Bless Me, Ultima - The Play

ANAYA'S CLASSIC FINALLY ON STAGE

Just this week I received this exciting message from our friends at El Centro Su Teatro:

For the first time ever, Rudolfo Anaya’s original script, Bless Me, Ultima, based on his beloved 1972 novel, will be presented on stage. And who will be bringing you this landmark work? Who else? Your favorite Chicanos! (Okay, okay—your second favorite?) Denver’s most colorful theater company (36-years-old and still going strong)—Su Teatro! Bless Me, Ultima captures the magic of childhood with poetic elegance. Torn between his mother’s earthy farming family and his father’s wild vaquero brothers, young Antonio finds a wondrous middle ground in his relationship with the wise old curandera, Ultima. Su Teatro’s workshop production of Bless Me, Ultima opens on February 12. Stay tuned for more details, including a great way for you and your family to get involved. Or give us a call now: (303) 296-0219.

In line with the presentation of the play, I'll repeat a message I posted a few weeks ago regarding the Amatl Project, which is tied in with Su Teatro and Rudolfo Anaya's work.

THE AMATL PROJECT

John-Michael Rivera, Creative Director of the Amatl Project, sends our readers the following message encouraging contributions to a literary project scheduled for April, 2009. This sounds unique and full of possibilities - give it some serious thought. You should contact John-Michael for details about submitting your contribution.

Dear Folks,

For those of you who do not know me, I am John-Michael Rivera, an Associate Professor of English at CU Boulder and Creative Director of The Amatl Project, a center for the cultivation of Latina/o Arts and Literacy.

The Amatl Project grew out of EL Laboratorio, which was an award winning Latino Literary arts space that held innovative Literary Salons in 2007-2008 and worked closely with The LAB at Belmar, Arte Público Press, and the University of Colorado at Boulder's Creative Writing Program. We are continuing our programs with Latina/o artists and facilitating Literary Salons, but now we are adding important dimensions: we are working with El Centro Su Teatro in Denver and will add Latina/o literacy to our programming elements. I am currently working with El Centro Su Teatro and this year's NEA sponsored Big Read.

Making sure that Latina/o literature and culture are highlighted nationwide, we plan this year to create programs and honor the work of Rudolfo Anaya.

We are writing you all to ask that you contribute to a creative project that will take place during the 11th Annual Pablo Neruda Literary and Poetry Festival in Denver, Colorado on April 16th, 17th and 18th. At this festival, we will have a digital and live-action literary salon made up of writers, scholars and artists who have engaged or been influenced by Rudolfo Anaya's work in the broadest sense. We are looking for essays, poems, short stories, graphic novels, documentaries, and other creative work that responds to Anaya's long career as a writer.

Your contribution will, in part, serve as the basis for a literacy project with high school students in the Rocky Mountain area who have historically been left behind in literacy projects or have not had a chance to engage Latina/o artists and scholars at their own schools. The Amatl Project will work closely with teachers and students, and your contributions will serve as models for their own writing. Through your creative or critical work, we will help students find their own voices and begin their life long passion for writing.

The deadline is March 15th, on The Ides of March, and selected works will be posted on La Bloga and will be highlighted at our live performances held at El Centro Su Teatro in April, the weeks leading up to and during the Neruda Festival. If you are in the area, you will also be invited to read or perform at this event. I am also currently in conversation with three publishers who are interested in publishing a book length manuscript that may emerge from this project. This is the first of many literary salons and live blogs we will be sponsoring. Please stay tuned. Thanks for your time and if you have any questions please contact me at anayaproject@suteatro.org.

Con Respeto,
John-Michael Rivera
Creative Director, The Amatl Project

BOOK REVIEW

The Examined Life: A Gil Rodrigues Mystery
Virgil Jose
Yellowback Mysteries, 2007

Crimespree Magazine’s review of this book said that The Examined Life is a "small gem that deserves to be dug out of the thousands published every year." The reviewer concluded that “well-drawn characters and convoluted plot lines create a pleasurable reading experience.” I agree, but let me elaborate.

Jose manages to present the characters in this private eye novel (the author’s first published work of fiction) as distinct individuals. The protagonist, Gil Rodrigues, is a Vietnam vet, widower, and a private eye. The year is 1987 and most of the action takes place in and around Los Angeles. Rodrigues does mostly insurance work, jobs like making sure that an accident victim really is injured, or checking on a business bank account to look for missing funds - that kind of mundane, routine stuff. He’s in a relationship with Diana, a beautiful Chinese American who struggles with a conflict between wanting to escape the “old ways” of her family and her need for the security of tradition. She wants to “make it” and Gil is just along for the ride. Gil is Portuguese but he spends a lot of time with the Chinese community – his best friend is David Chang (Diana’s brother); the cops who eventually become involved in the caper are Latino and Asian; some of the bad guys are also Asian. So there is a good mix in this book of unusual personalities and color. I wish there had been more about the cultural traditions and customs of the characters, but the author doesn’t spend a lot of time with those kinds of details. However, I may be wishing for the kind of details that other mystery readers object to as getting "in the way" of the mystery. This is a detective novel, after all.

The plot centers on the murder of David, which turns Gil’s world upside down. David’s daughter, Sabrina, asks Gil to investigate the killing. She’s not satisfied with the official police version that David was the victim of a carjacking gone bad. She tells Gil that David had been “acting very odd” the past few days.

Gil gets right into the case even though Lieutenant Steve Hara of the LAPD tells him not to play "TV private eye" and that interfering with an investigation of a capital crime could cause him nothing but trouble. But Gil's loyalty to David and David's family drives him forward.

Gil’s investigation affects his relationship with Diana. It requires that he dig deep into David’s life and learn things he didn’t really want to know about his friend. Eventually it places Gil in the same danger that his friend faced. Along the way, Gil meets uptight police detectives; shady and mysterious “businessmen” from China who don’t seem to really work; a retired CIA operative; and other assorted characters that point Gil toward an international conspiracy involving diplomatic immunity, smuggling, and political intrigue.

As Crimespree said, this is a pleasurable reading experience. I should point out that this book is not noir or hard-boiled (what I usually read). The violence, for the most part, is off the page, there isn’t a lot of private eye angst, and the book’s conflict plays out for the reader without many unexpected twists or turns. Jose’s first book is a good start, and I expect that his future books about his private eye will be more developed in terms of character analysis, a bit more mysterious, and maybe with more of an edge.

Later.

Damián Baca, Scripts for Liberation

Damián Baca works at the intersection of rhetoric, comparative writing systems in Mesoamerica/later America, and globalization. Generally, he looks to cultures in Latin America, the Caribbean, and U.S. Latinidad as a lens through which to complicate and inform two correlative domains of inquiry:

1) The disciplinary formation of the study of alphabetic writing as it emerges during a crucial period of Western territorial annexation, and

2) The imperial complicity between "racialized" subjectivites and economy, from the development of the transatlantic commercial circuit in the sixteenth century to the present stages of global capitalism.

Baca is especially interested in the rhetorical potential of post-Occidental reason - an invitation to theorize with, against, and beyond inherited patterns of thinking that emerged in Western Europe under capitalism. In place of merely challenging the Western Rhetorical tradition from a so-called "alternative" cultural locus, his work examines how and why the current study of Rhetoric and Composition becomes an unquestioned alternative to the immense global plurality of communicative forms and knowledges that remain obscured. He perceives these inquiries as having substantial implications for the politics and ethics of research, teaching, and curricular reform.

Author Bio:

Damian Baca, assistant professor of English at the University of Arizona, earned his Ph.D. from Syracuse University in 2006. He is a member of the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) and serves on the council's Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English.

Baca is a recipient of the NCTE Cultivating New Voices among Scholars of Color scholarship, and was supported by the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program during his years as a graduate student. His research and teaching areas include Chicano Chicana Rhetoric & Poetics, Comparative Technologies of Writing, Rhetorics of Mesoamerica/Colonial Mexico and the U.S./Mexico Border, Globalization, Colonial/World-Systems Analysis, Digital Humanities, and Ancestral Literacy.

Baca is author of Mestiz@ Scripts, Digital Migrations, and the Territories of Writing (New Concepts in Latino American Cultures Series) Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. He is also lead co-editor of Rhetorics in the Americas: 3114BCE to 2012CE with Victor Villanueva, scheduled for publication in late 2009.

He is currently preparing his third manuscript on pedagogical resistance to inherited patterns of thinking that emerged in Western Europe under capitalism. A native of New Mexico and descendant of Sephardic Crypto Jews (primarily through his matrilineal line, Espinosa), Baca regularly conducts research at the National Hispanic Cultural Center Foundation and numerous other locations throughout the region. Additional information is about Baca is available at http:/u.arizona.edu/~damian.


2008 Palgrave Macmillan Press Release for Mestiz@ Scripts, Digital Migrations, and the Territories of Writing:

Conventional scholarship on written communication positions the Western alphabet as a precondition for literacy. Thus, pictographic, non-verbal writing practices of Mesoamerica remain obscured by representations of lettered speech. This book examines how contemporary Mestiz@ scripts challenge alphabetic dominance, thereby undermining the colonized territories of "writing." Strategic weavings of Aztec and European inscription systems not only promote historically-grounded accounts of how recorded information is expressed across cultures, but also speak to emerging studies on visual/multimodal education. Baca argues that Mestiz@ literacies advance "new" ways of reading and writing, applicable to diverse classrooms of the twenty-first century.

La Bloga's discussion with Damian Baca

How would you describe your career arc?

I trace my present inquiries back to my training and experience in graduate school. The teaching of college writing is a practice that is claimed by Rhetoric and Composition, a discipline within the larger field of English Studies. On one hand, the discipline focuses most of its attention on writing activities in controlled academic spaces with histories firmly embedded in the thinking of ancient Athenians, Roman imperialists, Aryan-Germanic philosophers, and descendants of Puritan immigrants. On the other hand, Rhetoric and Composition proclaims that writing is more or less a life-long activity that is relevant in multiple ways and for multiple cultural situations. So a notable predicament arises -- how can scholars make authoritative claims about (and thus teach) the "diversity" of writing while simultaneously surrendering to an outdated and culturally provincial historical fantasy?

My point of departure from the discipline has become two-fold. First, while the discipline's governing gaze remains fixed upon a linear "Greece>Rome>Europe>North America" global trajectory, I'm committed to questioning pre- and post- conquest legacies on our own continent. While conventional academics theoretically look back across the Atlantic to the West and Europe, I aim to think from the South, from Mesoamerica, colonial Mexico, and the U.S./Mexico borderlands. And not surprisingly, Rhetoric and Composition is structured upon the largely unquestioned ideology that Western Roman alphabetic symbols comprise the foundation of writing and literacy. But this is not my foundation.

Indeed, our continent tells an "other" narrative, one of a plurality of graphic marks that produce Olmec calendrics, Maya hieroglyphs, Aztec pictographs, Inca quipu knotted cord systems, Chicana Chicano iconography, and Zapatista digital communications. A truly hemispheric and global plurality provides precisely what Rhetoric and Composition experts have yet to grasp: historically-sound and theoretically grounded accounts of multiple and conflicting writing systems in the Americas, the Caribbean, and beyond. I believe such accounts foster perspectives that are better suited for our contemporary world problems of perpetual warfare, territorial occupation, economic exploitation and systemic poverty, and the politics of communication across cultural borders.

Why this area of study?

Good question. Why study and teach writing? My interest is driven by a conviction that critical agency and justice cannot emerge from a single overarching rhetorical tradition upon which all civilizations across the globe must follow. In this spirit, I practice and teach writing as a political and creative art, an art that involves building theoretical frameworks, analyzing and developing concepts, and thinking beyond the sentence-level to critically reflect upon larger, underlying structures. This is why instead of "teaching writing as production" or "teaching texts as consumption," I tend to think in terms of teaching through inquiries associated with legacies of conquest and resistant discourses that challenge global powers of our day.

A series of interlocking life-changing events, from the colonial break-up of the Ottoman Empire and the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to Al-Qaeda attacks of September 2001 complicate --among other things-- isolationist narratives that recast Western civilization as separate from the world rather than part of it.

The political and ethical potential of my work, I hope, might provide space for enlarging the harmfully narrow frameworks that academics use to study and teach written language and literacy. In addition to an increased awareness of, for example, transnational migrations, fundamentalist faith systems, and multinational corporations, a more global concept of writing might likewise call into question the foundations of the humanities and social sciences.

When and where do the Americas and the Caribbean become literary, literate, and rhetorical? According to whom and with whose definitions? Should North Atlantic imperialism dictate the historical and creative imaginary of the rest of the world? I prefer looking to wider geographic, temporal, and cultural contexts for rethinking hemispheric and world history. Building a wide-angle transatlantic view is helpful in teaching beyond the provinces of Athens, Western Europe, Massachusetts Bay, the British colonies, and toward a global past and global present.

How are writing technologies and disciplinary lenses already embedded within transnational processes of oceanic trade, migration, and industrialization? How can writing specialists better understand the plurality of writing systems, empires, and trade networks that thrived in
the Western Hemisphere long before European occupation? How have these earlier commercial networks set the stage for our current era of technoglobalism, human trafficking, and unregulated capitalist expansion? As a teacher, these inquiries impact multiple scenes of learning, teaching, and institutional leadership, from hallway conversations to seminars, from faculty search committee meetings to conference presentations. The classroom is merely one space where learning,teaching, and writing happen.

What is the significance of specific constructs of language in Chicano contexts?

There are so many writers who've influenced my thinking about language and rational thought. Lucha Corpi, Sandra Mar?a Esteves, E.A. Mares, Rosaura S?nchez, Ben S?enz, Aurora Levins Morales, Demetria Martinez, José Antonio Burciaga, Manuel Mu?oz, Laura Pérez, and numerous others. The late Gloria Anzald?a and her groundbreaking Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza also comes to mind. Borderlands adds significantly to our understanding of Chicana Chicano politics of language, I think, by advancing a new strategy of imagination and invention?the critical invention between multiple discourses and the memories that are embedded in those discourses. Mexican Spanish, Spanglish, Cal? and Pachuquisma, Tex-Mex, English variations, Nahuatl fragmentations, Espa?otli.

I see this intervention as a powerful rhetorical tactic, but one that is often confused with the mere encounter between different cultures and worldviews. Numerous writers have shown that Chicana Chicano discursive experiences are far more complex than this. For example, Anzald?a employs nepantla as a concept of borderland thinking. Nepantla, which can translate as "the space between two oceans," is a Nahuatl expression coined in the early sixteenth century in the aftermath of European invasion, rape, genocide, and conquest. The first generation of children from Mesoamerican mothers and Iberian fathers recognized that "authentic" pre-European ways of life were impossible to recover. At the same time, the Spanish colonial world of brutal Christianization was not a suitable alternative.

Nepantlism, then, is a strategy of thinking and speaking from a border space through multiple kinds of expressions and oppositions. Inventing and communicating from nepantlism, suspended between paradoxical frames of reference, was first a possibility in the mind of the Mesoamerican, not the Spaniard. Both worlds experienced and negotiated cultural difference and linguistic "diversity," yet the Spanish colonial administration had no equivalent to the Nahuatl nepantla. Anzald?a's border thinking is a distinct articulation that emerges from the underside of colonization, from the perspectives of the subjugated and silenced. These Chicana Chicano articulations undermine and revise Western conventions of communication by enacting "new" memories, subaltern recollections in which splintered Mesoamerican and other language practices are strategically reconfigured and embroidered within our post-Columbian world of colonial and global power. Moreover, our culture has no need to accept either/or linguistic binaries. Anzald?a, like so many others in our community, reveals U.S. linguistic assimilation debates for what they are?outmoded ideas and false dilemmas.

What are some future areas of study?

In early 2009 I'll complete a book project I've had in mind for a few years now, Rhetorics of the Americas: 3114BCE to 2012CE, an edited manuscript under contract with Palgrave Macmillan. I believe this will be a groundbreaking collection, the first of its kind, as it extends the culturally provincial study of Western Rhetoric into an introduction to pre-Columbian rhetorics of the Americas. The book addresses an understanding of discourse meant to persuade within Pre-Columbian civilizations; that is, in presenting the rhetoric that coincided with but was not influenced by Greco-Latin ones.

Each contributor provides glimpses into what those indigenous rhetorics might have looked like, how they are tied to culture and conquest and, perhaps most importantly, how their influences remain.

The collection brings together scholars from Rhetoric, American Indian Studies, American Studies, Mesoamerican and Latin American Studies, Art History, and Comparative Spanish Literatures, among other disciplines. I approached Victor Villanueva, Director of American Studies at Washington State University, to step in as co-editor for the project. Victor?s an amazing person and an award-wining scholar whose contributions to Rhetoric and Composition studies are too numerous to list here. I'm blessed to be working with him, and blessed to work with such a wonderful group of scholars.

Lisa Alvarado

Books about Martin Luther King Jr. in English and Español

Here is a list of books to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day on January 19. Go to your favorite library or bookstore. Enjoy! ¡Diviértete!

Celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with Mrs. Park's Class
Celebra El Dia De Martin Luther King Jr. Con La Clase De La Sra. Park

By Alma Flor Ada & F. Isabel Campoy

The students in Mrs. Park’s class prepare to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. ‘s Day by thinking about the values he taught. Contains an informative section on Martin Luther King, Jr.

A Picture Book Of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Un Libro Ilustrado Sobre Martin Luther King, Hijo

By David A. Adler. Illustrated by Robert Casilla.

A brief, illustrated, biography of the Baptist minister and civil rights leader whose philosophy and practice of nonviolent civil disobedience helped American blacks win many battles for equal rights.

Happy birthday, Martin Luther King.
Feliz cumpleaños, Martin Luther King

By Jean Marzollo. Illustrated by J. Brian Pinkney.

An introduction to a great civil rights leader. In commemoration of his peaceful fight for freedom and change. The stunningly illustrated, best-selling portrait of the famed civil rights leader and the times in which he lived is a poignant and touching tribute to an American Hero.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Life of Determination
Martin Luther King Jr. : una vida de determinación

By Sheila Rivera

Do you know...? How Martin Luther King Jr. helped black people in the United States? How Martin fought peacefully? How Martin showed determination? Read this book and find the answer.

Read about Martin Luther King, Jr./ Lee sobre Martin Luther King, Jr

By Stephen Feinstein

Bilingual series for ESL and English speakers trying to learn Spanish- Great for beginner reports- Supports the History/Social Studies, ESL/Spanish Language Arts, and Reading curricula- Illus. with color and black-and-white photographs and illustrations- Contains large, easy-to-read type, timeline, glossary, further reading, Internet addresses, and an index.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

By Jonatha A. Brown

Based on Martin Luther King, Jr. (Trailblazers of the Modern World series) by Adela Q. Brown -- T. p. verso.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 23) and index.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day / Día de Martin Luther King Jr.
Our Country's Holidays/ Las fiestas de nuestra nación

By Sheri Dean

This bilingual series is ideal for English Language Learners. It supports a key topic in the early social studies curriculum- our nation's holidays- and provides students with an introduction to United States history. Using lively, full-color photographs and easy-to-read text, each title explores a different holiday and explains why it is significant. Beginning readers will also learn how the holidays they celebrate in their families and communities are observed across the nation.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day : honoring a man of peace.
El día de Martin Luther King, Jr. : honramos a un hombre de paz

By Carol Gnojewski and Carolina Jusid

Civil rights leaders are people who make sure that the laws of the United States are fair for everyone, regardless of their race, religion, or gender. One of the most influential men of our time was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


Martin Luther King Jr. Day
El Día de Martin Luther King, Jr.

By Mir Tamim Ansary

Introduces Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, explaining the historical events behind it, how it became a holiday, and how it is observed.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 31) and index.

Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

By Doreen Rappaport. Illustrated Bryan Collier

This is one of my favorite books! It is not in Spanish yet.

This picture-book biography is an excellent and accessible introduction for young readers to learn about one of the world's most influential leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Doreen Rappaport weaves the immortal words of Dr. King into a captivating narrative to tell the story of his life. With stunning art by acclaimed illustrator Bryan Collier, Martin's Big Words is an unforgettable portrait of a man whose dream changed America" and the world" forever.

Review: Ghosts of El Grullo

Patricia Santana. Albuquerque: UNM Press, 2008.

ISBN: 978-0-8263-4409-0 

Ghosts of El Grullo offers some haunting moments in Chicana fiction. That's not a cheap pun on the title. It's an accurate

description of what you'll find in the 287 pages of this fine novel. The absochingaolutely intolerable papá, raging--whether against his own ghosts, ignorance, or mental illness--drives his consentida to a finely-honed hatred for him through a lifetime of outrageous acts:

A male voice calls on the phone asking for one of his five daughters, the father screams at the caller not to bother calling here again. A daughter has gone to her high school prom without his permission; he drives over, drags her off the dance floor and brings her home to his cowering brood. He comes home early one from his night job to discover a party in progress; outraged at such festivities without his knowledge or permission he throws everyone out.

Do Mexicano fathers really exercise this kind of mind control over their daughters and wives? Do Mexicanas and Chicanas sit still for such abuse, accept Papá's outbursts as part of their lot in life and learn to be obedient wives and children?

Whatever grains of truth may lie in this fiction of the father, Patricia Santana so overstates the character that I began to mistrust the narrator's perception of her father's behavior. This unreliability becomes more acute as Yolanda the middle daughter of five (and four brothers), talks about her mother, who emerges a saintly presence. Although Yolanda declares how, as an eleven- and twelve-year old she was trying to hate her mother, Yoli has only kind words and warm memories to share.

This imbalance is the only truly weak element in an otherwise rewarding story. The working class girl finding her metier as a literature major at UC San Diego recognizes how her new world will tear her away from her familial culture and her father's rules, so her narrative focus leads her to the extremes that comprise the novel's most harrowing events, the horror a way to keep the fugitive grounded in her origins.

When Yoli's head isn't spinning on horrible memories she takes the time to enjoy living in her mother's culture back in El Grullo, Jalisco, Mexico. Here are some of the story's best elements, when Yolanda travels to the warmth of her mother's familial mansion, a perfect contrast to the struggling poverty of their San Diego household. 

That Yolanda bears a striking resemblance to her mother brings the daughter special welcome in the hearts of her dead mother's family and long-ago friends. The ghosts are real. The tias have made peace with the spirits, but Yoli's troubled soul is easily touched by the household spirits. The susto the ghosts wreak on the twenty year old Yoli straightens her out and she returns to the States liberated--perhaps escaped--from her mother's and father's histories and ready to go forth on her own.

Santana expresses ambivalence about events that take a Mexicana or Mexican-American to Chicana. As a college student, Yoli becomes a fervent Mechista, but with an obvious detachment. An older sister had adopted a similar path, and Yoli would ridicule the sister's nationalism. Now, married and in a professional career, the older sister returns the favor, as if to say MEChA is merely a passing experience that one inevitably grows out of. When Yoli abandons her virginity to the president of MEChA--in one long, beautiful sentence that is a highlight of the written work--the experience leaves her unsatisfied and empty in a clear evocation of the political experience.

But abandoning youthful experiments may be the "author's message," as is required in coming of age stories. Yolanda gains profound insights into her mother's tormented marriage, and paths not taken. She comes to see her father in a more realistic state, then idealizes that as a way of forgiving his trespasses as he forgives hers against him. She may look like her mother, a priest notes, but does the daughter have the carácter of the mother? It's not appearances, but substance.

Ghosts of El Grullo is also notable for the character of Chuy, whom we met in Santana's earlier Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility. I was put off by Santana's portrayal of the veteran in the earlier novel--Yolanda is fourteen and it is 1969. Chuy comes home a stereotypical crazy ex-soldier who runs off into the night. Surely our veterans deserve better in literature. The broken Vietnam veteran brother is doing better in this novel. After a violent confrontation between broken father and broken son, in the end it is this son who leads Yolanda to do the right thing by their father. But then, Yolanda realizes she is a broken daughter.

Patricia Santana writes interesting prose. The narrative leaps easily from present to memory then back again. The writer introduces an image or a reference then drops it, only to bring it back with more dimension and with telling energy later in the story. She, or her editor, employ appositional translation of Spanish language terms, the italicized Spanish accompanied with an English translation--"my aunts admitted que les daba escalofríos--that it gave them goose bumps"--but more often in a unique manner. Sometimes Spanish is italicized, others not. Rarely is the translation direct--"add to this one frayed brincacharcos, high-water charro suit" or, "her entourage of viejitas (gossipy old biddies)"-- other times a term sits untranslated. "Pan dulce" likely doesn't require translation, but mother and daughter's chata nose, or "viejas chismosas" might not be so obvious. Such style is a good way to honor the intercultural reader while not bringing a compelling story to a screeching halt.

Patricia Santana has hit her stride with her Yolanda Sahagún character. As this novel wraps up, Yoli is heading for UCLA and graduate school, perhaps romance with the slick-talking ladies man and Chicano medical student. One thing for sure, Santana's set high expectations for a third novel in Yoli's career.

That's the second Tuesday of January 2009. Be sure to check out the Call for Writers to the 2010 Festival de Flor Y Canto--details upcoming. Until next week, hay les wachamos.

mvs

La Bloga welcomes your comments on this and any column. Click the Comments counter below to share your views. When you have a lengthier reply, or you'd like to share an independent view on a different book, a cultural, or arts event, know that La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. Click here to explore your invitation to be our guest.

Late-Breaking News: Free Book!

If you'd like a free copy of Gwendolyn Zepeda's Houston, We Have a Problema, reviewed last Tuesday at La Bloga, send your mailing address to this link. The first five gente do this will find a copy of the recently-released novel in their mail box. 

Showing the past, present and future of human existence

Alejandro and the Fishermen of Tancay (University of Arizona Press) by Braulio Muñoz

Guest review by Kathleen de Azevedo

When one thinks of Peru, one might imagine the Andes and its ancient Inca ruins nestled on high oxygen-depleted hillsides. However, author Braulio Muñoz in his poetical new novel Alejandro and The Fishermen of Tancay (University of Arizona Press) takes us to the modern Peruvian port city of Chimbote and shows us the lives of fisherman and how these humble yet noble people struggle with the gradual environmental changes that threaten not only their livelihoods, but their souls. This book is not one of those nostalgic tomes of life-as-it-once-was. Muñoz has written a heartbreaking yet brave tale of our time that is both about Peru and about all of us.

The narrator of the book addresses his story to an absent listener, Alejandro. We do not know much about Alejandro nor the narrator until the end (which I will not reveal, but herein lies the weakness of the book: the relationship between the two is fascinating but we only know of its full extent in the final chapter). However, we get a sense that Alejandro is modern and lives far away and perhaps is young and distracted. The narrator, who has seen many changes befall his community, reminds Alejandro of how things were in the past and what life has become, and urges that that “we must follow the threat of remembrance and recall not only what you saw and felt, but also what others saw and felt for you or with you.”

The city of Chimbote and the surrounding rocks of Tancay and the sea are teeming with beings both of flesh and spirit. The ways of ocean fishing are as varied as the fish which are harvested. Those fishing for chita (grunt fish) stand on dangerous rocks and drop lines into the churning water below. Those preferring mojarilla (croaker), fish from the pier. Some fisherman stand on the beach and hurl baited lines into the oncoming waves. There is no competition among the men; there seems to be enough fish and ocean for all, even for the dead. The almitas, spirits of people who have perished, wander the beaches as do the pre-Columbian gentiles. However even these ancient beings are being destroyed by progress as there are fewer people to remember them.

The community is threatened by both acts of God and Man. A big earthquake dismantles much of Villa Maria, the shantytown section of Chimbote, where most of these people live, but no earthquake is as destructive as human greed. The fishmeal industry pours putrid yellow sludge into the ocean, producing a “smell of boiled fish that [sleeps] in your hair.” The military takes hold of Chimbote as does prostitution. Corruption and pollution go hand in hand with the heartbreaking disintegration and “slow death” of “everything going to hell . . . the turtles, crabs, cachemas, sand sharks . . . trying to save themselves from the yellowish water.”

A theme the narrator gently reminds us is one of patience. It takes patience to tell stories and patience to fish and patience to tend to human need. It takes patience for nature to replenish itself. Muñoz wonderfully shows of how the lack of patience destroys, not only the ways of the fisherman, but their value system and identity. “Remembering” in this case does not mean yearning for the past but rather “polishing our memories” to find what kept us alive in the first place.

Alejandro and the Fisherman of Tancay is a short book with small chapters, each chapter a snapshot of a moment in time. Read together, these fragments show the past, present and future of human existence. The writing is beautiful and lyrical and expertly translated from Spanish to English by Nancy K Muñoz. The two languages are woven together seamlessly as shown with description of how “when the moon was full, their shirts of cotton covered with fish scales would glow.” In a lot of ways, the novel reminds me of John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, though the issues in Muñoz’s work are more complicated and more in keeping with the issues good Latin American literature explores.

Of course, poor communities such as the inhabitants of Chimbote have lived unseen in the shadows of our modern world, but these people are wise men and women who saw the future long before we did. Now we face the same world they have been struggling with for so long. Our lack of patience has resulted in our current environmental and financial wasteland and we too, need the advice of these fishermen. This book is painfully current and valuable in contemplating our own legacy.

***

Kathleen de Azevedo’s novel of Brazilian immigrants in the U.S, Samba Dreamers (University of Arizona Press) won the 2007 Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award. You can find out more at http://www.kathleenazevedo.com/.

◙ Over at Art Ltd. magazine, George Melrod writes about the artist, Salomón Huerta:

In an identity-obsessed “Facebook” culture, in which the majority of the population seems fixed on displaying themselves to the rest of society in as many different formats and media as possible, Los Angeles painter Salomón Huerta, over the last decade, has seemed no less intrigued by the joys of obfuscation. His first widely recognized body of work, exhibited at Patricia Faure Gallery in 1998, featured the backs of men’s heads, neatly bald (or shaved), presented against flatly graphic, pastel colored backgrounds. Without reference to the usual primary indicators of personality—their faces—viewers were forced to project their own conjectures of identity onto the elusive portrait subjects. Who are they? That depends: who do you think they are?

Huerta’s most recent works are if anything bolder and more overtly obscured: portraits of Mexican wrestlers, their faces covered in vividly graphic masks. Posed variously, from steeling themselves for battle to grimacing in mid-fray, from defiant to defeated, and presented in larger-than-life scale, at up to four by five feet, Huerta’s fighters exude emotional intensity even as they defy traditional expectations of what portraiture should depict. Yet one cannot deny the bravura aspect of the work, both in the melodramatic posturing of the fighters, and of the painter’s own ambition in grappling with them and pinning them (at least in spirit) to the canvas. One difference, however: unlike the previous portraits, these characters are clearly—ostensibly—Mexican.

“American culture has Superman and Batman, but you can only see them on a screen. Mexican culture has these guys, but you can actually meet them,” Huerta explains. “They each design their own mask. Some of the them fit their identity so strongly, you don’t want to see them without the mask ... They go to a guy, tell them what they want: ‘I want it to be like a sun, or like lightning.’ Then they fit it to their head. You have a funny shaped head, you’re going to have a funny-shaped mask.”

To read the entire piece, go here.

[Pictured: “Untitled (Wrestler in Coffin),” 2008, Oil on canvas, 61" x 48" x 2"]

◙ Helena María Viramontes’s powerful and evocative novel about East L.A. during the Vietnam era, Their Dogs Came with Them, was recently released in paperback. With the economy being what it is, lower cost paperback editions offer welcome savings, no? Indeed, I’ve heard several booklovers recently say that they will not purchase a particular new hardcover book until it comes out in paperback in order to save money. Indeed, even though this hurts my own bottom line, when friends and family tell me that they want to buy one of my books, I remind them that the Los Angeles Public Library carries all of them. If you want to see whether your favorite book is carried by the libraries in your neighborhood, you can go to WorldCat and do a search by state (if you want to do a countrywide search, once you’ve found the book you’re interested in, type in “U.S.” instead of “CA” or whatever other state you had in mind). In any event, if you did not buy the hardcover edition of Their Dogs Came with Them in 2007 due to the price, now’s the time to purchase it in paperback.

Speaking of East Los, Hector Becerra, staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, tells us about East L.A.’s movement toward becoming a city by obtaining enough signatures to begin the process:

East Los Angeles is proudly known as the community that sparked a Mexican American civil rights movement, gave birth to Los Lobos and jump-started low-rider car culture.

But for all of its notoriety and close-knit feel, East L.A. has never been a city. Rather, it’s an unincorporated area governed by the county Board of Supervisors.

But on Friday, the community took a major step toward gaining independence. County officials announced that backers had gathered enough signatures for the cityhood process to formally begin.

To read all of Becerra’s piece, go here.

This news reminded me of Luis Rodriguez’s wonderful short-story collection, The Republic of East L.A. Luis was ahead of his time.

◙ Award-winning writer Rigoberto González reviews A Dolores Huerta Reader (University of New Mexico Press, $27.95 paperback) for the El Paso Times where he notes, in part:

Dolores Huerta, internationally recognized civil rights leader and activist, is a name inextricably linked to the United Farm Workers movement as well as to many other significant social and political struggles since the 1950s.

"Yet despite her important historical role," writes Mario T. García in his introduction to [the book], "she has not received the same type of coverage from historians and journalists as César Chávez."

This groundbreaking reader is a first step to changing that.

***

"A Dolores Huerta Reader" presents a complex portrait of a greater-than-life figure who continues to march, protest, advocate and educate after all these years. This is an inspirational glimpse into the life of an American legend. García's praiseworthy project does indeed fill an inexcusable void until a more comprehensive biography appears in print.

Read the entire review here.

◙ Just got word from Los Angeles Times columnist, Al Martinez, that his column will end on January 19. Martinez currently blogs here so I'm sure that he will let us all know the details. This is very sad news. But it's also very confusing. Is Martinez too old for the Times demographics? Perhaps he needs to get some plastic surgery, a little liposuction, and start a line of designer gowns that both Oprah and Britney would kill for. If this news upsets you, drop an e-mail to the Times at readers.rep@latimes.com (Jamie Gold is the readers' representative). If you haven't read a Martinez column, today's piece is a moving example of his work: he writes about his daughter's fight with cancer. Finally, I note that Kevin Roderick of LAObserved has been covering the Martinez story and all other matters of concern to our city. Stay tuned.

◙ That’s all for this week. So, in the meantime, enjoy the intervening posts from mis compadres y comadres here on La Bloga. And remember: ¡Lea un libro!

KOP & Ex-KOP by Warren Hammond

When cultural appropriation isn't

Manuel Ramos is buried under a ton of deadlines, and as soon as we can find a shovel to dig him out, he'll be returned to this, his regular posting day. Speaking of Ramos, I'm not into cop/detective/crime fiction like he is, but at last summer's Denver WorldCon, I was lucky enough to share some food, time and drink with local-writer-made-good Warren Hammond. For a güero, the guy's charming, friendly and, despite a Clark Kent veneer, worth being around.

Because of that, I got copies of his futuristic noir KOP and Ex-KOP novels. Since I love noir and science fiction I figured at least those aspects of his work would be worth my time and money. I was wrong.

KOP contains some of the strongest prose, striking noir, and original world I've read in years.

As far as SciFi, it's not your typical, formulaic future world. Check this: the planet Lagarto (Spanish for lizard because this tropical-like world's got one on or under every doormat and kitchen shelf) was colonized by Mexican scientists! Not Spanish conquistadores or Mexican drug lords, but científicos. This alone was refreshing, at least to this reader.

To deal with one question La Bloga readers might be asking--cultural appropriation--I've got to say Warren maybe's deduced what a lot of cultural-appropriating novelists have yet to figure out: it's better not to exploit too much of what's foreign to you. To his credit, Warren doesn't try passing his world off as Chicanolandia. He doesn't stretch his premise about the planet's name and founders much into the body of the work. Yes there are surnames and references, but all incidental or extraneous to the plot. Even what I think is the biggest "inconsistency" in his Lagarto world--the absence of dialogue influenced by Spanish--works for me. Otherwise, I might have felt differently.

Now, about the writing. From the cover quote: "KOP is about as good as noir crime gets since Dashiell Hammett stopped writing. Yes, I know what I just said." (David Drake) If this was on the cover of Warren's second book Ex-KOP, I'd agree with this Drake guy. But the writing in KOP is better, more sophisticated than Hammett's. Yes, one day even the classics get replaced, and should be.

Instead of just telling you what I think, I give you a little of Warren's own words. What you need to know first is that KOP is replete with this style, crazily filled with his choice of language, bien gordo with this richness hidden in a SciFi novel. Now, sit back and let these words pica your lips and saturate your tongue, swish them around some, and then let them storm your literary gullet, and you'll see why Mario Acevedo, of X-Rated Bloodsuckers notoriety, said about Warren's writing: "Raw. Visceral. Compelling. As unforgettable as a stabbing." I'd add, you'll find yourself repeatedly rubbing that wound with pleasure. All quotes below are from KOP, wherein I find a more masterly prose than its sequel. (Sorry, Warren, I call them as I confuse them.) These are not favorite passages; they're just what I randomly flipped to.

What the planet's like:
I crossed the street, weaving between the puddles and piles of rotting garbage. Geckos scattered out of my way, running for cover under green weeds that had pushed up through the rippled pavement. Every few months, the city would come through on a slash-and-burn. They used to poison the encroaching jungle growth until people started to notice tumor-ridden fish belly-up in the Koba Riber. Citizens' groups got worked up over their health and forced the city to change methods. Now, they blasted the streets with flamethrowers, crisping anything green, leaving only the smoldering stench of burned trash and vegetation in their wake. (p 13.)

About the gritty protagonist:
She listened with rapt attention as I open-booked my life for her. I could tell her anything--judgment free. I told her about Tenttown. I told her how my father would tie me up while he beat my mother. I showed her the rope-burn scars. I told her how I was always getting kicked out of school for fighting. When she asked if I had any regrets, I told her that I wished I had killed my father before his liver beat me to it.

"Really? You wouldn't feel guilty killing your own father?"

"The bastard deserved it. I deserved the chance to kill him myself. His liver robbed me of my vengeance. It was my only chance to see the world as a fair place.

She wouldn't let it drop. She kept asking questions about my father and how I could possibly kill him, my own flesh and blood. He beat my mother. I didn't know how much plainer I could make it." (p. 113)

Cover-wise, while the artwork is fine, I couldn't help but see a disgruntled Pierce Brosnan in the Kop portrayal of protagonist Juno. That said, it fit his character. What's funny is that the sequel's Ex-Kop cover of a more hardened, down-and-out Juno reminds me of a hung-over Bruce Campbell, half of which is in keeping with the second installent, where Juno's lost his career and turned private eye. Judge yourself from the side-by-side pics below.

Here's the publisher's blurb:
"Juno Mozambe is a dirty cop... The colony world Lagarto boomed when an indigenous plant was discovered to yield a uniquely intoxicating brandy...but when Earth synthesized a copy, Lagarto's economy crashed. Now, like many Lagartans, Juno lives in quiet desperation. But it wasn't always like this. When he was a young cop in capital city Koba's Office of Police, he and his partner worked to break the drug trade. Now, his old partner is the beleaguered chief of police, and Juno is a cop on the take, broken in body and in spirit.

"Despite his past sins and present problems, some small part of Juno has not given up hope. He and his beautiful, young rookie partner are assigned to a particularly ugly murder case that makes no sense...until he realizes that it's a setup to get rid of him and the chief. But it's also a chance to blow the lid of a huge scandal—an offworld plot to crush the slim hope Lagarto has to regain its economic independence. If he can break the case it would mean a new beginning for him and his world...if the conspirators don't break him first." (DOR, Tom Doherty)

Warren Hammond bio from his website:
"Warren grew up in the Hudson River Valley of New York State. Upon obtaining his teaching degree from the University at Albany, he moved to Colorado, married his wife Kathy, and settled in the Platt Park neighborhood of Denver where he can usually be found typing away at the local coffee shop or browsing the selection at the Tattered Cover.

"His first novel, KOP, was published by Tor Books in 2007. Its sequel, Ex-KOP, hit shelves in October 2008. Currently he is writing KOP Killer, the third book in the KOP series. Splitting his time between devouring science fiction and classic crime noir, he lists among his important influences Arthur C. Clarke, Orson Scott Card, Jim Thompson and James Ellroy. Warren is a serious music listener, specializing in blues, reggae and surf. Always eager to see new places, Warren and Kathy have traveled extensively. Whether it’s wildlife viewing in exotic locales like Botswana and the Galapagos Islands, or trekking in the Himalayas, they’re always up for a new adventure."

It's too late for me to recommend this as a Xmas present (although I did gave away a couple), but at the start of New Year 2009, which we may describe to our great grandchildren as the Worst Depression, reading Kop and its sequels may be the perfect way to increase your tolerance for pain, hardboil your heart against depression, and still stoke the fires of a hope that American (gringo) originality, genuine passion(ate writing) and creative talent are not following the economy into mediocrity.

Ex-KOP = Bruce Campbell?

RudyG