They Really Said That? 2009 Quotes

Last year, the day after Christmas, I posted a few quotes from 2008 that I thought said something relevant, funny, or clever. I'm never one to quit beating a horse that has a few gasps left, so here are a handful of quotes from 2009. And since this is Christmas day, I should have even fewer readers than I did last year for this column.

NOTE: I kept a few off this list simply because we heard them so much, e.g. You lie! and Keep your government hands off my Medicare! But those two say a lot about the U.S. in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
__________________________


You give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders. Jesse Ventura (who was on last year's list -- he could become a regular.)

So if I had to do it again, what I would not do is use the word "quaint" and the Geneva Conventions in the same sentence. Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. (Other than the unfortunate word choice, Alberto apparently has no regrets. He also said it was cool to work in the White House. That word has lost all meaning.)

Always have bail money. 50 Cent. (Word.)


If my visual, literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis offends or outrages some readers, which seems inevitable considering that the text is revered by many people, all I can say in my defense is that I approached this as a straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes. That said, I know that you can't please everybody. R. Crumb (in his Introduction to The Book of Genesis Illustrated, which has to be one of the best books of 2009. The cover jacket gushes: The first book of the Bible graphically depicted! Nothing left out! You gotta love Crumb.)

Jazz won't go anywhere. Playing this music is not an option for the musicians who get bit by the improvising bug. Jazz becomes a necessity, as important as food or water for the musician. It's organic music that will continue to grow as long as humans still play instruments. Jason Koransky (Editor of Downbeat, writing in the 75th anniversary edition of the iconic magazine. Amen.)

Newspapers have become deadweight commodities linked to other media commodities in chains that are coupled or uncoupled by accountants and lawyers and executive vice presidents and boards of directors in offices thousands of miles from where the man bit the dog and drew ink. Richard Rodriguez (writing in Harper's Magazine in an article entitled: Final Edition: Twilight of the American Newspaper.)

What is it about Afghanistan, possessing next to nothing that the United States requires, that justifies such lavish attention? In Washington, this question goes not only unanswered but unasked. Among Democrats and Republicans alike, with few exceptions, Afghanistan’s importance is simply assumed—much the way fifty years ago otherwise intelligent people simply assumed that the United States had a vital interest in ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. Today, as then, the assumption does not stand up to even casual scrutiny. A.J. Bacevich (The War We Can't Win, in the same issue of Harper's [November] as Rodriguez's article.)

Now when the once-cocky Cutler walks onto the field, he looks like a man reaching for the doorknob to the motel room he's just discovered his wife rented with Dennis Rodman. Matt Taibbi (writing in Rolling Stone; you probably have to live in Denver or Chicago and follow the Broncos or Bears to really appreciate the irony and pathos of this quote.)

In these last few years, the winds of change have blown through Mexico -- citizens have more power, protests have managed to kick out the old administration. But they have only been able to improve relations with the cop on the corner, not defeat the march of crime. The madness comes back with new variations. Now we have a killer of old women, a cannibal who eats his girlfriends. Paco Ignacio Taibo (from the Introduction to Mexico City Noir, recently reviewed for La Bloga by Michael Sedano. )

I’ve tired of seeing the vibrant, dynamic literary output of my peers who work in Spanish interpreted through the single, constricting and somewhat outdated lens of magical realism. I say this as someone who has the greatest admiration for García Márquez, someone who, as a young man, devoured his masterworks with revelatory glee. Still, in the marketplace of Latin American letters in the US, this obsession with magical realism has had the unfortunate effect of erasing nuance and glossing over the great diversity of talent and voices that are out there. Daniel Alarcón (in his interview with Daniel Olivas for La Bloga.)


That's it for 2009. It was a tough year, but then it had it's bright spots. Time magazine says that we are in The Decade From Hell. Maybe. In my community, life has always been a struggle - there are just more of us trying to keep our heads above the raging waters these days.

Again, I've had a blast writing for La Bloga and only hope that I can keep up with my comrades who continue to produce outstanding and provocative articles for La Bloga, every day of the year. I wish everyone the joys of the season, and a truly happy new year. See you in 2010.

Later.

Interview with Daniel Olivas

By Lydia Gil

LYDIA GIL: Tell us a bit about your literary background and how it intersects with your legal background.

DANIEL OLIVAS: I majored in English Literature at Stanford University but, instead of continuing along that track, I went to law school at UCLA. I have been a lawyer with the California Department of Justice for the last twenty years where I have worked on cases in the areas of antitrust, environmental law, and consumer protection. I started writing fiction rather late in life at the age of 39 in 1998. Now, over ten years later, I’ve had five books of fiction published, edited an anthology, with two more books on the way in the next two years. My legal background intersects with my literary background primarily in the kind of people who populate my fiction: my characters (who are mostly Chicano and Mexican) come from all walks of life, from people who work with their hands to lawyers and judges. Also, because I am a trained lawyer who works with words all the time, I’m a very fast and efficient fiction writer. I never suffer from writer’s block. A lawyer can never say: “Oh no! I can’t finish this brief!” You have to get it done. I have the same approach with fiction writing. A blank computer screen does not scare me.

LG: How did your recently published collection of short stories, Anytwhere But L.A., come about?

DO: I found that throughout the last few years, many of my stories involved characters who had escaped Los Angeles (my hometown), wanted to escape the city, or simply had no connection to L.A. I like to have a theme for my collections (this is my third story collection), so I pulled together the stories and found the title in the words of one of my characters in the story “San Diego” to be a perfect fit. He utters the words, “Anywhere but L.A.,” after his wife has died and he needed to escape the city because everything reminded him of his wife. Also, I think natives of Los Angeles have a love-hate relationship with the city. It has so much to offer yet it can be maddening in terms of traffic, crime and smog.

LG: I'm not familiar with your earlier work (except your book for children, which my daughter loves). Is there a thread that runs throughout your work, or is each project completely different in nature and execution?

DO: If you were to look at all of my books, I think you would find that I’m not afraid to confront tough issues such as racism, sexism, dysfunctional families. But I often use humor in my stories even as I write about matters that normally would not be humorous. In the end, the important thing is to tell a compelling story and not be predictable. I think fiction should disturb the reader, in every sense of the word.

LG: What role does the "city" play in your writing? Is it necessarily tied to the Latino experience?

DO: I think that city life in the United States has allowed Latinos to thrive in ways that other settings have not. My grandparents came to Los Angeles in the 1920s and made a good living even though they had little education. My father’s father was a cook. My mother’s parents worked in a laundry. My parents took advantage of the low-cost city college system to improve their lives. In the mid-1960s, with five young children at home, my parents went to community college. After graduating, my father eventually landed a job with our public transportation system where he could wear a suit to work. My mother opened a pre-school in our neighborhood which she ran for many years. All but one of my siblings finished college, and three of us went to graduate school. So, in my fiction, Los Angeles and the Latino experience are necessarily tied together particularly with respect to how Latinos have taken advantage of the city’s opportunities to improve their lives. I think this is the classic story of immigrants in the United States.

LG: Has your connection to Judaism influenced your writing? How?

DO: I was raised Catholic but converted to Judaism in 1988. My wife, Sue, is Jewish and she introduced me to Judaism. So, I feel comfortable including Jewish themes and characters in my fiction particularly with respect to the theme of conversion. Anytwhere But L.A. includes my first Holocaust story which was a challenge for me. But I feel comfortable with the result and I hope that Jewish readers will, too.

LG: How do you see your work in relation to recent Latino literature?

DO: I think that my writing is part of the continuum of Chicano literature. I have been deeply influenced by writers such as Sandra Cisneros, Luis Alberto Urrea, Helena Viramontes, Luis Rodriguez, and many others. Yet, because my parents were born in the United States, and I am an attorney, I bring other experiences to my literary expression. My fiction has been called “postmodern” and I have been categorized as part of the “new wave” of Chicano writers. I don’t know if such labels really mean much to the average reader. I’m just delighted that people are reading my books.

LG: What are you working on now?

DO: My first full-length novel, The Book of Want, will be published by the University of Arizona Press in 2011. It concerns two generations of Mexican women and bounces back and forth between Mexico during World War II and Los Angeles in the year 2006. I recently put the manuscript through another edit and await further comment from my editor. My first poetry collection entitled Crossing the Border will be published next year by Ghost Road Press, a small and wonderful publisher based in Denver, Colorado. I’m always writing short stories and likely will have a collection completed sometime in late 2010. I’m a book critic for the El Paso Times and other publications, and I blog each Monday on La Bloga [HERE!!!] which is run by a collective of Latino bloggers [THAT'S US]. I’m also thinking about collecting some of my essays and interviews of writers into a volume. As you can see, I’m a compulsive writer!

LG: Thank you for your thoughtful answers, Daniel!

And to the rest of you, if you haven't yet read Anywhere But L.A., run to get your copy! It's full of wonderful twists and literary levitations. You may learn more about Daniel's writing by going to his official website.

En español: If you are still scrambling to find a present for your Spanish-speaking primas, here are some suggestions. And for the primitos, René Colato's bilingual books are guaranteed to be a hit.

¡Felices fiestas, mi gente!

Feliz Navidad

Traditional Christmas songs from Latin America

Los peces en el río

Las posadas

Mi burrito sabanero

La Marimorena

Blanca Navidad

Great News From Revista Iguana

OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION BY CHILDREN’S PUBLICATION RECOGNIZED (SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA, DECEMBER 9. 2009)

The prestigious Multicultural Children’s Publication Award was recently presented to Iguana magazine for its "outstanding contribution to the field of multicultural education" by the National Association of Multicultural Education (NAME) at its 2009 President’s Banquet and Celebration.

NAME acknowledged the contribution Iguana makes to the Latino community by promoting the "reading, learning and enjoying" of Spanish language, multicultural stories. The association recognized founder, publisher and editor Christianne Meneses Jacobs for her work, through the magazine, to “instill in young children a pride for their native language.”

“This is a great honor for Iguana,” said Meneses Jacobs enthusiastically. “NAME is a well recognized educational association and their endorsement validates the work we do on behalf of Spanish speaking children in the United States.”

Iguana is the magazine for Spanish speaking children. It contains original short stories, poems, articles about science, technology, history, geography, biographies, comic strips, recipes, craft projects, word searches and many more. “The mission of Iguana magazine is to serve as a tool for Spanish language retention and Latino cultural preservation,” said Meneses Jacobs. “Iguana is unique in that it aims to instill in Latino children pride for their language and cultural heritage.”
Now in its fourth year, Iguana has also been honored as the recipient of the 2007 Anna Maria Arias Memorial Business Fund Award and the 2008 Latino Future Small Business Award.

For further information about Iguana, visit the website www.IGUANAmagazine.com or contact via email at revista_infantil@yahoo.com or by mail:
Iguana c/o NicaGal, LLC.
P.O. Box 26432
Scottsdale, AZ 85255.

Iguana is a publication of NicaGal, LLC.

My Letter to Santa, 2009

Michael Sedano

*Click here to listen to this letter to Santa

Dear Santa:

Seems like only yesterday I wrote you all I wanted was my two front teeth so I could with you merry chrithmath. And here we are today, several fake teeth and numerous fillings, but my two front teeth are all mine, so thanks for granting me that small wish.

Then there was that bit of trouble, remember? I saw Mommy kissing you underneath the mistletoe that night. How was I to know Daddy was wearing your suit? I got sent to my room, but I didn't shout, I didn't pout. I knew about that list you keep and check twice. I did not want a couple lumps of coal instead of that Red Ryder BB Gun. Thank you, I see fine with one eye. It's not your fault. And it got me out of the draft back in '68, so all in all, that was another good Christmas for me.

I don't know what Grandma did to piss you off, or maybe it was just the worst time of the year for such a journey, the ways deep and the weather sharp, the very dead of winter, and all of that. But getting run over by reindeer is a hard way to reaffirm one's belief in myths. Did I say that? I meant the true spirit of X-mas and, of course, your existence, Santa. I shall be glad of another sale.

Last year I asked for RAM and got a whole herd of Bo-Peep's sheep. I meant computer memory, Santa. So, now that I know you have a low tolerance for ambiguity, I am going to keep this short, sweet, and specific, OK?

First, all I want is a room somewhere. You know, far away from the cold night air? Make it a big room, and soundproofed because when all the faithful come joyful and triumphant, they make a lot of noise. And no figgy pudding, sheesh.

Second, please bring You Know Who a puppy. I saw a doggie in the window, one with a waggly tail. Tan cute; its ears were grown long and its tail cut short. But the price was astronomical, so that little dogie can just git along, that's its misfortune and none of my own. Heah!

And, wow, did you pull a fast one on me last year! I was all happy knowing yes, there is a Virginia. And Pennsylvania. And Ohio. And Montana, of all places. Yes, Virginia and the others, si se pudo. I thought then we'd finally laugh, eat well, and grow strong, that no one will send us to eat in the kitchen, or Iraq, or Afghanistan anymore. Boy, was I wrong. My third wish: please wise up that pendejo in the White House. War is not Peace. Bring the troops home now.

As I promised, I’m keeping this short and to the point. Here’s hoping all your wishes come true, too. As you say, "Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night."

P.S. Enjoy the mutton stew.

INTERVIEW WITH CARMEN GIMÉNEZ SMITH

Carmen Giménez Smith is an assistant professor of creative writing at New Mexico State University, the publisher of Noemi Press, and the editor-in-chief of Puerto del Sol. Her work has most recently appeared in Mandorla, Colorado Review and Ploughshares and is forthcoming in Jubilat and Denver Quarterly. She is the author of Bring Down the Little Birds (University of Arizona, 2010), and Glitch (Dusie Press Kollectiv, 2009). She recently edited, with Kate Bernheimer, an anthology of contemporary fairy tale adaptations to be published by Penguin Classics in 2010. She lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico with her husband and their two children.

Carmen kindly agreed to juggle yet one more thing and sit down with La Bloga to chat about her new poetry collection, Odalisque in Pieces (University of Arizona Press, 2009).

DANIEL OLIVAS: How did you decide upon the title of your new collection, Odalisque in Pieces? Did you consider other titles?

CARMEN GIMÉNEZ SMITH: I shuffled through many titles before landing on Odalisque. For a long time the book was called Fussy, which probably had more to do with my personality than it did with the book. It was called Solve For N when I sent it to Arizona; the editors there weren’t crazy about that one, so I ordered my husband to come up with a title; he plucked the phrase from a poem in the book. It seemed perfect to me: a woman naked, supine, slavish, shattered.… I feel that it’s the book’s secret symbol, in a way.

DO: You divide the collection into four sections without titles. Did you intend each section to have a theme?

CGS: I’d like to think that the book has an arc. Each section contains a poem with a sense of mythos about it, and the book tracks a progression into adulthood. Earlier drafts of the book didn’t contain section breaks, but a reader felt that the book needed some moments of pause -- some “breathing room,” I believe she said -- so the section breaks were included to provide something like that. I think the breaks serve to dramatize movement through the book, and also to help ensure that certain significant poems in the book’s project wouldn’t get lost in the melee of a sectionless collection. To be honest, I’m pretty order-illiterate when it comes to my own work. I’ve been lucky to have friends who will step in and say, “This is how you should order this book.” It may be that poem order literacy is a qualification for a poet’s friendship.

DO: One of my favorite poems in your collection is “Tree Tree Tree,” which begins: “There’s a game we play: / Repeating a word until it ceases to mean….” These lines are both thrilling and horrifying, at least for a writer. Do you ever get lost in words? Do their meanings sometime become obscured the more you dwell with them?

CGS: I am enthralled by syntax, by the sinews of the sentence. Often my absorption in the line leads to language becoming pure sound for me, something like murmur, but of course the printed word itself and at least the shadow of its meaning always remain. I love Wittgenstein’s take on this stuff, the way he seems so utterly perplexed by it, which I think is the correct attitude to take when it comes to thinking about the relationship between the look of the word on the page and the sound of the word in your head or your ear. There’s a line somewhere in the Investigations: “Remember that the look of a word is familiar to us in the same kind of way as its sound.” I suppose “Tree Tree Tree” speaks to this look–sound problematic in some way.

My first language was Spanish. Writing in a language other than that with which I grew up, with which I learned to think and feel, has surely had some bearing on my relationship to writing. I love finding words and sounds from other languages buried in English; I prefer to imagine discrete languages as continuous, like adjoining rooms connected by a common door -- sound. When I revise a poem, I’m thinking primarily about sound, syllables as phonemic puzzle pieces. I wrote “Tree Tree Tree” in graduate school; I think it was exhibitive of my coming to this awareness of new sonic possibilities in my writing.

DO: Do you have a favorite poem in this collection?

CGS: I have specific, special feelings for each of the poems. The poem “Finding the Lark” took me years and years to write, so I certainly have very strong feelings for that one: something like half ardor, half arduousness. I would write a draft with a truncated ending, and my good friend, one of my best readers, the poet Mark Wunderlich, would hand it back to me and say, “No.” When I started writing the poem, I didn’t have the chops to sustain the drama, the narrative. I have often seen the necessary course of a poem early on, but have failed to come up with the stamina, I guess, to follow it through all the way to the end. But this is something I’m failing better at all the time.

If I had to choose one poem that’s just my out-and-out favorite, I would probably pick “Idea In a Ruinous State,” the book’s final poem. I’m nuts about Wallace Stevens; early drafts of the poem contained a refrain that included his name. Mark said, “No.” I went back to the drawing board. I remember an interim draft that was significantly more expansive. Eventually I stripped it down into something like a litany, which turned out to be the solution to that particular poem.

As you can tell, my fondness for my own poems concerns the process by which they came to be. Revising and reshaping and reconceiving a poem: that is why I love to write poetry.

DO: Who are some of your favorite poets and how have they influenced your poetry?

CGS: Well, like I said, Stevens is pretty much the cat’s pajamas for me. When I was in graduate school I hated him; I didn’t see how earnest his work was until I was older. My favorites list is long and eclectic. My dear friend Rosa Alcalá’s work poetry has had a strong influence on my newer work. Her stuff is so nervy and tough; I love it, I love it, I love it. There’s Mina Loy, sort of modern dance. And James Wright, wow. Wright’s work has been a big force in my life. He’s tough too, but also so lyric. I like Neruda’s wryness. There’s Louise Glück, so terse, the master of compression. Brenda Shaughnessy is so lush, and her beautifully complex syntax. C.D. Wright is great. Juan Felipe Herrera is the sage. Alexander Pope is so funny. Mary Jo Bang has such amazing range. I work with two incredible poets, Connie Voisine and Richard Greenfield; I’ve learned a great deal from them. They’re very different, but both rare talents. Mark Wunderlich is one of the great lyric poets of our time; I’ve learned so much from him. Some contemporary poets with whom I’m in the early stages of romance are Ariana Reines, Paige Ackerson Kiely, Hoa Nguyen, Peter Ramos and Dan Machlin.

DO: Do you have a writing routine? How do you juggle writing with teaching and editing?

CGS: I drop a lot of balls when I juggle…. I have an amazing husband who helps and supports me. I’m blessed with so many generous friends and colleagues.

Once I became a mother, I had to become mercenary with my time. I can’t wait around for a poem to strike me, so instead I create goofy scenarios in my mind from which poems might emerge. I have lots of these little multiparous tricks to generate drafts. As soon as my kids are in bed, I write. I also do a lot of composition in my head while I’m doing any number of mundane things, folding laundry, cleaning dishes, etc. I don’t necessarily write a poem from memory, but I certainly can imagine a form or an arc, maybe the beginning of a lexicon, then scramble to write it down.

Teaching only fuels my writing. I get so inspired by my students; I often walk away from class jonesing to write. And the work I do as an editor informs my work, as well. I’ve learned a lot about my own writing from working with authors on their manuscripts. Being an editor and a teacher requires me to quickly and clearly articulate what is at issue in a piece of writing. Surely this has been helpful to my own revision process.

DO: Are you working on another book?

CGS: I just finished a manuscript of poems called (for now, at least) Trees Outside the Academy, as well as another collection called Happy Trigger, a book I’m terribly excited about because it’s my feminist polemic, the book I’ve wanted to write for a long time. I’ve also written a nonfiction book, Bring Down the Little Birds, which the University of Arizona Press will release next year. I’ve been working with Kate Bernheimer -- from whom I’ve learned so much -- on an anthology of contemporary writers adapting fairy tales, for publication with Penguin. I’ve been writing short pieces for a book about money and class called Squander and also beginning again to think about a book I’ve been working on for what feels like eternity, something called Goodbye Flicker about a girl who escapes into these fairy tales which her mother has, in the telling, corrupted. I always have to have several projects going on at a time. So many windows open on the computer, crazy stacks of papers around me, books all over the place. It helps me to flit about from thing to thing.

DO: Mil gracias for spending time with La Bloga.

◙ The latest volume of The Los Angeles Review is now out and available for purchase. Published by Red Hen Press and edited by Kate Gale, this issue is dedicated to Wanda Coleman and includes essays, fiction and poetry from many fine writers including a nice sampling of Latinos/as such as Conrad Romo, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Chloe Joan Lopez, Octavio Quintanilla, and Eugenia Toledo. I’m delighted to note that the issue also includes an interview by fiction editor, Stefanie Freele, of yours truly concerning Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature (Bilingual Press, 2008). I do want to note that Stefanie is the author of a powerful, funny and not-to-be-missed short story collection, Feeding Strays (Lost Horse Press, 2009).

◙ Gregg Barrios interviews playwright Octavio Solis for the San Antonio Current. Barrios notes that “Solis’s breakthrough drama, Lydia, has made the El Paso-born playwright a national sensation in the theater world. But for the 50-year-old Solis, who has toiled in the theatrical trenches for half his lifetime, the idea of overnight success chafes a bit. He’d prefer to be described as an 'up-and-coming' playwright.” It’s an enlightening interview which you may read in its entirety here. Also, don’t miss Barrios’s tribute to the Crystal City, Texas Student Walkout 1969...this month marks its 40th anniversary.

◙ Lisa Alvarado is a poet, performer, and installation artist, focusing on identity, spirit, and the body. She is the founder of La Onda Negra Press, and is author of Reclamo and The Housekeeper’s Diary, originally a book of poetry and now a one-woman performance, and is the recipient of grants from the Department of Cultural Affairs, The NEA, and the Ragdale Foundation. Lisa has also completed an ambitious trilogy of performance pieces, REM/Memory, Bury The Bones and Resurgam, whose themes are the culture of violence, popular culture and personal redemption. Her first novel, Sister Chicas (written with Ann Hagman Cardinal and Jane Alberdeston) was bought by Penguin/NAL, and released in April 2006. Her book of poetry, Raw Silk Suture, was released by Floricanto Press in 2008. We have a treat: a poem by Lisa Alvarado in celebration of Chanukah. Enjoy:

Adonai assigns each Jew a rabbi or tzadik
because you can't eat yeshiva or angel's wings,
Even the holy need parnassa, and a job is a job, after all.

But we still were hiding
so my great grandmother, a woman, a bird at the end of flight,
was my first rabbi, my first tzadik.
Us two, with eight more in Gan Eden.
No one else allowed, no one knowing.
Because the neighbors already looked at us with sharpened eyes,
sharp as the knife she killed chickens with for Fridays.
The two of us, the ten of us,
burned that bread, lit those lights
and sang down the slipping night
and Shekinah's stars.

I am her patchwork Jew,
offering poor wages
to those rabbis close now.
No drush is as sweet as the honey from her table.

◙ Read Queer is Multicultural, and essay by Himilce Novas in The MultiCultural Review.

◙ If you’re still looking for that perfect gift, check out Marcela Landres’s suggested Latino/a titles.

◙ Rigoberto González, an award-winning writer living in New York City, reviews for My Latino Voice the new novel by Reyna Grande, Dancing with Butterflies (Simon & Schuster). He notes, in part:

“The landscape of the novel is genuinely contemporary, so the tensions between alien status and national identity, between prescribed gender roles and feminism, are key factors in the motivations and attitudes prevalent in the behaviors of the characters. But Grande is successful in keeping the women from becoming symbols or victims of the violence and struggles of international and domestic politics.”

You may read the entire review here.

◙ That’s all for now. I hope that you and yours will be healthy and happy this holiday season. In the meantime, enjoy the intervening posts from mis compadres y comadres here on La Bloga. And remember: ¡Lea un libro!

Loose Girl: A Book Review

Deborah Garcia

Some girls turn to anorexia. Others to alcohol, drugs, cutting, sports, ambition. I chose promiscuity.

Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity opens with self-effacing honesty on a difficult topic: charged sexuality among young girls. Kerry Cohen's memoir envelops her readers in sharply focused sensuous descriptions of her earliest sexual experiences that begin during her early teenage years and extend to adulthood. Her tale is common and relatable: as a young girl, Kerry quickly learns that her body and giving it over can command the desperate attention she seeks to harness from boys. More so, her emergent sexuality seals a fundamental truth: her body and sexuality provide an immediate conduit of control many seek over insecurity, self-esteem, and self-importance.

Loose Girl balances an uneasy awareness with a private narrative tone. The work’s established tone is borne from hindsight filled with shame, regret, and poignant insight to the kind of damage Cohen’s relentless promiscuity dealt to her emotional well-being. Confessional, conciliatory, and cautionary, Loose Girl challenges the reader to dissect our views on young girls’ early sexual experiences — a topic ensconced in some amount of cultural silence — and follow her introspection to understand and rise above emotional needs so commonly tangled up in our own adult sex lives.

We follow Cohen from her early teenage years to adult years wrestling with issues intertwined with her sexual awakening. Common issues surrounding her beauty in comparison to her peers, her body image as she perceives it and by boys whom she finds appealing, and more complicatedly, a burning and relentless need to find proof of her worth and ability to be loved. It is this last issue that governs and controls her frequent impulse to seek sex randomly, promiscuously, and irresponsibly.

In the memoir’s afterward, “A Conversation with Kerry Cohen,” a loose girl is defined as “a girl who has been badly emotionally hurt and attempts to ease that hurt through male attention and sexual behavior. … She is not wantonly or gratuitously trying to get sexual attention.” Perhaps because this is Cohen’s memoir and not discursive critique, the thorny issue of addressing girls who are sluts is clear cut and includes a tacit understanding that girls who have sexual experiences inside of relationships falls outside the realm of slutty behavior.

Loose Girl refrains from lecturing. It is a highly compassionate and feeling memoir. Loss and pain are buried beneath Cohen’s sexually dominant id. Time and time again, her sexual experiences leave her with deep longings — longings she understands come from profound emptiness and sorrow.

For everyone who was that girl.
For everyone who knew that girl.
For everyone who wondered who that girl was.

Kerry Cohen’s official Web site, www.kerry-cohen.com, highlights Cohen’s upcoming psychology and parenting book on the loose girl issue. She writes, “There are tons of books with evidence why gorls [sic] shouldn’t have sex, tons of books about rape and molestation, tons of books about the grown-up slut. But this will be the first book - like Loose Girl - that addresses the issue of addiction to male attention, how it’s culturally fueled and so hard to avoid.” The author welcomes reader comments and contact to be interviewed for her book.

Deborah Garcia is a publishing and writing professional

born and raised in San Antonio, Texas.

Continuing to straddle cultural fronteras,

she moved back to her hometown in 2008

after having spent half of her life

on the East Coast.

"SciFi", Latinos, Chicanos & Aztecs in outer space

Había una vez, back in '04 when Ramos was getting me drunk in a bar, as he was wont to do, I vaguely remember discussing the idea that eventually resulted in creating La Bloga. We were already in communication with Michael Sedano in Califas, via Teresa Marquez's CHICLE listserv at UNM.

That brings back more vague memories. One of them was my vision of my role in La Bloga. My cabrón father had raised me on what was then called SciFi, and I wanted to focus on Chicanos in that genre, as well as fantasy.

I wanted the blogworld to learn about characters like Pablo Cortez from Cortez on Jupiter (written by Ernest Hogan, whose mom's maiden name's Garcia), still one of my favorite Chicano characters--the "wild young Mexican-American artist who covers Greater Los Angeles with fantastic graffiti. . . founds the Guerrilla Muralists of L.A., and goes on to make mankind's first contact with the sentient life-forms of Jupiter, and ends as the Solar System's most revered--and least reverent--artist." (from the back cover)

Or Hogan's character Beto Orozco, from High Aztech, "a VR games designer with too much time on his hands, who decides to create an AI version of Tezcatlipoca using some illegal software he finds. The result is a digital resurrection of a god that would have been best left sleeping away the centuries."

Like too many of my plans, I never became the SciFi/Fantasy voice of La Bloga, nor of anywhere else for that matter, which is neither good nor bad, just a fact.

Recently though, I learned of someone who took up a similar mission, at least regarding Latinos in film. Since Sept 2009, if not earlier, una boriqua has been reviewing SciFi, as she calls it, over at SciFiLatino.com.

Her reviews read well, like this: "The film Cirque du Freak is based on the first three books of a young adult series called The Saga of Darren Shan or alternately, Cirque du Freak. It is unfortunate that this film comes after several vampire movies and TV series because I am sure vampire fatigue will make some people dismiss it. That would be a mistake because Cirque du Freak isn’t annoyingly angsty and any love story is secondary to the plot. It is grittier, darker, and surprisingly fun."

Here's her description of her mission: "SCIFI LATINO came about because of my love for science fiction and fantasy. Why focus on Latinos and Latinas? Because it gives me a thrill to see people like me in my favorite genre, and I want to celebrate each and every one of them. The blog will review current television series, cancelled shows, movies, books and anything else that I consider genre-worthy and where we see a Latino participating in a significant capacity."

You can find other gems there, like her preview of Al final del espectro (At the End of the Spectra)--"a 2006 Colombian thriller set to be remade in the U.S. in 2010." Or the Latina actress playing a Latina in the Avatar flick: "Our non-blue warrior chica Michelle Rodríguez (playing Trudy Chacón) kicked ass and was a favorite (at least in my theater) judging by the applause she got."

She's also up at Twitter: @scifilatino
www.facebook.com/scifilatino

So, if you're into this genre or want to check out the Latino connections, click here.

Ramos also claims he can remember well that bar back in '04 and that I was wont to nix ideas, like calling this site El Blogo instead of La Bloga. Would we have fared better, become more world-renown had we adopted El Blogo, instead? If you want to cast a very late vote, do so in the comments below. Which one would have better described what this site's become?

RudyChG