The Public Library Today

Books & Reading: An Interview with Luis Herrera

 

Recently I had an opportunity to spend a weekend with my former classmate and friend Luis Herrera, City Librarian, for the San Francisco Public Library, a position he’s held since 2005.

In 1976 Luis and I were two of fifteen students recruited by Dr. Arnulfo Trejo, Professor of Library Science at the University of Arizona in Tucson, as part of an innovative program to train Spanish Speaking Librarians. Dr. Trejo, born in the same Tucson historic barrio as Lalo Guerrero and the writer Mario Suarez, was aware of the great inequality of Library services to Spanish Speaking communities, a situation he wanted to improve.

The focal point of Dr. Trejo’s ideas was to graduate Librarians of Spanish Speaking backgrounds that would work in these underserved communities, be they school or the general public. His strategy was three pronged: to advocate, to educate and to serve as models.

Several of those fifteen students went on to have librarian careers with a great degree of responsibility: Jose Aponte a Puerto Rican became head of the San Diego County Library System, Martin Gomez, a Chicano, became City Librarian for the City of Los Angeles and then became the Vice Dean of Libraries for the University of Southern California, Orlando Romero, a Manito, in addition to being a Santero and author of Nambe, was the Director of the Palace of the Governors Museum of New Mexico. Luis Herrera, a Chuqueno from El Paso, before going to San Francisco was City Librarian for Pasadena.


Antonio-Luis this interview is about books and libraries, so we'll ease into it by each of us telling a story that's relevent.

Luis. To tell you the truth my first experience with the public library was not very good. When Iwas a young boy my mother took my brother and me to the El Paso Public Library and we checked out some books. I was really happy with my books until we were notified by the library that the books were a loan and that if they were not returned they were sending a "book cop" to collect them. So all summer I lived in fear whenever someone came to the door. Heck we were just kids and didn't know any better.

 Antonio- My best story about books is about my grandmother, who was a maid at the Sheraton town House. She and the other women who cleaned the rooms were allowed to keep stuff left behind by the guests if it was not claimed within three months. Thus she would bring home lots of paperbacks, pulp fiction mostly with racy sex scenes and fortunately for me my grandmother couldn’t read and never knew what she was giving me. But sometimes the books were best sellers like Marjorie Morningstar, Studs Lonigan and The World of Susie Wong.

Luis-You had your own special library.
 

Antonio-  That's right. Ok Luis, you’ve been the mero mero for 20 years and when you finally retire I’ll have to telephone you so you can give me orders. It’ll easy the pain of not being the boss anymore.

Luis- No it’s not like that he answers laughing. Now a days you don’t order people, it’s more like saying can I suggest that you consider….            

Antonio –Besides having to relate to staff differently, what differences do you see in librarianship from when you started forty years ago?

Luis- Libraries are so changed Tony. When I started one couldn’t say library without conjuring up an image of a book. It’s not like that anymore. Libraries are so much more.

Antonio- Talk about how that happened?

Luis Herrera  December 2017

Luis- It was a process. But the big changes began when the Internet burst on the scene around 1994 and libraries had to respond to the public demand for computers.

Antonio- I’ll share something that’s related. I was working at the Kellogg Foundation at that time and we had a dual concern, one that the digital divide that was developing between well to do communities and those that weren’t so well off was a threat to our democracy and the second concern was that public libraries, the institution that has always had a role in providing information, was not going to be able to make the transition to the information age that was emerging.

Luis- Well that fear certainly didn’t manifest, evidenced by the fact that 20% of our circulation is electronic material.

Antonio –That much?

Luis- Yes  and I tell you that the library is so much more now. Libraries are just a microcosm of what is taking place outside in the rest of the world.

Antonio- So tell me.

Luis-Well for example, San Francisco like most cities has a large population of homeless people and we took the step of having a social worker on site to attend to their needs. Another thing we do is to partner with a nonprofit agency that parks a bus in front, outfitted with showers and a barber.

Antonio-That is quite different from the traditional public library.

Luis-It is. And those two services take place outside our walls but we have also changed what goes on inside. For example we had a good sized area for old periodicals that we converted it into a teen area that we call The Mix.

Luis Herrera December 2017

Antonio- Taking the room away from periodicals must have ruffled some feathers?

Luis- It did Tony but all of those periodicals are available online and the teens really needed their own space. It’s incredible what goes on in there. We have a 3D printer, audio recording equipment, film making equipment and all sorts of creative projects take place. And the teens really own that place and run it.

Antonio- Wow! Sounds pretty nice. And for adults do you have something  special?

Luis –We do. One really neat thing we offer are spaces for the Career Online High School that allows a person to get a fully accredited high school diploma, not a GED. And for those that need it, we can provide a laptop and something called a MeFi which is a device that allows them access to the Internet. It’s like WiFi except it can work from their home.

Antonio-And I’m certain that you have all sorts of ebooks and audio books and online databases.

Luis- Oh of course and we continue to have regular books.

Antonio- I’d like to switch topics, knowing that you have served in national organizations and that you’ve had some recognition for your work. Can you tell me about that?

Luis –Sure, there are a couple that I feel especially proud to have been associated with. One of them is The Digital Public Library of America that is now online and providing access to several large digitized collections, like the Smithsonian, The New York Public Library, Harvard, the University of Virginia and others.

Antonio- And a person can search those collections.

Luis- Absolutely. It’s an amazing resource.

Antonio- And the other one?

Luis- I was appointed by President Obama to the board of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, whose mission is to provide federal support to 120,00 libraries and 35,000 museums. We considered proposals and made grants.

Antonio- Before we bring this platica to a close, can you talk about how you have been involved in continuing or even expanding the presence of Latinos in Libraries.

Luis-Gee Tony there are now so many in the library field. One of the ways we have promoted their entry is through Reforma the national organization whose mission is to promote library services to Spanish Speaking communities and of course we push librarianship as a career whenever we can. We even have scholarships for that purpose. And for several years I have been a board member of Knowledge River, The University of Arizona's Masters program in Librarianship for Latinos and Native Americans.

Antonio- Knowledge River follows up on what Dr. Trejo started so many years ago.

Luis- Yes he was a visionary.

Antonio- Luis I appreciate the time you've given for this little chat. It's nice to know that the public libraries are keeping up with the times. 


Below some of the original fifteen individuals selected for the Master program in Library Science by Dr. Artnulfo Trejo in the back row with the red vest.The two women in the front row L-R Amanda Castillo, Laurita Moore. In the back row L-R Antonio SolisGomez, Francisco Avalos, Luis Herrera, Dr. Arnulfo Trejo and Alberto Villegas, taken a few years after graduation.

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I'll Be Homie For Christmas

Flo's Latest Creation

Flo, the brains of the outfit, is also a very creative person.  Many of you have appreciated her annual Día de Muertos altars and cakes at KUVO and here at our little casa on the Northside.  Some of you have seen her collection of folklore, and others know that her garden is loaded with color, gizmos and art. She also designs some of her clothes, organizes elaborate celebrations for grandchildren birthdays, decoupages, experiments with cookies and cakes, produces books and, on the side, keeps me in line. Life around Flo is never dull, sometimes dizzying, and always interesting.

Her latest creation can be seen in the photo above -- a Christmas village with a twist.   For some close-up views of the diorama, I've attached a few more photos and a video (please excuse the shakiness of my 69 year-old hands.) She calls it Homie Christmas.  

And here's the story of Homie Christmas ...

Once, in the Land of Make Believe (cue Chuck Mangione and Esther Satterfiel) a vato named Chuy the Cholo had serious doubts about where he was headed in his "so-called life," as he put it.  In his search for truth, he traveled from a street corner to Chubby's to the pool hall to his favorite bar to his AA meeting, and everywhere he went, he asked, "Is this all there is?"  People just looked at him -- he had a reputation, you know.  He kept on, straight up 38th.

He became more and more frustrated, not because no one knew the answer, but because no one took him seriously.  At least not until he stumbled across the Christmas Pot Luck Dinner and Bingo Tournament in the basement of old St. Dominic's church.  He'd heard about the pot luck but he always figured that it was for viejitas and their grandchildren, and people who had nothing better to do on a snowy night a few days before Christmas.  But, he realized he was hungry, and he had nothing better to do on that snowy night a few days before Christmas, and although he didn't have any pot (and not any luck, for sure) to contribute, he did have half of a bean and beef special in his jacket pocket that he'd forgotten about.  So, maybe he could trade a cold and stale half burrito for a warm fresh tamal?

He walked into the basement and was immediately met by his old pal Sapo.  But Sapo looked different -- more in control of himself, more at peace, which was really a surprise because Sapo was crazy, man, if you know what I mean. 

Sapo and Chuy bumped knuckles.  Then, Sapo accepted Chuy's offering of a burrito half.  The two walked to a large table in the middle of the hall.  Sapo placed the burrito on the table.  Chuy had no explanation for what happened next.  By this time, the dry and stale half burrito had turned into a greasy bag of about a dozen steaming burritos that Sapo spread on Gloria O'Hara's pink glass serving dish.  Chuy couldn't believe his eyes.

"What the ...?" Chuy said.

"It's Christmas, dude," Sapo answered. "And you're in the basement of St. Dominic's, and you gave what you could, and in case you hadn't noticed, you're right in the middle of Homie Christmas."

Chuy blinked his eyes.  "What the hell is that?"

"Easy, dude.  You're in a church."

"Sorry.  I'll re-phrase.  What the hell is a Homie Christmas?"

Sapo smiled.  "Take a look, bro.  It's all around you."

And sure enough --- the basement had become a wonderland of sights and sounds that Chuy had never imagined, much less seen.  Over in the corner was a living nativity, with some of his old posse acting the parts:   Chula as María, Dreamer as Jesús, Sleepy as José and Peewee as the Angel.  The wise guys bearing gifts were neighborhood fixtures:   Oranges Vato, the paletero and the panadero.  Padrecito played the Shepherd, along with a pack of street dogs.

There was more.  A couple of ex-cons watched a cockfight (no animals were harmed in this production.)  A band of young priests played the greatest hits of José Alfredo Jiménez. Officer Placa ate doughnuts and no one cracked a joke. At the other end of the basement, summer had returned and adults and children mingled among grass-thatched huts where vendors sold fruit, hats, flowers, pots, or bread.  Chuy could've had a haircut, if he wanted one. Or, he could've bought a fine piece of wood furniture from the carpenter's shop.

And there was more.

He kept looking and what he saw ... well, to get an idea, check out Flo's Homie Christmas display.

And Chuy?  Well, he never quite got an answer to his question. ¿Sabes qué? When he sat down and ate his tamal, which turned out to be exactly like the tamales his abuelita used to make when he was a child and which he never had his fill of, he realized that as long as he had a warm tamal, and he was surrounded by friends, and everyone was laughing or singing, and no one cried and no one made any pedo, then he really didn't need an answer, and he forgot the question. 

And he had a very merry Christmas.

_____________________________________________________________

Thanks to Rudy Ch. Garcia for the gift of his homie art commemorating KUVO.

Feliz Navidad by the Barrio Boyzz.

Later.

Manuel Ramos is the author of several novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction books and articles. His collection of short stories, The Skull of Pancho Villa and Other Stories, was a finalist for the 2016 Colorado Book Award. My Bad: A Mile High Noir was published by Arte Público Press in 2016 and was a finalist for the Shamus Award in the Original Paperback category sponsored by the Private Eye Writers of America.  He is hard at work on his next Chicano Noir crime novel.

Chicanonautica: High Aztech News

by Ernest Hogan 

High Aztech is alive and well, and rampaging through the world. Really. I have to check Google to keep up.

Reviews keep coming, and not all of them are good. I don't despair over them. It's a diverse world, dissenting viewpoints happen, and deserve attention. Besides, it get suspicious if they're all good reviews.

This one gave is from a Carol Evelin, who gives High Aztech one star, and headlined it “Don't waste your money.” It's also now the first review you see on the Amazon.uk. Like others, she objects to the Españahuatl slang. She quotes a paragraph as an example:

My Aztec calendar bedsheets still smelled like Cóatliquita. I kept thinking about that as I had sex with Patiyonena. The muchacha - yeah, I know, she's over twenty, but I can't really think of her as a full-grown woman-must have been good; I remember gozoaing, but I don't remember much about the act, except that I forgot about the desmadreization of my life. Also, I kept opening my eyes, to remind myself of who the Mictlán I was patchioaing, and somehow I managed not to forget and cry out "Cóatliquita!"

Not bad, if you ask me. Could even arouse some people's interest.

She goes on to say: It's not the sex that bothers me, it's the continuous use of words that I don't know nor understand. . . I want a story that flows without being constantly jarred to a stop by gibberish.

Even in this century, there are still a lot of monolinguals with limited vocabularies out there who get upset by languages—and other things--that they aren't familiar with. They shouldn't read my books.

They probably shouldn't read books at all.

 

Facing the unfamiliar is what SF/F is all about. Escapism is a mere side-effect.

I go through the world, merrily encountering strange new words, and adding them to my vocabulary. It makes life interesting, richer, more fun.

Or, to use the quote from the book that's posted on Goodreads:

They jabbered amongst themselves in a bizarre jibberish that sounded like Spanish gone wrong: maybe gringo Spanglish, some kind of Españahuatl that I hadn’t decoded yet, or a dialect of Spanmayan, Zapotecnish, Spanotomi, Mixtecnish, or some other new native language; or Japanish, Spanorean or…I’m getting carried away. You need a talent for picking up new words and grammars these days-it’s become an obsession with me, someday I’ll probably write a book about it, but in what language?

As for it not being worth your money, if you have Kindle Unlimited you can get the High Aztech ebook for free—a great deal for those of us who read to encounter and explore new things.

Also, royalties keep coming in. It's not going to make me rich, but it indicates that some folks like it, like the at students at School of the Art Institute of Chicago that Josh Rios recently introduced to the book.

And it was called “the seminal Chicano science fiction novel” in an article about Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in Americas at the University of California's ARTSblock. Not to be confused with the book Altermundos, where its praises are sung in essays reprinted from the journal Aztlan.

And High Aztech will be soon be discussed as part of Sal Herrera's “The Force of Teotl: Deriving Change From Chicano/a Futurisms and Indigenous Philosophies” at the 2018 Native American Literature Symposim.

So, I'm boogieing into the new year with a smile on face. I'm a cyberpunk/Afrofuturist/Xicanxfuturist/Chicanonaut, intruding my way into science fiction, comics, fine art, and Latinx/Native American Literature. My virus is spreading. ¡Ticmotraspasarhuililis!

Ernest Hogan is also busy drawing a lucha libre comic strip, and is determined to finish his insane Victor Theremin novel in 2018.

La Noche Buena: A Christmas Story

Written by Antonio Sacre

Illustrated by Angela Dominguez

Age Range: 5 - 7 years

Grade Level: Preschool - 3

Hardcover: 32 pages

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0810989670

ISBN-13: 978-0810989672

Nina is visiting her grandmother in Miami for Christmas. Usually she spends it in snowy New England with her mother and her family, but this year is different. She isn’t certain what to make of a hot and humid holiday, until she learns the traditions of her father’s side of the family from her Cuban grandmother. She helps prepare for the evening and takes part in all their traditions—the intricate cooking for the feast, the dancing, the music, and the gathering of relatives and neighbors. It all comes together for a Noche Buena that Nina will never forget.

Antonio Sacre and Angela Dominguez have created a wonderful story that everyone who celebrates Christmas will enjoy. The book includes a glossary of Spanish words.

Reviews

Dominguez's bright acrylics convey calm and joy, while Sacre's visceral prose captures the voice of a child gaining assurance, as well as the kindness and mutual respect of a loving extended family. –Publisher Weekly

A warm bit of holiday diversity. Diane Olivo-Posner, Los Angeles Public Library - School Library Journal

A memorable celebration, equally suited to reading alone or aloud, and rich in joyful, intimate family feeling. Grades 2-4. --John Peters- Booklist

Antonio Sacre is a Cuban-American writer, storyteller, and performance artist. He lives in Los Angeles. Visit him online at www.antoniosacre.com.

Angela Dominguez was born in Mexico City and lives in northern California. She illustrated Ava Tree and the Wishes Three and Carmen Learns English. Visit her online at www.angeladominguezstudio.com.

Salvation and Life in the Mission

Review: Cathy Arellano, Salvation On Mission Street. San Francisco: Kórima Press, 2016
ISBN: 978-0692692455

Michael Sedano

A first book is a coming-out party in diverse senses of the phrase. Like a Quinceañera  or a debutante ball, the first publication marks the writer’s debut among literary peers. In a different sense, for author Cathy Arellano, coming out meant a drunk uncle blurting it out. In a loving familia like los Martinez, no one lost sleep over it.

Being out is a fact, not a theme of Salvation On Mission Street, though narratives happen upon Arellano’s sexuality like they happen upon other facts of life. These 27 stories, poems, and a family map take a generally chronological journey into one familia’s life in San Francisco’s Mission District. The family map dates residences from 1958 to 1984, setting a time frame for stories. Not until the closing pages, however, does time matter to the Martinez family.

That’s a subtle time element linking the collection’s first two pieces, poems. The poems describe graffiti demanding a succession of causes that signaled Mission activism over the years. From U.S. out of El Salvador, then out of Honduras, to  the timeless,Yanqui Go Home. Arellano’s not sure if that means her.

There’s Free Huey, Free Angela, Free Norma Jean and whatever sundry cause gets spray-painted on a wall, then covered over with the next causa. Until recently, the only thing changing in the Mission is the date. What happens to Arellano’s family, los Martinez, happens over again next door to a different set of six or eight people sleeping in two rooms, loquacious drunks, harried adults, flexibly pragmatic children. To borrow an old teevee intro, “there are 50 thousand stories in the Mission, this is one of them.”

There’s warmth. There’s extended family love with a knuckle to the head, crowd management strategies that include cussing and shouting. There are primas. Salvation’s familia narratives will tickle many a reader, if only for Arellano’s styled nostalgia, though readers won’t miss the author’s political resistance. That comes with growing up brown, and growing up brown in the Mission.

There’s a heaping tablespoon of irony in almost every story, it’s in the way the author looks at the world and fine-tuned by the Mission. The title story offers a wonderful laugh derived from the irony of a church lady preaching salvation to teenagers Cathy and Angel. When the church lady works up to a big finish and demands “Do you?” believe? Arellano answers “I do!” whereupon she and Angel embrace in an “I now pronounce you” erotic kiss.

There’s heartbreak. A major element of coming into one’s own majority is the death of elders and loved ones. Mom dies, perhaps from AIDS. Arellano understates her mother’s joie de vivre and love of dancing the night away in bars and clubs. In her Foreword, Cherríe L. Moraga refers to mom as  “Motown-loving painted-lipped high femme”.

Arellano abandons her brightly ironic tone where she relates her mother’s death. The writer presents an incredibly intimate moment, daughter telling mother it’s OK to leave, and the moment life passes. That must have been hard to write and edit, but like most of the work, Arellano’s writing sparkles and not from tears alone.

Prima Nancy dies young. After introducing the older cousin as a lovably bossy adolescent, and a gentle flower picker, the author devastates the reader with the news of Nancy’s dying young. Oddly, Nancy isn’t one of the familia named in the dedication. Maybe I’m the only one to notice.

That plus ça change motif gets plowed under by developers as the book wraps up. Gentrification brings time certain eviction dates and ugly permanent change for families and for the neighborhood. For families like Arellano’s, poor people living hand-to-tamal and residing for generations within a few blocks of their previous rental, exogenous money means million-dollar penthouses atop mom and pop grocery stores, and “improving our community / by kicking us out”. The final chapter, a poem “If You Can’t On Mission Street,” marks Arellano’s hail, and farewell, to her Mission.

Readers are going to enjoy meeting Cathy Arellano through Salvation On Mission Street, her debut collection of stories and poems. Everyone’s life is worth a telling, and most worth living. Arellano couldn’t find herself and her familia in the literature she studied as an English major. She decided not to pursue a Ph.D. in literature and instead write literature.

Good start.

Order Salvation On Mission Street publisher-direct from San Francisco's Kórima Press (link), or ask your local independent bookseller to order. Buy local, buy brick and mortar.

Dini Karasik, Jennifer Givhan, Raquel Z. Rivera, Andrea Serrano, Cathy Arellano

Mail Bag
February Comes Fast. To New Mexico We Go!

February 18, 21, 23, 24 & 25, 2018
2 pm—Saturday & Sundays
7:30 pm—Wednesday & Friday

Hector Armienta’s Bless Me, Ultima is a fully-staged opera with orchestra, sung in English with both English and Spanish supertitles and presented in three acts with one intermission. This will be the world premiere of the Rudolfo Anaya masterwork.

Opera Southwest, along with the National Hispanic Cultural Center and San Jose’s Opera Cultura, is thrilled to have commissioned an opera based on Rudolfo Anaya’s best-selling novel Bless Me, Ultima. The composer, Hector Armienta, has worked with Mr. Anaya on the libretto, and the resulting piece will be an historic event. Maestro Guillermo Figueroa conducts.
$15, $29, $45, $59, $75, $89; discounts for groups of 10+ and patrons 30 and younger



Mr. and Mrs. North America and All the Ships At Sea... (NBC News story)
Seven Words For The CDC

The banned words are guidance on how to present the budget to the sensitive ears in the chain of command in Health & Human Services, and not really prohibited. What this discloses about H&HS remains up for discussion.

"In a statement sent to NBC News on Monday, CDC Director Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald pushed back against reports that the agency had prohibited use of the words "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," "fetus," "evidence-based" and "science-based."

"The CDC remains committed to our public health mission as a science- and evidence-based institution, providing for the common defense of the country against health threats. Science is and will remain the foundation of our work," Fitzgerald said. "As I have said previously, there are no banned, prohibited or forbidden words at the CDC — period.""

Link

Tezcatlipoca’s Glory

A poem by Daniel A. Olivas

I made a fool out of you

Back in the bright days

Of the Aztecs and Toltecs.

I made a fool out of you,

And it was easy.

I was a simple god,

Not as wonderful as you,

The great Quetzalcoatl.

¡Ay Dios mío!

You, the sun god, were the greatest!

Long after the Spaniards

Evicted us and brought the Christian

Deities, you were remembered!

Even D. H. Lawrence named

A novel after you: The Plumed Serpent.

Because that is your form,

A horrendous snake

With a head framed in magnificent feathers.

Yet who am I, simple Tezcatlipoca,

As compared to you?

The god of the air!

The pinche goddamned air!

What kind of god is that?

But it was I who shamed you

So that you fled Tenochtitlán,

Our homeland,

In humiliation.

I know you remember the night

I disguised myself

As a great hairy spider and

Offered you your very first taste of pulque

Which (as I’m sure you now know)

Is worse than tequila

Because it sneaks up on your brain

Without warning.

¡Ay!  You got muy borracho!

And you loved that warm feeling

That ran down your throat and into your stomach

And your groin grew hot, too!

What did the great sun god do?

In a drunken heat,

You had your way

With your sister, Quetzalpetlatl!

I watched from behind a cactus

As you ripped her clothes, and you

Moaned an ugly moan, and your sister

Screamed and I laughed!

And in shame, you left your home

And wandered,

Leaving it all to me!

My brilliant plan,

So simple but so effective.

Why you would trust a great

Hairy spider is beyond me.

Perhaps your hubris lulled you

Into a sad belief that no creature

Would dare cause harm to Quetzalcoatl!

I made a fool out of you

Back in the bright days

Of the Aztecs and Toltecs.

I made a fool out of you,

And it was easy.

[“Tezcatlipoca’s Glory” is featured in Daniel A. Olivas’s debut poetry collection, Crossing the Border (Pact Press).]