Two reviews. Taix time. On-Line Floricanto.

Review: American Night: The Ballad of Juan José. 

Richard Montoya, developed by Culture Clash and Jo Bonney. American Night: The Ballad of Juan José. La Jolla's Potiker Theatre through February 26, 2012.

At Culver City's Kirk Douglas Theatre, March 9 – April 1, 2012.

Michael Sedano

Every couple of years I drive down to San Diego to attend a play, but I will not readily drive across L.A. to attend plays. Dago holds many nostalgic memories for me so going there is a sentimental journey. Besides, for me, the best places in El Lay for theatre are closer to the Eastside: the Los Angeles Theatre Center downtown, or the main stage of the Mark Taper Forum on Bunker Hill.

Prior to last weekend, my previous drive down to the La Jolla playhouse on the UCSD campus was to enjoy Culture Clash’s Zorro in Hell in advance of its playing Los Angeles. This year it was my turn to take in Culture Clash’s American Night: The Ballad of Juan José.

Great news, American Night: The Ballad of Juan José is heading north. Unbelievably sad news: not to the Taper main stage.

Zorro came to the Taper main stage, one of those rare genius decisions by Michael Ritchie, the fellow currently in charge at the Taper. Now Ritchie, in a stroke of semi-genius, is bringing American Night: The Ballad of Juan José north. In March, it plays the far edge of the continent in the Taper’s Culver City sucursal, the awkward and uncomfortable back-of-the-bus 317-seat Kirk Douglas. The Taper seats 700.

How typically Ritchie. After a few of these backhands, I begin to see something nefarious, not chowderheadedness. Ritchie’s chosen to shut out 400 people per show. Ritchie knows L.A.’s raza audience numbers in the millions. Gordon Davidson packed the house for Zoot Suit, both in its world premier staging in the New Theatre for Now Festival, then again in Zoot Suit’s fabulous regular season run. Obviously, a theatre director who cares about attracting new nalgas to fill seats can do it. But the teatro has to want to bring us in. Given effective marketing, L.A.’s Eastside gente would flock to the Taper’s nearby Bunker Hill location--the subway goes there, even. But, no way, Juan José, we’re not welcome any more, not with this guy.

American Night: The Ballad of Juan José resonates with any audience, though I suspect so much of the code-switching fun will be lost on most Westsiders. On our side of town, American Night: The Ballad of Juan José would be not only accessible entertainment, but also an inspiring educational vehicle. If you engage the play, citizen and aspirant alike learn the answers to some of the questions on the citizenship test.

What are the names of the original 13 colonies? Name the three branches of government. How many Amendments does the US Constitution contain? How many pendejos sit in the House of Representatives? What is the price of "playing by the rules?"

The nation puts immigrants through a meat grinder.The program offers a 10-item sample. Lots of folks in the audience Friday night were making excuses why they thought it was 20 Amendments, or couldn’t come up with the13th colony. “Y la Georgia!” Juan remembers, and passes the exam. Could a citizen pass the U.S. Citizenship test? Immigrants must study diligently, even obsessively.

That’s the premise. Juan José is going to pull an all-nighter studying his pocket Constitution and flash cards. But sleep takes over, launching Juan José into a series of side-splitting encounters with US History. Theodore Roosevelt killing everything in sight. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez emoting at Woodstock. Australian immigrant Harry Bridges organizing longshoremen in San Francisco Bay. Unknown freedmen saving KKK babies. Jackie Robinson breaking color barriers. A Chicano in Manzanar.

Juan José’s feverish dreams come with a subtext bite: Juan José’s Lydia—the enchanting Stephanie Beatriz--whom he’s left behind in Mexico, invades his dreams in the guise of characters in history. You can learn all that foreign stuff, amor, but don't forget where you belong.

There's Lydia with Lewis and Clark as the teenager Sacachihuahua. She talks funny because she’s wearing a modern retainer in her mouth. She is, after all, a 14-year old single mother. Sitting around the campfire, Juan José pulls out a history of their journey, gives them hope by pointing out all the place names honoring the clueless, eventually successful, adventurers. There’s Lewis this place, Clark that place. Even Sacachihuahua has a couple of geographies honoring her: Squaw Mountain, Panocha Creek.

The audience didn’t get that last one, except for the bilingual trio of women behind me who do a spit take on that and numerous other sly code-switches peppering Montoya’s script.

Indeed, playwright Richard Montoya packs this script densely, loading layer upon layer of funny, hilarious, fiendishly uproarious material. And, of course, the script packs a deadly punch, as all great satire will. There’s so much in the script that I—already suffering depleted memory resources--am overwhelmed, unable to remember all the joys this performance spreads across the stage and out into the audience. Fortunately, Google sells the Oregon version of Montoya’s script. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival commissioned the play.

Montoya’s not the only shining star in the production, he and Herb sparkle. Absent is CC co-founder Ric Salinas.

The play closes brilliantly with Stephanie Beatriz’ poignant solo. Her pitch-perfect pure soprano voice accompanied by soft ukulele chords burns into the audience’s hearts with the Patience and Prudence oldie, “Tonight, You Belong To Me.”

The script doesn’t credit a music arranger, but someone deserves credit for adding rests after the song’s opening line, “Tonight, you be-lo-o-o-o-onng…” And the word “belong” hangs there dangling off the end of a chord, four beats awash with telling ambiguity. “…To me-e-e-e-eee” the abandoned wife insists helplessly.

For the audience, palpable tension builds in the four-beat silence of the rest, Lydia's unstated fear that, in the face of citizenship’s place-switching allure, her husband belongs not to her anymore. The audience exits with tears in their eyes, humming that tune.

René Milián plays the whelmed, never overwhelmed, title character perfectly. Director Jo Bonney and Set Designer Neil Patel achieve equal brilliance from the opening blackout to Herbert Sigüenza's Neil Diamante glitzy production number, “Coming to America,” and that last solo. Lighting Designer David Weiner’s and Choreographer Ken Roht’s work complement this fabulous script, making American Night: The Ballad of Juan José a superb entertainment not to be missed, even if audiences have to drive all the way across town. 

Review:  The Last Days Of Ptolemy Grey. 

Walter Mosley. The Last Days Of Ptolemy Grey. New York : Riverhead Books, 2010.

ISBN 9781594487729 1594487723

Michael Sedano

Readers are fickle. Walter Mosley used to be my favorite Los Angeles writer, then I failed him. At first, I devoured every Easy Rawlins novel I could buy or borrow. In a series of novels, Rawlins arrives back in L.A. after WWII to set matters right in his community. Using righteous homegrown justice, Easy at first serves his community as a detective malgre lui, then as Mosley builds the character, Rawlins becomes an out-and-out private dick for hire. A Little Yellow Dog stands as the masterpiece of this wondrous series.

Mosley next introduces Socrates Fortlow, a superb fellow with arresting storyline. Unlike the situations Rawlins works into and out of again, Fortlow’s plots suffered from too much contrivance. The Easy Rawlins stories that followed those Fortlow titles progressively lost my interest. Discovering myself less engaged with his stories, I relegated Mosley’s newer works onto the “to be read if I get time” list.

Now I discover that Mosley’s contriving pluma produced a masterpiece back in 2010, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. (My paperback version in 2011). And talk about contrivance: old Confederate gold, a money-changer with a heart of gold, generational change, hard-edged innocence, evil clowns, well-deserved ass-kickings, a 90-year old man’s dementia miraculously reversed by the Devil’s illegal medical experimentation.

Walter Mosley is back. And wow. Especially compelling is the writer’s ability to reflect the ravaged displacements of dementia as seen through the disabled person’s fragile synapses.

Turning his eyes to the other side of the bed took all of his concentration. He saw and registered and forgot many things on his way. (275)

Equally arresting is the writer’s skill fashioning paragraphs holding time-future as past, and other writer’s gems that sound like this:

“The older you get the more you live in the past," Coy intoned like a minister introducing his sermon. "Old man like me don’t have no first blue sky or thunderstorm or kiss. Old man like me don’t laugh at the taste of a strawberry or smell his own stink and smile. You right there in the beggin’ when everything was new and true. My world is made outta ash and memories, broken bones and pain.” (166)

Within the covers, this wonderful story will keep readers occupied for a day or two at most because, beautifully written and plotted, once begun, the book is impossible to set down. Outside the book, readers with their own memory issues, elderly neighbors, ageing relatives, worthless trash relatives, find a special linkage between their own existence and this fiction. Would you cut your life expectancy to a month or two, if for that period you were free of dementia and able finally to wrap up a lifetime’s unfinished business?

Ptolemy has a secret treasure but he cannot remember what he knows. He’s sleeping under a table because he long ago sealed the bedroom and hoarded himself into a tightly confined space, a mirror of Ptolemy’s mind. He rarely ventures outside alone nowadays, owing to a local junkie who slaps Ptolemy around and steals his money, once even invading the place to rob him. The grand-nephew who used to look after Ptolemy has been murdered. A grand-niece sends her loutish thief of a son who, to his credit, bullies the junkie and sends her scurrying away, and steals only a portion of his great Uncle’s pension checks.

Enter an angel. Robyn, a beautiful seventeen-going-on-thirty distant relative with a heart of gold and a 5” knife in her purse. What goes around comes around: Robyn is to Ptolemy what Coydog was to the boy. Robyn drives the story by giving Ptolemy back his memory. An orphan living with her auntie and the lout, she’s helplessly desperate to escape to a space of her own. When Robyn digs in and cleans Ptolemy’s disgusting bathroom bare-handed, and then everything else, the newly opened space helps revive some of her uncle’s energy. If she was twenty years older and Ptolemy forty years younger, eros would rule their nest. But it’s puro agapé that grows between them after Robyn moves in.

Coydog is a magnificently contrived character who functions as a kind of prosthesis for Ptolemy’s memory. As the plot needs a new twist, Mosley whips out a Coydog tale. There are lots of them. When the now old man was a tiny boy, he spent significant hours learning from Uncle Coy, who’d taken the boy under his wing though they probably are not related. Coy teaches the boy African history, white people’s behaviors, community wisdom, practical advice, and infects the grown man with a lifetime of nightmares.

Readers, too, will get nightmares when Mosley describes the process of Coy’s lynching by a mob of piggish whites. The little boy, hidden in the forest, looks down on the ugly scene as the white men string up the old thief, stand him on an unsteady crate, pour gasoline on his feet and set them ablaze. Who could ever forget that sight, nor not seek solace in revenge?

Living well is the best revenge. And that’s what Ptolemy sets out to do—not for himself, but keeping a lifetime’s promise to use the treasure to save his people. Whom would you save, if you owned a boxful of old gold coins liberated from a slaveholder? Mosley/Ptolemy answers: those who deserve it.

So, what are just desserts? Who merits saving, who deserves a bullet in the chest? The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey makes the latter question entirely logical. As for who earns being saved from the emptiness of existence in central L.A., that’s the novel. 

TAIX Time in Los Angeles

One of my favorite restaurants in Los Angeles is Taix French Restaurant. Gente will say "tays" but the name sounds more like April 15, se dice "tex."

My first visit to Taix was on a debate trip back in 1963, when Taix was a sawdust-floored picnic-table table d'hôte establishment in the shadow of the Brew 102 building and gas storage tanks where the 101 becomes the 10. Since then, Taix moved to fancy digs in Echo Park, and carpeted the floors.

The restaurant this month honors three 50-year employees with a special celebration prix fixe dinner. The food is superb country chow, the potage alone reason enough to eat there. This month brings a superb  reason to dine at Taix: a display of mutual loyalty between employer and employee that deserves notice.

50th Anniversary Celebration

for Jose Fragoso, Fernando Gomez, and Bernard Inchauspe

Wednesday, February 29th, 2012 at 6:00 p.m.

Join us in celebrating a Rare and Unique event.  "50 years of Family, Friends, and Service."   $75.00 per person (all inclusive) Family Style Dinner. Paid reservations Only. Seating is limited.   Tickets may be purchased starting Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 at our front desk. 213-484-1265 Last Chance News eSe Amor: Great Works of Love La Bloga supports teatro wherever it is, San Diego or Seattle, East Los or SanJo. Here, for instance, is news of a fundraiser up in Sherman Alexie country. Quien: eSe Teatro: Seattle Latinos Take Stage Que: Fundraising gala and performances Cuando: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 6:30pm (Doors open 6pm, Curtain Call 7pm) Donde: ACT Theatre in the Bullitt Cabaret, Seattle We have worked tirelessly during the last few months to put together an event that celebrates Latino culture and community; both of which are fundamentally based in amor. From passionate readings of celebrated literary works performed in Spanish and English, to a sampling of music and dance from Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula, the performances we have lined up for you encompass great works of love from Spain, Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Chile and Brazil. Details at the Seattle teatro’s website. http://www.acttheatre.org/Tickets/OnStage/eSeAmor On-Line Floricanto 1st of 4 February Tuesdays This first On-Liine Floricanto of Valentine month brings six poems from five poets, including Sonia Gutiérrez, Mari Herreras, Diana Left, Elena Díaz Bjorkquist, Iris De Anda.  Next Tuesday--The Day--La Bloga brings you a special expanded Valentine's Day On-Line Floricanto. As always, instead of a fifty dollar box of See's Chocolates or Bon-bons, print out the On-Line Floricanto and read it aloud to your loved one. You're welcome. "Entrenched/Atrincherada" by Sonia Gutiérrez "Arizona Sometimes" by Mari Herreras "If It Wasn't For The Mountains" by Diana Left “Saguaro Tanka” by Elena Díaz Bjorkquist “Por Siempre...” by Iris De Anda “Entrenched”/“Atrincherada” By Sonia Gutiérrez Entrenched Entrenched, earth propels the palms  of my feet, and I walk arm in arm with nature all around me. Entrenched, I spread my arms mercifully and fly past the walls of prejudice— longing to live the Dream. Entrenched, I spin spiral webs—catching rainbows, rainbows rainbows in full glee. Entrenched, I wake, labor, and rise until this small universe of mine whispers, “No more.” Atrincherada Atrincherada, la tierra empuja las palmas de mis pies, y camino de brazo en brazo con la naturaleza a todo mi alrededor. Atrincherada, extiendo mis brazos misericordiosamente  y vuelo pasando los muros de prejuicios— anhelando vivir el Sueño. Atrincherada,  tejo telarañas espirales, capturando arcos iris, arcos iris arcos iris en pleno júbilo. Atrincherada, me despierto, laboro, y me levanto hasta que este pequeño universo mío me susurre, “No más”. Arizona Sometimes by Mari Herreras     Arizona sometimes you remind me of the boy I write poems for who doesn't realize each word is my heart. Which only means each sunset, every shadow and light across the Catalinas, the coyote's yips and howls, our sultry nights during monsoon seem Arizona sometimes. It is as if you know that as you hold my heart that every book hidden, every child told no, every cry met in indifference, every family chased away, is Arizona sometimes and you've no choice but to break my heart. If It Wasn't For The Mountains by Diana Left     if it wasn't for the mountains that said my name the mountains that welcomed me and clearly said they had been waiting for me these mountains where i have been before and where i am before again in dreams in reality and in battle i have often mentioned that i am a chicana indita indigenita piel morena como la misma tierra i am the only one in these mountains of my kind. part now of these mountains that tell me they are ashamed sometimes of man... but they also tell me they forgive him as some of them do come in to pray before they take their game. these mountains have made way for paths in his escape from pain and many paths they allow him for his pleasure and his gain. if it wasn't for these mountains i would never have painted my self. i would have never understood what mountains sound like when they speak. oh man! oh little, little imbecile man! the road you travel belongs to them from Patagonia to Arizona. Where you have gone mad. these are the mountains that make you. this is Machu Picchu in what you call america Las Andeas you plant your stake to. these are the mountains that never crumble when they speak like the Popocatepetl en tu Mejiko. if it wasn't for these mountains oh if it wasn't for these mountains banned books would not survive their ban. these mountains have read all of our books of the chacanismos they have heard chicanas crying through the willows they have heard the one called illegal lamenting through the Aspen leaf dances. oh crazy crazy crazed one. stop it. Mexican American is here in the mountains. on the borders,inside the wombs of tomorrow. Book banning them will not stop them. They are children of the Sun. In honor of mountain's which protect me,and protect us! Diana L.--joe Chuska Mountain Fortress near the Sky. Aztlan, February 1,2012 Saguaro Tanka by Elena Díaz Bjorkquist ©2012 Like a saguaro I stand tall and patient Forever waiting Housing words for poems To reconcile all people Por Siempre... by Iris De Anda once upon a time  habia una ves in a place not far from here a binding together of thoughts like paperbacks that tell a tale no holding back of outrage that emerges as you burn me stamp me condemn me take away my cuentos try to censor the spirit of mi gente presente we are here to stay because the more you ignore me  the closer i get the louder i get the stronger i get linking memories of our saga like hardcovers the first edition never the last always a story to be told life unfolds the twisted hair holding cosmic words uses breath like ink that spills forth truth on paper the cantos  the versos the simbolos that rewrite the mentiras the fairytales the lies that failed ban me  suppress me prohibit me take away my books try to limit the soul of mi pueblo rebelde we will not submit we will awaken because our memoirs both tragic & epic are authentic & sublime they will transcend time, people, & borders & even if the pages  of our storytellers are set ablaze  our leyendas will spread  like the fire that consumed them  & flourish in the hearts of our semillas in flor y canto por siempre... BIOS "Entrenched/Atrincherada" by Sonia Gutiérrez "Arizona Sometimes" by Mari Herreras "If It Wasn't For The Mountains" by Diana Left “Saguaro Tanka” by Elena Díaz Bjorkquist “Por Siempre...” by Iris De Anda Sonia Gutiérrez—poet, mother, translator. educator and social critic—teaches English at Palomar College and for the Upward Bound Program (CSUSM). Sonia uses her craft—poetry, prose, and libros cartoneros as tools that promote social awareness and human compassion. To learn more about Sonia Gutiérrez’s work, visit Chicana in the Midst, una bloguita bien chingona.  Mari Herreras, a fifth generation Tucsonan, is an award-winning journalist who works for the Tucson Weekly. When she’s not writing about the ugly and beautiful that makes Tucson weird and wonderful, she writes with the Sowing the Seeds women's writing collective. The group recently published its second anthology, "Our Spirit, Our Reality: Celebrating Our Stories."  Elena Díaz Björkquist, a writer, historian, and artist from Tucson, writes about Morenci, Arizona where she was born. She is the author of two books, Suffer Smoke and Water from the Moon and is nearing completion of another collection of Morenci stories entitled Albóndiga Soup. Elena has been on the Arizona Humanities Council (AHC) Speakers Bureau for ten years performing as Teresa Urrea in a Chautauqua living history presentation, and doing presentations about Morenci, Arizona and also the 1880’s Schoolhouse in Tubac. AHC recently selected her to do a presentation on El Día de los Muertos. Elena is co-editor of Sowing the Seeds, una cosecha de recuerdos, an anthology written by her writers group. The project was funded by AHC. She co-edited a new anthology entitled Our Spirit, Our Reality; our life experiences in stories and poems that was released in November 2011. A SIROW Scholar at the University of Arizona, Elena conducted an oral history project funded by AHC; “In the Shadow of the Smokestack.” A website she created contains the oral history interviews and photographs of Chicano elders living in Morenci during the Depression and World War II. Another project funded by AHC and the Stocker Foundation is “Tubac 1880’s Schoolhouse Living History Program.” Her website is www.elenadiazbjorkquist.net/.  Elena is one of the poet moderators for the Facebook page “Poets Responding to SB1070. She recently received the 2012 Arizona Commission on the Arts Bill Desmond Writing Award for excelling nonfiction writing. Iris De Anda is a writer, activist, practitioner of the healing arts, and co-founder of the company Las Adelitas: Moda, Cultura, Revolucion. A native of Los Angeles she believes in the power of spoken word, poetry, storytelling, and dreams.  She can be reached at evoluxion777@yahoo.com.

“The Book of Want” at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Library, February 9th, 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.

I am delighted to announce that I will be reading from my novel, The Book of Want (University of Arizona Press), at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. The reading will conclude with a Q&A and a book signing.

DATE: Thursday, February 9
TIME: 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.
WHERE: UCLA Campus, 144 Haines Hall
CONTACT: Lizette Guerra, Archivist and Librarian, (310) 206-6052
E-MAIL: csrcinfo@chicano.ucla.edu

This is a homecoming, of sorts, because I attended law school at UCLA (where I met my brilliant and beautiful wife). Also, our son, Ben, is now a UCLA junior majoring in anthropology. I hope to see many La Bloga readers in attendance!

Praise for The Book of Want:

"The lives of a Mexican-American family living in Los Angeles unfold in surprising, sometimes delightful ways in Olivas's debut novel (after story collection Anywhere But L.A.). Olivas's approach to the novel resembles his approach to the collection; he resists following characters with regularity or predictability....Olivas's strands work their discreet charm...."

—Publishers Weekly

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“The first novel from L.A. writer (and California deputy attorney general) Daniel A. Olivas focuses on Belén, the deceased, cigarette-puffing matriarch of a Latino family who continues to meddle in her daughters’ affairs through their dreams. Olivas, who also edited the anthology Latinos in Lotusland, grew up in Koreatown and Pico-Union, and sets much of the fanciful story near his old haunts. His brand of magical realism has a sense of humor about itself, and he succeeds in harnessing the genre’s unique ability to expose what’s beneath the surface.”

—Wendy Witherspoon, Los Angeles Magazine

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“Olivas achieves liftoff … I want more Want.”

—Jarret Keene, Tucson Weekly

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"Carefully crafted and provocative, The Book of Want is nothing less than a celebration of human desire in all its forms."

—Robert Moreira, Dark Sky Magazine

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“Discover this book’s stark power for yourself.”

—Virginia Alanis, El Paso Times

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"It’s a work of realism...but not without a dose of the magic—linking it with important works of Latino literature. The Book of Want is one such important work."

—Janelle Adsit, ForeWord Magazine

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“...a book unlike anything else you’ll read this summer, and, perhaps, many summers to come.”

—Frank Mundo, LA Books Examiner

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“Olivas' prose is rich but simple, colorful and sometimes irreverent—as whimsical and likeable as his characters. You will find yourself rooting for these people; you will even find yourself wanting for them.”

—Kathleen Yale, High Country News

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“El nuevo libro de Daniel Olivas, The Book of Want, es una encantadora colección de historias entrelazadas que revelan los anhelos de una familia mexicoamericana en la diversa metrópolis de Los Angeles.”

—Lydia Gil, MSN Latino

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“...Olivas' readers will not be disappointed by his effort. The structure of the novel is unique. Each chapter takes its inspiration from one of the Ten Commandments. The result is a story that spans a wide spectrum of characters and settings from the young and elderly to straight and gay. Ethnic and economic barriers are crossed. Rich and poor, Mexican and Jewish themes are also addressed.”

— Mary Ann Cooper, The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education

"Taking With Me The Land:" Xicana Nebraska by Amelia M.L. Montes (ameliamontes.com)

Chiles Rellenos: all ingredients from my

Nebraska garden or locally grown in Nebraska gardens/farms

In honor of the Libro Traficante Caravan that will be leaving on a banned books “traficante” journey Monday, March 12 from Houston, Texas heading to Tucson, Arizona (planned arrival is Saturday, March 17^th), I dedicate this bloga entry to their efforts by offering a reflection about “recognizing" and "speaking place” -- the importance of looking around and understanding every aspect about where you are, placing yourself meaningfully in the space where you find yourself-- demanding the books/the education you need to conocer y contemplar quien eres/quien somos. In this entry, I'm contemplating "place" that has been constructed as "empty" and "white"--yet first and foremost, a space that was and is Indigenous: Lakota and Dakota, Ponca, Omaha, Pawnee, Otoe, Winnebago, and also continues to be a space where inmigrantes reside: Nebraska.

Nosotras: Chicanas y Chicanos often talk about land: the land we lost, the land we left behind, the land we desire, the land we imagine, the land that defines us, the land that created or destroyed us. I think of Tomás Rivera’s . . . y no se lo tragó la tierra (. . . and the earth did not devour him), a novella of inmigrantes, of struggle and survival; Arturo Islas’ Rain God which grapples so eloquently and painfully with identity within and outside of familia and land; and Gloria Anzaldúa who wrote “I was the first in six generations to leave the Valley, the only one in my family to ever leave home. But I didn’t leave all the parts of me: I kept the ground of my own being. On it I walked away, taking with me the land, the Valley, Texas” (from Borderlands/La Frontera).

“[T]aking with me the land” resonates within me although lately I’ve been adding the phrase “and merging it with another land.” Here’s how it goes—aqui te va:

Some of my experiences on this Great Plains land of Nebraska have been what I consider more Mexican, mestiza, Xicana, more “raza” to me than living in Los Angeles ever was (and the opposite is true as well, but I'm more surprised with the former). For example, I never planted, never grew or harvested chile or maize, tomate or ajo until I came here to Nebraska. The wonders I have seen on this land (lightning bugs, thunder snow, cicada melodies, the migration of thousands of sandhill cranes from Mexico no less!) only emphasize what Professor and writer, Norma Cantú told me when I first contemplated “migrating” to Nebraska to teach at The University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “There is magic here, if you can see it.”

maize from Nebraska garden

I’ve lived on the edge of the sea (Califas) and now here. Nebraska writer, Willa Cather, describes the Nebraska land in her novel My Antonia like this: “As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow to be running.”

The Plains of Nebraska

I read My Antonia en Califas long before I ever thought about moving here. I was in San Francisco, at a friend’s house. It was raining and I was sitting next to the window reading and intermittently watching the rain create uneven trails down the pane of glass. During one of Cather’s descriptions much like the one above, I remember looking up and saying, “I must go there.” I never meant to say, "I must live there." Pero aqui estoy-- and I find myself constantly surprised at the connections, the familiarity of the "place."

The prairie is like a tidepool. From far away, a tide pool looks like rocks and water—that is all. One could call it "empty." But if you get closer, if you bend down, if you use your fingers to reach in toward the greens and reds and orange colors, you will discover sea stars, mussels, sea anemones, sea palms, urchins, sponges, surf grass. The anemone reminds you (when it grabs at your finger and holds on) of the powerful life forces within. John Steinbeck wrote: “It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.” Where from a distance, the tide pool may look like rock and water (nothingness), it is teeming. The earth and sky are teeming if you seek to observe with passion.

For example, yesterday we had a heavy snowstorm. I shoveled a foot of snow. One may think that nothing, absolutely nothing is underneath all that snow. Yet like the tidepool, here you have what’s called the subnivian zone where it can be 50 degrees warmer than where the person above is shoveling snow. If we were small enough (like a mouse, vole, grouse, or bunny) we could go down to that zone and be quite comfortable.

The subnivian zone

This subnivian zone and its inhabitants remind me of Califas and termites in East L.A. One day my uncle Frank gave me a memorable gift. He had called me into the garage and gave me a bottle, wide enough to have probably been a peanut butter glass container. There were pieces of wood in the bottle—that’s all I saw at first. It took a bit of time, but finally I could see the almost see-through segmented bodies (two of them) of termites, with fine shiny wings. I sat there, watching for a long time—watching their pincers have at the wood.

The subnivian zone here, the Califas termites remind me of Mexico and the flying cockroaches en Torreon con mi tia Panchita--swatting them on a hot August night, which then reminds me of the time that my cousin Angelina and I found opals imbedded in rocks when we were playing in a cave outside Guadalajara, Mexico (perhaps near Tonalá). On that particular day, not only did we find opals, we observed a truck (filled to the brim with mangos) suddenly jack knife and turn over on its side. Thousands of red orange (some green) mangos covered the side of the road, rolling mangos everywhere. The truck driver, who didn’t seem hurt—only quite upset-- pleaded with us to take as many as we could. And we did--creating pouches with our sweaters, grabbing at an old empty plastic bag on the side of the road, filling them up, laughing and amazed at the red orange road.

The Bison Trail in Lincoln, Nebraska

During the summer and fall, I ride my bike and take a route that sends me out of Lincoln. I ride past fields of family farms, of bike and foot paths, of streams and trails where at times herons or hawks have flown so close I can hear their whoosh of wings. I can almost feel the soft downy of feathers in the sound. One morning I saw what looked like a surreal drapery of black curtains ahead of me on the bike path, only to realize that a flock of turkeys were hurrying down the road and taking to flight in a mighty awkward effort. I never knew turkeys could take to flight at all-- and here they were raising their black wings, lifting their heavy bellies up a few feet, then back down in such an interestingly odd almost helpless way. This happened near the home of a Mexican family from Sonora who have a number of chickens and a rooster that always calls as I head past their place.

I mention this Mexican family's "Sonoran" home in Nebraska because it is exactly during this part of my ride, where I swear I’m in Mexico—en Guadalajara or en Torreón, Coahuila hearing the tunas vendor going down the street, pushing his tunas cart, shaking the bells attached to the side, and calling, “tunas,” “tunas.”

"Tunas" in western Nebraska: Scotts Bluff donde tambien--hay muchas Latinas y Latinos

In some ways, I am doing what Anzaldúa describes as “taking with me the land.” Another explanation is what geographer Doreen Massey calls “different experiences of time-space compression.” She writes: “Instead then, of thinking of places as areas with boundaries around, they can be imagined as articulated moments in networks of social relations and understandings, but where a large proportion of those relations, experiences and understandings are constructed on a far larger scale than what we happen to define for that moment as the place itself, whether that be a street, or a region or even a continent. And this in turn allows a sense of place which is extroverted, which includes a consciousness of its links with the wider world, which integrates in a positive way the global and local.” Given what Massey says, this “Mexican Nebraska” title functions as a way to disrupt fixed constructions of place.

A few days ago, I was at a reception for fiction writers and poets from out of town. One of them approached me and asked how I could live in a geographic region where there is nothing. “There is nothing here on the Plains” he said. I agreed that there was nothing – for him. He wasn’t looking. "Nothing" registered for him because he has always been told, as he explained, that there is nothing here. He reminded me of the main character Clithero in the 1799 novel Edgar Huntly; or Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker by Charles Brockden Brown-- a gothic novel that illustrates what has been described as the white man's fear and desire to control nature, to maintain rationality and harness the imagination because of the horrors an active conscience can conjure or encounter. Clithero seeks not to cross the line between what is defined as "civilization" and the "wild." He is constantly fearful of nothingness, of what is beyond what he knows. And I too was fearful when I arrived here in Lincoln--thinking as well there was nothing because of the overwhelming stereotypes this country has constructed regarding all of its regions.

Near the Bison Trail, Lincoln, Nebraska

Yet, from the moment I arrived in Lincoln, so many connections to what I knew registered for me. The Nebraska State Capitol architect (Bertram Goodhue) is the same architect who designed The Los Angeles Public Library. As soon as I saw the building, the façade, the type of calligraphy font carved into the stone, it felt familiar. I remember thinking, "I recognize this place." The land outside of Lincoln (Nine Mile Prairie, for example), the tall grasses that Cather describes--red and sea-like in its movements (big and little Bluestem grasses, switch grass, etc.) are present south on the Gulf of Mexico (and Latin America: the Gran Chaco of Bolivia y Argentina).

The Los Angeles Public Library

The Nebraska State Capitol

However, I question the use of "taking with me the land" even though it is in the title of this blog entry. I often hear myself say, “My Mexican Nebraska”---“My Los Angeles,” “My Califas.” Nothing . . . nothing is ever mine. Nothing is ever ours and in thinking this way, I may be more appreciative, more respectful to see "land" and "people" as they are without assuming how "land" and "a people" should be, without fear, without judgement. I like thinking of the term "constant migrancy"—from the tide pools to the subnivian zone and everything in between. "Mestizos" "Xicanas" are everywhere-- and we carry with us our books, our history, our experiences, our complex perspectives which illustrate our deeply rich and complex raza.

When I moved here, I was afraid some of my Califas friends would be right in saying, "You'll lose your Xicana roots over there." Pues what has happened es que I've planted Xicana roots here "taking with me the land de alla." When I was little, I remember my parents constantly telling me: "If anyone asks who you are, you tell them you are an American." They would tell me this with a worry I didn't understand at the time. They were recent immigrants. Perhaps my mother worried they would deport me, they would somehow take me away or take all of us. This worry is still alive and real today in Nebraska, Alabama, in Arizona--just to name a few states. (click on this link to view the latest on immigration raids) My parents wanted me to say I was American not knowing I would make the term "American" a life-long pursuit of study. And throughout my life, I've read what the Puritans and later nineteenth-century and contemporary writers have defined as "American"-- waves of immigrant writing throughout the years grappling with this identity, legislators forcing their opinion on what "American" is in order to have license to deport, license to ban multicultural teaching, license to ban Ethnic Studies, license to take away books or change what has been written by raza to promote a definition of "American" that is narrow and excludes all voices.

You go Libro Traficante Banned Book Caravan—you go and take Arizona all those books they banned. Cross that state line and bestow on those hungry young students, on all of the state—las palabras de tantas culturas, de tantas voces from where we live, from where we came, from where we walk taking our land with us.

A Mestiza mans The Chilean Winter. Children’s Lit Conference.

We norteamericanos seem to worship the cult personality; it is all about individualism, every [wo]man for itself, and nurturing the voyeur in us by watching someone else succeed or fail at the Superbowl, on an irreality show, or America's Funniest Videos. Give us our X-Box, IPodTouch and 3D-plasma TV so we can happily retreat to our condos where we will be led to believe that the Occupy "fad" won't survive the winter and that politics is really about Republican primaries. We'll then vote by mail or online. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy and our unfair share of it wither.

That's why people here maybe would have chosen Tim Tebow as person of the year 2011, instead of The Protestor, as did Time Magazine. To check this, the British newspaper The Guardian asked its readers for their nominations. The result: 78% chose Camila Vallejo--former vice president of the Student Federation of the University of Chile, and the face of student-led Chilean protests. Most of us here never heard of her, since she didn't make it to the American Idol finals.

In many exciting parts of the world, politics has lost its electoral politics emphasis. The streets, a la 60s, has toppled presidents, dictators, and led to the kind of changes we starve for. There is protest and street action taking place here, but they receive little press, reinforcing our only-the-vote myopia. But at least in Chile, a mestiza has been showing that something else is possible.

Here's excerpts from The Guardian article:
"The 23-year-old Ms. Vallejo has gained rock-star status among the global activist class. Since June she has led regular street marches of up to 200,000 people through Santiago’s broad avenues—the largest demonstrations since the waning days of the Pinochet regime in the late 1980s. Under her leadership, the mobilization, known as the Chilean Winter, has gained nationwide support.

“ 'Commander Camila,' as her followers call her, has become a personality in her own regard. She skewers senators in prime-time TV debates and stays on message with daytime talk-show hosts hungry for lurid details about her personal life, while her eloquence gives her a preternatural ability to connect with an audience far beyond her left-wing base.

"In perhaps the most poignant set piece in the year of the protester, Ms. Vallejo addressed a dense ring of photographers and reporters in August while kneeling within a peace sign made of spent tear-gas shells, where she calmly mused about how many educational improvements could have been bought with the $100,000 worth of munitions at her feet.

"The movement is upending Chilean society. True, it is centered on a policy question, namely reforming an educational system that disproportionally favors the children of wealthy families. [It is] a nonviolent social revolution in which disaffected, politically savvy youth are trying to overthrow the mores of an older generation, one they feel is still tainted by the legacy of Pinochet. It is not just about policy reform, but also about changing the underlying timbers of Chilean society.

"The liberalization of higher education has led to improvements in access, [while] tuition has consistently outpaced inflation and now represents 40 percent of the average household’s income.

"At the same time, protesters say that wealthy students from private and expensive, co-pay charter schools have unfair access to elite universities, while the rest struggle to meet entrance standards at under-financed public institutions.

"The Chilean Winter dabbled in the absurd, but with a high-tech, social-media twist. Thousands gathered in front of the presidential palace in June dressed as zombies, then broke into a choreographed dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. In July, students again gathered in front of the palace for a huge “kiss-in.”

"It has used Ms. Vallejo’s 300,000-plus Twitter followers to quickly initiate huge “cacerolazos,” a form of dictatorship-era protest where people walk the streets banging on pots and pans.

"Ms. Vallejo said, 'People are not tolerating the way a small number of economic groups benefit from the system. Having a market economy is really different from having a market society.' "

If anyone wants to accuse me of encouraging cult personality, I have no problem with that because Cesar Chavez, Gandhi, Che, and La Pasionaria happen in history; they're not made by me, the mainstream press or anyone else. If anything, the Occupy's focus on communal, community decisions--while noteable--seem to preclude the possibility that historic personalities can naturally arise. Not so in The Chilean Winter, which may account for some of its success. For me, there's nothing to debate.

Here, we don't seemingly have a Chicana or Chicano like Camila Vallejo receiving the same following or coverage in the U.S., yet--although if we did, it might be months before we learned of it from the mainstream press--but young and old activist gente can take inspiration from her. Then maybe next year's Guardian poll will feature one of our Spanish surnamed.

To read the entire Guardian article, click here.

More words from Camila Vallejo:

"Vallejo said on the subject of her looks: 'You have to recognise that beauty can be a hook. It can be a compliment, they come to listen to me because of my appearance, but then I explain the ideas. A movement as historical as this cannot be summarised in such superficial terms.

" 'We do not want to improve the actual system; we want a profound change – to stop seeing education as a consumer good, to see education as a right where the state provides a guarantee.

" 'Why do we need education? To make profits. To make a business? Or to develop the country and have social integration and development? Those are the issues in dispute.' "

[Taken from here.]

______________

National Latino Children’s Literature Conference

Courtesy of Alma Flor Ada, comes this:

Conference Description
On March 29th and 30th, 2012 celebrate the rich traditions and diversity within the Latino cultures at the National Latino Children’s Literature Conference. Discover how to meet the informational and literacy needs of Latino children via high quality, culturally relevant literature and the latest educational strategies.

Engage in unique networking opportunities with librarians, teachers, educators, and researchers from across the nation as we explore how to make intercultural connections and serve this rapidly growing, uniquely diverse population.

As the number of Latino children and their families continues to increase, so does the need for understanding these diverse cultures. This exclusive conference provides a forum for sharing current research and practice addressing the cultural, educational, and informational needs of Latino children and their families. At the same time, the conference also examines the many social influences that Latino children’s and young adult literature have upon the developing child and adolescent.

Beginning Thursday March 29th at 9 a.m. on the historical University of Alabama campus, nationally-recognized, award-winning Latina author and professor Dr. Monica Brown will launch the recurring conference theme “Connecting Cultures and Celebrating Cuentos” with a powerful keynote address.

Participants will then have the opportunity to attend breakout sessions related to Latino children’s and young adult literature, library services to Latinos, and literacy education for Spanish-speaking and Latino children. Following these small group sessions, award-winning Latino author René Colato Laínez and award-winning Latino artist Joe Cepeda will discuss the collaborative synergy behind their work. Latina author Meg Medina will then present a rousing keynote about the milagros found in her books.

Thursday evening, all the Latino children's book creators will celebrate El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day), Latino children’s literature, and cultural literacy with a free community event at the Tuscaloosa Public Library. This Noche de Cuentos (Evening of Stories) begins at 6:30 p.m. and includes storytelling and story readings, refreshments, and free books for the niños.

On Friday March 30th, award-winning, internationally renown authors Dr. Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy will energize participants and open the day’s events with a keynote address about transformative multicultural education. Breakout sessions for both practitioners and researchers as well as graduate and undergraduate students will follow and include a variety of topics related to Latino children’s literature and literacy. Research posters will also be on display throughout the conference.

A buffet lunch will be served in the beautiful Gorgas Library and followed by an engaging collaborative keynote by award-winning Latino artist Joe Cepeda and Latina author Monica Brown. Afterwards breakout sessions will include topics related to education, literacy, storytelling, and library services for Latino children. The day will end with small group sessions with all the authors and illustrators.

By attending the National Latino Children's Literature Conference, participants have the chance to meet award-winning Latino authors and illustrators, attend exciting break-out sessions, engage in exclusive networking opportunities, and celebrate cultural literacy in a Día community event. Come deepen your understanding of the Latino cultures and celebrate their rich diversity within our classrooms and libraries.

For more info, go here.

Bits & Pieces On A Winter Friday

La Bloga-Friday columnist Melinda Palacio is taking the day off owing to an exhausting two-day sitting with noted portratist Margaret Garcia. Ms. Garcia has accepted Tia Chucha Press’ commission to paint Melinda’s portrait for the cover of Palacio’s upcoming poetry collection from Tia Chucha Press. Melinda, via Denise Chavez, sends along news of Librotraficantes infiltrating Arizona with banned books.

Librotraficantes Caravan Coming To Mesilla

Because Latino Studies has been banned in Arizona, writers and activists are organizing a caravan to Tucson to smuggle banned Latino books back into Arizona! Librotraficante Banned Book Bash Caravan will be filled with authors and activists bringing banned books back into Arizona, to give away. The bus will be filled with authors who were banned, new authors, as well as other advocates concerned with preserving First Amendment rights of Equal Protection and Freedom of Speech.

Librotraficantes Banned Book Caravan leaves Houston Monday, March 12. Librotraficantes Banned Book Caravan arrives in Tucson Saturday, March 17.

Librotraficantes Banned Book Caravan plans stops in Texas and New Mexico prior to infiltrating Arizona's lightly guarded Eastern border. Additional stops will be listed as they are finalized, and as funding permits. Donations can be given to Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say by visiting the website www.librotraficante.com

Librotraficante Tony Díaz, accompanied by various writers, holds a press conference and a Quick Lit Throw Down reading on Thursday, March 15 at ten a.m. at Cultural Center de Mesilla, home base of the Border Book Festival. The caravan heads to Albuquerque that evening for a Librotraficante Banned Book Bash at a location to be announced.

Among banned authors participating throughout the week will be Sandra Cisneros, Dagoberto Gilb, Luis Alberto Urrea.

For more information, contact the Border Book Festival at 575-523-3988, bbf@borderbookfestival.com

Foto Essay: "In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures Of Women Artists In Mexico And The United States"

Michael Sedano

It’s as good as you think it’s going to be. That’s my final verdict on "In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures Of Women Artists In Mexico And The United States,” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until May 6, 2012. Not that the experience comes unflawed, but the art certainly comes together as a stunning, breath-taking show about women by women artists. 

LACMA’s publicity features a Frida Kahlo self-portrait, and the LA Times picked the same one to lead its online review. Kahlo draws ‘em in, so why not? If Frida brings visitors to LACMA to enjoy this fabulous excursion into art and ideas, lead with Frida. 

Everyone knows Frida Kahlo. But after a couple invigorating hours strolling the various galleries viewers emerge with an immensely enlarged knowledge and lasting visual memories of works and artists in gratifying depth beyond Frida. 

As LACMA’s p.r. notes, “Iconic figures such as Louise Bourgeois, Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo, Lee Miller, Kay Sage, Dorothea Tanning, and Remedios Varo are represented, along with lesser known or newly discovered practitioners.”

Among the many benefits of being retired from the world of work comes the leisure to attend this exhibition on a relatively quiet Thursday morning. Yet at the early hour and weekday, the luxury of spending time alone with a particular favorite rarely happened, with the crowd. I’m guessing the weekend will be packed, and crowd control will become an issue. That’s when the ropes will be necessary.

The Resnick is one huge space, providing 45,000 square feet. Designers have divided that into three long, narrow spaces. “Wonderland” hangs in the West wing. The space runs nearly the length of a football field, then turns back on itself about a third of the distance before exiting.

End to end, it’s a long walk and you're only 2/3 of the walk in. Make that doubly long if one elects to revisit a favorite piece. To form two long exhibition spaces, designers defined them using free-standing partitions set at acute angles that outline each room. The diagonals reflect the sharp peaks of the pavilion’s roofline, a nice touch.

Placement at these angles creates open space between partitions, but that generous space is blocked off by webs of thick sisal rope. Being generous, one could say the ropes resemble the incised lines of certain artworks on display, but more realistically the ropes are a huge flaw. For one thing, acrobatic rule breakers could roll underneath. LACMA realizes this and has stationed lots of uniformed guards nearby. 

This surrealist exhibition enriches one’s experience and broadens one’s knowledge. Lots of food for thought in the diversity of content, technique, presentation.

Go to LACMA at your earliest convenience, even if you have to suffer the weekend crowd. Parking’s $10 bucks. Admission to the show sets you back $22.00. Under 17 free.

Here Are Women

Happily, LACMA permits photography at this venue Sadly, so many people whip out their cameras and flash away. Flash illumination is anathema to preservation. Happily, the space is lighted sufficiently to grab a handful of images at ISO800 within 1/60 and 1/4 of a second at f/4, on a Canon T2i and 55-18mm IS lens. 

Click each image for a larger view, or visit the home gallery of these frames at  Read! Raza.

Las Dos Fridas dominates its room, given its magnificent size and popularity. Side-by-side are Leonora Carrington and Helen Lundeberg. Three giants. Frida's are the faces gente have come to see in person. She's one of dozens of delights. The exhibition rewards with so many women in disparate styles, the idealized, the horrific, the pixie doll, the romanticized, the photographed.

Helen Lundeberg. The Mountain. "Celotex" lends rich texture to the surface of this monumental painting.

Leonora Carrington. The Chrysopeia of Mary The Jewess. Carrington's representation in this show will bring her new popularity. Viewers who've seen only reproductions of Carrington's work will be astounded at the painter's vision.

Rosa Rolanda. Autorretrato. The curator's notes on the piece describe a US woman adopting Mexicana culture in the midst of divorcing her Mexicano. The curatorial commentary draws frequent remarks among visitors. Some overheard people remark on the fluffiness, others on the curator's need to explain excessively, especially obvious features. 

This is by by Frida Khalo. I did not get the title. The curators set this painting strategically removed from other Kahlo work. The visitor must turn around on entering the gallery to see this on the wall. There's a grand moment among visitors when they recognize the style, lean into the placard and confirm their recognition in the face of its restrained surreality. Then one notices that airplane.

Painting and drawing highlight the exhibition. The curators include numerous fotos including exhibition prints, solargrams, posterized and images manipulated the old-fashioned way, in the darkroom with light and chemistry.

A marked contrast from the liberation expressed in the art is the curatorial decision to force viewers to see the show in a highly ordered manner. Ropes impede one's election of a personalized viewing experience, leaving no question this is the curator's show and no one else's. After going through the exhbition once in the directed sequence, viewers must retrace their steps to revisit a particular painting or face, or peek through the ropes for a glimpse of a favorite piece so near and yet so far.

This room surprises and disappoints with that huge blank space. Placing this selection of small pieces--some two-up to save space?-- amid such emptiness gives the impression these are unimportant leftovers. The blank is a filled-in portal. Perhaps the wall is too weak to support one of these precious works? Still, the room has a desultory feel that, with the weird ropes, are the exhibition's only glaring flaws.

Chicanonautica: Ocotillo Dreams, Arizona Dystopia

by Ernest Hogan

People always ask me why I live in Arizona. The truth is, it’s not all dystopian political turmoil. The state is a wonderful, weird mix of human eccentricity and strange, natural beauty. I never go long without encountering something that amazes and inspires me -- like the ocotillo.

The ocotillo has thin, twisting branches -- it’s also know as the Vine Cactus -- with thorns and sometimes green leaves and red flowers at the tips. In the dry season it looks like vegetal barbed wire. To people used to the plants of wetter climates, it looks otherworldly.

I can see how it inspired Melinda Palacio in her novel Ocotillo Dreams. It survives in a hostile environment, bringing a unique beauty to the world.

And there is a great deal of beauty and joy in Ocotillo Dreams. It’s not a dreary account of the torture of an oppressed people. The Latinos, a diverse group of people (in life and this novel), lead lives full of rico textures, rhythms, and flavors -- and this novel captures them well. It also moves through the space and time travel of Mexican-American life, with personal lives tangled up in history and politics, from the Eighties into the Nineties, from San Francisco to Chandler, Arizona. There are also some complicated love lives worthy of a telenovela.

Isola, the main character, and the other women in the book show the reality of the strong Latina. I’ve always wondered where the stereotype of the passive Latin female came from. There aren’t any in my family.

But, of course, the novel isn’t all pretty flowers and leaves. It runs headlong into the infamous immigrations sweeps of 1997. Ethnic romance turns into dystopia:

It’s 1997,” Isola screeched. Didn’t we learn anything from the Japanese internment camps? They can’t do that!”

After all, 1984 was a long time ago.

It may seem jarring, but Palacio brings it all together the way that unlikely juxtapositions do in Latino life. She keeps it real, and human, but touches magic realism with the dream that explains the title:

The red tips of the ocotillo are covered in blood and drip onto the woman’s face. When I reach her, I have a strong feeling that I know her, but I don’t recognize her because the blood is covering her face. Despite the blood and her being in the desert, she is singing and she is beautiful.

And none of it crushes the spirits of the ocotillo dreamers.

It is 2012. As Arizona politicians dream dystopian dreams, we can learn something from the ocotillo. It can look dead, but sprout green leaves. Fences made from dead, thorny branches often come back to leafy, flowery life.

That’s life in this dreaming desert.

Ernest Hogan is getting ready to launch the ebook version of his acclaimed novel, Cortez on Jupiter.

2012 Pura Belpré Award Winners

Gracias to ALA (The American Library Association) and ALSC (Association for Library Services for Children) for this post about the 2012 Pura Belpré Awards Winners. 
http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/belpremedal

The award is named after Pura Belpré, the first Latina librarian at the New York Public Library. The Pura Belpré Award, established in 1996, is presented annually to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth. It is co-sponsored by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), and REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking, an ALA affiliate.

2012 Author Award Winner

 
Under the Mesquite, by Guadalupe Garcia McCall, published by Lee and Low Books Inc.

In “Under the Mesquite,” Garcia McCall, writing in emotionally riveting free verse, gracefully manages to convey the experience of growing up in a bicultural community in Texas with geographical accuracy and a radiating authentic voice for its main protagonist fourteen-year-old Lupita, the oldest of eight children who is dealing with her mother’s terminal illness.

“Garcia McCall deftly communicates not only the experience of a youth losing her mother to cancer but that of a child surrounded by siblings embracing and discarding their Mexican roots in various degrees,” said Naidoo.

2012 Illustrator Award Winner

Diego Rivera: His World and Ours, written and illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh, published by Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of ABRAMS

Diego Rivera: His World and Ours highlights the accomplishments of Mexican painter, activist, and muralist Diego Rivera. Tonatiuh’s stylized illustrations include elements of Mayan artwork and represent his interpretation of Diego’s original artwork, answering the question: what would Diego paint today? Through eye-catching digital collage, Tonatiuh juxtaposes contemporary Mexican life with the past.

“Tonatiuh’s visually appealing, layered artwork rendered in a mural style pays homage to Diego’s paintings while balancing traditional images with modern twists,” said Pura Belpré Award Committee Chair Jamie Campbell Naidoo.

2012 Author Honor Books

Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck by Margarita Engle, published by Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Engle’s beautifully written poetic narrative cuts to the heart of an untold story in Latin American history and describes the enslavement of the native peoples of the Caribbean by the Spanish along with the mixing of Spanish and native blood that now forms the vast majority of Latin America. Told from several points of view, the story captures the rhythm and sounds from a time long ago and encourages readers to explore Latino culture on their own.

Maximilian and the Mystery of the Guardian Angel: A Bilingual Lucha Libre Thriller written by Xavier Garza, published by Cinco Puntos Press.

Xavier Garza successfully captures the excitement that Max, an eleven-year-old Mexican-American boy, displays when he discovers that his favorite Lucha Libre wrestler is coming to town and might have a strange connection with his own family! This action packed bilingual mystery novel uses playful language that reinforces elements of Mexican-American culture and overflows with almost unbridled excitement for Lucha wrestling.
 
2012 Illustrator Honor Books

 
The Cazuela that the Farm Maiden Stirred illustrated by Rafael López, written by Samantha R. Vamos, and published by Charlesbridge.

Nothing is better than a delicious bowl of arroz con leche unless, of course, a host of farm animals have a hand in the preparation! Lopez’s blazing illustrations for the rhythmic, rollicking cumulative tale, “The Cazuela that the Farm Maiden Stirred” radiate a cheerful exuberance and are peppered with Latino cultural details that extend Vamos’ perky narrative.

Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match /Marisol McDonald no combina illustrated by Sara Palacios, written by Monica, and published by Children’s Book Press, an imprint of Lee and Low Books Inc.

Bright and vivacious Marisol, a young Peruvian-Scottish-American girl, loves peanut butter and jelly burritos and speaks both English and Spanish. Unfortunately, her teacher and classmates do not appreciate Marisol’s mashing of cultures. Using mixed media techniques, Palacios’ illustrations exude child appeal and biculturalism, allowing astute visual readers to identify the blending of cultures.