Review: Gypsy Curses Beatified Bearded Woman. The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks

Review: Alicia Gaspar de Alba. The Curse of the Gypsy. Houston: Arte Público Press, 2018. ISBN: 978-1-55885-862-6

Michael Sedano

Alicia Gaspar de Alba calls her collection of stories, The Curse of the Gypsy, a “deconstructed novel” which she explains is like a do-it-yourself meal, a literary sin sul lo or hot pot where the diners assemble their repast selecting tidbits from the lazy susan.

The author is no lazy Alicia, assembling ten stories and a novella (which is the subtitle). Given the strictures of print, she’s organized them and one reads from start to finish, the ten stories then the novella. Only then does a reader come upon the afterword, describing the banquet in store for a second reading.

Inadvertently, I took the author’s implicit advice and read the novella first. The narrative voice of that work is so different from the first of the ten stories that one's literary ear has to settle down after spending time in the dark ages.

Thinking of the disassembled novel, I might want to go to the funny stuff first. The YA third person voice in the teenage tattoo shop and the ribald humor of the cross-country bus travelers to start.

An amuse bouche with colloquial voices relating generally good-natured stuff, and settle in with the warmth of family reunion time, only to get gut-punched by a member of someone’s family running out of time and she knows it.

There are hard things in these lives, made harder by shifting perceptions a reader gleans in different stories. One story the voices write off a sister for being “deranged.” They’ve had to lock away the crazy sister. There's no reason not to take their side. Another story, a voice in a confessional relates a life of rape by her father, the family’s abject denial, labeling the child “deranged” and locking her away to hide her truth.

Gaspar de Alba usually rewards her readers with long, complex stories. A reader is so happy turning page after page following Sor Juana’s career, and equally pleased following Sister’s amanuensis from the convent to puritan New England. This time all you get is less than 220 pages.

The author makes every one of them count. It’s the voices of narrators in one set of stories, it’s the arresting tale itself in another story, holding a reader. Some stories spread over a dozen pages, others turn the page and it’s over. What makes a story a story? Read ten of them for ten different answers.

Look for the names of people. In one story, characters named X, Y, or Z play a prominent role. In another, a character thinks of a line of Marias in her heritage while she stares at indigenous faces seeking out her missing mother. She cries and her daughter Chole, Maria de la Soledad, comforts her.

I should specify look for name play in the ten stories. The novella is a pastiche of antique storytelling and a tour de force of vocabulary. It reads like a mild Decameron tale, or a low-key euphuistic experiment.

St. Wilgefortis is a real saint from a forgotten until now legendary Europe. Talk about names: Calsia; Domina, an honorific; Basilia Drusilla, called Sila; Wilge, Liberata Wilgefortis’ short name. There are the nine babies named in latin sequence, Quarta and Quinta, for example, who are harelips.

I suspect Alicia Gaspar de Alba, the English professor, had a lot of fun with this story and the sources it’s drawn upon. Indeed, there’s a researcher’s bibliography. The characters use a number of artifacts like lectus, cena, palla. One dries and eats an afterbirth. Another slakes her thirst then squats and takes a leak in public. It's nature, verdad?

Normally I’d rail against the author’s reliance upon appositional translation, but much of the time it works here. A Spanish or Latin phrase will immediately have a translation by the narrator, or the narrative itself makes clear the foreignism. In other instances, the author elects to leave the foreign terms to context. Set against the schism of native magic—one character need only think up a fire to produce a blaze—and emerging Christianity, context plays an important role for the reader not up on goetia magic and medieval history.

St. Wilgefortis’ people speak a lot of Italian or Latin, and a number of English words I had to look up. One character “bellows the logs in the fireplace” and gets burned. Darned if I know that use of “bellow.”

Vocabulary and Voice are but two of the elements that make The Curse of the Gypsy a delight. Another element a reader will want to revel in are numerous eloquent passages where the writer’s quill takes a life of its own from the scene. I found this especially in bullfighting paragraphs that echo the drama and intensity of Barnaby Conrad killing Manolete. Gaspar de Alba doesn’t kill her toreador, though the gore will be enough to give a PETA advocate night sweats.

The Curse of the Gypsy Ten Stories and a Novella is new from Arte Publico Press. Your local Indie bookseller can order it and get it to you as readily as the big internet retailer. Support your local independent bookseller, and GOTV.


The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks
Gluten-free Lemon Butter Shrimp Sauce on Pasta
Michael Sedano

Throwing all carbohydrate caution to the wind, the Gluten-free Chicano hungered for pasta.

The cupboard was also bare and the concièrge didn’t feel like going to the store.

The freezer held cooked shrimp, the pantry some noodles.

On hand always are lemon juice, butter, cornstarch, lactose-free whole milk, paprika, parmesan cheese.

I have a special Paprika. Chuck Braithwaite brought back from his travels for the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The better your ingredients, the more your dish will please you and guests. Ditto the Parmesan cheese, which is not from Chuck but Ralph's.

I planned a side dish of canned spinach because I was antojado. I didn't have bacon (see lazy concièrge) so I used bacon grease I keep in the freezer to flavor up the greens. Use fresh spinach or chard with chopped garlic when the garden, or Ralph's, provides.

Preparing Lemon Butter Shrimp Sauce over pasta is really fast when using cooked shrimp, and richly elegant. Use half-and-half or add some cream for a super rich flavor. You could add sherry to the sauce.

What is less easy is the carbohydrate count. Some people exercise a  50g of carbohydrate limit per meal. The total count by measure tallies around 55g of carbohydrates. The gluten-free pasta and the milk are the limit-pushers here.

Small servings, such as a single gluten-free tagliatelle nest and a couple of ladles of the sauce, limit the carbohydrate exposure to reasonable.Making a cup of sauce will probably leave half of it in the pan for light eaters.

Making Lemon Butter Shrimp Sauce Over Pasta

1. Defrost the shrimp. Pull off the tail.
2. Get some salted water on to boil. Add a bit of olive oil.

3. In a shallow pan, melt ½ to 1/3 cube butter with a pinch of black peppercorns, sea salt, and Paprika. When it’s boiling, stir in cornstarch and boil for a minute until the color changes.

4. Splash in a bit of whole milk to make the buttery roux into a thick paste. Quickly stir in the rest of the milk to dilute the roux completely. Lower the flame, add juice of one or two lemons, adjusting taste. Stir in ¼ cup grated parmesan cheese.

5. Simmer five to ten minutes, stirring regularly. The sauce needs to be velvety and thick, it coats the stirring tool but flows easily. If it gets too thick stir in a tablespoon of boiling pasta water.
6. While the sauce thickens, start cooking the gluten-free pasta. A critical process easily mucked up. The noodle must be completely limp in the rolling boiling water. Pinch off the end of several noodles and give them the al dente test. The instant they all please your bite, dump the pot into the colander to drain. Don’t delay.

7. Drain the pasta. If you rinse your cooked noodles, use cold water to stop the cooking.
8. Add the defrosted cooked shrimp to the steaming white sauce and raise the temperature. This sauce holds its heat, so it the pasta takes more time than predicted, leave the sauce off the heat. Be patient with the pasta. Don’t serve crummy hard noodles.
9. Ladle a base of white sauce on each plate.
10. Place a noodle nest on the sauced plate.
11. Ladle a helping of shrimp in white lemon butter sauce on each pasta nest.
12. A salad or vegetable completes the meal. I wilted onions in bacon fat and heated drained canned spinach.
13. Serve.

Counting Carbs (link to carb counter) 
2 nest egg noodle, 86g - 43g carbohydrate per nest
¼ cup corn starch 7g / tbs = 28g
Milk ½ cup 11g
Butter ½ cube 0g
Spinach 1 cup 7g
Shrimp, .05 g per small



The Gluten-free Chicano On Gluten-free Pasta

The most successful wheat analogs in the gluten-free world are beer and pasta. Good gluten-free beers existed the last time The Gluten-free Chicano tested birongas. Nowadays, el G-FC avoids alcohol and can’t personally vouch for beers like he once did. (link) 

Gluten-free breads, crackers, pretzels, cookies, not a one of them is edible despite looking like their wheat product analog. Two restaurants serve delicious gluten-free pizza. This is in the entire world, to the limits of The Gluten-free Chicano’s dining voyages.

One, Baggage Room in Pasadena, serves only on weekends. Palm Springs’ Giuseppe’s serves pasta and pizza (link) day-in, day-out. Giuseppe's is the best restaurant in the world, for gluten-free Italian food aficionados, and demands at least two visits a year.

Noodles compounded from rice, corn, and quinoa all are adequately like wheat pasta. Ancient Harvest brand quinoa product has proved itself the most satisfactory for tooth and taste, but tends to overcook easily and is costly. Early in the product's introduction I heard pedo that quinoa exports were sentencing Andean natives to malnutrition, but that’s cooled off as U.S. domestic quinoa production ramps up, and people probably care less about Andean natives. Quinoa, by the way, is higher in carbs than a cup of corn pasta.

Way-out analogs are answers. There's the vegetable spaghetti; it's not bad and grows prolifically. Ask Ichabod Crane for a spiral cutter for halowe'en, use it to make pumpkin noodles. Or, skip the pasta altogether and serve over steamed broccoli or cauliflower.

¡Provecho!

Poesía en los International Latino Book Awards de 2018

Poesía en los International Latino Book Awards de 2018

Por Xánath Caraza

El sábado pasado, 8 de septiembre, fue la ceremonia de premiación para la edición de 2018 de los International Latino Book Awards. 

Para Poesía hay cuatro categorías:

Best Poetry book—One Author—Bilingual

Best Poetry Book—One Author—English

Best Poetry Book—One Author—Spanish

Best Poetry Book—Multi-Author 

Este 2018, queridos lectores de La Bloga, tuve el gran honor de recibir primer lugar para dos de mis poemarios: Sin preámbulos / Without Preamble y Lágrima roja. 

A continuación todos los ganadores en las cuatro categorías de poesía para los International Latino Book Awards de 2018.

 Aquí pueden hacer click para ver una lista completa de todos los ganadores en todas las categorías para los ILBA de 2018. 

Aprovecho para felicitar a mi colega bloguero, René Colato Laínez quien recibió mención de honor en la categoría Best Children’s Nonfiction Picture Book por su libro Telegrams to Heaven: The Chilhood of Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero.

Felicidades a todos, viva la poesía y finalmente mis poemarios ganadores.

Best Poetry book—One Author—Bilingual

Sin Preámbulos / Without Preamble (Spartan Press) por Xánath Caraza, traducido por Sandra Kingery

Best Poetry Book—One Author—Spanish

Lágrima roja (Editorial Nazarí)

Teeth Never Sleep: Interview with Poet, Ángel García

Cover Design by Guillermo Lorca García Huidobro

Ángel García is this year’s CantoMundo Poetry Prize winner! His poetry collection,

Teeth Never Sleep,will soon be out October 2018, published by University of Arkansas Press in collaboration with CantoMundo. Every year, CantoMundo receives hundreds of entries for this prize, so it is quite an honor for García to be recognized.  

Born in Texas, and raised in the Los Angeles area, his poetry reflects various perspectives on immigration, identity, the question of home, the recovery of personal and political histories, family and relationships. It is a poetry collection offering a rich intensity of language, rhythm, and multi-layered meanings.  

Currently, García is living in the Midwest.  He is a graduate student working toward his PhD in Creative Writing/English at The University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  La Bloga is fortunate to have Ángel García with us today.  He literally wears his "poeta" identity on his arm:  

Amelia Montes:  Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, Ángel. I want to begin with the title. You chose a title which focuses on two poems in the collection, the first one being the shortest. And yet, despite its brevity, it speaks volumes.  Tell us about both poems which directly connect to the title of the books.  

Ángel García:  Teeth Never Sleep was a title I came to relatively late in the process of writing the book.  There had been several titles over the years.  I decided on this title, however, because both the poems you mention embody themes important to the manuscript:  silence and ritual.  The first version of the title poem explores silence, particularly male silence, and the consequences of being unwilling or unable to communicate.  The second version of the title poem explores a ritual performed by my speaker’s mother.  While these are tender rituals, rituals of a mother’s care, they are birthed from violent rites of passage.  

Amelia Montes:  Yes—and that comes through clearly: violence that begets a kind of tenderness and vice versa.  Also—on that theme, a recurring character is present in the manuscript: “el Esposo de la Llorona.”  How did his presence come about in your writing and what does this “Esposo” mean to you?  

Poem by Ángel García from Teeth Never Sleep

Ángel García:  I’m interested in the ways Chicana Feminism has reappropriated narratives of historical women to make new meaning about their lives—La Llorona and La Malinche being the two prime examples. And so thinking about the narrative of La Llorona, I was interested in exploring the male role and to a certain extent, his responsibility which is overlooked.  My attempt was not to redeem el Esposo, but rather challenge and explore the ways in which male emotions are often seen as rote and static.  Through the persona of el Esposo, I explore the possibility of grief in its various manifestations as this is something with which my speaker struggles. 

Amelia Montes:  This is so important because we often read the perspective of la Llorona without any male counterpart which leads me to how these readings also make me think of “Cortez.”  I never thought of Cortez as soft or remorseful so the way he is portrayed in these poems is very compelling.  I’m also thinking of your poem, “Conversations with My Father” and the Cortez character there.  

Ángel García:  It’s funny you mention Cortez because early on I had planned to write persona poems from his perspective.  This though was too much of a task considering the violent and long history of colonization.  But Cortez in many ways represents colonization and patriarchy, as does el Esposo.  My exploration of these personas was an attempt to complicate them.  Cortez shows up in the latter poem as both an example of colorism but also the violence that can exist between men and the silence that perpetuates its own kind of violence.  

Amelia Montes:  Along those lines, one of my favorite poems is “El Esposo de la Llorona Reza,” because it carries so much of what the entire manuscript is about:  the handing down (via DNA,  fathers to sons) the trauma of the past that is so difficult to fully understand and resolve because the tools of healing are not easily available.  

Ángel García:  This was a difficult poem to write for many reasons. The main reason being that while there is an acknowledgement of not wanting to follow the paths of his patriarchal and/or mysognistic forefathers, the persona also accepts that there is often little hope.  I do believe as a male poet, however, that the tools of healing exist.  But those tools need to be discovered just as much as they need to be imagined and forged to share with other boys and men.  There is plenty of work to be done and it is necessary and crucial work.  

Amelia Montes:  And your book is definitely exploring this necessary work! Also—I was interested in the plethora of animals and animal symbolism in your book.  Some become the narrator/speaker.  Another is present but not living.  It is made from human hands:  the Alebrije.  And yet, the Alebrije comes alive within the poem.  I see this as very indigenous/Chicanx.  Do you?  

Ángel García:  I am interested in the alebrije because of its existence as a “many-animal.”  They are separate and distinct beings that comprise a whole—making an entirely new animal. Masculinity, to push the metaphor, is a many-animal.  The collection explores these animals, in their most tender manifestations but also in their most violent: beasts that feed off prey or that are fed upon.  

But the alebrije is also an animal of imagination, coming to the original creator in a dream.  I think too, that new modes of masculinity are being imagined and adopted that will help men liberate themselves from toxic masculinity and work to remedy patriarchy.  The morphing/blending/metamorphoses of the alebrije is particularly Chicanx because we exist in the borderlands, in a third space.  

Amelia Montes:  And then there is the poem “Full Moon.”  There is a vulnerability in this poem, a soothing as well as an alarming and grieving love.  And this connection (mother/son) is echoed in “Antipode.”  

Ángel García:  Throughout my collection my speaker is dealing with grief: loss of innocence, loss of family, divorce, displacement, love loss, the loss of what kind of man he thought he’d be and the loss (imagined/real) of a child.  But in these poems, that realization becomes true about his mother. While my speaker fears many things, his greatest fear is losing his parents.  These poems are my speaker’s attempt to hold onto his mother while also realizing he must let go.  

Amelia Montes:  I can feel all you say in the poem.  It cuts deep.  Within this “letting go,” the entire manuscript/book feels like a coming of age journey—filled with so many other people’s journeys that have influenced the speaker in a myriad of ways, primarily the parents. How do you feel about it when you gold the book in your hands?  

Ángel García:  Both my parents made Teeth Never Sleep possible.  They have always been supportive of my career as a poet, for better or worse, and never once questioned the path.  Having the book in my hands in many ways is a testament to their love and support, but also a testament to their endurance and strength.  I hope that resilience translates for readers, particularly for young male readers who are struggling with what it means to become or embody their masculinities.  

Amelia Montes:  And parents and immigrants the question of language also arises. Your poems are at times bilingual.  The Spanish easily slips in and through the English—even present all by itself—entire poems in Spanish.  

Ángel García:  While I did not grow up speaking Spanish (only listening to it) this collection reflects my lingual and literary genealogy.  It moves between Spanish and English as I too move between both languages.  Originally there were more poems in Spanish, an attempt at reclaiming my language, but the poems were omitted from the final manuscript.  Many of those decisions were also influenced by who was speaking.  I wanted to be true, as much as possible, to their own language and how characters/personas might speak.  

Amelia Montes:  Thank you so much, Ángel.  The cover of the book, by artist Guillermo Lorca García Huidobro is also quite stunning. La Bloga readers also want to know where you will be reading from your book.    

Ángel García:  I’ll be in Los Angeles from October 20^thto the 28^thdoing several readings and celebrating with an official book launch. I’ll be reading in Topanga as part of the Loose Lips Series on the 20^th.  On the 23^rd, I’ll be reading at The University of Redlands.  On the 24^th, I’ll be at Long Beach City College.  On the 25^th, I’ll be in Santa Ana with LibroMobile.  On the 27^th, I’ll be reading in Pasadena and that evening I’ll be having the official book launch in DTLA at the Civic Center Studios at & 7:00p.m. Finally, on the 28^th, I’ll be reading at Avenue 50 in Highland Park.  Folks can visit my website www.angelgarciapoet.com for event details.  

Amelia Montea and Ángel García

Amelia Montes:  Gracias, Ángel y felicidades. Dear La Bloga readers: you are cordially invited to attend Ángel’s readings. Also for those in the Midwest, Ángel will be launching his book Tuesday, October 30^that The University of Nebraska-Lincoln in The Bailey Library: second floor of Andrews Hall.   

Nena, La Jefita, by Antonio SolisGomez

Nena's Children. Top L to R Raul, Maria, Miguel, Jesus (Tito) Bottom L Robert and Me

It’s not surprising that 'chinga tu madre' is the most despicable slur that a Chicanx can hurl or receive, a person’s mother being sacrosanct, inviolable, above reproach. It's this way not because a cultural norm or a Catholic canon decrees it, which it does, but rather because Chicanx mothers can be so loving and protective of their sons and daughters that it engenders in their children such awe and respect that they will go to any means to protect her in return.

It is therefore, a challenge to write objectively about one’s mamá, the subject fraught with a floodgate of memories so wrought with emotion that it overwhelms the intent. Nevertheless on this week of my Jefita’s 99th year of life, I write to honor her life and her role as mother, in this way.

Judged by the standards that reign in contemporary society, my jefita’s life was ordinary, nothing that she did made her stand out as someone special or accomplished in any way. She gave birth to five boys and one girl, they also ordinary in every sense, except that they all turned out to be hard working independent individuals with a refined sense of right and wrong.

left Raul, me, El Paso, Washington Park 1944

It’s in the last point that I will dwell, a quality that was paramount in her parenting and that is preeminent in the world of spirit, for in that realm worldly accomplishments are fleeting and temporal and it is only the virtues that one attains that are carried over into the next life. Thus the world is a stage, background if you will, at the foreground is the individual struggling to be a good and moral person. This background which is a person’s career, lifestyle, economic station, gender, ethnicity, religion, physical looks and nationality are washed away by death. What’s left is the person stripped of everything but his or her spiritual life, not religious life either but the basis for any religion: love, empathy, goodness, tolerance, compassion, honesty and truthfulness.

Although she was a very loving mother she was not a person that her children could manipulate or of whom they could take advantage. She had high expectations and these were established early on and passed from the oldest to the youngest. The following two stories attest to this. When my oldest brother Ruly was in 2nd or 3rd grade, she was called to the school and told that her son was goofing off, not paying attention to the teacher and not doing his school work. As punishment my mother told Ruly that there would be no birthday celebration for him that year and if he didn’t shape up he would also miss out on Christmas. He changed fast! The other story was of a time Ruly hopped on a trailer hitched to the rear of a car, he fell off and the trailer ran over his leg. Mother ran out to the street and when she ascertained that he was unhurt, proceeded to spank him.

Nena clowning with Tito's Letterman Sweater

There were a lot of morality stories that she and my grandmother imparted that originated in the Mexican culture. One of them was the story of the woman who has just cooked a chicken when someone comes to her door and she hides the meal behind the door only to find out later when the guest has left, that the chicken has become a frog. Time and time again when we lived in El Paso we had many men from Juarez come to our door asking for food and mother would ways find something to give them. The moral was simple you share what you have with those who come to your home.

The other story is about a woman sweeping the floor and instead of picking up the dirt, she lifted a corner of the linoleum floor covering and just as she was to sweep it under, the devil appeared.

This story like the previous one were not entertainment, they were lessons that were modeled by her own behavior, she being a tireless worker that even today frail as she is, wants to crochet, cook meals and because of an impending move, box her belongings, for at the end of the month she is moving in with my brother Robert and his wife.

It’s a hard time for her, dissolving her household. She has always been fiercely independent, never allowing herself to be taken advantage of or feeling depressed because of a setback. It’s always been go forward, roll up the sleeves and get working to fix whatever needs fixing.

Circa 1939 Nena visiting Torreon walking with three of her cousins

She was born Elena Gómez in Torreon, became Elena Solis when she married my father and then Elena Parral when she married my stepfather. She was called Nena as a child and by her friends into adulthood. She, her mother and father migrated to El Paso when she was around nine, sometime in the late 1920’s. She went to school and finished the 8th grade before starting to work as a domestic. She married, my and my older brother’s father but they divorced when he decided to move to Los Angeles. At the end of World War II, she married a returning soldier and had two children with him before the family moved to Los Angeles and in that new city had two more children.

She worked at the Sheraton Hotel as the Switchboard supervisor for many years before retiring in the late 1990’s. She was by then a single woman having divorced my stepfather in the late 1960’s, a time she marks as the most financially difficult time as my sister Maria and my youngest brother Robert were teenagers living with her.

Fortunately she had a male companion during the ensuing years after her divorce and she was able to travel to Europe, Mexico, Hawaii and many of the large cities of the USA.

Battle Creek Michigan circa 1997

My own assessment of my mother’s finest moment was when the family learned that Miguel one of my younger brother’s was gay. It was a shock when I learned. He had been an all star football player, had married and fathered two children and generally epitomized masculinity, which because of him I learned was not mutually exclusive. My mother didn’t hesitate one bit in embracing him and his partner. She traveled and stayed with him in Hawaii where he had moved, cooking him his favorite meals, never once making him feel that he was unloved because of who he was.

My brother had AIDS for several years but his body began to wear out in 2006. My mother was right there with him, nursing him until his final days. It was a devastating blow to all of us but more so for my mother, who continues to mourn him. She is known to her twelve grandchildren and to a handfull of great grandchildren as Grandma Nena, how that name skipped a generation and attached itself to her, is a lost memory.

On her 99th Birthday Standing Raul with his son Dan, seated Tito and Nena

Alebrijes -- How They Came To Be

Alebrijes -- the fantastic folk art creatures of Mexico -- have been around for a while, but the recent animated motion picture hit, Coco, raised the visibility of these beautiful monsters to new heights, and cemented their popularity.    

What's the story behind these amazing creations?  What do a coma, the four basic elements of life, a whisper in a nightmare, and a parade have to do with alebrijes? Who is the "father" of alebrijes?   Why is folk art important?  Click on this video from Great Big Story and see for yourself.

Later.

_______________________________

Manuel Ramos writes crime fiction.  His newest book is The Golden Havana Night.  Tattered Cover (Colfax), October 22 at 7:00 p.m.