Virginia Grise Looking Up at the Sky: blu

tatiana de la tierra

San Antonio in August was sweltering while I was there for the Macondo Writers’ Workshop in 2008. Every night, after gnashing words with other writers and sweating it out in poetry workshops, I ended up at some restaurant, shoveling gorditas, chiles rellenos, chalupas, enchiladas and queso flameado down my throat. My stomach was still full when I landed in LAX after the weeklong workshop was over. A friend picked me up at the airport and we raced to Plaza de la Raza in Lincoln Park.

We had a mission: The Panza Monologues. Performed and co-written by San Antonio native Virginia Grise, this fleshy offshoot of The Vagina Monologues pulled at the chords of my gut. It embodied what I love most on stage—solo performance, body parts, personal and political repercussions, social commentary, and humor, all in one. It was so fulfilling that, after the show, my friend and I went to King Taco in honor of our panzas.

Virginia Grise is an artist I like to keep my eye on. A writer, performer and director who lives in Los Angeles, she’s got grit, talent and poetry in her soul. With a MFA in Writing for Performance from the California Institute of the Arts and a series of awards under her panza, Grise is living the playwright’s life. Current works in progress include the plays rasgos asiaticos and Making Myth. She’s also collaborating with Ricardo A. Bracho on a theatrical piece, The Mexican as Told by Us Mexicans.

But the buzz for the moment is blu, her first play. A poetic urban reality check set in a barrio in the U.S., blu is having a premier run at Company of Angels in Los Angeles. Directed by Laurie Carlos, the play features actors Diana Delacruz, Romi Dias, Luis Galindo, Phillip Garcia, Alexandra Jimenez, and Xavi Moreno. The storyline involves a family with an imprisoned father headed by a lesbian couple. Gemini, the daughter, anchors herself on the rooftop to imagine another world.

In blu, the sky takes center stage. Helicopters hover above, providing an unsettling soundtrack. The sky turns black again, not blue or hazy with smog. It’s a black that allows the moon and stars to emerge with their infinite possibilities for the future and the mythic past.

I asked Virginia Grise a few questions about her writing life and blu for La Bloga.

tierra: I saw The Panza Monologues, a bit of rasgos asiaticos, and blu. What’s it like for you to go from a solo performance of The Panza Monologues to a full production of blu? Do you have a preference?

Grise: The Panza Monologues was like a theatre boot camp. Being directed by Irma Mayorga (co-writer and director) taught me a lot about theatre – including narrative structure, the rhythm of a work, how to hold an audience’s attention - not to mention the things I learned about performing and my own body. I really enjoy performing and would like to do more of it. I do think that acting and performing (having done both) are different muscles. I think the thing that I prefer is the thing that I am doing at the moment. When I am doing solo work I am completely committed to it. When I am putting up a play I am completely committed to the play. So I don’t think I have transitioned out of solo work – I’m just not working on a solo show right now.

There are certain things that I am obsessed with as a writer, things that re-appear in my work including the Panza Monologues but I certainly hope that my work looks different – that each piece is radically different from the other. rasgos asiaticos though a play doesn’t look like blu and my current play Making Myth doesn’t look like either of the prior works. Each piece of writing reflects a different set of questions I am asking myself aesthetically, politically and theoretically.

tierra: blu began as a series of poems that you wrote while you were a middle school teacher in San Antonio. Why did you decide to transform these into a play?

Grise: I heard different voices in the poems. They weren’t singular. I felt it was important that the poetry be embodied, not voices but people. Threading the stories of six people to create a single narrative was a structural challenge for me as a writer but I try to let the writing dictate form and this story wanted to be a play.

tierra: The poems that you originally wrote as the basis of blu were set in San Antonio. In your mind’s eye, do you see the play set in San Antonio, or in Boyle Heights?

Grise: It is set in the barrio in the United States of America. People from Tejas think it’s San Antonio, people from California think it’s Los Angeles. There are specific references to both places throughout the script. I was interested in the elements of similarity between the places and how the State, institutional violence, war, poverty, and desire manifest themselves in the barrio.

tierra: You had staged readings of blu in several places, including Austin, Los Angeles, and New York. What’s it like for you, as a playwright, to experience these different levels of development of your work?

Grise: I learn a lot through readings, through hearing the work. Many writers get frustrated with readings but there becomes a point in the process where I have difficulty rewriting without hearing it, without watching it in the body. The reading I did at the New York Theatre Workshop directed by Carl Hancock Rux and the workshop production at CalArts directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera really helped shaped the published version of the script.

tierra: Anything you want to divulge about your practice as a writer?

Grise: I don’t follow a routine really. I’m slow. I hold onto things for a long time before I let them go. I often write in response to something – in reaction to something I witness or experience. My home is clean when I am writing – a mess when I am directing or in production. Not sure what that means but it’s true.

tierra: You live in Los Angeles, yet you rarely drive a car. What’s that like? How does this affect your creativity?

Grise: I do have a car but stay out of it as much as possible. I do take public transportation when I can – the bus, the metro, the train and I in fact prefer it. I think it forces you to pay more attention to what is around you – to notice the worlds you travel a little more.

tierra: One word that speaks to where you are now as a writer:

Grise: Changed.

Debra la tardita in her America, of late

un pensamiento por Rudy Ch. Garcia

I know of a little girl whom I call Debra here who struggled to get to school on time. Her record on tardiness steadily grew worse. From a minute or two to five and ten minutes and then half an hour; soon she didn't show up to school at all some days. But not because she was sick.

She inevitably came in with disheveled hair, sometimes displaying frustration and helplessness over her lateness. Her teacher had talked with her and her older sister about what was going on. From the little I'd heard, Debra seemed to be a very capable student who loved learning about the world around her, and threw herself into improving her academic skills. Despite whatever went on in her life that made her late, she maintained an optimistic smile and seemed a happy child.

Unfortunately, in the real world, Debra's mom worked two low-paying jobs, like a lot of Spanish-speaking and other parents, with or without papers. One job required the mom to leave the house at four a.m., with Debra's siblings responsible for somehow getting everything ready and everyone to school on time. It hadn't been working out well.

In that same world, Debra's dad hadn't been born in the U.S. He'd gone through hells to relocate here from another country, like so many on the planet these days. He didn't come to sell drugs or covet and steal others' possessions nor to underbid millions of Americans also desperate for meaningful work. He finally found some manual labor that he worked hard at, often as many hours or more than Debra's mom.

Debra's teacher, whom I've known for years, never considered the child an "at-risk" student. She became instead a bright spot in that teacher's day, a child who often giggled as she wrote small stories, who orally expressed herself quite remarkably for a six-year-old, and eagerly tackled math and more, especially her learning of English.

Her teacher told me that one morning she pulled attendance up on the computer and there stood an X by Debra's name, indicating she'd be missing school again. The sidebar explanation read, "Dad arrested."

Debra's teacher cried.

On the other hand, Obama's minions carved one more notch on their hundreds of thousands of deportees list, more even than his supposedly more evil predecessor Bush had extradited from their workplaces and homes and communities and families. The Republican-Democrat political machine added one more statistic to their tally of see-how-many-illegals-we-catch? And the millions of ignorant American citizens who blame Debra's dad instead of American politicians and corporations for their unemployment, college-loan bills and underwater mortgages, went to bed thinking that arresting Debra's dad would magically turn their own plunging lifestyles around.

Debra's life certainly got turned around; more like, upside down. Getting to school on time will not be the major problem in her life anymore; worrying about her dad replaced that. Wondering how well she is learning English may no longer be an immediate goal for her; that will depend on where she winds up attending school. Why butterflies can fly and how many colors there are in a rainbow might become relegated to the back of her small, growing brain. And I dread to think how long her giggles will be overshadowed by new burdens in her life.

I didn't know Debra well enough to cry. But I have taught children from her background for many years. Most good teachers in this country know that all the Debras and Daniels can and do learn and succeed, if given the educational opportunities. The biggest thing they are at risk of here is being tested to death.

Anyway, not that politicians will care much, anymore than they worry about the human repercussions of their money-driven acts, but I'm using this occasion to remove my name from the registered voter list. Our citizenry is committed to following self-destructive bills, amendments and political parties that are eviscerating our souls. Very little on this year's ballot, and nothing in the next presidential ballot is aimed to stop our dive into deeper mediocrity. However, I'll keep myself on the listservs that might announce when it's time to Occupy Our Country.

I don't hope Obama reads this. Nor will I send it as part of any letter/Email/twitter-sending campaign. Those who know better, are already informed. Those who don't, shouldn't be cause for wasting time. But despite my remarks above, I don't feel sorry for Debra. My empathy for her, and abstractly with millions of U.S. immigrant children in similar straits, also makes pity inappropriate.

So I can't end this on a sad note, however dismal Debra's future may sound. I've seen too much of children's regenerative powers, their instincte for finding new cause for giggling in situations where we adults might fall into depression. No, it doesn't always happen that way.

But every morning, children in the millions rise from their bed, sofa, mattress or blanket on the floor or ground, and using their powers of some magnificent magic, push aside the fact that the country they're growing up in lacks so much humanity that it prides itself on legally taking their parents from them. Although children sense at many levels if they're of the "wrong" color, speak a "lesser" native language and live more impoverished than the majority who can afford to text-and-twitter, their eagerness to chase a butterfly into the pages of a book or scan a rainbow for magic bigger than themselves doesn't cease beaming from their developing minds. And makes some teacher somewhere remember why all the searches for truth can't be stifled. Nor for some kind of justice.

Even if the child rises as collateral damage in a nation so far from where her father now struggles.

Que viva! our species' capacity to reconstruct ourselves, even if not as magically as all the Debras innately create new dreams to keep themselves giggling, and surviving. And even if they sometimes can't help being late for school.

es todo, hoy,
RudyG

Putting it all together drawing by S.D. Hillberry, of which I own a print.

Apropos of Nothing

Manuel Ramos

Apropos of nothing. Always liked that phrase. It’s a ticket to conversation anarchy – everything goes because nothing is implicated.

Speaking of which … there’s an ugly surrealism surrounding the politicos who are praying and preying to unseat Obama. These freaky people grab, punch and pinch for attention, and their audience responds accordingly. Last year, Tea Party goons stepped on the head of a non-supporter; more recently, the Republican debate audience cheered death for anyone too poor to buy health insurance; more cheers for a record-setting executioner; and the pizza guy excused his call for electrocuting people, whose crime is risking their life and liberty to work in the U.S., by saying that he was only joking (or maybe not.)

tricks or treats?

Halloween is coming up and in timely fashion we have an overabundance of monsters. Unfortunately, it's politics as usual. The presidency has always attracted scoundrels and miscreants, but you'd think the modern crop of power parasites would have a bit more class, or discretion at least. Hell, these people attack their fellow contenders’ religion and race, and, gasp, the creation of jobs taken by immigrants! It’s as if these “challengers” have been injected with mad dog serum. The Republicans make it too easy. One of the more ridiculous and highly offensive rants comes from the pizza guy, again – “Jesus was killed by a liberal court.” Good God.

And none of the above crazy examples includes Michele Bachman or Sarah Palin. Talk about wicked witches. Just sayin' ...

I want to grab these misfits and delusional demagogues by their collective throat and give them a good shaking, then send them to the corner of the room to read the collected works of Twain, Spinoza, Sartre, and Bolaño because … well, just because.

The good thing is that we have only another year of this before the election.

“You’re being selfish” used to be a call down. Now it’s a badge of honor. As Tony Garcia, Artistic Director of Su Teatro, said recently, “It's really hard to talk to people who are coming from a place of deep, narrow self-interest.”

Meanwhile ...

Occupy Hawaii

Occupy Denver

Occupy Puerto Rico

Not to be left out of the zaniness, the Democrats are on a magical mystery bus tour when they should be taking care of business. They can’t get a comprehensive jobs bill passed in the Democrat-controlled Senate, can’t defend their health care plan from legalistic attacks (and have already scrapped a major piece of the plan because of inadequate planning and foresight), are willing to “leave no banker behind,” and appear disposed to sell out the elderly, poor, infirm, and uneducated in the name of debt crisis “compromise.” Remember the promise to reform the immigration system? Turns out that meant meeting a quota of at least 400,000 deportations a year. Occupy the White House?

Moving on -

Here's an announcement from Joseph Torres, Senior Adviser, Government and External Affairs, Free Press.

From revolutionary pamphleteers to websites, our media have reflected America’s racial divisions throughout the centuries. Communities of color have confronted prejudice in establishment media by creating their own vibrant alternative press and fighting for a just media system.

Juan González of Democracy Now! and I tell this important story in our new book, News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media.

Juan and I will be in Denver on Thursday, Oct. 27, to discuss how our book puts race at the center of the story of American media. We’ll also be signing copies of the book.

Details are below:

What: News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media: Benefit for KGNU Community Radio

When: Thursday, Oct. 27. 6 p.m.: special reception ($100 tickets required. To purchase, visit http://act2.freepress.net/go/6812?akid=2944.9527107.VM89al&t=2.)

7 p.m.: presentation and book signing (Tickets are $10 for KGNU members and $15 for the general public. To purchase go to http://act2.freepress.net/go/6812?akid=2944.9527107.VM89al&t=4.)

Where: Highlands Church, 3241 Lowell Blvd., Denver, Colo.

Who: Juan González, award-winning journalist and co-host of Democracy Now!; Joseph Torres, Free Press senior adviser for government and external affairs and Tina Griego, Denver Post columnist

Finally - we note the passing of Piri Thomas on Monday, October 17. In an introduction to a recording of Thomas reading Born Anew at Each A.M, Neal Conan of NPR said: "Writer and poet Piri Thomas died this week at his home in El Cerrito, California, at the age of 83. As a young man, he robbed people on the streets of New York, used and sold drugs and served seven years in prison. After he got out, he wrote a memoir called Down These Mean Streets, first published in 1967. It described growing up in what was then called Spanish Harlem in vivid, angry language that continues to be taught in universities today."

The N.Y. Times obituary is here.

QEPD

That's it for now. Remember that you can always read a good book. You might check out Down These Mean Streets.

Later.

Miami- José Manuel Fors

Fragmentos. Solo exhibition of Cuban artist Jose Manuel Fors
From October 22 through December 5, 2011

Opening Reception: Friday, October 21, 2011. 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Location: Pan American Art Projects. 2450 NW 2nd Avenue. Miami, FL 33127


Pan American Art Projects is pleased to announce Fragmentos (Fragments), a solo show by Cuban artist Jose Manuel Fors. This will be Fors' first exhibition in Miami, and the artist has prepared a considerable amount of new works, including pieces and installations that will be created in situ.

In our exhibition we are presenting different kinds of works, which Fors has been developing over the past couple of years. The series Atados (Bundles), is made with actual memorabilia that belonged to his family and friends. In the series Objetos (Objects), circular compositions are made with fragments of photographs. In the project room we will exhibit one of his 'leaves installations', in which he uses natural dried tree leaves, and which includes also a video.

Fors was born in Havana in 1956, where he currently lives and works, and attended the San Alejandro Academy. His work can be found in important museums and institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, Cuba; MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in Los Angeles, California; The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas; the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, among others.

This exhibition is curated by Irina Leyva-Perez and Alejandro Machado. The artist and the curators will attend the opening reception.

Click here for directions to the gallery

Pan American Art Projects
2450 NW 2nd Avenue
Miami, FL 33127
Ph: 305.573.2400
miami@panamericanart.com
www.panamericanart.com

For more information about local openings and events, please visit www.miamiartguide.com

Tía Isa Wants a Car

Written by Meg Medina. 

Illustrated by Claudio Muñoz.

    •    Pub. Date: June 2011
    •    Publisher: Candlewick Press
    •    Format: Hardcover , 32pp
    •    Age Range: 3 to 7
    •    ISBN-13: 9780763641566
    •    ISBN: 0763641561

A little girl pitches in to help her tía save up for a big old car - and take the whole family to the beach - in a story told with warmth and sweetness.

Tía Isa wants a car. A shiny green car the same color as the ocean, with wings like a swooping bird. A car to take the whole family to the beach. But saving is hard when everything goes into two piles - one for here and one for Helping Money, so that family members who live far away might join them someday. While Tía Isa saves, her niece does odd jobs for neighbors so she can add her earnings to the stack. But even with her help, will they ever have enough? Meg Medina’s simple, genuine story about keeping in mind those who are far away is written in lovely, lyrical prose and brought to life through Claudio Muñoz’s charming characters.

Meg Medina is the author of the middle-grade novel Milagros: Girl from Away. The idea for her first picture book began with the true story of her family’s first car. She grew up in Queens, New York, and now lives in Richmond, Virginia.

Claudio Muñoz is an award-winning illustrator who has worked for many newspapers and magazines as well as illustrating several children’s books. Born in Chile, he now lives in England.

BOOK TRAILER

Reading your stuff aloud. Diga Me! On-line Floricanto mid october.

Reading Your Stuff Aloud 
Handling a Manuscript


Michael Sedano

"….The End."

When the editing process achieves its goal, the author signs off on the story with a breath of triumphant relief and a smile. Now, a new opportunity offers itself: presenting the work in a public reading.

“Reading Your Stuff Aloud” is a recurring feature here at La Bloga because Oracy—the ability to express oneself aloud effectively—is often a missing, or ill-developed, competency among writers. Oracy is not a mystery; it’s the work product of planning, preparing, and evaluating one’s oral performance.

Today’s feature looks at a key element of reading your stuff aloud: handling a manuscript. We’re jumping into the middle of the topic. Ni modo. Over the year, La Bloga’s “Reading Your Stuff Aloud” feature will cover most of the issues. Columns are forthcoming on pre-event planning; promotion and marketing; effective practice methods; becoming a student of your own behavior; delivering the piece; following-up and supplementing an event.

The video below illustrates a number of approaches to reading your own stuff while using a manuscript. Using manuscript pages, or a book, is a nonverbal reaffirmation of written words. The physical presence of a manuscript offers a silent reminder that the writer is selling books at this event.

The manuscript won’t make or break a performance. Considered use of the script, however, can add benefits not otherwise obtained. So it’s valuable to consider how you handle a manuscript in your own presentations.

As a communication coach, I prefer memorization.

Memory used to be as valued in Western civilization as expressing solid ideas. In the 3d century BCE, Aristotle taught that the canons of effective public speaking included five interlinked competencies:  finding ideas and evidence; arranging a competent message; crafting enjoyable, appropriate language; delivering the piece to achieve its purpose; and memory, knowing your material by heart and leaving a lasting memory.

Today, invention and arrangement are called critical thinking and taught by philosophers. Style and delivery are seen as “mere” talking or empty decoration. Memory has been forgotten by the academy.

These excerpts of some of the best of a superb group of readings illustrate food for thought. When you view the entire performance you’ll appreciate the context these snippets fail to define adequately. USC’s digital library does not yet have these performances up for distribution. La Bloga will report the availability of video from the 2010 Festival de Flor y Canto. Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow. 1973’s floricanto, El Festival de Flor y Canto--both video and photographs--are here.

Original video Directed by Jesus Treviño

Veronica Cunningham is reading with good vocal variety and pacing, but avoids making eye contact with her listeners. Veronica’s also stuck in her position behind the lectern because she’s laid down the manuscript. This is a difficult posture because audiences enjoy eye contact and the visual variety when a speaker moves about or gestures from the lectern. As she warmed up to her audience, Veronica grew animated and won over her audience. She finishes to cheers.

Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin holds her manuscript at eye level. This posture lets her keep excellent eye contact with the audience. A short glance up provides the directness of eye contact with little chance of losing her place. Sitting in the audience looking up, however, that paper does get in the way. Chest-high usually functions well, especially with a customized manuscript and good peripheral vision. What do you  think of Vibiana's decision to place multiple poems on a single sheet?

Juan A. Contreras holds his manuscript waist high. Juan’s powerful style and eloquence, as well as his platform control, reflect a seasoned performer comfortable with his inimitable style. Note, he is reading off that page, costing him eye contact. Yet, with his full body commitment to audience and art, Juan’s rapt audience finds much to appreciate and doesn’t know what they’re missing. The point is how much more effective a reader becomes by evaluating one’s implementation of key techniques.

Karen Cordova holds her manuscript at chest level for ready reference. Note her superb eye contact. Karen is not reading but working from memory. The paper is a useful aide-memoire today. Eventually, Karen will find it useful to discard the paper. That manuscript keeps her tied to the lectern, despite a visible desire to step away from the lectern and commit herself wholly to her audience. When a speaker has a bit of apprehension, moving purposefully releases the energy positively. Tied to a lectern unable to move, one’s suffering may reinforce a distaste for the pleasures of public performance.

Olga Garcia has her book and audience in her hands. Her energy level overcomes her manuscript dependence. The regular glances up toward the house is enough eye contact to convert her listeners to participant-observers. Audiences find such experiences immensely satisfying. Feedback in cheers, laughter, people leaning toward the speaker energizes reading with higher degrees of expressiveness. After such a performance, the writer’s reputation glows with positive word-of-mouth.

The "right way" to present a reading is one that produces sales. That’s a metric you learn only as gente line up for the signing part of the reading event. In other words, there's no "right way" because the acid test comes after you’ve sat down. Nor is the manuscript alone critical to the audience’s experience. An effective reading results from executing a plan. After all the parts come together, they produce the result you and your audience get.

The following observations on using manuscripts when you read your stuff aloud will provide food for thought:

Copy good models. When you attend a reading and see an element that worked really well, try it on for size. When you see something you disapprove, look to yourself; do you perform the same way?

Hold that paper up high, especially if you have poor eyesight. Paper. Cell phone screens are punishingly tiny reading manuscripts. Print it out. Hold the text in a portfolio. You don’t want your audience counting pages. If you can’t read without your computer, treat the screen like a piece of paper: magnify the text. If you’re flipping through virtual pages, program hyperlinks. If you’re reading from paper, mark sections with bookmarks plainly numbered.

Prepare a customized reading manuscript. Triple space, 26 point type—or whatever’s comfortable for your vision and reference style. Read from the open book but consider placing a customized manuscript cut to page size inside and read from a more forgiving manuscript.

¡Digame! about Diga Me!

A friend me reclamó because en cristiano there would be no space and different punctuation. Thus, for gente who do not enjoy an intercultural pun, unlike me, take the above as penance.

I know these friends are sure to dig Diga Me! when Diga Me! comes to UCLA's Fowler Museum at month's end, October 29, 2011 3 pm, in fact.

The spoken word event comes in cooperation with Mapping Another L.A.: The Chicano Art Movement. Although listed as a 3 p.m. curtain, guests will want to arrive early to enjoy the already legendary exhibition in the galleries surrounding Diga Me! 

Other than $11 parking, Diga Me! is free.

Per Diga Me! press release:

Sally Shore’s New Short Fiction Series, L.A.'s longest running spoken word series in partnership with the Fowler Museum at UCLA, will present performances of short fiction by Chicano authors from the original presenters at the 1973 Festival de Flor y Canto on Saturday, October 29, 2011, 3:00 pm at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. 

The performances will be followed by a panel discussion with the original writers as we explore where L.A.’s Chicano literary movement began and where it is now.  Join us for original short fiction by Ron Arias, Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin, and Alejandro Murguía, three original presenters from the 1973 Festival de Flor y Canto, the nation’s first Chicano literary festival. 

Performances by Matt Ferrucci, Marina Gonzalez Palmier and Holger Moncada,Jr. will be followed by a conversation with the writers moderated by Michael Sedano, co-founder of La Bloga.

Late-Breaking News

PALABRA Hits the Streets With Issue 7

PALABRA features outstanding work by an always astonishingly good assembly of artists. Their readings at REDCAT in Disney Hall are reliably cool.

La Bloga On-Line Floricanto Mid-October 2011

October 18 issue of La Bloga: Nephtalí de Leon, Dorothy Thomasson Chao, Nancy Aidé González, Rossy Evelin Lima Padilla, Mario Escobar

"Todos Somos Alabama Blues" by Nephtalí de Leon
"Desconocida" by Dorothy Thomasson Chao
"Among the Vines" by Nancy Aidé González
"Icnocuicatl / Canto de tristeza" por Rossy Evelin Lima
"I Have A Poem..." by Mario Escobar

Todos Somos Alabama Blues

(Indios in tennis shoes insurrection!) 

On the eve of Columbus Day, and 2012, Oct, 2011

by Nephtalí de Leon

Alabama blues

where the American dream

is a people nightmare

town of Birmingham

is always in the news

families broken up

new trail of tears

like in times of old

winter's coming cold

the world is watching now

coming down on native skin

bronze colored people

beautiful color canela

we got a cinnamon skin

hey European America

chasing illegals 

go chase your own abuela! 

my people are beautifully brown

bronze copper colored hues

earthy colores de la tierra

look yourself in the mirror

guess whose a native

don´t need no proof

we got news for you 

we´re America

occupied by you !

todos somos Alabama

todos somos Arizona

we´re all color canela

go chase your own abuela!

© Nephtalí

http://Nephtali.Net/email: nephtali3000@hotmail.com

DESCONOCIDA

by Dorothy Thomasson Chao

I wrote this after taking part in the Migrant Walk – an annual event which is a 75- mile walk from Sasabe, Mexico to Tucson, Arizona, in solidarity with migrants who make the dangerous journey.  Just prior to our arrival at Three Points, AZ, we learned that four more bodies had been found in the desert.  One, a woman as yet unidentified (desconocida), was found near where we were.  This poem is for her.

Now--

In the dark

I lie on my mat in the desert--

Beautiful, savage desert.

Blowing wind, rustling mesquite--

What woke me?

Moving in the scrub near our camp

Flashes of light and a nightbird cry.

Desconocida --

Found in the desert today

Were you a daughter, sister, mother, wife?

Did you think of your family when you died?

Did you think of your home

in Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Peru?

Did you see the flowers, the stars

That I did?

Or did the burning thirst,

The heat of the day

The chill of the night

Call forth the savage side of the desert only?

Did the Border Patrol come with the helicopter

Bouncing and buzzing above you like an angry bee,

And scatter your group on the rocky ground below

Like leaves before the dry desert wind?

Were you pulled along through the cactus by another

Till you could go no further

Then sacrificed --

Left behind for the survival of the group?

Did you grieve the separation from the others

Regret words spoken, unspoken,

Did you wish for the physical closeness of another human

As you died?

Did you see the town lights from your hiding place

Here in a desert wash?

Did your terror keep you still

Even as dehydration and exposure did their work?

Restless spirit,

Victim of global forces beyond your control,

Forgive my complicity!

Come sit with me thru the dark of this night.

Baptize me with your spirit,

Help me to carry your voice forward,

Speak through me

So that neither of our lives will be in vain!

Among the Vines

By Nancy Aidé González

Among the Vines
By Nancy Aidé González
In these green open spaces
filled with chirping finches,
there is a momentum that
swirls – glints
of my mother newly arrived
from Mexico at sixteen,
working in the contoured rows
of the fields
during the summer.

She was surrounded by
the thin skinned
aubergine grapes,
resting upon craggily
old vines
stretching their arms
up toward  the azuline
sky reaching for something,
more.

In these granular fields
my mother’s thin long fingers
picked grapes gingerly,
on misty central valley mornings
until the dusty twilight
settled.

From a day’s work
of picking
she earned a
pittance of cents
but those cents
helped  her family
so it had to be
enough.

It was here among the
lush grape vines,
that my mother
searched the labyrinths
of her mind
for a way to better her life,
she heard the hopeful
whispers of the wind
and a dreamer was
born.

She dreamt of
learning English
so the American girls
at school would no longer
pull her braids and
call her names,
she dreamed of going
to the university and
learning from hardbound books,
she dreamt of better
days.

The whispers of the wind
among the vines
told her she
could.

© 2011 Nancy Aidé González

Icnocuicatl/ Canto de tristeza

por Rossy Evelin Lima


Hay un tambor que me sigue,
que me hace creer
en lo que se esconde,
en la avalancha
que a mí me esconde.

Esta tierra
Nican

a esta tierra voy a regresar
oscepa nican niohualas
Hay un cascabel
que me llama,
hermano del
silencio que me cubre
enemigo esclavo
de lo que descubre.

Existo
Ompa

hay un conujunto
de piedras
que forman el
mosaico de mi vida.
Permanesco
Existo
Ompa

Imploro
Llamo

Con flores y cantos
xochitika ye iuan kuikatika

Hay una luz
que me entrega,
luna que canta
siendo yo hija del sol

Me desgarro
Nontiya

Solo he venido a quedar triste
in san niualik no tlamatiko

a esta tierra voy a regresar
oscepa nican niohualas.

I have a poem

by Mario Escobar


I have a poem, a sobbing poem,
a poem of unwanted refugees—nasty poem, nasty century.
this is what I will give you,
yanked from the blood of the past and the present,
dirty century, nasty century. Dark poem.

I’ve cried the tears of those lost in the desert:
the undocumented death. I’ve lived that experience,
among the headless bodies, the cutoff hands, the torture mothers,
the disappear sons and fathers, and the raped daughters.

I’ve jumped the border with my defeated flag,
I’ve knock on your door. I’ve knock on your door
many times, I’ve knocked on your door but
you don’t listen to the pounding of the heart.

I have thousand stories and millions of tears to give you.
Pain knows me too well.

Pain knows those still at bay,
crossing the desert, or jumping the fence.
They will be knocking at your door.
Please answer to your blunders.

I will say no more. Time to leave you alone
with this dirty and nasty poem.
Dirty century.
Nasty century.
Dark century                  


Mario Escobar ©2011

BIOS

"Todos Somos Alabama Blues" by Nephtalí de Leon

"Desconocida" by Dorothy Thomasson Chao

"Among the Vines" by Nancy Aidé González

"Icnocuicatl/ Canto de tristeza" por Rossy Evelin Lima

"I Have A Poem..." by Mario Escobar

Nancy Aidé González is a Chicana poet, writer and educator.  She currently lives and works in Lodi, California. Nancy graduated from California State University, Sacramento with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature in May of 2000.  She has contributed poems to Poets Responding to SB 1070. Her poems, “The Ones That Live On” and “La Pulga” have been published on La Bloga.  Miss González is a participating member of Escritores del Nuevo Sol, a writing group which honors the literary traditions of the Chicano, Latino, Indigenous and Spanish-language peoples.

She teaches first-generation, Mexican –American migrant elementary students. She enjoys teaching her students and giving back to her community.  She holds a Master’s degree in Education with an emphasis in School Administration from California State University, Stanislaus. Nancy Aidé González is involved in Chicano Organizing & Research in Education (C.O.R.E.) a non-partisan, research and advocacy organization that aims to improve the educational environment of all Chicano/Latino students.   She is currently working on a novel about Chicana women.

Rossy Evelin Lima ha participado en dos antologías poéticas: La Ruta de los Juglares, McAllen, y Letras en el Estuario, Matamoros. Además de haber publicado en revistas locales como Tierra Firme, Gallery, Interstice, Nuevo Santanderino y Panorama. También ha publicado en México en la sección cultural Ojo de Ciclope del periódico Expreso de Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas. En la revista La Pluma del Ganso, Mexico D.F. en la sección Aquí está Usted; en Lenguaraz, revista de la facultad de filosofía y letras de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, quienes dictaminaron a favor de los textos El Río Bravo y Caminante. En España en la revista 3D3 Revista de Creación en Andalucía, en la antología Caminos Inciertos del Centro de Estudios poéticos en Madrid y en la revista internacional Negritud de Atlanta, Georgia.  Recibió el tercer lugar en el Certamen Literario José Arrese en el 2008, mención honoraria por la revista Gallery en el 2009; en su participación en el Segundo Coloquio Estudiantil Sobre la Lengua en la University of Texas Pan-American, su obra poética fue premiada por ser considerada como “La mejor entre las de su área académica.” En el 2010 recibió el Premio Gabriela Mistral por la Sociedad Nacional Honorifica Hispánica. Rossy ha organizado más de 10 eventos poeticos en la Universidad de Texas Pan-American, y organizó el Festival de la Mujer 2011.  En la actualidad es fundadora de la asociación Colectivo Huatsamara, la cual promueve las artes en el Valle del Río Grande y ha impartido tres talleres literarios en Mission, McAllen y San Juan Texas. Sus labores comunitarias incluyen el haber fundado y dirigido el programa Un mar de cultura, en el cual se motivaba a los jóvenes a seguir sus estudios académicos; con este proyecto se les dio información a un aproximado de 250 jóvenes y padres en iglesias, escuelas y centros comunitarios. 

Mario Escobar, the founder of Izote Press, was born in La Union and raised in Morazán, El Salvador. He came to the US at age 12. He is a former child guerrilla fighter who in 2006 attained asylum in this country. He holds a BA in Spanish Literature and Chicanos Studies from UCLA, Diplomado from Universidad de Guadalajara UDG and completed his Masters course work at ASU. He is a Dream activist co-founder of UCLA IDEAS (Improving Dreams Education Access and Success) and currently working on a PhD at University of Maryland College Park.  He is the author of Gritos Interiores a book of poetry responding to California Proposition 187. He was also featured in the UCLA publication Underground Undergrads: UCLA Undocumented Immigrant Students Speak Out. Currently he is finishing his first novel, Paciente 1980, which is expected to be out early 2012. This Salvadoran born but Chicano de Corazon was raised in South Central and East LA and now lives in Maryland with his linda Chicana compañera Karla Escobar-Gutierrez and his three beautiful daughters.

La Raza occupies & Su Teatro journeys

Daniel Olivas will return next Monday after a brief rest.

Occupy Wall Street movement breaks borders

An unprecedented wave of protest against the international financial elite and prevailing economic policies swept the globe on October 15. And New Mexico, Mexico and the greater US-borderlands were no exceptions. Protests were chalked up in San Diego, Tijuana, Las Cruces, Ciudad Juarez and Mexico City, among many other places. In El Paso, an encampment was announced beginning Monday, October 17, in the city’s downtown San Jacinto Plaza.

In neighboring Ciudad Juarez, protesters from several groups began their action in the downtown plaza but culminated at the US Consulate, where they blasted US economic domination. The world economy, said activist Julian Contreras, was “leaving many people abandoned while privileging the banks and big businessman and not generating employment or letting the young people study.”

In Mexico City, different protests involving hundreds of young people likewise linked issues of violence related the so-called drug war to economic inequities. “We should unite all the young people, use the social networks to make a new revolution, and construct a new democracy in which there is no violence and inequalities,” said one student at a new protest encampment set up at the Revolution Monument.

Other Mexican protests were reportedly held or planned in Guadalajara, Morelia, San Cristobal de las Casas, Oaxaca City, Cancun, and more than a dozen other cities, including Monterrey, Mexico’s violence-torn, old industrial powerhouse of the north.

Two days prior to October 15, more than 100 students rallied at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces in a local manifestation of a new national student movement that’s grown out of the original New York City occupation of Zuccotti Park, now rechristened Liberty Square, on the edge of Wall Street. Other New Mexico cities witnessing October 15 weekend protests included Carlsbad, Roswell, Farmington, Taos, Santa Fe and, of course, the state’s largest city, Albuquerque.

The October 15 Duke City demonstration was a fusion of Americana, Third World iconography and working-class history. Members of the AFSCME and 1199 unions were plainly visible in a highly spirited display of pent-up outrage against the economic powers-that-be. A younger crowd of protesters marched up Central Avenue from the Occupy/Liberate Albuquerque encampment at the University of New Mexico (UNM) to hook up an older, sign-waving group already positioned in front of a Wells Fargo Bank in the Nob Hill district.

A leaflet handed out at the event and bearing a picture of a huge mother pig criticized Wells Fargo’s lending practices and contrasted the earnings between an average bank teller and 2007-2008 company Chairman Richard Kovacevich, who the authors’ claimed made more than 662 times the pay of a teller.

A visual sampling of signs quickly revealed the crowd’s political sentiments: “No One Elected the Koch Brothers, “End Plutocracy,” “Bring Back Sherman Tillman and Glass Stegall,” “My Son Deserves a Future,” “Stop the Wars..,” “Honk if you are Underpaid.”

And numerous motorists honked back, tapping their horns in such a crescendo of bleeps that it was difficult to hear at times. “We are the 99 percent,” “This is what Democracy looks like” and “People Power” chanted a crowd of hundreds made up of the old, the young and the middle-aged. A man was heard urging the return of FDR.

Covered with placards and armed with a list of websites related to a movement that is leaping across continents and rattling political establishments from north to south and from east to west, a woman who identified herself as Tami from Mountainair said October 15 was directed “against globalization and privatization that the banks are spearheading with their massive amounts of money…we bailed them out, we own them.”

Addressed to mayors and police chiefs, a printed message protested the clearing of Occupy Movement protesters in cities like Denver and reminded authorities of the existence of something called the First Amendment. “When people across the Middle East occupied public squares, leaders in Washington mostly cheered these protesters and warned Middle Eastern governments not to use force to clear them…” read the statement.

A one-year resident of Albuquerque, Mirra said she also stood with teachers and other workers whose pensions were threatened. “It infuriates me that that one percent of the people like hedge fund managers and war profiteers pay 15 percent (tax),”she added.

The demonstrators’ demands as well as warnings against state repression were strikingly similar to those heard in Mexican protests that erupted after the 1994/95 economic crisis and bank bail-out, events which ushered in an era of austerity and public debt that is still being paid off years later.

Like other places, the Occupy/Liberate movements in New Mexico are not ending with October 15. A teach-in is planned for UNM this coming week, while the Albuquerque City Council is poised to issue a proclamation on Monday, October 17, in support of the protests.

Backed by City Council Vice-President Rey Garduno, the proclamation puts the contemporary movement in historical context, declaring that “Albuquerqeans know that being the 99% also means dealing with the historical legacy of occupation by foreign powers in pursuit of profit; being targeted today by polluting industries; and watching our tax dollars go to bail out wealthy corporations while young people can’t afford to go

to college."

In continuation, the proclamation declares that workers, people of color, immigrants and indigenous nations “know all too well what occupation really means,” and that the privileged one percent of the population and “their protectors in government” threaten to slash and squeeze safety nets and economically beneficial programs. The proclamation ends, “We are the 99 percent and we stand with the Occupy Wall Street Movement.”

By Sunday, October 16, less than a month after the first spark was lit in New York, nearly 2,000 cities worldwide were involved in one way or another in the new movement that’s beginning to shake up global politics, according to the website occupytogether.org.

excerpted from Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news

Center for Latin American and Border Studies

New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM

For a free electronic subscription email: fnsnews@nmsu.edu

______________

Su Teatro's second full season in Denver art district opens with Enrique’s Journey

As Su Teatro embarks tomorrow on its second season at their new location, it is garnering even more attention with a stage production of “Enrique’s Journey,” based on the book by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Sonia Nazario about a Honduran boy’s difficult journey to the U.S. to join his mother.

“Enrique’s Journey” began Oct. 13 and will run Thursdays to Saturdays, ending with a Sunday matinee Oct. 30.

For more details on this, see the Denver Post article by Matthew Rodriguez.