René Colato Laínez at CABE: California Association of Bilingual Education

Award

I am so excited to receive a Campoy-Ada Honor Award for my book Telegrams to Heaven: The Childhood of Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero/ Telegramas al cielo: La infancia de monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero in the Biographies for Children category. 

To find the list of all the ganadores visit https://labloga.blogspot.com/2019/01/ganadores-del-premio-campoy-ada.html

The Premio Campoy-Ada Awards Ceremony 



Date: Friday, March 22, 2019 

Time: 10:30 am 


Location: Long Beach Convention Center, Ballroom A

A reception will follow from noon to 2:00pm. 



Book Signings 

Thursday, March 21 

10:30 a.m. 

Lectorum Publications, Inc.

Booth(s): 213, 312

I will be signing copies of my latest bilingual book My Shoes and I: Crossing Three Borders/ Mis zapatos y yo: Cruzando tres fronteras.

Thursday, March 21 

12:00 p.m. 

Arte Público Press

Booth(s): 516

Mamá the Alien / Mamá la extraterrestre

Join author René Colato Laínez and illustrator Laura Lacámara who will be signing copies of their award-winning picture book about immigration, Mamá the Alien/ Mamá la extraterrestre, published by Lee & Low Books. 

When Mamá’s purse falls on the floor, Sofia gets a peek at Mamá’s old Resident Alien card and comes to the conclusion that Mamá might be an alien from outer space. Sofia heads to the library to learn more about aliens. Some are small and some are tall. Some have four fingers on each hand and some have large, round eyes. Their skin can be gray or blue or green. But Mamá looks like a human mother! Could she really be an alien?

Filled with imagination and humor, this book is a sweet and timely celebration of family, no matter where that family comes from.

Friday, March 22 

9:30 – 10:15 a.m. 

Exhibit Hall Booth #219    

Workshops 

Workshop Title: De niño inmigrante a escritor

Date:3/22/2019

Time: 1:30 PM - 2:45 PM

Location/Room: Hyatt Regency Long Beach - Regency D

Workshop Title: La biblioteca de los sueños

Date: 3/22/2019

Time: 3:15 PM - 4:30 PM

Location/Room: Hyatt Regency Long Beach - Regency D

Gluten-free Cuaresma Dinner Sinfully Fancy

Michael Sedano

Last week, the Gluten-free Chicano shared his peppercorn steak with rum sauce as a fancy dining option, something to serve when company comes, or an easy-fancy meal for a big date. Then Lent happens and even regular people are practicing the religious ritual of meatlessness.

As if anyone needs an excuse to eat Cheese Souffle, here's a lots-of-work Lenten dish that's spectacular fancy dining that busy people can make ahead and bake before serving. 

Made with gluten-free baking mix, it's one of the more satisfying analogs to wheat-based food, The Gluten-free Chicano's Cheese Souffle.

McDonald's Urban Farm in Altadena, CA brings farm-to-fork convenience of home delivery en estas partes. Twice a week, the farmer delivers to your door the freshest of blanquillos.  McDonald's Urban Farm is The Gluten-free Chicano's daughter's place, and La Chickenada's new digs. The current eggs are the first production of a new flock.

You can make this dish in advance, refrigerate it, pop it into a hot oven later that day. Get up an hour early and start with a reliable oven-proof straight-sided deep vessel. If you own a Souffle Pan, all the better.

Butter or spray the entire baking dish then pour in parmesan cheese. Roll the cheese around until the dish is completely coated with cheese. You can pour the cheese back into the jar or leave it.

Now separate eight McDonald's Urban Farm farm-fresh eggs, or whatever you can get. Wash your hands really well. Break the egg and pour it into your hand, fingers closed. Let the white slide into a mixer bowl and put the yolk into a small microwave safe jar.

Beat the egg whites and a pinch of salt until they are fluffy and make stiff peaks. Feel free to add chile powder or paprika to the whites. You're pouring a cup of hot cheese sauce into these egg whites, so have the right size.

You can make this gluten-free cheese souffle from egg whites alone. For sure, save some yolks for Hollandaise sauce. Dot lemony goodness across left-over souffle for tomorrow's breakfast, or for the full-fancy treatment, make gluten-free Eggs Benedict.

Make a gluten-free roux (link) from a stick of butter and a skimpy ¼ cup of gluten-free baking mix. Add a pinch of cayenne and black pepper to the roux. Stir a cup of milk into the butter-flour roux and cook over medium flame until the white sauce is thick and coats your spoon.

Stir the grated cheese into the white sauce and cook until the cheese is mostly or completely melted into the white sauce. Quickly whip in the yolks if you choose.

Fill the baking dish with the cheese sauce. It's ready for the oven, or stretch plastic film across it, refrigerate, and bake it after work.

Place the filled souffle pan on a cookie sheet to catch spill-overs. The foto illustrates the pan ⅔ filled and the finished souffle doubled its size. It is risen!

Use a sharp blade to cut the souffle into serving slices. Lift out the slices and arrange on the plate.

A Cesar Salad and champagne make this a wondrous dinner for four, six, or two. The wine adds a few carbs, anchovies are zero.

The Gluten-free Chicano's Gluten-free Cheese Souffle Ingredients. Carb counts link.
1 cup grated cheddar cheese = 2grams carbohydrates
8 eggs = 3g
1 stick butter = .07g
Simple Truth gluten-free baking mix ¼ cup = 32g
whole milk 1 cup = 11g

El Gluten-free Chicano used three different aged U.S. and Ireland cheddars. Experiment with a variety of cheese.

Use any brand of gluten-free baking mix. The Gluten-free Chicano is currently buying Ralph's private label mix. King Arthur is an excellent product, despite the monarchial pretension.

The Process
Beat egg whites to stiff peaks
Make cheese sauce
Stir sauce into whites
Fill baking vessel
Bake 400º 45 minutes / insert a butter knife blade diagonally into the center. A clean blade is a done souffle

Interview of Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros by Xánath Caraza

Interview of Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros by Xánath Caraza

 

Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros

Who is Carolina?

I am a Tejana poeta, Chicana, and Mujerista. I hope that my work gives light as it wrestles between the tension and hope of our time.

As a child, who guided you through your first readings? 

My grandfather. He would go to the bathroom for hours and it would drive my grandmother crazy, but she’s the one who made a small shelf in there for him. The shelf always had the Holy Bible in Spanish and religious pamphlets or thin books. It was not something overtly introduced to me, yet I found such joy in knowing that my grandfather would retreat to read and it was something he enjoyed very much. My grandmother created a space for him to read and enjoy that. While she did that for him, I think she simultaneously did that for me. It made me want to be a reader.

How did you first become a poet?

This is a blurry answer for me. I have so many memories of poetry and I don’t know which one was the first. I don’t know if I was in Mrs. Kazekwa’s first grade class describing clowns who rode unicycles or if I was at my grandmother’s kitchen table, elbows plastered to the plastic as I wrote out lines on a birthday card especially for her. I wrote those lines in light blue ink with one of those pens that had four colors: green, red, blue, and black. Those were my grandmother’s favorite pens. I don’t know if I was in Mrs. Davis’s class in high school writing about the macabre or if I was in our trailor off 281 South dealing with the horror of teenage life. Maybe it was in our trailor off Addison Road or in our home off East Bates or the Bellaire Apartments off South Flores. It was somewhere there that I became a poet and all those places contributed to that moment.

What projects are you working on at the moment that you would like to share?

I am currently working on a book of fiction that I started to write in Professor Nan Cuba’s class in my current graduate program at Our Lady of the Lake University. She unearthed stories that I didn’t know I had inside of me. It was a real pleasure to work on fiction with her. I find that when I write fiction there is a recurring theme of journey that seems to pierce through. I want to acknowledge it. I want to honor it.

I am also researching Chicanx theopoetics. I’ll leave that there for the moment. I believe in speaking things out into the universe.

What advice do you have for other poets?

Take risks. Have a poet’s prayer. Give thanks to your ancestors. There is no one in competition with you. We are all in this together. Never be afraid to learn from someone else. Learning is an opportunity to re-remember what we know in our bones to be the truth.

What else would you like to share?

The work of poetry is the work of faith. Sometimes we sit down to do the work and don’t know what is going to will itself to the forefront. It is an act of great faith to sit down and do the work. Keep the faith.

Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros is a Tejana poeta, Chicana, Mujerista from San Antonio, Texas. She is a current MA/MFA student at Our Lady of the Lake University. Her work has appeared in On Being, Sojourners, The Acentos Review, Rock & Sling, and more. She is the 2019 recipient of the Alves Award in Theopoetics. Her chapbook, Becoming Coztototl was recently published by Flowersong Books.

Lalo Delgado Poetry Festival

First -- writing advice from the back of a pencil.

_______________________________

The following is a press release from Metropolitan State University of Denver, Chicana/Chicano Studies (with some edits and additions from me.)

Metropolitan State University of Denver, Chicana/o Studies Department invites the community to the 12th Annual Lalo Delgado Poetry Festival -- Thursday April 4, 2019 from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm. at the St. Cajetans Center, on the Auraria Campus, Denver. 

This year’s theme: Raices Y Alas: Looking Back and Moving Forward ~ Roots and Wings: Looking Back and Moving Forward will center on social action through poetry.

Abelardo "Lalo" Delgado

Lalo Delgado is remembered as Colorado’s social justice poet and considered the National Grandfather of Chicano Poetry.  Among many other awards and recognition, Delgado received a Civil Rights Award from Rosa Parks, Scholar/Elder of the Civil Rights Movement who worked with Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez to support thousands of migrant farm workers in the Unites States.  Lalo was originally from El Paso Texas, but he eventually made Denver his family's home.  His numerous publications include the seminal poem Stupid America, regarded as a masterpiece of Chicano thought and a powerful example of resistance poetry.

Ariana Brown

The 2019 Lalo Delgado Poetry Festival will feature nationally recognized poet: Ariana Brown.  Brown is a poet from San Antonio, Texas, with a B.A. in African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American Studies. She is the recipient of two Academy of American Poets Prizes and a 2014 collegiate national poetry slam champion. Ariana, who has been dubbed a “part-time curandera,” is primarily interested in using poetry to validate Black girl rage, in all its miraculous forms. Follow her work online at arianabrown.com or on Twitter & Instagram @arianathepoet.  

Eden Nicole

Lalo’s Poetry Festival also welcomes Denver’s own Eden Nicole.  Eden merges her inspirations from her three sons with her indigenous roots and environmental activism to create her spoken word. Eden has various works published through Café Cultura, Red Rising Magazine in Canada and she has been showcased in the Cuatro: A Series of Artist Interactions with the Denver Art Museum (2017), amongst many other events throughout the Denver Metro area. Through Groupo Tlaloc Danza Azteca, Medicine Heart Dancers, and the Indigenous Two Spirit and LGBTQ+ communities, she is teaching her sons the traditions of their people; while also pursuing her Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Engineering and Hydrology. 

Ana Duran, Lalo’s eldest daughter, welcomes the poetry recited by Lalo’s great grandchildren.  

The festival opening at 9 a.m. begins with a blessing ceremony by Aztec Troupe Huitzilopochtli, followed by a free continental breakfast and lunch.  The event is free and open to the public. Sponsors include MSU Presidents Office of Institutional Diversity: Chicana/o Studies, GITA, Student Activities and CU Denver Latinx Services.

For more information, please contact Christina M. Sigala at selim@msudenver.edu 

Later.

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Manuel Ramos writes crime fiction.  His latest is The Golden Havana Night (Arte Público Press.)

Chicanonautica: Here Comes Kaiju Mexicana

by Ernest Hogan

Monsters are global, even universal. All human beings make their fears into something tangible, visible. No wonder they are a staple part of entertainment.

At first I was horrified of monsters, but it wasn’t far into my childhood that I became obsessed with and even identified with them, and became a big fan of monsters movies, that back then were shown on Saturday afternoon programs like L.A.’s KHJ-TV 9’s Strange Tales of Science Fiction.

Though these shows mainly showed low-budget Hollywood productions, they included movies from other countries. Monsters and other strangeness from England (which I’ve always considered strange and exotic), Italy, Russia, Mexico, and especially Japan. Godzilla and the other kaiju we a driving force in monster kid culture.

Years later, I grew up into a speculative fiction sophisticate, but deep down I’ve always been that kid who loved monster movies.

Which brings us to David Bowles’ novel Lords of the Earth.

 

This one hit me with both barrels, totally satisfying my inner monster movie fan, and the venerable Father of Chicano Science Fiction.

In Lords of the Earth, author, translator, scholar and translator of pre-Columbian languages, David Bowles brings kaiju-style giant monsters to Mexico. He doesn’t just throw some arbitrary guys in rubber suits into miniature, stereotypical sets studded with adobe buildings and cactus, Bowels digs into pre-Columbian mythology, and geology, makes connections to Mexican cultures, dovetailing the myth with science.

There are also heroic, educated, successful Mexican/Latinx characters, (when I was kid, the heroes were always white, except in the Japanese and Mexican movies) and contemporary situations, drug gangs, the border, and bring a feeling of reality of the latest news broadcasts to the fantastic vision.

It brings back the fun of old monster movies, but brings the genre up to date, making it suitable reading for adults, though this would also be a great book to give young guys who aren’t interested in reading.

Not only a fabulous tribute to the art of the monster movie, Lords of the Earth, would make a great movie. With Mexico dominating the film industry, it would be a natural. Especially since the taboo that kept the Academy from recognizing the work of Mexican directors if they put anything Mexican in their films has just been broken.

I have a feeling that this is beginning of a monster renaissance. Which wound also satisfy the Father of Chicano Science Fiction and his monster kid inner child.

Ernest Hogan is currently working on a story about the monsters of Aztlán starring a female masked wrestler.