Palabra Pura: Soul Food Worthy of Support

While his note is geared to Palabra Pura poets, I would ask gente in the Chicago area and elsewhere to read this, give generously, and support what is a seminal Latino poetry venue. Palabra Pura feeds the soul, celebrates our luminaries, makes poetry accessible for our community in a way that no other literary institution does. For more info about who and what Palabra Pura is, read: http://labloga.blogspot.com/2007/07/conversation-with-francisco.html
and http://labloga.blogspot.com/2008/02/palabra-pura-news-new-latino-poetry-on.html.



October 16, 2008

Dear Lisa:

As a board member of the Guild Complex in Chicago, last year I had the privilege of weighing in on the discussion that produced this re-vamped mission statement:

The Guild Complex, a community-based literary organization, presents and supports diverse, divergent and emerging voices through innovative programs including performances and readings. We look at literary culture and ask, “What’s missing?”

In the Fall of 2005, then board member and current board president Mike Puican answered that question (“What’s missing?”) in the following way: “There are no poetry reading venues in Chicago that deliberately and systematically welcome Latino and Latina poets.” So when Mike called me one morning and asked if I would be interested in helping create a Latino poetry reading series, one of my most enriching professional collaborations began. You know what I am talking about because you are a PALABRA PURA alum. And I am writing to more than thirty
of you—our PALABRA PURA familia!

As the Guild Complex moves forward in planning season four (2009), we are faced, as you can imagine, with growing challenges. We’ve received funding in the past from the Illinois Council on the Humanities and the Joyce Foundation. And yet we have come to understand that in order for this series to have long-term viability, we are going to have to tap individual giving, as well.

And it occurred to me: who better understands and, I hope, appreciates this series than those poets who have read in it? Who better understands that PALABRA PURA aims to promote community between poets, specifically through our pre-reading salon dinners, in addition to providing a Chicago venue for Latino and Latina poets to share their work?

We have ten readings per year where we invite a “visiting poet” from outside Chicago. With me so far? We are asking you to look at it this way: We are asking you to donate $5 to each of those ten visiting poets. 

If you can think about this in terms of giving future Palabra Pura readers $5 each, it will go a long way towards our being able to keep offering honoraria, in addition, of course, to travel and lodging.

And here’s the part I like the most: it’s a model for increasing sustainability. Next year, at the conclusion of season four, we’ll be joined by more PALABRA PURA alums, so that each year your $50 donation will be increased (if we remain faithful) by at least $500. It’s as if we were all forming a living and growing endowment for the future of the series. 

But don’t get me wrong: the annual budget for PALABRA PURA is much much larger than the $1500 or so I hope to raise from all of you. But it is an excellent and meaningful start at being more intentional about tapping individual giving. Also: future potential funders will be impressed if we can say that former participants in the series are among our most faithful supporters.

And finally: your $50 donation buys you an annual membership to the Guild Complex. If you have any questions about what a Guild “membership” means, please ask (this letter is already too long!) And it goes without saying that if the spirit moves you to donate more than $50 please do so since I imagine and understand that there may be personal economies who can’t give as much as $50. It also goes without saying that any amount, however modest, would be greatly
appreciated.

In a nutshell: I am asking you to consider making a tax-deductible donation of $50 towards a program you were a part of and, we trust, was a meaningful experience for you. You can make your donation by writing a check to “The Guild Complex.” Please write in the memo line “Palabra Pura.” Alternatively, you can make the donation online through pay pal by going to the Guild website (http://guildcomplex.org ). We only ask that you let us know if you have gone this route as we would like to keep track of the number of PALABRA PURA alums who have contributed. If you opt to send a check, the mailing address is:

Guild Complex
P.O. Box 478880
Chicago, IL 60647-9998

Again, please feel free to contact me, or Ellen Wadey, the Guild’s Executive Director, if you have any questions.

Thank you so much,

Francisco

Francisco Aragón
Co-curator, PALABRA PURA
Board member, The Guild Complex

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

6:00 PM - 9:00 PM,
Tuesday, October 28
Reception and private viewing including guided tours of
La Vida Sin Fin - Day of the Dead 2008
National Museum of Mexican Art
1852 W. 19th St., Chicago

Plus a special program featuring
Jose Cruz, Founder and President of Immigration PAC,
speaking about the immigration issue in the upcoming elections

$30 in advance; $40 at the door
includes reception, private viewing and tours
For advance ticket price, payment by noon, October 27

On-street parking

Please visit the website to RSVP
www.latinosandjews.org/UpcomingEvents.html

WWW.NALAC.ORG

Featured Event

NALAC Regional Arts Training Workshop
November 14-15, 2008
Los Angeles, CA

at The New LATC
514 South Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013

HOSTED BY: The New LATC, CONTRA-TIEMPO, Floricanto Dance Theater, Olin Theater Presenters, PALABRA A Magazine of Chicano & Latino Literary Art.

The National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) will convene a Regional Arts Training Workshop in Los Angeles entitled “Creative Responders: Latino Art in Action Re-Affirming and Transforming the Future.”

The Regional Workshop is a forum for dialogue, professional development and technical assistance for the Latino arts and cultural field. The context of this gathering is focused on empowering Latino artists and arts and cultural organizations through ideas, solutions and strategies for sustainability.

We invite you to join other Latino artists, arts and cultural leaders, organizers, educators and activists in the Los Angeles, area for this rewarding two day meeting that will include presentations, workshops, dialogue, performances and exhibits.

Regional Workshop Tracks include:

• Resource Development and Capacity Building
• Leadership Development and Re-generation
• Establishing Relationships with Funders and Navigating Government Funding
• Arts Toolkit: Marketing Your Work and Reaching New Audiences
• Nuestras Casas: Development of Cultural Facilities
• Transnational Re-Connections: Immigration, Economic Justice & Social Impact
• Comerciantes Culturales: Organizing Communities through Arts Festiva
• Taking Latino Art and Culture into the Classroom
• Creative Responders: Re-Shaping the 21st Century Latino Narrative
• Latino Arts Town Hall Meeting

SPACE IS LIMITED FOR THE LOS ANGELES REGIONAL ARTS TRAINING WORKSHOP.
REGISTER TODAY TO ENSURE YOUR PARTICIPATION!
Made possible with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts; the JPMorgan Chase Foundation; the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; the Ford Foundation;Southwest Airlines; MetLife Foundation; City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs; The Center for Cultural Innovation in Los Angeles and individual donors, volunteers and NALAC members.

Los Angeles Host Committee: The New LATC, CONTRA-TIEMPO, Floricanto Dance Theater, Olin Theater Presenters, PALABRA A Magazine of Chicano & Latino Literary Art.

Click Here to read the October 2008 e-Boletin and find more information on this and other exciting exhibits, events, funding opportunities, resources and member happenings.

Direct Link:

http://www.nalac.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=164&Itemid=211


Join NALAC today at http://www.nalac.org to stay informed of important announcements and opportunities!

Support NALAC!

Click Here to make a secure tax-deductible contribution via Network for Good and help NALAC continue providing valuable programs and services to Latino artists and arts organizations across the country.



NALAC
1208 Buena Vista Street
San Antonio, TX 78207
PH: 210.432.3982
FAX: 210.432.3934
http://www.nalac.org

Encounter, Encourage, Envision…tu Arte en NALAC

You are currently subscribed to NALAC’s e-Boletín, the electronic newsletter of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. If you no longer wish to receive notices from NALAC, please email info@nalac.org with the subject heading “Please remove from e-Boletín.”

SEND PRESS RELEASES, ANNOUNCEMENTS, QUESTIONS & COMMENTS TO: info@nalac.org

Please put e-Boletín in the subject heading.

The National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) is dedicated to the preservation, development and promotion of the cultural and artistic expressions of the diverse Latino populations of the United States. Through this effort, NALAC is committed to the continuing struggle for the elimination of racism, sexism, ageism and discrimination against gay, lesbian and physically challenged populations. The objective is to recognize and support the varied standards of excellence grounded in the aesthetics and traditions of our root cultures.

NALAC receives generous support from the Ford Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, the MetLife Foundation, Southwest Airlines, Heineken USA, Texas Commission on the Arts, The Tobin Endowment, City of San Antonio Office of Cultural Affairs, Tucson Pima Arts Council, San Antonio Area Foundation, Our Lady of the Lake University, NALAC members, individual donors and volunteers.

Lisa Alvarado

West Hollywood Book Fair 2008

Authors from Latinos In Lotusland were present at the fair!

Tips in Writing for Children

A Writing Tip from Newbery Honor Novelist Carolyn Coman

As writers, we're prone to hearing voices—sometimes a chorus of them. We strain to hear the true and natural voices of our characters and our narrators. We wait for our deepest unconscious to talk to us in whatever way it does. And at some point in the process, we invite in response from trusted readers—a fellow writer, or teacher, or editor—and their voices help us see where we are with our stories, and where we need to go.

There are also voices that aren't helpful at all, just plenty loud and persistent: the internal censor, the distracter, the voice that's always there with the perfect taunt. You will never write this story; it isn't worth writing anyway; you will never get it published; if you do, it won't be successful and you'll never be able to write the next one. . . . The variations are endless. It's the mean voice that adapts itself perfectly to jiggle our worst, next fear.

Let's listen to the voices that serve our stories. Ask/tell the others to be quiet; and if they won't, then make a deal: we will listen to them after we have sat down at our desks and worked on our stories for a chunk of time. Let's cultivate a discipline that reduces the clatter of voices that undermine what really matters: writing the best stories we possibly can.

Happy Writing!
Carolyn

Carolyn Coman's acclaimed novels for children and young adults include The Big House, Many Stones (National Book Award finalist and a 2001 Michael L. Printz Honor book), Bee and Jacky, What Jamie Saw (National Book Award finalist and Newbery Honor book), and Tell Me Everything. She has taught fiction writing at Harvard Extension, Harvard Summer School, and the Chautauqua Institute. For eight years she was a faculty member of the Vermont College MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults Program, and she is currently on the faculty of Hamline University's new MFA program.

* * *

A Writing Tip from Picture-Book Author/Illustrator Dominic Catalano

Writing a picture book can be daunting. Having to write to a specific book length, pacing the story in a purposeful and dramatic way to move the reader forward—engaged and anticipating what's next to come—is indeed challenging. And, all this in just thirty-two, that's right, count 'em, thirty-two pages.

Here's an idea: think in scenes, like a movie!

Breaking those thirty-two pages into scenes can help to realize the overall experience of the book. Page 1/scene 1 and pages 2 and 3/scene 2, like the opening credits of a film, can offer visual material, such as illustrations and font styles, that sets the stage, foreshadows, and eases the reader into the opening written text. The next fourteen scenes (all spreads except for the last on page 32), build the story to a climax and, like scenes in a movie, change through shifts in point of view, location, or action.

An illustrator has a distinct advantage here, being trained to think visually. An author, however, brings the delight and power of language to the picture-book mix. When an author writes visually, pacing a story into scenes, an illustrator (who might also be the author—talk about split personalities) can easily follow the flow of the narrative, enhancing and adding to the dramatic, humorous, or aesthetic effect.

Who knows, you might be the next Chris Van Allsburg, whose picture book (think Jumanji, The Polar Express, and the soon-to-be-released Zathura) is the next blockbuster to make it to the silver screen.

Happy Creating!
Nick

Dominic Catalano holds an MA in fine arts, an MFA in illustration, and most recently was awarded a PhD in art education from Ohio State University. He is an assistant professor at Bowling Green State University in northwestern Ohio. Dominic has illustrated twenty-five trade and mass-market picture books, four of which he also wrote—Wolf Plays Alone, Frog Went A-Courting, Santa and the Three Bears, and Mr. Basset Plays. His work has also appeared in numerous children's magazines and reading series.

If you'd like to learn more from Dominic, join him for the Visual Art of the Picture Book, a special workshop for illustrators, from November 6-9, 2008. For more information, visit HighlightsFoundation.org.

* * *

A Writing Tip from Children's Editor Paula Morrow

Tight writing is related to focus. There are two aspects involved, which for lack of better terms I'll call close-up and wide-angle. When taking pictures with a camera, you usually use one or the other; but when editing, you need both. Close-up focus is the line-by-line, word-by-word process of trimming out unnecessary words and phrases to streamline each sentence. "Cats are able to hunt at night because of their ability to see in the dark" sixteen words) becomes "Cats can hunt at night because they can see in the dark" (twelve words).

Equally important is wide-angle focus, in which you examine the structure, organization, and development of the entire manuscript. Do you have a clear narrative arc that builds inexorably to a memorable climax and then resolves quickly? How much backstory is actually necessary? How much detail is required, and how much is padding? Could you delete the first paragraph? The first page? Why is material from chapter two repeated in chapter five? Is a whole page of dialog necessary on page three, or is some of the dialog purposeless chitchat that impedes the plot?

When you're tightening a manuscript, read it multiple times. Focus on either the close-up or the wide-angle in each reading—but not both at once.

Happy Streamlining!
Paula

Paula Morrow considers her main talent to be editing, although she has written more than two hundred published stories, articles, poems, and activities. Before joining Cricket Magazine Group in the 1980s, she edited publications for the state of Michigan and for NOAA, then owned a desktop-publishing business. As executive editor of Ladybug and Babybug magazines, she also edited titles for Cricket Books and packaged books for McGraw-Hill Children's Publishing and Scholastic Book Clubs. Paula is a regular columnist for the children's writers' magazine Once Upon a Time, a weekly children's book reviewer for newspapers in northern Illinois, and an instructor with the Institute of Children's Literature. She is editor and publisher of the new small press Boxing Day Books.

If you'd like to learn more from Paula, she will be offering Writing Fiction for Children's Magazines for the Highlights Foundation, November 13—16, 2008. For more information, visit HighlightsFoundation.org.


Highlights Foundation, Inc.
814 Court Street
Honesdale, PA 18431
Phone: (570) 251-4500
E-mail: contact@highlightsfoundation.org
www.highlightsfoundation.org

Review: The Likeness.

NY: Viking/Penguin, 2008.
ISBN 9780670018864

Michael Sedano

Colonialized people flit about the periphery of Tana French's second novel, The Likeness, giving the mystery an interesting subtext that should be appealing to colonized people elsewhere. At the same time, the novel moves in and out of Irish and US cultural references so seamlessly that the gulf between the isolated villagers and worldwide English-language culture grows all the wider, even as it grows smaller for the rest of us. That gulf, plus an interesting premise, give the novel a high degree of readability, despite the author's struggle to get the story started.

Outside Dublin, a dying Irish village still seething resentment after centuries domination by the lords of the now-seedy manor house, shuns the new owner, the last remaining heir bearing the family name. For his part, the heir is more than content to shelter himself and his ersatz family of six within Whitethorn's walls, where the two women and four men fashion their own fantasy world that comes tumbling down around them when one of them winds up dead.

The dead woman is doppelgänger to detective Cassie Maddox. The deadly implications of Cassie's physical resemblance to the dead woman are only part of the story. More troubling--stunning in fact--is the dead woman's theft of Cassie's undercover identity, Lexie Madison. Where's she come from, who was she, why does she look exactly like Cassie?

Taking advantage of the virtual twinship between the victim and the cop, Dublin police insert Cassie as Lexie into the manor house to ferret out the facts and identify a suspect for the stabbing of their roommate. It's a plot rich in psychological torment. Real name, unknown, has been Lexie in her world. Now Cassie, creator of the false Lexie, must assume the dead Lexie's identity, who had been real. But Cassie is her own person, albeit injured from events just prior to the novel.

Author French uses the criss-crossed identity to create a struggle between Detective Cassie, Lexie--or whoever that person was for real--and Cassie/Lexie's conflicted conscience for betraying her best friends. Well, not her best friends, Lexie's best friends. And that wasn't really Lexie. But one, or more, of these BFF murdered the pregnant Lexie, whoever she actually was. And who was the father? This shifting of conscience and consciousness makes for some interesting issues about identity and reality.

French uses the subtext of class and regional struggle to toss a red herring into the crime solving plot, while making a telling point about the dissolution of cultural boundaries. The entire village could be suspects in the murder, except it's the kind of backwater place whose median age grows older by the year as the younger villagers take off for the big city at their earliest opportunity. In fact, only three locals emerge as suspects. The cops haul them in for interrogation. Compounding the locals' xenophobia are the accents of the cops. One suspect challenges the cops with their fancy accents not to think him stupid just because of his local dialect.

When, one night, a vandal hurls a rock through a picture window. Cassie and two of the men race into the darkness in angry bloodlust. Their quarry disappears in familiar territory and the housemates flush him out with challenges to the vandal's manhood, and especially the cultural gap between colonized and master. When one of Lexie's mates laughs in a London accent that a good horsewhipping would cure the bad attitude of the local bumpkins, the local hurls himself out of the darkness into a bloody fistfight with the three adversaries. Was the local the murderer? Will he succeed in burning the place to the ground and sleep in its ashes?

One of the more satisfying elements of this Irish novel is the mutual intelligibility of its English and cultural allusions. There are numerous references to US-based pop culture. In one instance, a couple of cops talking about the inmates of the lockup allude to there being plenty of "mother stabbers and father rapers", a bowlderized line from Arlo Guthrie's 1960's comic protest song, "Alice's Restaurant." (Or perhaps I remember it inaccurately and it's a direct quotation from Guthrie's classic).

Unlike works translated from Spanish into British English, there are few words a United States reader won't ken. For example, in describing the implicit contempt for rural folk seen in how administrators assign local policemen, we come across this description leading with a delightful timesis:

Rathowen station was craptacular. I'd seen plenty like it, dotted around back corners of the country: small stations caught in a vicious circle, getting dissed by the people who hand out funds and by the people who hand out posts and by anyone who can get any other assignment in the universe. Reception was one cracked chair, a poster about bike helmets and a hatch to let Byrne stare vacantly out the door, rhythmically chewing gum. The interview room was apparently also the storeroom: it had a table, two chairs, a filing cabinet--no lock--a help-yourself pile of statement sheets and, for no reason I could figure out, a battered eighties riot shield in one corner. There was yellowing linoleum on the floor and a smashed fly on one wall. No wonder Byrne looked the way he did.

Except for the hatch, the description could as easily capture a substation in southern Colorado or California's central valley. Would this be a "dutch door" or an access window cut into the station's modest portal? Ni modo.

French's prose is more than serviceable. The housemates are Ph. D. students in literature at a Dublin university, so the writer must echo their postgrad ambience through vocabulary and description. But French is at her best when elevating mundane events into moments trapping Cassie in convoluted reverie between the detective's recent disastrous experience and the romance of what could be in her doppelgänger life:

I was buttoned tight and untouchable in my blue dress and that was a sweet sad thing that had happened to some other girl, a long time ago. Rafe was picking up the rhythm and Abby was swaying faster, snapping her fingers: "I could say bella, bella, even say wunderbar, each language only helps me tell you how grand you are. . ." Justin caught me by the waist and spun me off the floor in a great flying circle, his face flushed and laughing close to mine. The wide bare room tossed Abby's voice back and forth as if there were someone harmonizing in every corner and our footsteps rang and echoed till it sounded like the room was full of dancers, the house calling up all the people who had danced here across centuries of spring evenings, gallant girls seeing gallant boys off to war, old men and women straight-backed while outside their world disintegrated and the new one battered at their doors, all of them bruised and all of them laughing, welcoming us into their long lineage.

It's a beautiful image but the opposite of what actually is transpiring. Cassie has insinuated herself into the falsely idyllic homelife, not to become one of their lineage but to rip it apart in murderous violence. And the manor house is not a place of gallantry but the source of hatred and oppression for the local folk.

Yet, in all this power and cultural conflict, Tana French doesn't quite create a compelling novel to spellbind her reader. Five chapters to set up the undercover role are four too many. The denouement when we learn who Lexie really was and the outcome for the housemates is unnecessary. Under the old adage of "leave 'em wanting more," this could have been left as part of the mystery, or grist for the next novel. The Likeness, the publisher says, continues a story thread and characters from the writer's first novel, In the Woods. There's a ton of allusions to events in Cassie's immediate past that filled that first title, so there would be little loss to have omitted these afterthoughts and plugged them into the subsequent Cassie Maddox tale. Let us trust the publisher will spell the author's name correctly in the next blurb--"Tanya" Penguin calls her, perhaps caught in the atmosphere of mixed identities when it invites, "View our feature on Tanya French's The Likeness"--and will exert tighter editorial control for a tauter story that moves much faster through otherwise exciting material. This author deserves it.


Hachette / La Bloga Book Give Away Concludes - 5 Winners

Observing Fiestas Patrias Month, in the US under public law 100-402 "Hispanic Heritage Month", it has been La Bloga's pleasure to offer a delightful collection of these eight Hachette titles to the gente answering questions drawn from a week's columns at La Bloga.

Dream in Color By Linda Sánchez , Loretta Sánchez ISBN: 0446508047
Gunmetal Black By Daniel Serrano ISBN: 0446194131
The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters By Lorraine López ISBN: 0446699217
Bless Me, Ultima By Rudolfo Anaya ISBN: 0446675369
Brownsville By Oscar Casares ISBN: 9780316146807
The Hummingbird's Daughter By Luis Urrea ISBN: 0316154520
The General and the Jaguar By Eileen Welsome ISBN: 0316715999
Tomorrow They Will Kiss By Eduardo Santiago ISBN: 0316014125

Our most recent contest winner is Diana Chavez of Littleton, Colorado. Here's a list of all five La Bloga readers to whom Hachette is mailing the collection:

Tom Miller
Tucson AZ

John Alba Cutler
Evanston IL

Eduardo Pena
Tucson, AZ

Marie Madrid
Denver, CO

Diana Chavez
Littleton, CO

I hope the winners will enjoy the work enough to motivate them to do a guest review of one or more of their favorites. Do know that La Bloga welcome, encourages, guest columnists. If you have a review of a good book, a cultural or arts event, an extended response to something you've read here at La Bloga, please share it. Click here to declare your interest in being La Bloga's guest.

Flor Y Canto 2010 Call for Writers

Plans are underway to hold a renewal of the 1973 Festival de Flor Y Canto at the University of Southern California in September 2010. If you were a participant in that first Flor Y Canto, or would like to join the 2010 event, click here for details.


That's the penultimate Tuesday of October. Dia de los Muertos approaches, so you'd better watch out, you'd better not pout, el cucuy is coming to town dressed as La Llorona, a ghostie or a goblin or candy-seeking chupadulces.

See you next week.

mvs

La Bloga welcomes your comments on this and all La Bloga columns. Leave yours by clicking on the Comments counter below. As noted, La Bloga encourages guest columns. Click the link above to declare your interest in being our guest.

The poet of East L.A.: Debut brings women's stories to wider audience

Peeping Tom Tom Girl (San Diego City Works Press, $12.95 paperback) by Marisela Norte

Book review by Daniel Olivas

In the introduction to Marisela Norte's first book of poetry, Peeping Tom Tom Girl (San Diego City Works Press, $12.95 paperback), the scholar George Lipsitz dubs Norte the "poet laureate of the people." This urgent, gritty, sexy and engrossing collection of poems supports Lipsitz's grand pronouncement in every respect.

Norte is a native of East Los Angeles who, remarkably, does not possess a driver's license. She rides the bus and, when necessary, walks in this city that seems to live and breathe on exhaust fumes.

But Norte's mode of transportation has the effect of bringing the poet even closer to those she writes about, with a particular emphasis on the Chicanas, Mexicanas and tough-girl cholas of her community.

As she notes in the title poem:

I am a peeping tom tom girl
And from my seat on the downtown bus
I have been driven through
Been witness to
Invaded by
Las vidas de ellas.

Norte is a storyteller, and she allows her imagination to fill in the blanks of the lives she witnesses from her bus seat or the sidewalk's vantage point. In the poem "Big Red," we are introduced to middle-aged "Disco Grandma" who gets out

Of her big, black, sport utility vehicle
The one she parked with great difficulty
Between a baby blue Mazda mini truck
And a forest green Lexus.

Norte does not pity Big Red. In fact, she wishes that "I were brave enough / To follow her on to the dance floor." Norte praises those who know who they are and what they want, even if the rest of the world might not think much of their efforts.

Norte undermines the mistaken belief held by many that poems should be "pretty" or "beautiful" in the most banal and harmless sense of those overused adjectives. For example, in such pieces as "Daily Grind," she recounts a young woman's rape after a wedding by a "friend of the family." The woman's degradation is heightened by the subsequent abortion and the male doctor "who barely looks at" her and who tells her to open her legs: "'Wider! Wider!' he says, 'I know you're used to that.'” In a sense, the protagonist is raped again.

Norte sings of the lives of women -- primarily Chicanas and Mexican women -- such as an aunt who, in the poem "Act of the Faithless," crosses the border each day: "She worked as a hotel maid / In the El Paso Holiday Inn." The discards of hotel guests become her treasures:

Decorated her home with
Objects of rejection
Souvenirs
Turistas left behind
Salt and pepper shakers
Shaped like ten gallon hats
Lone Star state of the art back scratchers
All the way from Taiwan

The above stanza's last line is emblematic of Norte's irony, which she deftly employs to prevent her protagonists' lives from devolving into pedantry or too-easy pathos.

For too long, Marisela Norte's poetry was known and appreciated mostly in Southern California. But upon the publication of her first book, many others will no doubt discover this singular talent.

[This review first appeared in the El Paso Times.]

◙ BOOK REVIEW BY DANIEL OLIVAS EXCLUSIVE TO LA BLOGA:

The Slacker's Guide to Law School: Success Without Stress (The Fine Print Press) by Juan Doria (paperback, $16.95)

Oh, I wish I had this book when I was applying to law school.

Juan Doria’s easy-to-read, sometimes hilarious but always practical guide to succeeding in law school without losing one’s mind (or soul, for that matter), should be required reading for all new law students.

Doria earned his B.A. in English literature at Indiana University – Bloomington, and then did what many such majors have done (I’m included in this cohort): he applied to law school – after traveling through Italy for a bit.

In the first chapter entitled, “Should You Go to Law School,” Doria recounts his reasoning in making this decision, reasons that will sound familiar to all those liberal arts majors out there: I don’t know what else to do; my parents (spouse, friends, etc.) expect me to go; I want to make money; and the ever-famous last words, I can do anything with a law degree.

You can see where this is going. But, in truth, Doria is being honest: his point is that you, the potential law student, should think long and hard before making the emotional, intellectual and financial investment in going to law school.

Doria divides his book in logical progression beginning, as noted, with the initial decision to go to law school, moving to the application process, taking the LSAT, choosing a law school, beginning classes, studying for exams, graduating, finding a job, and taking the bar.

Doria does not hold back. He readily recounts the alcohol and drug abuse that is all-too-common within law school. Every potential friend and study mate is also a competitor. Law school nerds are annoying and to be avoided. Romance is possible (Doria got married in law school and became a father) but he warns against dating a fellow law student (I married my law school sweetheart 22 years ago so I have some qualms about this advice).

As I read The Slacker’s Guide to Law School, I realized two things. First, the practice of law has been much more fun than law school itself (I got the sweats reading some of Doria’s chapters, especially on test taking).

Second, Doria is no slacker. To the contrary, he knows how to work hard but he also has an excellent bullshit detector. Doria simply reminds us that there is no reason to kill yourself in law school when there are practical and less painful ways to avoid the usual soul-crushing mistakes made by new students.

If you’re thinking about applying to law school or have a friend or family member thinking about it, buy this book!

◙ AUTHORS’ PANEL AND BOOK SIGNING

Join the Friends of the Signal Hill Library to welcome guest authors, Margo Candela, Mary Castillo, Reyna Grande, and Jamie Martinez Wood, who will discuss their fictional accounts of the Latina experience from three different perspectives. This free program is sure to be a thought provoking evening.

Monday, October 20th
7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Signal Hill Park Community Center
1780 E. Hill St.
Signal Hill, CA 90755

◙ Gregg Barrios gets interviewed over at La Opinión, the Spanish-language daily newspaper published in Los Angeles (it is the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the United States and second-most read newspaper in Los Angeles after the Los Angeles Times). Barrios discusses his hit play, Rancho Pancho. Read it here.

◙ Things are hoppin’ over at C. M. Mayo’s blog (which she provocatively calls, Madam Mayo). First, there’s a guest post by Sergio Troncoso entitled, Things Every Writer Should Know About Money (a must read). Then Stephanie Elizondo Griest offers the gripping Glimpses into the Mexican Underworld. You can catch all prior guest posts by clicking here.

◙ Yesterday the San Antonio Express-News gave a rave review to Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature (Bilingual Press). Written by Gregg Barrios, the review may be read here. Here's a short excerpt of the review:

In citing the present Latino population of Los Angeles County at 4.6 million, the Los Angeles Almanac adds an arch footnote: "A late 19th Century editorial in the Los Angeles Times predicted that the 'Mexican' population in Los Angeles would disappear by the early part of the 20th Century."

Latino writers might be hard-pressed to find solace in this. For in the world of mainstream publishing, they are still barely visible. And in the more rarified literary quarterlies and best stories anthologies, they are an endangered species.

Daniel A. Olivas edited this collection with this in mind. Yes, there is a respectful nod toward established and overlooked writers, but the lion's share of its 34 stories comes from previously unpublished writers — some seeing their fiction, their byline in print for the first time.

Long overdue, "Latinos in Lotusland" is a literary GPS guide to El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, aka the city of Angeles as seen through Latino — mostly Mexican American and Chicano — writing.

****

"Latinos in Lotusland" is a movable feast that bears witness to the incredibly talented writers that reclaim Los Angeles as their own.

◙ In yesterday's El Paso Times, Rigoberto González reviewed a new graphic novel by the multi-talented and prolific Ilan Stavans, Mr. Spic Goes to Washington (Soft Skull Press, $15.95). González notes that it’s “an illustrated comic tragedy that answers the question: What if a keep-it-real Chicano infiltrated the U.S. Senate?” You may read the entire review here.

◙ All done. So, until next Monday, enjoy the intervening posts from my compadres y comadres at La Bloga. And remember: ¡Lea un libro!

Body-Building Hobos…with Guns!

My son Carlos and I were driving down Elmore Street one day last week, when we saw a long-haired dachshund running up the middle of the road. Its gait of total glee, immaculately groomed coat, and jingly tags told us it was not a stray. The dog was weaving back and forth across the road, cars screeching to avoid it.

“Mom! We have to do something!” My son cried.

Now I wouldn’t have left the creature to get squished under the wheels of a car, but with a houseful of asthmatics the prospect of bringing it home was not appealing, not to mention that we were heading to my office and sneaking an energetic dog in would prove a challenge. I pulled the car over and leapt out, waving my arms in warning at the oncoming traffic. Just as I bent over to call to the dog—who, by the way, was smiling, I swear he looked like a drunken frat boy on spring break—I heard a car careening behind me and whipped around to stop them. I watched a nice-looking man jump from the driver seat and call “Sam!” as the pooch ran to his waiting arms like a kid back from summer camp.

“Are you his owner?”

“Yes, we’ve been driving all over looking for him, the little bugger!” he said, affectionately mussing Sam’s fur.

“Thank God! I wasn’t sure WHAT we would have done with him, but we couldn’t have left him to run wildly through the streets!”

The man thanked us and drove off, Sam’s shiny nose peeking through the cracked window from the safety of the sedan’s back seat.

After we’d resumed our course, Carlos turned to me and asked what we would have done with the dog if his owner hadn’t arrived.

“We would have taken him home and posted some ‘lost dog’ signs around town, why?”

“Well, then anyone could come to the door. I mean, like…a hobo.”

“Carlos, I don’t think you need to worry about hobos.” I chuckled, tickled by his use of such a nostalgic and vintage term.

“But what if they were body-building hobos….with guns?!”

Now, I moved to Vermont so I could raise a child in a safe environment. As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, having grown up in New York City’s upper, upper west side, I was mugged three times before I was eight years old. I figured my child could grow up in the safety of a rural Vermont town, hanging from trees and walking home from school in safety, the only threat being a skinned knee. But as I drove, I glanced over at my son and realized it had still happened. Though his threats were more fanciful—I pictured hoards of body-building hobos jumping from 1920s era trains rattling through our small town—he still had fears about his safety.

I couldn’t help but think: Is it television? Is it in the genes? Is he hard-wired to be nervous? And the burning question underneath it all, the true ‘parent trap’: is it my fault?

My mind harkened back to my own tenth year after we had moved to suburban New Jersey, my mother having the same impulse to raise the children in a safer environment. I remembered the piles of horror comics I devoured each day, my butt parked in its usual spot in front of our Sony Trinitron to watch the weekly Creature Feature movie, armies of monsters, aliens and zombies parading across the small screen. And every night after my mother tucked me in—reminded by my begging whine to leave the nightlight on—I pulled the blanket tightly around my neck to protect against vampire attacks while I slept. I thought of the hundreds of children lining up for the spook house at the local amusement park, rocking back and forth on their Keds, nervously chattering in anticipation like monkeys. The boys lined up on the sidewalk in front of the old, abandoned Jenkins’ house, daring each other to go closer, to step on the porch, to look into the broken window panes.

We liked to be scared.

As I thought about this from the vantage point of middle age, I realized that this must be a childhood way to prepare ourselves, the fantasy horrors making life’s true challenges pale by comparison. Because after all, fear is not the antithesis of courage, courage is being able to act despite our fears. I could see my son waiting for my response out of the corner of my eye. I smiled at him.

“Well honey, in a fight between a body-building hobo and your dad, I’d put big money on Dad.”

He took a deep breath, and I could tell this wasn’t entirely a joke to him. He really had been looking for reassurance. “Yep, he’s not afraid of anything,” he said, no small amount of pride in his voice.

“You got that right,” I replied. As we drove through the Vermont summer morning I was secure in the knowledge that between the three of us we could handle any horrors life could hand out, true or imagined.

Body-building hobos? Bring ‘em on.

Book Give-Away! Read All About It.

Here's the final quiz in the La Bloga / Hachette Book Give-Away.

Publisher Hachette Book Group, as a way of recognizing "Hispanic Heritage Month", will mail this eight-title library of outstanding reading to the first person correctly answering the questions below, and provided the response includes a mailing address:

Dream in Color By Linda Sánchez , Loretta Sánchez ISBN: 0446508047
Gunmetal Black By Daniel Serrano ISBN: 0446194131
The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters By Lorraine López ISBN: 0446699217
Bless Me, Ultima By Rudolfo Anaya ISBN: 0446675369
Brownsville By Oscar Casares ISBN: 9780316146807
The Hummingbird's Daughter By Luis Urrea ISBN: 0316154520
The General and the Jaguar By Eileen Welsome ISBN: 0316715999
Tomorrow They Will Kiss By Eduardo Santiago ISBN: 0316014125

All answers are readily available in this week's La Bloga posts:

1. Floricanto Press published this biography of a community worker and Monterey County judge.

2. Flor Y Canto 2010, will be held at this university.

3. The big city referred to in Estrellita en la ciudad grande is this one.

4. This is the fellow who said "The paranoid person is in possession of all the facts."

5. His novel, Rise, Do Not Be Afraid was a nominee for a Colorado Book Award.

Once you've assembled your answers to these questions, click here -- please include your mailing address -- and if you're the first to send in the right answers, you'll get your eight outstanding books from Hachette.

Bits and Pieces

THE COLORADO BOOK AWARDS were announced on October 8. The winner in the History category was The Life and Times of Richard Castro: Bridging a Cultural Divide by Richard Gould (Colorado Historical Society). Gould's book tells the story of a Colorado political leader who was beaten by the police as a young man. Years later his house was bombed and he was shot by political rivals. Castro eventually served as a state representative. He died at age 44 from a cerebral hemorrhage. Other nominees for the Colorado Book Awards included aaron a. abeyta for Rise, Do Not Be Afraid (Ghost Road Press) in the Fiction category, and Guillermo Vidal for Boxing For Cuba: An Immigrant's Story of Despair, Endurance & Redemption (Ghost Road Press) in the Creative Non-Fiction category.

FROM LIBRERIA MARTINEZ: "Join the Friends of the Signal Hill Library to welcome guest authors, Margo Candela, Mary Castillo, Reyna Grande, and Jamie Martinez Wood who will discuss their fictional accounts of the Latina experience from three different perspectives. Margo Candela, will discuss More Than This, a unique falling-in-love story; Ms. Castillo's book, Switchcraft, is a spirited romantic comedy about two best friends who share a life-changing trading places experience. Reyna Grande's work, Across a Hundred Mountains, tells the story of a small group of undocumented immigrants and makes their struggles and humanity real to the reader. Jamie Martinez Wood's debut novel, Rogelia's House of Magic, is about three different 15-year old girls who find friendship and special powers as they are trained by a wise old woman. This free program is sure to be a thought provoking evening."

October 20, 7:00 - 8:30 PM, Signal Hill Park Community Center, 1780 E. Hill Street, Signal Hill, CA


A DOZEN ON DENVER, the Rocky Mountain News' project to celebrate Denver's (and its own) 150th birthday with fiction by Colorado authors, has planned two events for November where the twelve authors and their stories will be featured. On November 14 at 5:00 PM, the News will announce the winner of its writing contest (the 12th writer and story) during a reception and general party. All of the participating authors are expected. The party will take place in the lobby of the Denver Newspaper Agency, 101 W. Colfax Avenue, Denver (303-954-5000). Then, on November 22 at 2:00 PM, the Tattered Cover Book Store (Colfax Avenue store) will host an event to honor A Dozen On Denver where all of the authors' books will be available for signing. These events are free and open to the public. In the spirit of the celebration, and to publicly demonstrate your support for an excellent idea from the Rocky Mountain News, I urge those of you who can attend either or both of these events to show up and join in the literary fun.

THE POWER OF ONE - As part of the Aurora Public Library's Power of One series, five authors will conduct a panel around the general theme of the series: the power that one word, one image, one perspective or one moment can have on all around us. Authors include Margaret Coel, Christine Goff, Robert Greer, RT Lawton, and Manuel Ramos. The program is set for October 26 at 2:00 PM at the Aurora Public Library, 14949 E. Alameda Parkway, Aurora, CO. 303-739-6634.


JAMES CRUMLEY - Finally, and belatedly, I wanted to note the passing of a great American writer, James Crumley. Mr. Crumley died on September 17. His death has been noted by many others with praise and admiration, feelings shared by his readers from around the world.

The New York Times repeated this quote in its obituary: Though Mr. Crumley’s books attracted a devoted readership, they were never best sellers. He was philosophical about this.“I’m not middlebrow and middle class,” he said in the Dallas Morning News interview. “Sure, I’d like it if more people read the books. My children would like it. My ex-wives would like it. But that’s just not what I’m about.”

Crumley's best-known work, The Last Good Kiss, is considered an American crime fiction masterpiece. It opens with these famous lines:

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

That's all I got this week.

Later.