Liebegott, Salvador Plascencia.

Are you taking on any new projects any time soon?

I'm excited about a chapbook press endeavor I am taking on called ECONO TEXTUAL OBJECTS. This [making chapbooks] was so much fun I don't want it to stop. I'm working on another chapbook for the Spring, along with chapbooks by friends and conspirators Félix Solano Vargas and Nikki Darling. These chapbooks are due out in May 2014.

That's an interesting name for a press. What exactly does it mean?

ECONO is inspired by one of favorite SoCal punk bands The Minutemen from San Pedro. They have the misfortune of having the same name as the xenophobic group in Arizona. But the punk band was founded by these dorky white guys into working class politics and aesthetic innovative approaches to making punk...like jazzy bass line and political poetry and experimentation that was accessible to a willing mass and within economic means. So I felt really connected to that and wanted to work with writers that are working full time, invoke that in the work and are making work that Is aesthetically adventurous. Econo being short for economic. Textual object feels more like what we're doing. Sure it's a chapbook essentially but I just felt the physicality of making a chapbook and how that translates to making physical art. The object. And its objectness is grounded in language.

Are you addressing a particular need with the starting of ECONO press?

The need. Hmm well I think it was a means to create a new kind of intimacy in the age of over sharing. I don't know but there's something intimate about knowing that only a specific number of people are experiencing the work.

Can you share a little about the two authors whose work will be featured by ECONO this May?

Félix is a young trans man community organizer who is writing about his family, trauma and survival. his work is also place based. He is writing about Riverside and labor.

Nikki is the poet feminist pushing against form and patriarchal traces in language. She's an experimental writer but she's also been a nanny full time while she writes about art and her New Mexico roots by way of her mom. Her chapbook is called Pink Trumpet and the Purple Prose.

In closing, even though you broke up with her, do you still love LA?

I'll always love LA.


To learn more about Raquel and ECONO TEXTUAL OBJECTS, visit: http://raquelgutierrez.net/
To visit Raquel's blog: http://raquelgutierrez.net/blog/
To purchase Breaking Up With Los Angeles:
http://raquelgutierrez.net/chapbook/breaking-up-with-los-angeles

VIVAS: Mujeres in the Mail

Olga Garcia Echeverria

Real, old-fashioned mail can brighten even the gloomiest of days. The parcel that arrives is the size of a record album, the weight of a sturdy book. It’s traveled all the way from Mexico City to Lincoln Heights. It’s littered with cool rows of orange Día de Muertos stamps and numerous black postal seals, faded and smeared. The envelope is made of brown paper bag, its edges beaten and gnawed. It's obviously been "manhandled" on both sides of the border. The calendars inside, though, are remarkably unscathed.

This is Rotmi Enciso and Ina Riaskov’s 2014 calendar project, VIVAS, where women who love women and women who love words are featured in every month of the year. The cover of the calendar is a lucha-libre-masked mujer running in a blur. She's zooming by in a white nightie, hot pink fishnet stocking, a black and gold cape, matching botas and fingerless arm-length gloves. Me gusta. Run, Lucha Libre Mujer, Run!

 

I open up the calendar to February. A black and white profile of an older woman stares back. There is some kind of fierceness in her face. No Botox. No airbrush. No commercial standards of youth and beauty. Yet, she’s beautiful, her skin weathered and sculptured by time--the same way wind and sun carve out the face of the earth.

 

 

 

When I turn to March, I see that my friends in Mexico have gifted one of my poems a page, “Vuelo.” It’s a poem close to my heart, about my maternal grandmother, who many moons ago in Mexico is said to have lost her mind. “Perdió la razón” is how the story goes. I like to envision it as a wondrous flight instead of madness. Vuela, abuelita, vuela!

 

 

 

 

In August, cumulous clouds and a poem by tatiana de la tierra greet me, “Prisionera de tu perro.” My heart warms and I laugh aloud, remembering this querida amiga, bloguera, escritora. It’s a true story, the poem. tatiana once got dumped for a dog. She was indignant when it happened. “Can you fucking believe it? A dog! A cat maybe, pero un perro comemierda?” Her revenge was to write a poem-song (with a loud barking chorus) to the ex-lover. “You don’t seem too heartbroken,” I said to her once while she was practicing the poem with a yowling gusto. She barked, and then kept on singing.

Gracias Ina and Rotmi. Your international parcel is greatly appreciated. Las mujeres en este calendario están VIVAS.


Calendario de mujeres opportunity: I have two extra VIVAS calendars to share. It's bilingual queer word and mujer visual art to hang on a wall porque every day is a good day to celebrate International Women's Day. If you'd like a calendar, email me at mariposa@datapillar.com and I'll send the first two people who respond a cool parcel in the mail.

 

Rotmi Enciso & Ina Riaskov: Artistas, Activistas, Femenistas,  Revolucionistas, Lesbianistas, Internacionalistas.

 
To learn more about VIVAS contact Rotmi and Ina via Producciones Y Milagros Agrupacion Femenista, A.C. proyectos.prodymil@yahoo.com or on twitter: @prodymil

Writing Rocks

Olga García Echeverría

You must write every single day of your life…You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

--Ray Bradbury

I hung Bradbury’s quote above the kitchen sink. It was supposed to inspire. Instead, as the days passed and I failed to write, it began to haunt and eventually torture.

It was early 2012 and reality was slowly destroying me. The educational program that I worked for at the time, Adult Ed, was being threatened with extinction and we--students, teachers, administrators, staff, and community members--were embarked in an ugly battle with the LAUSD school board to try to salvage it. It was one of those David and Goliath battles that you almost know you’re going to lose, if not completely, enough to leave you maimed or jobless. Yet, you give your best fight anyway--for the principle and because, well, as Zora Neal Hurston once wrote, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

More dreadful for me than the looming extinction of Adult Education was the news that one of my dearest friends, tatiana de la tierra, former Bloggera, had been diagnosed with colon cancer.

Half of Adult Education was killed in June of 2012, my job along with it. And at the end of July, tatiana died.

These candles, our bodies, see how they burn.

How many hours will they last—days, months, years?

--Hafiz

It is difficult to summarize the chaos that reigned the months during and after those two losses. It is even harder to summarize what tatiana’s passing meant for me. Aside from our friendship of 17 years, tatiana was my closest writing partner and confidant. She was also my editor and I many times hers. We swapped poems and prose and commented candidly, almost brutally, on each other’s work, a skill practiced in graduate school while getting our MFAs and mastered throughout the years. Nobody could tear my work apart like tatiana and make me laugh so hard at the same time, and I truly loved her for it. I respected her work greatly, so comments like “Me gusta!” or “You still got it, girl” were golden, and ones like “No sirve!” could be devastating. She was, among many other things, bold, colorful, passionate, keen, obsessive, Una Diva Divina, unpredictable, eccentric, magical, hilarious, hedonistic, and a royal fucking blast. Like sisters or a long-married couple, we fought over stupid things, like each other’s idiosyncrasies. Sometimes out of anger at something I'd said, done, or not done, she’d stop calling or texting me for a week. She’d later explain that her lack of communication was my punishment, to which I’d laugh and answer, “That wasn’t punishment. That was a vacation!” If we could make each other laugh, which we usually always did, then we were good, and we could move on. Regardless of what was happening in our lives and in our relationship, though, words were our most sacred glue. Above everything else was The Creative Word. The Bilingual Spoken-Broken Word. The Immigrant Word. The Word of Poverty. The Word of Abundance. The Queer Word. The Chicana from East L.A. Word. La Colombiana from Miami, Buffalo, Long Beach Word. And The Word was always with us. And we were The Word.

antes de la muerte, la poesía

--tatiana de la tierra

There are people who can write through anything I suppose. Pain and loss are fuel; words are medicine. I know that. But in 2012 my writing came to a standstill, and it wasn’t merely due to the year’s challenges and losses. My writing life has always been riddled with sporadic dry spells; now it had just reached an unprecedented season of drought. But maybe what appeared to be a drought on the surface had a deeper meaning. Could it be a much-needed period of rest, mourning, or creative incubation where seeds were being cultivated?

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled.

The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

--Ray Bradbury

I spent the last days of 2012 with loved ones in Yucca Valley. The cold night pierced through our layers of sweaters and jackets as we huddled around a bonfire. Beneath the waning gibbous moon, I reflected on everything that had transpired in the previous year. The world as I knew it had come to an end. But before me was a breathing metaphor, the desert. On the surface its vast open land seemed empty, desolate, almost post-apocalyptic, but upon looking closer, there was unyielding strength and beauty—the ubiquitous creosote bush that clones itself in extreme drought, the queer Joshua tree with its gnarled branches, the tough, standoffish Cholla, and the ocean of rocks—the speckled quartz monzonite, the coarse layered gneissic, the sand, the silt, the gravel, the clay, the rocks.

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

--Zora Neale Hurston

On the morning of the New Year, I awoke in the desert with an urge to go rock hunting. What were the rocks for? I didn’t really know. Originally, I thought I was picking them as small gifts for friends, but the more I wandered, looked, and touched the plethora of rocks, the more I felt something heavy shifting inside me, like a planet slowly changing its axis or a boulder moving, clearing a new path. Suddenly, it was hard to move or breathe. I sat down on a slab of rock the size of a lifeboat and took several long breaths, trying to replicate the rhythmic flow of a gentle wave. I could feel the earth spinning, the Universe churning, and my heart pounding. My year of gestation was coming to an end and it was time to say goodbye to 2012. I crawled further onto the rock, and then lay flat on my back, surrendering completely, the beautiful stuff inside me, my tears and cries, spilling out. I’ll never forget you, beautiful dying sun. I’ll always love you, 2012. Thank you for everything.

Whatever touches us touches our writing.

--Octavia Butler

I picked dozens of rocks that day and upon returning to Los Angeles I got myself a large mason jar. An idea was forming and the urge to write was surging from the ground up. It had occurred to me in the desert that I needed a new approach to creating my own writing routine, one that did not judge or torture and one that was in sync with my personality and lifestyle. What I needed was a habit-forming ritual and the rocks from Yucca Valley were going to help me. They were going to be my grounding stones, my Writing Rocks.

First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable.

Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not.

Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't.

Habit is persistence in practice.

--Octavia E. Butler

The idea was very simple--put a stone in the mason jar for every day that I write. At first I thought I’d empty the jar at the end of each month and start anew. Then I envisioned growing fantastically old, like a redwood, and being surrounded by my own sea of stones. Visual metaphors speak to me louder than words sometimes, and I dug the image, so I started to write, clumsily at first, like someone learning to walk again after a serious car crash, but writing nonetheless.

There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.

–Joy Harjo

Once I began my new ritual it wasn’t important to have a set time to write during the day or even the week. Rocks could care less about schedules. Time is time. This works wonderfully for me, since some days I’m a night owl who stays up till the crack of dawn and others I’m an 85-year-old woman who needs to be in bed as soon as the sun sets. I write whenever there is a block of time, and if there’s no apparent block of time, I move rocks to create it. It doesn’t matter so much where I write either. Of course, I want “a clean, well-lighted place,” and “a room of my own” would be rad, but that’s not always my reality. I don’t even have a desk at this time. I have a small kitchen table that’s one hundred years old. I can feel its spindled legs squeaking as I type. It’s a fine desk for now if you ask me. Other times, I write on the sofa with a laptop. Almost any place is game for a writing place—a café, a park bench, a library, a friend’s home. What matters most is that the writing happens, and that it be braided into my life, por vida, like a vigorous habit I cannot shake.

Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper.

--Ray Bradbury

I cannot completely explain why this visual metaphor, rocks in a jar, has been so empowering and healing. There’s something about the small physical act of holding a rock and placing it in a jar that is helping me make peace with one of my oldest nemesis--discipline. And I love my rocks, the desert quartz, the ocean pebbles, the river rocks, the precious turquoise, the random earth stones that are grounding me like little anchors with no strings attached.

In loving memory of taiana de la tierra, escritora extraordinare
May 16, 1961 -- July 31, 2012

 

Do not buy this book, yet

rambling update on debut novel by Rudy Ch. Garcia

My head's spinning, there's not enough time, I don't know where to look next. Welcome to the wonderful world of first-time published novelist getting ready for the BIG day.

You can read about my debut novel here and about some of my prep work here.

Like I said, my head's spinning. I want everything to be perfect, timely, on time, and as much of a success as it can be. At the same time, not everything is in my control. Luckily, I have friends, acquaintances and contacts who know more than me.

Manuel Ramos, author of several novels, authors and poetesses Lisa Alvarado and Melinda Palacio are just some helping me navigate this episode in my lit life that comes only once. First novel. Debut. Book signings with audiences who will read the bared revelations of this writer. Scary? Nerve-wracking? No, I've got too much prep work that's muscling in on all my time and not allowing for that much true feelings.

Again, luckily, I've also got supporters and friends and family who're helping me with setting up a book tour, speaking, interviewing engagements. I couldn't do it alone, otherwise.

For those of you who anticipate your first book-length MS getting published, I can't tell you how it will affect you. For me, it's mostly a blur.

When I tell someone new about the book, they go, "I bet you're feeling great." It goes in una oreja and out the other. I know I should be feeling that, maybe I will be when I stand in front of my first audience to conduct a reading. Vamos a ver.

I've had to research the Internet, blogs, publications, and contacts and found surprising things. For instance, I'm going to attempt to focus people's buying the book. For the first month of Sept., I'm aiming for the Denver bestseller list. Why?

Because bookstores in other parts of the country, book reviewers of major publications and media gente look at such numbers. If The Closet of Discarded Dreams can make the Top 5 for one week in Denver, it will get noticed, possibly, nationally. It might get reviewed. I might be interviewed. Etc. You can help me accomplish this.

So, that's why I entitled this post the way I did. Don't buy, don't pre-order, don't go for it until you hear where and when. It's a small window, making a bestseller list. Even harder with a first novel.

I hope to do my first reading at Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, just as soon as I can get books shipped from the publisher. After this first critical period, I will be encouraging people to order from them or whatever independent bookstore you prefer. Just not yet.

Then I'll hit Austin-San Anto-Houston. Then, Phoenix/So. Calif. Then, who knows where else in late Sept. and Oct. Hopefully, I'll get to meet La Bloga readers, since I haven't been out much of the Denver Metro area in years. Would love to hear what you all think of our Chicano lit blog. I expect to be surprised.

And even better, I hope to share some of my prose with many of you.

tatiana de la tierra

Hasta septiembre y octubre,

RudyG

P.S.: If you're at Su Teatro's Pachanga tonight in Denver, you can bid on one of the limited (of 25), autographed, numbered (#10) and monogrammed copies of the novel. It's to raise funds for the Teatro, so bid high. Delivery sometime in Sept.

Also, if you haven't yet, check out Rene's post and mine on recently deceased bloguera tatiana de la tierra. And check out tomorrow's, Sunday's tribute. 

Sí es todo, hoy,

RudyG

En memoria de tatiana

I met her only once at a writers conference, and in the hustle of workshops and developing publishing contacts, there never was enough time for much charla with the other blogueros. But I know something of her writing and will always be surprised that not more of it made it into published books.

tatiana was a lesbian, obviously. Unfortunately, I know that for some readers, that might have deterred them from reading any of her work, so, I direct La Bloga readers to just some of her other La Bloga works that amazed me with her fluid manipulation of English, particularly bringing us spiritual aspects of latinoamerica, especially her beloved Columbia. Those unfamiliar with her can discover something of your indigenous roots and spirit, and some of the unabashed political views exemplifying la raza cósmica in the following:

about the Chumash medicine woman

Healing with Medicinal Plants of the West: Cultural and Scientific Basis for Their Use

her review of Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In

her un-apology re 9/11: Oh Beautiful America

her piece on Luzclara Camus Living in Times of Plenitude

maybe my favorite: El Abejero and Mountains of Telluric Love

The knowledge she shared about our indigenous souls was a great contribution, among others, to our pages. tatiana's returned to her namesake, la tierra, and we blogueros will miss her writings, as will our readers.

RudyG

Hasta Siempre Tatiana- We will miss you

Our amiga and Bloguera Tatiana de la Tierra made her starry journey yesterday, July 31, 2012. She will be our eternal Sirena. I met Tatiana in San Antonio during Macondo Week. In Los Angeles, she introduced me to La Luciérnaga, a group of Latino writers in Southern California.


Tatiana, te vamos a extrañar. Here is Tatiana reading and talking about her life.

This is a partial list of her work.

Xía y las mil sirenas

Ilustrado por Anna Cooke

Xía es una niña huérfana que vive en una ciudad junto al mar, un día recibe la visita de una mujer perfumada que la lleva en un avión atravesando mares y continentes para conocer a su nueva familia: dos mamás, un hermanito y un pony. En el camino encuentra un millar de alegres sirenas quienes le brindan ayuda.

For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology / 

Para las duras: Una fenomenologia lesbiana

A philosophical exploration of the fantasy of being a lesbian, written from the heart of the matriarchy.  A lesbian manifesto for hardcore dykes, baby dykes, and wanna-be lesbians.

Píntame una mujer peligrosa

Un poemario de amor y pasión entre mujeres con celebraciones sexuales y canciones que afirman la realidad y el rumbo de la vida.  Escrito totalmente en español. / A collection of poems about love and passion among women, with sexual celebrations and songs that affirm the reality and beat of life.  Written entirely in Spanish.