The Border, the flu, the immigration, the violence – whose fault is it, anyway?

Part 1

Swine Flu, Border Security and Public Priorities

It couldn’t have struck at a worse moment. Reeling from economic crisis and public insecurity, Mexico was now faced with a public health emergency of unknown proportions. Across the country, from Tijuana in the north to Tapachula in the south, schools were closed, masses canceled, restaurants and nightclubs shuttered, museums and libraries shut down, and workplaces put on reduced hours.

Slammed with travel warnings and restrictions from abroad, Mexico’s important tourist industry, already teetering on the brink, was threatened with a coup de grace from the deadly hand of the swine flu.

Aguascalientes’ beloved San Marcos National Fair, the country’s largest spring festival, was canceled in the middle of festivities. Ironically, it was the controversial pop star Gloria Trevi (locked up for several years in a Chihuahua prison accused of corrupting minors before being acquitted) who delivered the final performance. The loss of an annual spring rite replete with love, wine, song and dance was added to the heartbreak of dying or sick relatives and friends.

In Mexico, the spring flowers withered and died this year.

In almost surrealistic fashion, an April 27 earthquake reportedly killed two people in the state of Guerrero and rattled Mexico City. Interviewed in a city which suffered major water shortages prior to the swine flu outbreak, a young woman described the feeling in the Mexican capital as apocalyptic.

It is still too identify the origin of the Mexican swine flu epidemic, but news reports link the possible start of the health crisis to a huge, runaway US pig farm located in the Veracruz-Puebla borderlands. The farm in question is owned in part by US-based Smithfield Foods, the largest hog and pork producer in the world and a company with a record for environmental violations on this side of the border.

Residents of the community of La Gloria have long protested unsanitary conditions, thick clouds of flies, unrelenting odors, and groundwater contamination allegedly coming from the factory farm. In response, the state governments of Veracruz and Puebla have slapped protestors with legal charges and sent in the police to arrest them.

Early this week, Smithfield Foods said tests found no evidence of swine flu in its employees or animals. Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said it was “adventurist” to blame the Veracruz countryside for the health epidemic and, in a comment sure to surprise many US health officials, added that swine flu was present in California and Texas before it was in Mexico.

Another high Mexican health official, Miguel Angel Lezana, expounded on the theme. Dissociating the pig farm from the killer virus sweeping the country, Lezana said it was difficult to determine where swine flu originated and may have in fact come from Asia or the United States.

Whatever true story of the swine flu outbreak finally emerges, it is almost certain the public health emergency, which could last for weeks, will have major political, social and economic ramifications for Mexico and its relations with the US and other nations.

Which brings us to the real meaning of border security. In recent months, both Washington and Mexico City have placed heavy emphasis on increasing border law enforcement. Coming from multiple branches of government, proposals are on the table to station more National Guard troops on the border, beef up local law enforcement agencies, set up additional border checkpoints and crack down on allegedly rampant gun running, to name a just a few.

Although the sheer volume of official, security-related statements (frequently contradictory) flowing from corridors of power on both sides of the border is challenging for even a news editor to follow and decipher, it is clear billions of new dollars are in the pipeline to government agencies and private contractors charged with implementing a cross-border security strategy.

Yet new border walls or state-of-the-art cameras didn't stop swine flu from crossing the border, south to north or north to south.

All this is not to say that Mexico and the US are totally unprepared to handle health emergencies like the swine flu. A healthy degree of cooperation exists among health professionals of the two neighboring countries, though much more remains to be done.

But serious questions about the ability of either country to handle a pandemic are the talk of the press. An individual connected to a major New Mexico hospital acknowledged to a media colleague that the institution would be rapidly overwhelmed if large numbers of people fell ill withswine flu.

The insider’s revelation is not surprising to journalists who probe the vast underbelly of New Mexico outside celebrity-haunted Santa Fe. Despite undergoing much-trumpeted economic growth in recent years, New Mexico has many trappings of the Third World underdeveloped colonias, mounting water shortages, lousy wages, high prices, rural doctor shortages, few dentists anywhere, and hundreds of thousands of people without health insurance. In numerous ways, New Mexico is not all that far removed from the Mexican reality.

A state that was once considered best suited for atomic bomb tests or treated as a quaint stop-over for Indian curios on the Chicago-LA highway, now ironically stands as the model of development for growing sections of the United States, where the Third World is settling in, too.

Like the financial meltdown of 2008, the swine flu is a wake-up call furiously ringing on both sides of the border. Will protecting public health make it up the list of political priorities for the respective governments?

-Kent Paterson

This article originally appeared on April 28, 2009, reprinted here with permission from FNS.

© Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email fnsnews@nmsu.edu

Awards, Author Events, More Free Books

COLORADO BOOK AWARDS

There is some excellent writing among the finalists for this year's Colorado Book Award in the category of Fiction/Literary:

Orange Mint and Honey by Carleen Brice, One World/Ballantine Books
Home Pool: Stories of Fly Fishing and Lesser Passions by Bruce Ducker, Stackpole Books
The Song of Jonah by Gene Geurin, University of New Mexico Press
People of the Whale by Linda Hogan, W.W. Norton
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, Ecco

The awards announcement from the Colorado Humanities and Center for the Book included this summary of one of the books that should have special interest to La Bloga readers:

The Song of Jonah by Gene Guerin

Unjustly accused in a minor sex scandal, Fr. Jon Armitage, a charismatic but brash young priest accustomed to hobnobbing with the upper crust of New England society, is exiled to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe in the early 1960s. There, in the bishop’s office, he discovers mediocrity and corruption to match anything from his previous situation and is assigned to the remote parish of Nueve Niños. Squatting at the edge of an ancient crater lake on the barren plains of northeastern New Mexico, Nueve Niños, with its long-standing reputation for mistreating its pastors, is an alien world that will prove his ultimate testing ground. Through his slow, often reluctant immersion into the lives of the villagers, Fr. Jon eventually gains insight into himself and his ultimate calling.

Gene Guerin was born in Las Vegas, New Mexico, in 1938 and educated in Las Vegas, Santa Fe, and Rome, Italy. Guerin is a freelance writer of documentaries and corporate videos for which he has received numerous national awards. His work includes an award-winning, hour length Spanish-language documentary on Pope John Paul’s visit to Colorado for World Youth Day 1993. Guerin also hosted a public service half-hour program featuring Hispanic issues on Denver’s Channel 2 in the 1970s. Most recently, he has been a writer for a non-profit organization called Cooperative for Education, which supplies textbooks and installs libraries and computer labs for the indigenous children of Guatemala’s highlands.



Fact of Life #31 by Denise Vega, Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, is a finalist in the Young Adult Literature category.

The 18th annual Colorado Book Award winners will be presented on Monday, June 22 at 3:30 pm at the Aspen Summer Words Literary Festival (June 21-26, 2009). Aspen Summer Words has been the place to be for anyone with a passion for the written word. One of the nation’s “Top Ten Literary Gatherings” (USA Today), this 6-day celebration of words, stories and ideas consists of a morning writing retreat, an afternoon literary festival, and professional consultations with agents and editors, bringing some of the world’s most interesting and engaging literary talent to Aspen.
Congratulations to all the finalists.

HIT LIST READING AND SIGNING EVENTS

Texas Friday, May 8, 2009 6:30 p.m. Murder By The Book 2342 Bissonnet Houston, TX 77005 Meet Lucha Corpi, Sarah Cortez, Bertha Jacobson and Arthur Muñoz Thursday, May 21, 2009 5:00 p.m. The Twig Book Shop 5005 Broadway San Antonio, TX 78209 Meet Bertha Jacobson and Arthur Muñoz New York Thursday, May 14, 2009 6:00 p.m. East Harlem Cafe 1651 Lexington Ave (@104th St.) New York, NY 10029 Meet Carlos Hernanez, Liz Martínez, Richie Narvaez and Sergio Troncoso Thursday, May 21, 2009 6:30 p.m. Mysterious Book Shop 58 Warren St. New York, NY 10007 Meet Sarah Cortez, Carlos Hernanez, Liz Martínez, Richie Narvaez and Sergio Troncoso Saturday, May 30, 2009 3:30 p.m. Author Signing at BookExpo America Jacob K. Javits Convention Center 635 West 34th Street New York, NY 10001 Meet Carlos Hernández, Liz Martínez, Richie Narvaez and Sergio Troncoso Colorado Thursday, May 21, 2009 7:30 p.m. Tattered Cover 2526 East Colfax Ave Denver, CO 80206 Meet Mario Acevedo and Manuel Ramos California Saturday, May 16, 2009 3:00 p.m. The Mystery Bookstore 1036-C Broxton Ave Los Angeles, CA 90024 Meet S. Ramos O'Briant and L.M. Quinn

La Bloga is helping to spread the written word in a very practical way - free books. We are partnering with Hachette Book Group during its promotion of free books recognizing May's Latino Book Month. Hachette is offering a library of five titles, including:

1. B as in Beauty - Alberto Ferreras

2. Into the Beautiful North - Luis Urrea

3. Hungry Woman in Paris - Josefina Lopez

4. The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos - Margaret Mascarenhas

5. Houston, We Have a Problema - Gwendolyn Zepeda

Click on the links in the titles to find out more about these novels.

To qualify for your five books, click here to send your name and a street address along with the answers to the following questions taken from the posts of the blogueros or blogueras earlier this week.

1. What East L.A. restaurant offers "unequalled pleasure" in a very special specialty?
2. What college has sponsored, since 1996, a summer conference dedicated to "advanced writers seeking to recharge, reconnect, and nourish their creative development"?
3. What was taken from René on his first day at his new school?

That's it on another beautiful day in Colorado. Read to succeed.

Later.

René Has Two Last Names

My dear character René from I Am René, the Boy/ Soy René, el niño is back with a new adventure in René Has Two Last Names/ René tiene dos apellidos. Illustrated by Fabiola Graullera Ramirez.

In this new title, René will work to have his two last names, just like in El Salvador. At school, they called him René Colato. But what happened to his Mamás beautiful last name? René is not a complete boy by being only René Colato.

• Reading level: Ages 4-8
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Pinata Books (October 31, 2009)
• Language: Bilingual English/Spanish
• ISBN-10: 1558855300
• ISBN-13: 978-1558855304

From the Publisher:

An engaging bilingual picture book about a boy’s clever efforts to help his classmates understand a Hispanic cultural tradition

"On the first day at my new school, my teacher, Miss Soria, gave me a sticker that said René Colato. The sticker was missing my second last name. Maybe Miss Soria's pen ran out of ink. I took my pencil and added it. Now it looked right: René Colato Laínez."

Young René is from El Salvador, and he doesn't understand why his name has to be different in the United States. When he writes Colato, he sees his paternal grandparents, René and Amelia. When he writes Laínez, he sees his maternal grandparents, Angela and Julio. Without his second last name, René feels incomplete, "like a hamburger without the meat or a pizza without cheese or a hot dog without a wiener."

His new classmates giggle when René tells them his name. "That's a long dinosaur name," one says. "Your name is longer than an anaconda," another laughs. But René doesn't want to lose the part of him that comes from his mother's family. So when the students are given a project to create a family tree, René is determined to explain the importance of using both of his last names. On the day of his presentation, René explains that he is as hard working as Abuelo René, who is a farmer, and as creative as his Abuela Amelia, who is a potter. He can tell stories like his Abuelo Julio and enjoys music like his Abuela Angela.

This charming bilingual picture book for children ages 4 - 8 combines the winning team of author René Colato Laínez and illustrator Fabiola Graullera Ramírez, and follows their award-winning collaboration, I Am René, the Boy / Soy René, el niño. With whimsical illustrations and entertaining text, this sequel is sure to please fans and gain many new ones while explaining an important Hispanic cultural tradition.

RENÉ COLATO LAÍNEZ came to the United States from El Salvador as a teen, and he writes about his experiences in children’s books such as Waiting for Papá / Esperando a Papá (Piñata Books, 2004) and I Am René, the Boy / Soy René, el niño (Piñata Books, 2005), which received Special Recognition in the 2006 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People. His book, Playing Lotería / El juego de la lotería (Luna Rising, 2005), was a finalist in the 2007-2008 Tejas Star Book Award, was named to Críticas magazine’s “Best Children’s Books” of 2005 and received the 2008 New Mexico Book Award for Best Children’s Book. René is a graduate of the Vermont College MFA program in Writing for Children & Young Adults and a bilingual elementary teacher at Fernangeles Elementary School in the Los Angeles Unified School District.


FABIOLA GRAULLERA RAMIREZ, a native of Mexico City, graduated from UNAM’s National School of Fine Arts with a degree in Graphic Communication. Her work has been part of collective exhibits in Mexico and Spain. She has illustrated many picture books, including I Am René, the Boy / Soy René, el niño (Piñata Books, 2005).

La Bloga

René Colato Laínez

Review: America Libre. Book Give-Away. Mesoamerican Conference.

Michael Sedano

Review: Raul Ramos y Sanchez. America Libre. NY: Grand Central. 2009.

I was happy to read Daniel Olivas’ review of Hit List Monday because it opens the week with a taste of the sublime, unlike the novel I started reading last week, instead of Hit List. The dog ate it, what can I say?

Fortunately, the edition I read of Raul Ramos Y Sanchez’ America Libre, is an advance copy anticipating its July 2009 paperback publication. So there’s time to fix a lot of stuff. Geography. Idiom. The “H” word. Most of all, Ethos.

America Libre takes place mostly in a dystopic present-day Los Angeles, but the trouble is nationwide. A Latina takes an errant bullet from drug-raiding San Anto cops. Barrios across the Southwest explode in violence. A National Guard platoon draws down on a mob and when the smoke clears twenty-three people lie dead. Across the nation, the barrios explode. Bloodthirsty television news channels provide only slanted, anti-raza coverage. Soon, lawlessness, or police indifference, bring vigilantes into the barrio. Bloody drive-by slaughters not only go unsolved, they grow in audacity. Increasingly, across the nation, xenophobia divides the country into brown v. white.

Conservative assholes, but I repeat myself, nativist assholes, ditto, hold sway in Congress. In a short period the United States of America begins rounding up all “Class ‘H’” people—“Hispanic” or Spanish-last name residents. Relocation camps in places like North Dakota will house the, first quarantined, then ultimately, concentration camped, population.

In Los Angeles, a group of, at first dissidents, then armed defenders, take on the violence. They ambush a three-car vigilante caravan. Using AK-47 and Rocket Propelled Grenades, led by an ex-Army Ranger, Afghanistan veteran and third-generation Hispanic, Manolo “Mano” Suarez, the barrio defender tortures the leader’s identity out of a vigilante. Joined by the incredibly rich and sexily blonde Hispanic Uruguayan Tupamaro Jo, and fiery orator Ramon Garcia, Mano helps the pretend poverty pimps craft a bloody liberation movement. Hispanics will take back their land from the …

Exciting material, could be a lot of fun to read, but for some serious obstacles.

The timeline gets mucked up. Each chapter tracks events by month and day, e.g. Month 2, Day 10. Someone--an editor, an assistant, a careless author—loses track of time. Month 11, Day 8 sees Mano quit his job with Jo and Ramon. Next chapter, listed as Month 21, Day 17, has Mano back on the street jobless and cheated out of twenty bucks, regretting quitting his job three weeks ago. Nine months of four weeks transpire in titles, but only 21 days in novel time. There are similar lapses in the sequencing gimmick.

Throughout the novel I had to keep asking myself who Grand Central thinks is its audience. Chicana Chicano readers, especially Angelinas Angelinos will have a lot of trouble enjoying the action owing to troublesome location errors, or, perhaps, ambiguities. And that's a small problem.

“East LA” is a place, not a stereotype, nor a metaphor. America Latina’s core action takes place in “Easlo,” an expression I hear for the first time in the novel. In El Lay, locals refer to “East Los” or “East L.A.”, and just as often respect specific communities like Boyle Heights, East Los’ neighbor to the West. Ramos y Sanchez writes as if “East Los Angeles” is a stereotype. In fact, Mano lives on Fourth Street, which is in Boyle Heights, not East LA. In another glaring locational error, after Mano and his crew of bombers blow holes across downtown L.A., the CIA moves its headquarters from its overlook of the Veterans Cemetery to some nondescript landscape. The Federal Building Ramos y Sanchez describes is on the tony L.A. Westside, miles from the downtown and not visible from East LA.

That type of blunder is easily fixed with a map or an informed editor. Less tolerable is the language people, supposedly raza, use. “Hispanic” is the major culprit. It’s clear Ramos y Sanchez and his editor struggled with the term. A limited Spanish-speaking Mexican-American like Mano and his guisa might indeed call each other and their gente “Hispanic” but dang, lots of characters buy into the term without any editorializing from the author about one of the most sensitive idiomatic expressions among Chicanas Chicanos Latinas Latinos, raza. I recommend the author and editor explore this terminological perplex with an ear for authenticity. Manitos and a chingón of Tejanos say “Hispanic” but in El Lay, Boyle Heights or greater East Los, hasta la westside, the “H” word might get your ass kicked. Among Mexicanos, Los Tigres Del Norte put the issue to song: En Estados Unidos te dicen que soy latino / Pero no te quieren decir que soy un Americano.

Politicized characters lack the ideological vocabulary one expects of Tupamaro or 60s veteranos. Instead of “amigo” the expression would, in the appropriate context, be “compañero” or “carnal” or “brother” or a host of other phrases that define relationship among speakers. For Ramos y Sanchez, “amigo” is the singlular expression of solidarity or palhood. Like “Hispanic”, the novel’s use of “amigo” contributes it a stunning lack of authenticity. I frequently have to read the author’s name again to make sure it’s not Amado Muro.

Everything that stuns my sensibilities is fixable in this action novel. Grand Central Publishing is home of Robert Ludlum’s library of high action thrillers. With that heritage in mind, Ramos y Sanchez has an obligation to give the reader more and better action. Things happen off stage or in exposition that deserve eye witness details and loud noises. The action develops much too slowwwwwly, and challenges even the most charitable reader’s willingness to suspend bullshit filters. Dozens of ammonium nitrate bombs detonate across Los Angeles downtown and not a drop of blood shed!?!

I suspect the most unfixable element is the horrid stereotyping of raza. In this world, as noted, dystopic, but other than gangbangers, junkies, whores, and looters, the barrios of this Los Angeles got themselves populated by gente with no backbone. All the crap that goes down and the people do not rise as one to do as they actually engage today: use political muscle and union power to organize the community. In this Los Angeles, outsiders sweep into town and lead us into temptation. The homegrown hero, torn by his loyaty to law and ordure and his Hispanic community, resolves the dilemma only after a National Guard tank levels the building where Mano’s son stood. In other words, out of selfishness rather than selflessness.

This puppet-like ethos of Los Angeles’ Chicano community makes America Libre one of the more subversive works of stories about chicanos by non chicanos. The cover blurb and author’s website describe the author as a Midwestern Cubano. If true, the author could possible fix the whole shebang by relocating the revolución to Pilsen or, mejor, Miami. That’s the ticket. One-way.

May / Book Give-Away!

La Bloga is happy to join with Hachette Book Company's promotion of free books recognizing May's Latino Book Month. Hachette is offering a library of five titles, including:

1.       B as in Beauty By Alberto Ferreras ISBN: 0446697893

2.       Into the Beautiful North By Luis Urrea ISBN: 0316025275

3.       Hungry Woman in Paris By Josefina Lopez ISBN: 0446699411

4.       The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos By Margaret Mascarenhas ISBN: 0446541109

5.       Houston, We Have a Problema By Gwendolyn Zepeda ISBN: 0446698520

 

To qualify for your five books, click here to send your name and a street (UPS) address along with the answer to questions:

Who are the editors of Hit List?

Who wrote the Foreward to Hit List?

Whose skull is the focus of Manuel Ramos' story in Hit List?

2009 Conference on Mesoamerica. Continuity and Change in Mesoamerican History From the Pre-Classic to the Colonial Era Comes to Cal State El Lay Mid-Month.

Congratulations to Dr. Roberto Cantu and his team of scholars and dedicated student workers on their upcoming academic conference presented in homage to Maya linguist Tatiana A. Proskouriakoff. The two day event runs May 15 and 16 at CSULA. The first three events indicate the promise of an intensely researched event:

A Valley Zapotec Text from 1614: What it Tells Us

Featured Speaker, John Pohl lecture, “The Hummingbird and the Flower Prince: New Approaches to Identifying Regional Political Interaction from an Analysis of the Narrative Themes on Postclassic Polychrome Vessels

Ulama: the Survival of the Mesoamerican Ballgame

Click here to view PDF of the conference schedule. This is a public, no registration fee event. CSULA sits astride Asia and América in El Sereno. Alhambra and Monterey Park to the east are Chinese and Vietnamese restaurant-rich communities. Lincoln Heights on the near West, City Terrace, East LA, and Boyle Heights on the South, SE, and SW respectively, offer infinite choices of tacos, tamales, raspados. To pick only one, Moles La Tia provides unequalled pleasure.



Tempus has fugitted with alacrity. Uau, 5 May. El Drinko de Mayo, as Lalo Alcaraz satirizes the bironga-heavy adverts that usually pepper us around this time of year. Not so much this year, must be the zombie strain of pig flu.

See you May's week 2, day 3.

mvs

La Bloga welcomes your comments. Click the Comments counter below. La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. Click here to share your idea.

Fine collection should engross any lover of mystery (not just Latinos)

Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery

(Arte Público Press, $19.95 paperback)
Edited by Sarah Cortez and Liz Martínez

Book review by Daniel A. Olivas

With the newly released Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery (Arte Público Press, $19.95 paperback), editors Sarah Cortez and Liz Martínez have succeeded in bringing together some of the best mystery fiction being written today.

This anthology features the work of Mario Acevedo, Lucha Corpi, Sarah Cortez, Carolina García-Aguilera, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Carlos Hernandez, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Bertha Jacobson, John Lantigua, Arthur Muñoz, R. Narvarez, L.M. Quinn, Manuel Ramos, S. Ramos O'Briant, A.E. Roman, Steven Torres and Sergio Troncoso.

In the foreword to Hit List, Ralph E. Rodriguez, an associate professor in the Department of American Civilization at Brown University, observes that the reader "will find no boring Latino caricatures or stereotypes in this volume." There is no doubt about that.

The anthology begins with a tightly wound, two-page bit of tough-talking noir by best-selling novelist Mario Acevedo titled "Oh, Yeah." In it, the narrator attempts to teach a seemingly dimwitted accomplice named Canela how to play a supporting role in an armed robbery. Of course, things go awry, but with a twist only an accomplished writer such as Acevedo could pull off.

There's some great humor here, too, such as S. Ramos O'Briant's sardonic "Death, Taxes ... and Worms," where we're introduced to a very proper Nellie Gallegos, who knows a trifle more about the death of her neighbor than she initially admits.

Several of the stories veer into wonderfully strange territory. "The Skull of Pancho Villa" by mystery novelist Manuel Ramos is based on various rumors as to the whereabouts of the Mexican revolutionary's head. The narrator, Gus Corral, informs us that the skull ended up in his family and recounts how it gets stolen from his sister's house. If you don't laugh out loud while reading this story, you have no sense of humor.

In "Nice Climate, Miami," award-winning author Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, a professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, brings us an icy killer named O'Hara who is hired to kill a man who has failed to pay a debt. The fact that O'Hara does not appear to have any connection to Chicano or Latino culture is proof that the editors saw no reason to pigeonhole or unduly restrict Latino mystery. Hinojosa-Smith's piece is crisp and smart and fits perfectly in this anthology.

But ethnic identity is certainly part of the collection. Sergio Troncoso's "A New York Chicano" involves one Ricky Quintana, an El Paso native who has made it in New York working for Merrill Lynch and who has developed a deep hatred for a bloviating, anti-immigrant host of a television show titled "America's Watch." What Quintana does to appease this hatred proves that he hasn't lost his identity at all.

No mystery collection would be complete without a lost soul or two. Alicia Gaspar de Alba's "Short Cut to the Moon" gives us exactly that in a troubled young woman who goes deep into alcoholic homelessness when she believes that her cousin has been murdered. Her search for the truth eventually converges with an understanding of her desperate need for help.

Space constraints do not allow for a description of each story in this landmark anthology. Suffice it to say that the stories in Hit List will engross, entertain and fully satisfy any lover of mystery fiction.

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

Manuscript Critique Auction and Post-Grad Writers Conference

Two exciting goings on from Vermont College of Fine Arts! The first from Miciah Gault, the editor of our literary magazine, Hunger Mountain:

Please join us for the Hunger Mountain Spring Fundraising Auction, featuring manuscript critiques with notable authors and agents, and limited edition letterpress broadsides. All items will be available at: http://stores.shop.ebay.com/thehungermountainstore beginning at noon EST on May 2nd. Bidding ends at noon EST on Saturday, May 9th. One-on-one critiques in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, writing for children, and writing for the stage will be conducted by phone, email or mail. This is a great way to study with a writer you admire and support non-profit literary publishing!

Not only are we offering an opportunity to work with authors such as Michael Martone, David Jauss, David Wojahn, Donna Jo Napoli and Tim Wynne-Jones, we also have a full-length children’s/YA fiction critique donated by literary agent Mark McVeigh, founding member of the McVeigh Agency, as well as a middle grade/YA critique offered by Tracy Marchini, agent assistant at Curtis Brown, Ltd. Picture book authors and illustrators Laura McGee Kvasnosky and Marion Dane Bauer will also be offering their expertise. Been toiling away on a script or stage production? Bid on a full-length play critique with playwright Gary Moore. Sue William Silverman is offering a full-length creative nonfiction manuscript critique, complete with a complimentary signed copy of her latest book Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir.

Other authors offering critiques in the auction include Philip Graham, Jess Row, Thomas Christopher Greene, Natasha Saje, Xu Xi, along with children’s and young adult authors Sarah Ellis, Martine Leavitt, and more. Also available are signed broadsides from the Stinehour Broadside Award Series including work by authors Alice Hoffman, Neil Shepard, and David Rivard and Lucia Perillo. These letterpress broadsides are all signed and numbered, limited edition, and frame worthy, making them the perfect gift for anyone who appreciates the artistry of literature! All purchases are charitable in support of Hunger Mountain's non-profit mission to cultivate engagement with and conversation about the arts by publishing high-quality, innovative literary and visual art by both established and emerging artists, and by offering opportunities for interactivity and discourse.

The link is: http://stores.shop.ebay.com/thehungermountainstore

The second announcement is from author and faculty member Ellen Lesser about the Post-Graduate Writers Conference coming up this August. And of particularly interest to me, for the first time there is a track for young adult authors led by award-winning authors An Na and Kathi Appelt.

Postgraduate Writers' Conference

Fourteenth Annual EventAugust 11-17, 2009

Vermont College of Fine Arts, home of the nationally acclaimed MFA in Writing and Writing for Children and Young Adult Programs, has since 1996 offered a summer conference dedicated to advanced writers seeking to recharge, reconnect, and nourish their creative development.

The Postgraduate Conference is open to all experienced writers, with graduate degrees or equivalent backgrounds. We emphasize process and craft through our unique structure based on intimate workshops limited to 5-7 participants, and including individual consultations with faculty, readings by faculty and participants, issues forums and master classes—all in a lively, supportive community of writers who share meals, ideas, and social activities in scenic Vermont.

The historic campus of Vermont College of Fine Arts is host to the annual gathering. Along with the rich menu of Conference events, participants enjoy the amenities of downtown Montpelier—the nation’s smallest and arguably most charming state capitol—just a few minutes’ walk from the College, as well as the beauty and recreational opportunities of the surrounding countryside and Green Mountains.

The Conference features prose workshops in novel, short story and creative nonfiction. In poetry, we offer regular workshops as well as ones focusing on book manuscripts. New for 2009, we have added two workshops in writing for young adults, and look forward to an exciting cross-fertilization with the other genres.

Our award-winning faculty for summer, 2009 are: Carol Anshaw and Clint McCown in Novel; Ellen Lesser and Michael Martone in Short Story; Lee Martin and Sue William Silverman in Creative Nonfiction; Nancy Eimers, Cleopatra Mathis and William Olsen in Poetry; Robin Behn, Major Jackson and Charles Harper Webb in Poetry Manuscript; and Kathi Appelt and An Na in Young Adult. Click “Faculty” below for biographical notes on these outstanding author-teachers.

Contact Ellen Lesser, Conference Director, with any questions, and to chat about how our program can serve you, at (802) 828-8835 or mailto:pgconference@vermontcollege.edu

Wings Press and A Few Notes

SPOTLIGHT ON WINGS PRESS

The Wings Press website has a paragraph labeled Something Like a Mission Statement:

Wings Press attempts to produce multicultural books, chapbooks, CDs, DVDs and broadsides that, we hope, enlighten the human spirit and enliven the mind. Everyone ever associated with Wings has been or is a writer, and we know well that writing is a transformational art form capable of changing the world, primarily by allowing us to glimpse something of each other's souls. Good writing is innovative, insightful, and interesting. But most of all it is honest. Likewise, Wings Press is committed to treating the planet itself as a partner. Thus the press uses as much recycled material as possible, from the paper on which the books are printed to the boxes in which they are shipped.

Wings Press has been around since 1975. Again, from the website:

Wings Press evolved during the small press movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. One of the founders of Wings Press was Joanie Whitebird, who was active in the formation of COSMEP (Committee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers). Whitebird was the driving force behind the first truly multicultural anthology of contemporary Texas poetry, Travois, published in 1975 as a cooperative venture between the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and another small Texas publisher, Thorp Springs Press. Wings Press was founded that same year by Joseph F. Lomax (Editor and Publisher) and Joanie Whitebird (Editor) as "an informal association of artists and cultural mythologists dedicated to the preservation of the literature of Texas."

Since then, the press has published an impressive array of authors including: Naomi Shihab Nye, Townes Van Zandt, Virgil Suárez, Cecile Pineda, James Hoggard, Donald Hall, Roberto Rodriguez, Marjorie Agosín, John Howard Griffin, raulrsalinas, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Ana Castillo, and many more.

Wings has many publishing accomplishments to its credit. The press gained national attention (including a full-page story in Publishers Weekly, and significant reviews in newspapers around the country) with the publication of John Howard Griffin's posthumous novel, Street of the Seven Angels. The next year, Wings brought out the definitive edition of Griffin's classic work, Black Like Me, with a foreword by Studs Terkel and several previously unseen historical photographs. The book received starred reviews in trade and library journals. Wings also published Lorna Dee Cervantes' first book in 14 years - DRIVE: The First Quartet. Its best selling poetry title, Carmen Tafolla's Sonnets and Salsa has sold more than 4000 copies. Tafolla also is the author of Wings's first illustrated children's book, Baby Coyote and the Old Woman / El coyotito y la viejita, which went into its third printing in 2005.

Not too bad for a "small" press operating not from one of the coasts but from the heart of San Antonio, Texas, and not from an impressive office building or university complex but straight from the back yard of the current editor and publisher (since 1995), Bryce Milligan. Bryce has achieved almost legendary status among writers, readers, and other publishers, as well as a few musicians, linguists, and antique musical instrument restorers. Here are a few tidbits about this guy:

*In 1985, Milligan co-founded (with Sandra Cisneros) an event which evolved into the San Antonio Inter-American Bookfair.

*No male scholar in this country has done so much for Latina writers as has Bryce Milligan. His support for us — in newspaper articles, book reviews, scholarly articles, community activism and publishing — began thirty years ago. ... I cannot even express to you how far ahead of the curve he was ... . Sandra Cisneros.

*Among other things, he has been a folksinger, a maker of guitars, drums and dulcimers, a carpenter, a rare book bibliographer and appraiser, a college English and creative writing instructor, a poet-in-the-schools, an arts administrator, a book and magazine editor, a book designer, and a publisher. As a writer, he has been a newspaper columnist, a freelance journalist, a scholar, a novelist, a poet, a playwright, and an essayist.

*Milligan's latest literary project is a simple little thing, really: a series of novels about Enheduanna, a woman who was the first-known writer in the history of the world. It's a project Milligan prepared for by spending several years learning cuneiform writing and the Sumerian language of 2,300 B.C. Milligan, fluent in Spanish, also reads in several other languages, including Latin, Greek, Welsh, Norse, Anglo Saxon English, Middle English and Old Irish.Listed below are events scheduled for the month of May for new books from Wings Press. If you are in the area, support the writers and the press. All the events are in San Antonio. If you can't make it to San Anto in May (is the Conjunto Festival back? - if so, yet another excellent reason to visit the Alamo City), go to the website and order a book or two.

Bryce is doing work that all of us at La Bloga admire and respect. Keep it up, Bryce.


May 2. Saturday, from 4 to 7 p.m., at StoneMetal Press Printmaking Center & Gallery. A reception and reading for Marian Aitches, winner of the 2009 Whitebird Chapbook Series competition. Marian’s new book, Fishing For Light, is a limited edition -- 500 numbered and signed copies -- printed on linen/recycled paper, with a hand-sewn spine. Only $15. Refreshments, music and poetry.

Marian Aitches fishes for light in rivers, and rivers run through these poems. She fishes back through family history, dream, certitude, and over the south Texas landscape of her childhood. A poet who can write A thousand years away, / I will be the bones / some anthropologist holds / up to the light, amazed / by the music they make will surely have many books beyond this first stunning collection. This is for all readers who want to know the tough sister, the one / who saved the others.
— Margaret Randall, author of over 80 books of poetry, photography, and documentary witness. Recipient of the Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett grant for writers victimized by political repression.

May 5. Tuesday, starting at 6 p.m., at The Twig Book Shop. Victoria Garcia-Zapata Klein will read from her new chapbook, Another Water Bug Is Murdered While It Rains In Texas ($10). Victoria is joined by Robert Bonazzi, Bryce Milligan and several other area poets for this post-Poetry Month reading.

In poetry as direct and powerful as it is genuine, Garcia-Zapata Klein continues the tradition she established with Peace in the Corazón, winner of the Poesía Tejana Prize, by serving the reader a savory helping of down-home truth, life and love. The title poem creates direct, hard-to-shake, and oddly parallel images between the voice of an abused, misused woman and the irksome, ever-present Texas cockroach. The poet reminds us that we are a problem / a splinter nagging the crisp weave of / the all powerful American dollar whose most powerful weapon is to read, in order to define and defend ourselves.
– Carmen Tafolla, author of Sonnets and Salsa, The Holy Tortilla and a Pot of Beans, and others


May 7. Thursday, from 5 to 7 p.m., at The Twig Book Shop. A very special evening with Robert Burns specialist and interpreter Arnold Johnston, author of The Witching Voice: A Novel From the Life of Robert Burns ($18.95). The novel is illustrated with period engravings, and features an extensive glossary of Scottish terms. January 25, 2009, marked the 250th anniversary of the birth of Burns, one of the most beloved poets in all of English literature. Arnold Johnston’s The Witching Voice brings to life the crucial years from 1784 to 1788, when Burns rose from poverty and obscurity as an Ayrshire farmer to nationwide acclaim and lionization by the aristocracy of Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital and a bastion of the European Enlightenment. Written in the same Scots-English that Burns made so familiar to the world, The Witching Voice is based on extensive research. It pulls no punches, offering a clear picture of the gifts, demons, and shortcomings of this poet who continues to charm us. As Richard Katrovas puts it, The Witching Voice conjures the sexy soul of an angelic rogue.

Here is literary history served up in a surge of life, humor, poetry, and song. Johnston succeeds in giving us a life of Burns that is at once unsentimental and yet deeply felt. He convincingly conveys Burns as a man of his time, while opening up the lyrical beauty and energy of his work in a way wholly accessible to a contemporary reader.
– Stuart Dybek, recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship; author of I Sailed With Magellan and The Coast of Chicago


Thursday, May 7 at Barnes & Noble, San Pedro at 410. Saint Luke’s Episcopal School Library’s spring bookfair is being held at Barnes & Noble. Carmen Tafolla will read and sign books at 4:30 p.m. Wings Press’s newest poet, Annie Parker, will read from her new chapbook, Remembrance of Rain, at 6 p.m. Ms. Parker, a graduating senior at TMI, was the youngest finalist in the history of the Whitebird Chapbook Series competition, so Wings Press is publishing a special chapbook to recognize this fine young poet.

Be sure to mention the Saint Luke’s Book Fair to the B&N cashier so a percentage of your purchase will benefit the school library.

Attentive to the world around her, Annie Parker somehow prays through her writing. She carries that Whitmanian sense of awe and gratitude for all things around. Like Mary Oliver, Annie’s attention to the natural world is constant; her expression of this is both precise and innovative.
— Marian Haddad, author of Somewhere Between Mexico and a River Called Home


May 14. Thursday, from 5 to 7 p.m. at The Twig Book Shop. Jay Brandon will sign copies of his latest book, Milagro Lane. Many San Antonians will have read a portion of this one when it was serialized several years ago in the San Antonio Express-News. Now in book form for the first time, Milagro Lane features many real persons and real situations, including some scandals too hot to report at the time it first appeared! Former columnist Rick Casey has provided an insightful Foreword. Special thanks to the City of San Antonio, Department of Cultural Affairs, for a grant supporting this publication.

Part mystery, part insider’s guide, Milagro Lane is a wonderful romp through a wonderful city.
– Rick Riordan, author of the Tres Navarre mysteries and the Percy Jackson novels for young adults.

In Milagro Lane Jay Brandon does for San Antonio what Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles: he makes the city the most compellingly authentic character in a book filled to bursting with compellingly authentic characters. Milagro Lane is a page-turner that will keep you up far into the into the wee hours, seduced as much by Brandon’s affectionate and informed portrayal of San Antonio, as by Brandon’s abundant gifts as one of the country’s masters of the mystery.
— Sarah Bird, author of How Perfect Is That and Yokota Officers Club

Within Jay Brandon’s Milagro Lane beats the heart—el corazón—of a great city. Sure, the novel is a beguiling mystery that leads down plenty of intriguing blind alleys, a whodunit populated with flesh-and-blood San Antonians and imagined characters real enough to stand up and walk off the page. But Milagro Lane is much more than that. The main character—the conscience of the book— is San Antonio, a South Texas border city with Southern charm that remains a mystery to most of the country and many of its inhabitants. Only someone who grew up in the Alamo City can understand the unique flux of cultures that exists here. Brandon’s observational acuity and quicksilver talent translate those urban rhythms into a cohesive page-turner.
— Steve Bennett, Book Editor, San Antonio Express-News

If you value innovative literature and its survival in the 21st century, and if you like living in a city where literature and writers are valued, support your local small presses. Wings Press books are available on line at www.wingspress.com, on all commercial book outlets like Amazon and B&N, and in most bookstores.

A FEW NOTES


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Friday, May 1 at 6:30, a cheese and wine reception, then a reading and signing by Josefina López (Real Women Have Curves) for her semi-autobiographical first novel, Hungry Woman in Paris. Plaza De Libros - Lynwood | (Plaza Mexico) | 11221 Long Beach Blvd., Suite 102 | Lynwood | CA | 90262. Click on this link for a video preview of the book.
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I'm pleased to announce that two of my stories are finalists for a Top Hand Award, the annual writing recognition sponsored by the Colorado Authors' League, in the category of Adult Short Fiction. The stories are Fence Busters from the Dozen on Denver series published by the late Rocky Mountain News (the dozen stories are scheduled for a Fall 2009 anthology from Fulcrum); and The 405 is Locked Down, my contribution to Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature, edited by Daniel Olivas. This news made me feel good all over.
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Speaking of feeling good, check out this video. It's a great musical trip around the world with a message that we all can relate to at one time or another. Click on the link.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2539741

We're moving into the months without "r"s - the best. Have fun.

Later.