Unearthing Bone, Writing Memoir: An Interview With Wendy C. Ortiz

Olga García Echeverría

 

Photo by Monica Orozco

What looks like bone might just be rock.

She is looking for clues.
There is a timestamp sealed in the bone's marrow.
The bone is a puzzle piece.
The bone is a treasure...

...Let me excavate. Brush this bone off.
Let me know its story.

                   
                        Wendy C. Ortiz, Excavation

 

 

 



 

I was stuck on a personal essay and looking for inspiration in my Must-Read-Memoir pile. I had gotten to a section in my own writing that made me feel frustrated, vulnerable. How long had I been writing the same story? It pissed me off that my father (who a good friend once labeled The Patriarch) was yet again showing up on the page all messy and in ways that set off emotional triggers. The plan was to read a few pages of someone else's vulnerability, feel better, and then go back to tackling The Patriarch. I picked Ortiz' Excavation from the stack because the title had long been tugging.

 

Excavate (verb):

to expose or lay bare by or as if by digging;

to unearth;

to excavate an ancient city, for instance.
 

 

Excavation is set in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the San Fernando Valley, where Ortiz grew up as an only child. The primary focus of the memoir is Ortiz' relationship as a teenager with a private school teacher fifteen years her senior. From the onset, the story is unsettling, complex, and deeply compelling. Those "few pages" of Excavation that I had planned on reading for inspiration turned into 50 pages, then 100, then 200, and so on, all in one sitting. My vision was blurry and the barrio roosters were crowing by the time I finished.

During the following days, I couldn't stop thinking about Ortiz' book. I thought about how writing creative non-fiction takes a lot of ovaries (or balls, depending on your gender preference). As Ortiz makes clear in her writing, memoir is an art form that requires courageous digging, uncovering, and mending. Think archeology where the terrain is The Self. Ortiz mentions some tools that might help in the process of excavating stories—a bulldozer, a backhoe. Or you can zoom in and get meticulous, as Ortiz does, and bring in the pick-axe, the shovel, and the brushes. Don't forget the brushes! Found objects must be handled with care, dusted off, and examined.

The other thing I kept thinking about after reading Excavation was how much I would love to interview Wendy Ortiz and pick her brain on the art of writing memoir. I put that wish into action by contacting her via Facebook with an invitation for an interview. She graciously accepted, and we are fortunate and excited to have her with us today.

 

Wendy, bienvenida! I have so many questions about memoir, but I will begin with one that has been buzzing in my mind recently. I did an interview with author Ben Saenz a couple of months ago (http://labloga.blogspot.com/2015/11/on-writing-and-discovering-secrets-of.html) and asked him if he'd ever consider writing a memoir. His response was an immediate and adamant “No,” which made me laugh. I love Ben's writing and was hoping a memoir was in the works, but he described the memoir as “a dangerous genre” that necessitates the author become the hero of his or her own narrative. “Writers are self-involved already,” he said. “No thanks.” I can relate to what Saenz shared.  However, I also think that memoir too often gets dismissed as literary neurosis. Any thoughts on this? Are those of us who delve in creative non-fiction a bunch of self-centered junkies?

 

I’d argue that the description of memoir as necessitating that the author becomes the hero of their narrative is a pretty narrow description. Yes, there’re a ton of books under the genre heading “memoir” that fit that description—however—and that’s a big HOWEVER—there are plenty of books, on some radars, but mostly off the big radars—in which the author is actually an anti-hero, or their identity is complicated in some way that makes the word “hero” not applicable. This is the type of memoir I’m interested in. If memoir were simply authors writing themselves as heroes in their narratives, I wouldn’t want to read or write memoir.

 

What about this notion that memoir is dangerous?

 

The idea of memoir as “a dangerous genre”—well, I write in multiple genres, I hybridize, and can only hope all of it is “dangerous” because to me that means I’m getting to the heart. I want to feel the danger as I write. Maybe in this way I am indeed a junkie?

 

Sometimes I think writing memoir and putting it out there is like getting naked in public. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is so much revelation and vulnerability in creative non-fiction. How did you deal with the issue of vulnerability when writing Excavation?

 

Vulnerability is where it’s at. It took me a while to get this and I still struggle with it. Vulnerable, to me, does not mean getting naked in public, though. It’s about getting to the uncomfortable truths, usually buried in old shame, and looking at those truths from different angles, with as little judgment as possible. There are many stories I left out of Excavation, partially because they didn’t enhance the narrative—they would have been like an unnecessary exposure. In the writing of Excavation, I had moments where I felt physically ill, or noticed an anxious thrumming underneath everything as I worked, but I took those to mean I was on the right track. Vulnerability is not so much an issue to me as it is a desired state of being. I see strength in that.

 

Dorothy Allison says that whereas in a novel we can always have redemption, it's not always possible in memoir. The nature of the genre requires a distinct type of honesty and truth, and as Allison writes, “memoirs are messy, relentless, and give no quarter...”

 

This helps illustrate my point about memoir not simply being a hero narrative! The messiness is what I crave and will go after. There are times when I try writing a story from my life in a different genre, such as poetry or fiction, as an exercise. I used to hide many of my selves in my fiction in my early twenties, when I was too scared to claim the mantle of “true story.”

 

Did you ever consider publishing your stories in a different genre?

 

The decision to publish, for example, Excavation, was mainly because I looked for exactly this type of book when I was going through the experience the book describes and never found it.

 

One of the issues I struggle with when writing family history is that I don't always have all the pieces. I may have fragments of a story passed down by a relative who is no longer living. Or I may have two radical versions of the same story. In memoir those gaps can't always be bridged as they are in poetry or fiction. Were there gaps in the narratives of Excavation or Hollywood Notebook and if so, how did you handle them?

 

If I were to write family history, there’d be a ton of gaps. My grandmother, who was the only grandparent I grew up with, didn’t have a birth certificate, for example. I’d have to do some extensive research to piece together “the facts” of both sides of my family because people have died, people have secrets, and we’re largely estranged. Both of my books, though, come from the journals I wrote, so gaps in narrative aren’t much of an issue there.

 

Did you grapple with the reality that in telling your story you would also be telling the stories of others in your life? Was there resistance from family, for instance, or self-censorship as a means to protect loved ones?

 

I’m pretty ruthless when it comes to writing a story that took place years ago. I did look at who I wrote about and how they’d come off and examined my intentions. I changed names but there is no one who needed actual “protecting” in Excavation. I didn’t experience any resistance from family, but I also don’t share my writing life with, for example, my mother. This is shocking to some people, but it’s real. Writing has always been a hobby to my parents, something I do on the side, and I didn’t see a reason to share the book with my mother, just as I don’t share with her the details of my publications in journals, etc. (my grandmother and father, who are in the book, are deceased). So, in a sense, maybe I’m protecting her, maybe this is where the self-censorship comes in. But honestly, it just feels like a function of the limited relationship we have as mother/daughter.

 

Last year I went to a writer's conference where I met an author whose memoir I had recently read. I didn't personally know this writer, yet the memoir had been so revealing and intimate that as a reader I felt a strong connection.  I went up to this author feeling/acting like we were old buddies, actually wanting to embrace him. It was presumptuous of me to think I really “knew” this person because I had read his memoir. Do you ever experience this type of behavior from readers and if so, does it bother you? How do you find that balance between sharing private aspects of yourself in writing and setting boundaries with readers you meet in public?

 

I experience this all the time! It’s actually a lovely thing until someone crosses a line (yes, lines have been crossed, but nothing outrageous). My training as a therapist and all the years I worked on boundaries in my own therapy make me pretty firm when it comes to readers who presume a relationship with me after reading my books. I mean, I understand what it’s like, I have those feelings of wanting to connect with the author of a memoir I just read and loved and gush all over them. I did that recently in a Twitter direct message after reading one author’s book. A total, “Oh my god, I loved it, I relate so much, I’m the age now that you were writing about it, and I’m going through this, wow!!!” sort of thing, and I was aware I was doing it and knew, actually, from the book, that this author probably had very good boundaries and would let me know if I’d crossed a line. I felt pretty safe, though. I wasn’t saying, YOU AND I ARE THE SAME PERSON or, like, We must be best friends now!! When I meet people they mostly behave graciously, kindly, warmly. I also think I’ve developed an invisible shield from truly shitty behavior (knock on wood). A friend of mine has described me as “unfuckwithable” and I think that’s part of what the shield’s composed of.

 

In 2013, sculptor and MacArthur Genius Teresita Fernandez presented her speech, “On Amnesia, Broken Pottery, and the Inside of a Form,” to the graduating class of her alma mater,

Virgina Commonwealth University's School of the Arts.

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/what-it-takes-to-be-artist-macarthur.html

In one part of the speech,  Fernandez shares how, while visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she was fascinated by a Greek ostracon, a broken piece of pottery or stone engraved with a message (these broken clay pieces were many times used like paper and for such things as voting). The ostracon reminded Fernández of the natural fragmentation that is part of life and creativity, and yet, she states, “we are conditioned to think that which is broken is lost, or useless, or a setback...” She goes on to talk about the Japanese art of mending broken bowls with gold, Kintsugi, where that which is broken is not only repaired but also renewed and beautified. I couldn't help but think about the act of writing memoir as I listened to Fernández' speech. Can you speak to this notion of fragmentation, mending, and recreating in relation to your writing?

Wow…you describe this beautifully. When I relate this to writing memoir, I think of how I often take experiences that some would consider ugly, or tragic, and try to make a thing of beauty out of them. Lately, too, my work has become more and more fragmentary. My tumblr, which I think of as my public notebook, feels like a bunch of fragments that I’m waiting to show me how they will connect and turn into something else. There’s also something here about the “mending” of situations I write about in memoir—a mending that is constant, never really ends.

 

Along that same vein, she who writes memoir is very much like an archeologist who has to get her hands dirty and excavate those broken pieces and stories. I loved this metaphor running through Excavation. One question I often have when writing autobiographical pieces has to do with this process of excavating. There is so much to uncover! What do we choose to salvage and recreate? We can't reveal every detail or scene (or can we?), so how do we determine what pieces are worth mending?

 

I don’t tell or reveal every single detail or scene, partially because every detail or scene won’t advance or enhance the narrative, but also because I need to keep some things, some stories, to myself. I get off thinking about all the stories I contain that will never be written. They are the stories I share with the people closest to me in my life, and then the deeper heart container of stories I won’t even share with those same people. It thrills me that it will never all be known.

 

What advice can you offer writers out there who are trying to write their first memoir?

 

Advice I received from Bernard Cooper, my first faculty mentor in my graduate education: write everything out chronologically THEN play with narrative structure. Consider how far away you are, in years, in emotional distance, from the experiences you describe, and how that may impact the story.

 

Okay, and one final question for fun. You're invited by NASA to put 5 books into a time capsule that will be buried and then excavated by future humans in the year 2115. What five titles do you choose?

 

1. The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

2. Seek: Reports from the Edges of America and Beyond by Denis Johnson

3. Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko

4. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

5. I’d pull one random poetry book from my collection and assume that was the one that was meant for a reader in 2115.

 

What appears to just be a huge heart-shaped rock floating in space
is really the Wendy C. Ortiz time capsule full of awesome books.
Future humans decided to launch it into space!
Photo "borrowed" from NASA.

 

 

Upcoming events for Wendy C. Ortiz: https://www.goodreads.com/event/list_author/8168754.Wendy_C_Ortiz

Wendy C. Ortiz Website: http://www.wendyortiz.com/

Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of Excavation: A Memoir (Future Tense Books, 2014), Hollywood Notebook (Writ Large Press, 2015) and the forthcoming Bruja (CCM, 2016). Her work has been profiled or featured in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, and the National Book Critics Circle Small Press Spotlight blog. Her writing has appeared in such places as The New York Times, Hazlitt, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Nervous Breakdown, and a year-long series appeared at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Wendy lives in Los Angeles.
 

 

Interview with L.A. Poet Laureate: Luis J. Rodriguez

Melinda Palacio

Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez

Bringing poetry to an entire city is a tough job. Mayor Garcetti chose the right man. Welcome Los Angeles Poet Laureate, Luis J. Rodriguez. His generous interview answers show a man who can take on tremendous responsibilities, especially those of elder and poet to the city of angels. As a Tia Chucha Press Poet, I'm a little biased but very humble and grateful for this interview with the 2014-2016 Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, Luis J. Rodriguez. Luis offers his personal website and email as venues to receive suggestions for bringing poetry to the center of our culture. 

Melinda Palacio: What are some of your expectations as poet laureate?

Luis J. Rodriguez: First to magnify what I do already—speak to students; conduct workshops in as many schools, libraries and communities as possible; to attend and help establish poetry events and festivals in our vast terrain of a city; to represent with dignity the city’s myriad voices, flavors and tongues, including reaching out to the forgotten or pushed out—such as those behind bars, undocumented, LGBT, or homeless. And, of course, I’ll write poems.

MAP: How do you plan on making Los Angeles a more creative space and what can the city expect during your tenure?

LJR: My plan is to help poetry, and all the arts, explode.  Poetry should be an everyday and every occasion thing.  I want to help bring poetry to the center of our culture, where it needs to be.  Presently, poetry in our city, state and country is highly marginalized, concentrated in a few hands, un-promoted and mostly unused.  People are much more engaged in popular culture, sports teams, video games, reality shows, celebrity gossip—which is all entertaining, but very much pushed on the rest of us.  There’s big money in this.  Poetry is not that easily appropriated.  You don’t need an industry to do poetry.  Anyone is capable.  Poetry like most art is internal.  Provide skills, mentoring, cultural spaces, and poetry can come alive for anyone.  Poetry is deep soul talk, truth derived, and therefore immanently scary.  It’s a prophetic act, not in the sense that poetry or art “predicts” the future, but that it pulls from the threads of the past, the dynamics of the present, to imagine and point to a possible future free of the limitations, uncertainties, inequalities, and angsts we face.  I plan during my two-year assignment as Poet Laureate to bring out the healing and revolutionary qualities of poetry to a city hungry for this energy and power.

MAP: This position is sponsored by the LA Public Library, will there be some coordination between the LA Public Library and Tia Chucha's?

LJR: The cultural space and bookstore I helped establish in the Northeast San Fernando Valley, Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural, will continue doing what it does during my time as poet laureate.  This includes reaching out to libraries and schools.  I want Tia Chucha’s to be key to my position—it’s a positive example of how art, including poetry, transforms lives.  As for literature, we have writing circles, an outdoor annual literacy festival, weekly open mics, and a renowned poetry press.  I will definitely work with the vast L.A. Public Library system to reach out and broaden our reach.  Tia Chucha’s will be honored to assist and collaborate in any way possible.

MAP: Is there also a role that Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural and/or Tia Chucha Press will play in the near future?

LJR: Most Angelinos do not know about Tia Chucha’s and its small press, Tia Chucha Press. In fact, L.A. has amazing small presses, including Kaya Press, Writ Large, the well-known Red Hen Press, and others.  The area also has amazing independent bookstores like Eso Won, Book Soup, Skylights, Vroman’s, Seite Books, Libros Smibros, and Tia Chucha’s.  We plan to cooperate in a number of events within the next two years, including in 2016 when the largest writers (and teachers of writing) conference in the U.S. is held here—the Associated Writing Programs conference that has had up to 12,000 participants from all over the country.  We may have an anthology of youth work.  Many ideas have already come my way. Yes, definitely, Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural and its press will play a big role.  Anyone can go to www.tiachucha.org to find out more.

MAP: Can you share any immediate activities slated in the near future in either your roles as LA Poet Laureate or Tia Chucha Publisher and Founder of the Centro? Any dates or events you'd like La Bloga to list?

LJR: Presently, the L.A. Public Library and the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs have not sat down with me to work on all the plans I have.  But I’ll make sure they will be publicized.  I do have a “Love Poem to Los Angeles” that I wrote just before the Poet Laureate position was announced by Mayor Eric Garcetti in early October.  I’d like to get this published soon—in a major publication first, and then elsewhere.  We plan another “Celebrating Words” festival in Pacoima next spring.  I will make sure to inform La Bloga and its readers about our final decisions.

MAP: What can the public do to assist in your vision for the city and what can Tia Chucha Press Poets do for you?

LJR: I’d like to hear from local libraries, schools, or community organizations about possible readings, workshops, and events in which children, youth, and families can be invited and engaged.  In more than just English as well.  I’d like to see more Open Mics—where people feel free to express themselves in words, songs, performances, and such.  I will accept proposals at my website at www.luisjrodriguez.com.  People can also reach me at SevenRabbit54@gmail.com.  Obviously, not all ideas can be done.  But what I’m thinking can happen with inspiration, a seed planted, a flower of creativity watered.  It can happen with or without me.  My job is to help push or create social energy toward healing and authority through poetry and the arts.

The Wedding of Margarita Lopez and Silverio Pelayo at Tia Chucha's
Officiated by Trini and Luis Rodriguez

MAP: Recently, you and Trini officiated a wedding at Tia Chucha's. This must say so much about how Tia Chucha's is truly a cultural center. Was this the first wedding at the center? Your energy seems boundless. How do you find time to fit in all of your roles? Do you have plans to seek public office in the near future?

LJR: In the thirteen years we’ve been in the Northeast Valley, we’ve seen young people grow up.  Some get married, have babies, continue to develop into wonderful and whole human beings.  Many learned guitar, Son Jarocho musical traditions, Mexican Danza (so-called Aztec dance), photography, mural painting, keyboards, drumming, puppetry, theater, and more at Tia Chucha’s.  Many read books, often for the first time, there.  We’ve had two weddings at our space where Trini and I were asked to officiate—and I have officiated three other weddings outside the space.  We’re honored to do this.  This is recognition of our eldership, our connection to new generations.  Trini and I are both in our early 60s; this is one way we can give back in a meaningful and respectful way.  How do I make time?  Community, including the poor, the exploited and oppressed, energizes me.  I’m energized by the possibilities of full justice and equity for all.  Ideas and actions together; learning, teaching and realizing—where there are no unreachable gulfs between these.  I’ve also been sober for 21 years—this helps tremendously.  I no longer live hidden lives, drinking, carousing, squandering time and relationships.  I’m more integral than I’ve ever been, and what an ordeal it has been to get here.  I’m revolutionary to the core, and this helps.  I won’t get “settled in,” complacent or satisfied with achievements.  But I also know—this is not about me.  It’s class, community, a new world. I may seek public office in the future—I don’t think we can turn over any political or cultural ground to the one percent, the wealthy or powerful that aim to control all this.  But for now, for the next two years, I’m concentrating on being Poet Laureate—to extend the important conversation about deep, systemic and healthy change, and how poetry can help.

Heroic maestros. Chief Theresa. A reading.

Thanks to Melinda Palacio for the following:

Hello Publishers & Writers,

This is Chiwan, from Writ Large Press, a downtown L.A. small press that’s been around for about five years. We are partnering with The Last Bookstore to run a pop-up bookstore at the new Grand Park on Saturday, March 2nd. If you haven’t been to it, it’s a park that stretches over three blocks, between the Music Center/Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to City Hall. It’s a big, beautiful space with a lot of grass, a giant fountain and a performance stage.

One of the first projects that the Park has scheduled is a day-long book and literacy festival. They have scheduled the acts for the main stage, but have asked us, along with The Last Bookstore, to set up and run a huge, about 2000 sq. ft., bookselling tent.

So, we want to sell your books. It won’t cost you any money. We’ll provide table, tent, umbrella, seats, cash register, everything. It will be a 70/30 cut of sales of your books. We just need you to respond ASAP and get the books to the park that morning. We will be setting up seats and a “stage” so writers can read from books we have available for sale.

These are the things we need:

Commitment: If you are IN, let me know ASAP, by 2/4/13, whether you will have books there. This way, Grand Park can put your names on their PR material.

Books: Tell me what titles you are bringing and the price. Make the price simple so it will be easy to sell. The books themselves should be brought to the park on the morning of the fest so we can set it up.

Readers: If your writers are in town and you can send them out to read, that will be awesome. Let me know who can be there ASAP so we can create a reading schedule.

Volunteers: Not necessary, but if you can have people out for a little time during the day, you can work the floor to hustle your own books. Feel free to pass this email along to publishers you know.

Peace,

Chiwan Choi, Writ Large Press

http://writlargepress.com/

To supporting Tejano and New Mexico music in Denver!

More on Chief Theresa's hunger strike

Following up on last Saturday's post of Chief Theresa Spence's (Chief Shining Turtle) hunger strike, go here to read her Open Letter to My Non-Aboriginal Neighbors.

You can also follow her here.

Teachers take a justifiable stand against testing

As with Chief Theresa, in recent posts I seem to have developed a "heroes" theme of people who have taken desperate or courageous action in support of their beliefs, sometimes endangering themselves or their standing in society.

As a former, tormented, bilingual teacher in the Denver area, I heartily add teachers from Garfield High School in Seattle who've refused to administer a standardized test at their school. (They've since been joined by other schools in Seattle and opposition to standardized testing is spreading. 

Here is the teachers' original statement, who're threatened with loss of pay and censure. I provide the entire piece because it is one of the clearest, most justified and alarming descriptions of why you too should support the movement to take back our schools. Below there's more about joining these heroic teachers.

"We, the Garfield teachers, respectfully decline to give the MAP test to any of our students. We have had different levels of experiences with MAP in our varied careers, have read about it, and discussed it with our colleagues. After this thorough review, we have all come to the conclusion that we cannot in good conscience subject our students to this test again. This letter is an objection to the MAP test specifically and particularly to its negative impact on our students. Here are our reasons:

*Seattle Public School staff has notified us that the test is not a valid test at the high school level. For these students, the margin of error is greater than the expected gain. We object to spending time, money, and staffing on an assessment even SPS agrees is not valid.

*We are not allowed to see the contents of the test, but an analysis of the alignment between the Common Core and MAP shows little overlap. We object to our students being tested on content we are not expected to teach.

*Ninth graders and students receiving extra support (ELL, SPED, and students in math support) are targets of the MAP test. These students are in desperate need of MORE instructional time. Instead, the MAP test subtracts many hours of class time from students’ schedules each year. If we were to participate this year, we would take 805 students out of class during 112 class periods. The amount of lost instructional time is astounding. On average students would EACH lose 320 minutes of instructional time. This is over 5 hours of CORE class time (language arts and math) that students are losing. We object to participating in stealing instructional time from the neediest students.

* In an appeal of the Board’s 2010 decision to renew the MAP contract, a parent group raised concerns about the negative impact of this test “on non-English speakers, Special Education students, and minority and low income children.” These concerns were never addressed nor were the claims refuted. Imagine a native Somali student with limited English skills, sitting in front of a computer taking an evaluative reading test that will no doubt be confusing and overwhelming to the student. The test is supposed to determine the student’s reading level, but without taking into account the student’s language challenge or the student’s limited time in the United States, which makes it almost impossible to understand the context of some passages. For these students and our students with IEPs, the test does actual harm. The students feel stupid yet are being forced to take a test that has NO benefit to them or their educational goals. We object to a test that may violate the rights of groups of students for whom schooling already constitutes an uphill battle.

* In addition to students losing class time to take the test, our computer labs are clogged for weeks with test taking and cannot be used for other educational purposes. For example, students who have a research project no longer have access to the computers they need to further their exploration into their research topic. This especially hurts students without computers at home. We object to our educational resources being monopolized by a test we cannot support.

* We see that our students do not take the test seriously as they know that it will not directly impact their class grade or graduation status. They approach it less and less seriously the more times they take it. Therefore, we see achievement scores go down after instruction. We object to spending scarce resources on a test that is peripheral to our students’ education.

* The MAP test was originally introduced by then superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson while she was a board member of the Northwest Evaluation Association, the company that sells the MAP. When Dr. Goodloe-Johnson was fired, the MAP somehow survived the housecleaning. We object to having to give a test whose existence in our district is the result of scandal.

* Even the NWEA itself, the parent company to MAP, has advised districts to carefully restrict the use of the test and its results. NWEA also cautions to ensure 100% random selection of students enrolled in any course if the test is used for evaluation and to take into consideration statistical error in designing evaluation policies. NWEA says that problems become “particularly profound at the high school level.” None of these or other criteria urged by NWEA has been met. We object to being evaluated by a test whose author suggests extreme caution in its use and warns against valid legal action if the test is used in personnel decisions.

* The Seattle Education Association passed a resolution condemning the MAP test that reads, “Whereas testing is not the primary purpose of education…Whereas the MAP was brought into Seattle Schools under suspicious circumstances and conflicts of interest…Whereas the SEA has always had the position of calling for funding to go to classroom and student needs first…Be it Resolved that…the MAP test should be scrapped and/or phased out and the resources saved be returned to the classroom.” We object to having to give it after such an opinion from our collective voice has been registered.

" We are not troublemakers nor do we want to impede the high functioning of our school. We are professionals who care deeply about our students and cannot continue to participate in a practice that harms our school and our students. We want to be able to identify student growth and determine if our practice supports student learning. We wish to be evaluated in a way so that we can continue to improve our practice, and we wish for our colleagues who are struggling to be identified and either be supported or removed. The MAP test is not the way to do any of these things. We feel strongly that we must decline to give the MAP test even one more time."

You can read their story here. 

You can sign a letter in support of the Seattle teachers here.

Read here about another Seattle high school joining their Garfield colleagues.

You can watch this interview with Jesse Hagopian, Seattle high school history teacher and union rep at Garfield High School in Seattle, Wash. and Wayne Au, former high school teacher. (Also editor of Rethinking Schools and assistant professor at the U. of Wash., Bothell Campus. He is author of Unequal By Design: High-stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality and the co-editor of Pencils Down: Rethinking High Stakes Testing and Accountability in Public Schools.)

You can sign the National Resolution on High-Stakes Testing here.

(Modeled on the resolution passed by, as of Oct. 2, 2012, and endorsed by 819 boards representing 80% of the districts and 88% of the students.

Garcia author reading, et al, Today in Denver

I'll be giving out sets of my infamous, super-absorbant drink coasters at this reading, and you can get a copy of my debut novel at a special price. Oh, and there's others reading.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 3:00  -- We welcome a fabulous trio of debut novelists, all of them friends, students and/or mentees of author Ed Bryant:

Sean Eads, The Survivors -- The aliens have landed, and this time they're not hostile. They're just rude. Coming in waves of rocket ships, the aliens not only refuse to acknowledge the existence of Earth's cultures, they refuse to acknowledge the existence of humanity itself. The aliens by means of their bulk block entry into cars, grocery stores, even elevators….without malice or even purpose.

Rudy Ch Garcia, The Closet of Discarded Dreams -- A young Chicano battles insanity in a surreal world where everyone endlessly relives humankind's abandoned dreams. Except for him. Will VN vet fraggers, Lenny Bruce, a Midget Godzilla, vampires, Neanderthals, a Black leper, Marilyn Monroe, Che, and Chrisie the Bruiser prove foes or allies?

Carter Wilson, Final Crossing: A Novel of Suspense -- When the sadistic Preacherman stole the last bit of Rudiger’s already troubled childhood soul, Rudiger lost himself forever. Rudiger has committed atrocities even he cannot explain. God has told him he must crucify The One to bring about the Final Judgment. But who is The One?

Broadway Book Mall, 200 S. Broadway, Denver

303-744-BOOK (2665)

www.BroadwayBookMall.com

Raza Rocks w/Rick Garcia!

Before the Super Bowl, listen to Denver public radio KUVO 89.3 fm, or online at 1:00 pm on Sunday, Feb. 3rd. Rick Garcia will assist Pocho Joe to encourage you to support tejano / nuevomexicano music and La Raza Rocks.

Es todo, hoy,

RudyG