Reading Rock Stars - Rio Grande Valley

March 11, 2015, 11:00 pm

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 2015 Reading Rock Stars - Rio Grande Valley Authors

Lydia Gil, René Saldaña, Jr., Libby Martinez, Pat Mora, Laura Lacámara, Carolyn Dee Flores

and Texas Book Festival Outreach Coordinator, Kendall Miller

McAllen, TX

Last week I had the good fortune of participating in the "Reading Rock Stars"--a fantastic program of the Texas Book Festival that brings authors from around the country to present their books in schools along the Rio Grande Valley. So students get to meet an author or illustrator AND each gets an autographed copy of the book!

According to Kendall Miller of the Texas Book Festival, for many students this is the first non-school book they will own. Professor Amy Cummins of UTPA added that the impact of "Reading Rock Stars" on the cultural literacy of the area has been enormous.

We visited schools in Pharr, Mission, Edinburg and McAllen, where teachers, principals and librarians rolled out the red carpet for us. They went all out to engage students with the readings through super creative pre- and post-reading writing activities and crafts. It was such a treat to meet our readers and learn about their connections to our books!

Here are some highlights of our "Reading Rock Stars" experience:

René Saldaña, Jr.

"Steph picked Laura and me up at the airport; on the drive to the hotel, she explained to us that Reading Rock Stars and the Texas Book Festival have given out over 60K books to children over the last several years. As the Rio Grande Valle is where I was born and raised, this number is important to me. Most of the recipients have never owned a book in their lives. Now they do, and they have the added benefit of having met the author or illustrator.

Walking up and down the hallways is always a highlight, seeing what art and reading connections our readers have made. At Zapata, one boy had drawn a portrait of me from off a promotional shot. At the same school, each classroom dedicated it's door and hallway to one number and image from Carolyn's and my picture book.

One fifth grader asked which of the American Revolution patriots I hated the most. I can honestly say I've never been asked about nor have found occasion to think about this topic. I answered Benedict Arnold, who it turns out was not a true patriot but a Royalist-wanna-be. The boy said Ethan Allen was his."

 Carolyn Dee Flores

"There is no organization closer to my heart than Reading Rock Stars. We see first-hand how the smallest of children love books. I found this one little girl reading our book Dale, dale, dale/Hit It, Hit It, Hit It underneath a library table, and nobody knew she was there.

    Pat Mora & Libby Martinez

"One of my special moments during RRS was at Zapata Elementary when a young boy said,

'I just want you to know that even though your visit is ending, it will continue in my heart.' So incredibly moving..." - Libby

"I treasure the memory of the pre-K girls dressed as the Statue of Liberty and a judge in connection with the book my daughter and I shared, I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE. I also cherish the children's smiles when they received their books." -Pat

                                

Lydia Gil

"I loved reading the children's letters to heaven, to their loved ones who had passed away...  Some were open for everyone to read; others were in envelopes because they were too personal. 

I met a girl who said her grandma died the week before they started reading Letters from Heaven. 

'It helped me a lot,' she said."

Laura Lacámara is the award-winning author and illustrator of Dalia’s Wondrous Hair / El cabello maravilloso de Dalia, and Floating on Mama’s Song / Flotando en la canción de mamá. Illustrated by Yuyi Morales, Floating on Mama’s Song was a Junior Library Guild Selection for Fall 2010 and was a Tejas Star Book Award Finalist for 2011-2012. Laura illustrated the 2012 Tejas Star Book Award winner, The Runaway Piggy / El cochinito fugitivo, as well as Alicia’s Fruity Drinks / Las aguas frescas de Alicia. Laura earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting at California State University, Long Beach. She studied printmaking at Self Help Graphics in East Los Angeles.Laura lives in Southern California with her husband and their daughter.

René Saldaña,Jr. is the author of several books for young adults. His most recent title is Dale, dale, dale: Una fiesta de números/Hit It, Hit It, Hit It: A Fiesta of Numbers (Carolyn Dee Flores, illustrator), a bilingual counting book celebrating Mexican American fiestas that includes piñatas and friends and family. With Erika Garza-Johnson, he co-edited Juventud!, an anthology of short fiction and poetry for young adults. He teaches in the College of Education at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, where he lives with his family.

Carolyn DeeFlores (Trinity University) is a rock musician/composer, turned computer analyst, turned children’s book illustrator. Dale, dale, dale / Hit It, Hit It, Hit It : Una fiesta de números / A Fiesta of Numbers, written by René Saldaña Jr., is her latest book. Carolyn’s debut book Canta, rana, canta / Sing, Froggie, Sing is about an underwater singing frog and is currently on the Tejas Star 2014 Reading List. Her second book, Daughters of Two Nations, won a 2014 Skipping Stones Honor Award for excellence in multicultural literature.

Lydia Gilwas born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. She is the author of the bilingual children’s picture book, Mimí’s Parranda / La parranda de Mimí, and the middle-grade novel Letters from Heaven / Cartas del cielo. She teaches at the University of Denver and writes for EFE, the leading Spanish-language news agency. She holds a Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Arts in Comparative Literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Libby Martinez is the co-author of two children’s picture books – I Pledge Allegiance (Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers) and Bravo, Chico Canta! Bravo! (Groundwood Books). Her mother, the award-winning author Pat Mora, was her writing partner for both of these books. Prior to becoming a children’s book author, Libby worked in the Texas political arena, served as the director of school and community partnerships for the Philadelphia Zoo, and founded a strategy consulting practice. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Stanford Law School, and now lives in Colorado with her husband and a cat named Squirrel.

Pat Morais the author of more than forty-five books for all ages. She has published poetry, nonfiction, and children’s books, some in bilingual formats and Spanish editions. An educator and literacy advocate, in 1996, she founded Children’s Day, Book Day/ El día de los niños, El día de los libros (often known as Día), a year-long family initiative that honors children and connects them with bookjoy. Annually, across the country, April book fiestas reach out creatively to all children and families in all languages. Pat, a native of El Paso who now lives in Santa Fe, is the mother of three grown children and a sweet, Austin granddaughter.

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2015 Tejas Star Reading List

February 25, 2015, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Better Late than Never: Eleven Ebooks for Bilingual Press

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The Tejas Star Reading List Task Force annually selects a recommended reading list of bilingual English/Spanish books or books written in Spanish from books published in the three years prior to the list being published. The list is prepared for use by children ages 5-12.

Caraballo, Samuel. (Illustrated by Shawn Costello). (2014). Estas manos: Manitas de mi familia/These Hands: My Family's Hands. Arte Público Press. Piñata Books. ISBN: 978-1558857957. Ages 5-9.

Elya, Susan Middleton. (Illustrated by Susan Guevara). (2014). Little Roja Riding Hood. G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers. ISBN: 978-0399247675. Ages 5-9.

Gil, Lydia. (2014) Cartas del cielo/Letters from Heaven.  Arte Público Press. Piñata Books. ISBN: 978-1558857988. Ages 8-12.

González, Maya Christina. Call Me Tree/Llámame árbol. Lee & Low Books. ISBN: 978-0892392940. Ages 5-9.

Kyle, Tracy. (Illustrated by Carolina Farías). (2014). Gazpacho for Nacho. Two Lions. ISBN: 978-1477817278. Ages 5-9.

Lacámara, Laura. (2014). Dalia's Wondrous Hair/El cabello maravilloso de Dalia. Arte Público Press. Piñata Books. ISBN: 978-1558857896. Ages 4-9.

Liniers, Ricardo.(2013). The Big Wet Balloon/El globo grande y mojado. (Spanish Edition). Toon Books. ISBN: 978-1935179405. Ages 4-8.

Lombana, Juan Pablo. (Illustrated by Zamie Casazola). (2014). Soccermania /Futbolmanía. Scholastic en Español. ISBN: 978-0545665162. Ages 6-11.

Lújan, Jorge. (Illustrated by Mandana Sadat). (2014). Moví la mano/I Moved My Hand. Groundwood Books. ISBN: 978-1554984855. Ages 2-6.

Mora, Pat. (Illustrated by Meilo So). (2014). Water Rolls, Water Rises/El agua rueda, el agua sube. CBP. ISBN: 978-0892393251. Ages 6-11.

Mora, Pat and Libby Martínez. (Illustrated by Amelia Lau Carling). (2014). ¡Bravo, Chico Canta! ¡Bravo! Groundwood Books. ISBN: 978-1554983438. Ages 4-7.

Morales, Yuyi. (Tim O’Meara-Photographer). (2014). Viva Frida. Roaring Book Press. ISBN: 978-1596436039. Ages 4-8.

Saldaña, René, Jr. (Illustrated by Carolyn Dee Flores). (2014). Dale, dale, dale: Una fiesta de números/Hit It, Hit It, Hit It: A Fiesta of Numbers. Arte Público Press. Piñata Books. ISBN: 978-1558857827. Ages 4-8.

Stockdale, Susan. (2014). Stripes of All Types/Rayas de todas las tallas. Peachtree Publishers. ISBN: 978-1561457939. Ages 2-6.

Thong, Roseanne. (Illustrated by Sara Palacios). (2014). 'Twas Nochebuena. Viking Books for Young Readers. ISBN: 978-0670016341. Ages 4-7.

 Last updated February 24, 2015

Better Late than Never: Eleven Ebooks for Bilingual Press

February 26, 2015, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Author Silvia Moreno-Garcia's strange ways

≪ Previous: 2015 Tejas Star Reading List

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Melinda Palacio

Photo by Nell Campbell

Last month, I received news that my 2011 novel, Ocotillo Dreams, was now available as an ebook. I pestered Bilingual Press to make my title available at the time of publication. Four years ago, it wasn't standard for University Presses to automatically publish an electronic version in addition to a hardcover and paperback. My first experience with Arizona State University's Bilingual Press was with a short story in Latinos in Lotusland: an Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature in 2008. In 2008, editor and fellow Bloguero, Daniel Olivas, did not anticipate having an electronic version of the Latino literary anthology. As a contributor to Latinos in Lotusland, I'm happy to see that there is an ebook now available. Also, Lucrecia Guerrero's Tree of Sighs was on the list, as well as Stella Pope Duarte's Fragile Night, published in 1997. However, the winner for longest wait goes to Ron Arias, whose book, Road to Tamazunchale, was published in 1987 and predates electronic media technology. While I'm glad for these electronic titles, I'm still clinging to paper bound books and do not own a special device for reading electronic books. I have a few books on my cell phone, but I can't say I've read a title cover to cover. Before receiving the following email and announcement of the new 11 ebook titles, I stumbled on the electronic version of Ocotillo Dreams by accident. 

Ocotillo Dreams

Eleven Bilingual Press titles now available as ebooks

The Bilingual Press is pleased to announce that it has released 11 of its titles as ebooks. The titles are Stars Always Shine by Rick Rivera; Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature, edited by Daniel A. Olivas; Tree of Sighs by Lucrecia Guerrero; Barefoot Heart and Corazón Descalzo by Elva Treviño Hart; Road to Tamazunchale by Ron Arias; Memories of Development by Edmundo Desnoes; Fragile Night by Stella Duarte Pope; Heart-Shaped Cookies by David Rice; Ocotillo Dreams by Melinda Palacio; and The Scoundrel and the Optimist by Maceo Montoya.

They are available through Amazon, Apple iTunes Store, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Overdrive.

The project to convert the titles to ebook formats was supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

***Here's An Early Announcement. Save the Date.***

April 18, 7pm

Because April is the ever busy National Poetry Month, I thought I'd give everyone a preview of this event, curated by Marisela Norte:

Cut Along The Line: An evening of readings in conjunction with The Big Read
Saturday, April 18 | 7:00pm (doors open at 6:30) at Craft and Folk Art Museum
A small reception with the poets will follow the evening's reading
Free
In celebration of Luis Alberto Urrea's novel Into The Beautiful North, writer Marisela Norte brings together authors Luis Alfaro, Melinda Palacio and Kenji Liu for a reading of poetry and prose on the immigrant imagination, erasing borders and the great divide. The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. More information can be found at www.NEABigRead.org.
RSVP requested to rsvp@cafam.org

Author Silvia Moreno-Garcia's strange ways

February 27, 2015, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: _The Tijuana Book of the Dead_: Interview with Luis Alberto Urrea

≪ Previous: Better Late than Never: Eleven Ebooks for Bilingual Press

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When I first learned that the Chicana spec lit author Silvia Moreno-Garcia lived and published in Canada, I wondered how Mexican she still was. I don't know much about the culture there, other than it's obviously far from Aztlán y la frontera. I read about anthologies she co-edited and about her awards: Sunburst Award, Cooper Short Fiction Competition winner, Manchester Fiction finalist. Then, I was more surprised that the setting for her full-length novel, Signal to Noise, was set even further south--in Mexico City--and described as "a literary fantasy about love, music and sorcery, set against the background of Mexico City."

Here's what some of the literary Gatekeepers say about the book:

"It's very early in the year but I can already tell this is one of the Notable Reads of 2015." - Kirkus

"Moreno-Garcia has a solid and convincing prose style, robust and subtle in all the right places... a successful debut, and a very interesting book." - Tor.com

“In a poignant, graceful coda, Moreno-Garcia brings the book full-circle, slyly subverting the expectations of a linear narrative and punctuating Meche's story with a hushed, lovely flourish. In many ways, Signal to Noiseis a coming-of-age tale, but it's also the tale of what comes after — and what happens when forces beyond our control, magical or otherwise, are better left that way.” – NPR

So I read the book. It's more than a regular fantasy, and then again, it's not pure fantasy. To me, genre classifications don't do justice to a lot of our Latino writings. Even the term speculative, as in, speculative literature, is the Euro-Western worldview being imposed on what's only a half-Euro world, our Spanish half.

The witches and witchcraft in Moreno-Garcia's book would be called fantasy and speculative--or Daniel José Older's santería--even though we grew up in environments where the only speculation about witches was, who was a good or bad witch, and what they do next.

But Signal to Noise is about signal to noise (s:n), developed through literary paths of Silvia's making. For those who don't know, s:n is a tech/scientific term comparing what's understandable to what's interfering with that understanding. The less background "noise," the better. Like being in the middle of the recent Facebook exchange of insults about not reading White Male Hero Saves The World books, for a year. Too much racist, privilege-defense and male chauvinism make it difficult to find intelligible comments.

I understood and appreciated Moreno-Garcia's novel once I realized that the theme of s:n permeated the entire plot and subplots. Maybe I should say themes, plural. Here's the synopsis from her publisher, the imprint Solaris (Rebellion Publishing Ltd., England):

     "Mexico City, 1988: Long before iTunes or MP3s, you said, “I love you” with a mixtape. Meche, awkward and fifteen, has two equally unhip friends -- Sebastian and Daniela -- and a whole lot of vinyl records to keep her company. When she discovers how to cast spells using music, the future looks brighter for the trio. With help from this newfound magic, the three friends will piece together their broken families, change their status as non-entities, and maybe even find love...

     "Mexico City, 2009: Two decades after abandoning the metropolis, Meche returns for her estranged father’s funeral. It’s hard enough to cope with her family, but then she runs into Sebastian, and it revives memories from her childhood she thought she buried a long time ago. What really happened back then? What precipitated the bitter falling out with her father? And, is there any magic left?"

Don't think this some regular time-travel story. Silvia beautifully develops the s:n themes through her character Meche (a great girl-name). The plot weaves between Meche's life as a teenager and the grown-up Meche returning to DF to help bury her father.

The s:n theme is also reflected in Meche's current life and her memories of her teen years. Back and forth, down those two currents, or paths, she will run through phases of coming of age, twice. And coming to terms with her BFFs, as teens and as adults, as well as her teen and her adult love of a boy and a man. Old magic that worked and new magic that may not. The s:n of the magical pitted against reality. The s:n between teen Meche and the boy Sebastian, attempting to find their "signals" by filtering out the "noise" of teen life, growing up in Mexico City.

These are my thoughts about what Silvia accomplished, which she may see differently. She gave us a novel that explores at least two ways--possibly more--of living and reliving a teen's life. The memoirs of an adult Meche judging her teen mistakes and successes, not only with dark magic, but also with the struggle of trying to find happiness in family life that reminded me of Melinda Palacio and Reyna Grande's books.

In that sense, Signal to Noise has a feel of memoir that I know girls will love. This also crosses into genre of "teen romance" with the teasing and flirting and obsessing about the hottest guy in school, the pledges and tortures of loyalty and love between girls and guys. Yes, there is some "love story."

Teen boys will see in Sebastian, their own attempts to create more signals to girls, rather than awkwardly stumbling over the "noise" they often produce from trying to discover their male emotions. Boys, just read a female version of what you're going through and you might learn quite a bit.

This is also a book for adults--the nostalgia, oldies music of rock, jazz, R&B and more. Adults will recognize and maybe regret identifying with how they fumbled with the "other" sex, through their own teen years. And later, how they might have returned to correct some of the stupid things they did.

How the strange magic works, I'll let you discover from your own reading. Of course it's about music, and witches, and witchcraft. That will turn dark, not like horror, but as mean as some of us might have acted had we had the power.

Don't expect a La Capital setting that an Anglo author might paint. There's not much of museum visits, boat rides down Chapultepec canals, or the tourist lens. This is a Mexico City that its residents live and love in, a mysterious place to a gringo americano, but it's simply a Home, like barrios we grew and grow up in. Abject realism, centered on the characters.

What I'd love to see from Moreno-Garcia are sequels or prequels of these characters and the city DF and the magic. I want Meche to visit and stay with her bruja abuela who's sent somewhere--I'm not spoiling it--and have the abuela mentor Meche's magical abilities. I want to know how the magic ties to Aztec or other indigenous cultures. Give me más, por favor.

For the sake of getting our Latino stories published, we're supposed to follow the constrictions of genre to be a "good fit," as it's called. Latinos writers are subordinated too often by the rules of the Euro-Western worldview. It's buenísimo that Moreno-Garcia didn't shoehorn her story into one genre. And instead, let her story flow thematically, in multiple streams across time, space and teen/adult emotions.

About Silvia Moreno-Garcia:

Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination. Silvia’s first collection, This Strange Way of Dying, was released in 2013 and was a finalist for The Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Her stories have also been collected in Love & Other Poisons.

She co-edited the anthologies Sword & Mythos, Historical Lovecraft, Future Lovecraft, Candle in the Attic Window and Fungi. Dead North and Fractured are solo anthologies. In 2011, She won the Carter V. Cooper/Exile Short Fiction Competition (in the Emerging Writer category) and was a finalist for the Manchester Fiction Prize.

Blog: http://www.silviamoreno-garcia.com/blog/

https://twitter.com/silviamg

https://www.facebook.com/silvia.morenogarcia

Es todo, of my "noise" today,

RudyG, a.k.a., Chicano fantasy author Rudy Ch. Garcia, known for sending his own mextasy signals

_The Tijuana Book of the Dead_: Interview with Luis Alberto Urrea

March 1, 2015, 12:00 am

≫ Next: The La Bloga interview with Luis J. Rodriguez, the new Poet Laureate of Los Angeles and founding editor of Tia Chucha Press

≪ Previous: Author Silvia Moreno-Garcia's strange ways

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What a pleasure to have writer, Luis Alberto Urrea in the La Bloga house today!  Urrea is the author of 13 books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. He has been a Pulitzer Prize Finalist (non-fiction), and an American Book Award and Lannan Literary Award recipient. 

Some of his best selling books are,  The Hummingbird’s Daughter, (historical fiction), and The Devil’s Highway.  In 2009, our own La Bloga writer, Olga Echeverría reviewed his book, Into the Beautiful North,another popular novel. His non-fiction works, Across the Wire:  Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Borderand Nobody’s Son: Notes from an American Life are poignant and gritty accounts of his coming-of-age in Tijuana.  Urrea has also been an important voice against the banning of books and of Mexican American studies in Arizona.  Here is a link to his poem "Hymn to Vatos Who Will Never Be in a Poem" that was read during the LibroTraficante caravan, a protest march that took place in 2012 to take banned books back to Arizona.  (Click here to listen to the poem.)

Urrea’s latest book is a collection of poetry entitled, The Tijuana Book of the Dead. He is currently on a book tour, but was kind enough to take time for an interview. I also want to give a "shout-out" to artist/photographer Art Meza (on twitter, find him at @Chicano-Soul) whose photo is on the cover of the book!

Amelia Montes: Gracias, Luis, for taking time out from your book tour.  How did this poetry collection, The Tijuana Book of the Dead come about?

Luis Alberto Urrea:The Tijuana Book of the Dead was about six books over the last ten years.  My life kept changing too fast for the poems to hold.  But then, the racist cabrones in the Tucson Unified School District started their bannings.  Oh, excuse me, their “book boxing.”  Sorry.  My rage boiled over and I got all Chicano.  It turned into 1971!  Ha ha.  The book was a cry from the heart.  An explosion.  The other million poems from the interim are moving into the new and selected collection I’m preparing. 

Amelia Montes:  How is this book of poetry different from Vatos or Ghost Sickness: A Book of Poems?

Luis Alberto Urrea:  “Vatos” is in it.  I never meant for “Vatos” to be a book.  It was always meant as the prayer at the end of the new book.  Remember, the poem is called, “Hymn to Vatos Who Will Never be in a Poem.”  If I had done that book, it would have been called “Hymn.”  Better that I didn’t!  Vatos was so much more marketable. 

As far as Ghost Sickness . . . one hopes the work evolves.  New voices, new melodies, new milieus. 

Amelia Montes:  You are most known for your fiction and non-fiction.  How does the writing of poetry sustain you differently from the other genres, or is it connected? 

Luis Alberto Urrea:  Poetry is the wellspring.  The secret source.  I have often said that The Hummingbird’s Daughter is really 25,000 haiku in a row.  It is more of a ritual for me, and you probably know all writing is a ritual for me.  Not a career at all. 

Amelia Montes:  Is there anything else you’d like to tell “La Bloga” readers?

Luis Alberto Urrea:  I just want to thank the “La Bloga” community for keeping our beautiful Raza vibrant and brilliant.  Our song, our story, our thought, our art, our soul, WEAR THE CABRONES DOWN. 

Amelia Montes: Gracias Luis!  Check out Luis Alberto Urrea's website for details regarding his book tour, and his latest publications! (Click Here!)    

The La Bloga interview with Luis J. Rodriguez, the new Poet Laureate of Los Angeles and founding editor of Tia Chucha Press

March 1, 2015, 11:01 pm

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Luis J. Rodriguez

By Daniel A. Olivas

Luis J. Rodriguez was born in El Paso, Texas in 1954, though his family lived in Ciudad Juarez. At the age two, Rodriguez’s family moved to Los Angeles where he grew up. As an adult, he moved around California and eventually lived in Chicago for 15 years, the same number of years he’s been back living in Los Angeles.

Rodriguez is an award-winning author of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. He is perhaps best known for his 1993 memoir, Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. Rodriguez has noted that this book has sold almost half-a-million copies, and in some places is the most checked out—and the most stolen—book.

Rodriguez now has 15 books in poetry, children’s literature, the novel, short stories, and non-fiction. His last poetry book, My Nature is Hunger, won the 2006 Paterson Poetry Book Award. And his last memoir, It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing, became a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award.

On October 9, 2014, Mayor Eric Garcetti appointedRodriguez as the new Poet Laureate of Los Angeles for a two-year term. In making the appointment, Mayor Garcetti observed, “Luis Rodriguez is an example of how powerful an impact literature can have on young lives, and as Poet Laureate, he will impact youth across Los Angeles. I have no doubt that Luis will run with this new role and take it to new heights.”

Rodriguez’s present wife, Trini, is his third and they have been together some 30 years. He has four children, five grandchildren, and a great-grandchild, with another one on the way.

Q: What do you want to accomplish as the new Poet Laureate of Los Angeles?

A: I’m for poetry to become an everyday, every occasion thing. To me poetry is deep soul talk that utilizes sounds, images and words to powerfully express and impact our world. Most social language appears dishonest or exploitative, giving you news, advertisement, information, but largely inauthentic and unrevealing. Over the past thirty years, there has been an explosion of rap, slam poetry, open mics, and independent publishing that has brought blood and vitality to the periphery of our culture. The center of culture—with multi-billion industries in publishing, film, TV, and radio—appears hollow in comparison. Poet Laureates not only celebrate their cities, communities or countries, but also write poems that are timely as well as representative of our times—good, bad, and in-between.

I currently have plans to do readings and workshops in libraries, schools, festivals, conferences, and other venues throughout the vast and colorful Los Angeles metropolitan area. I also believe in the art of poetry, the rigorous discipline and practice to make language, story and ideas as compelling as possible. Here’s a recent sonnet I wrote that I hope maintains an adequate measure of gravitas, claritas and integritas (gravity, clarity and integrity) that all art should strive for:

A shadow hangs where my country should glow.

Despite glories shaped as skyscrapers or sound.

More wars, more prisons, less safe, still low.

Massive cities teeter on shifting ground.

Glittering lights, music tracks hide the craven.

TV, movies, books so we can forget.

Countless worn out, debt-laden & slaving;

Their soul-derived destinies unmet.

Give me NASCAR, lowriders, Hip Hop, the Blues.

Give me Crooklyn, cowboys, cool jazz, cholos.

Give me libraries, gardens of the muse.

Give me songs over sidewalks, mad solos.

            Big America improperly sized.

            Give me your true value, realized.

Q: Aside from being a poet yourself, you are also the founding editor of Tia Chucha Press, not in its 25^th year, and co-founder/president of Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstorein the San Fernando Valley. What is the interplay among these different roles?

A: I created Tia Chucha Press in 1989 to publish my first collection, Poems Across the Pavement. This was when I lived in Chicago, which at the time was the birthplace of poetry slams. The book became a hit, which I sold out of the trunk of my car and while doing readings in bars, cafes, libraries, street corners, homeless shelters, prisons, Hip Hop and lowrider shows … you name it. Soon other Chicago poets wanted me to do their books. Why not? I had a great designer in Jane Brunette, of Menominee-German-French descent, who has designed our close to 60 books (of other poets, mind you) since then. In a couple of years, we obtained interest from poets across this great land.

I’ve published anyone whose manuscripts knocked me off my feet: African Americans, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, Native Americans, Japanese Americans, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Korean Americans, LGBT, and more. I moved back to Los Angeles in 2000, and a year later my wife Trini and I helped create a cultural café, bookstore, performance space, workshop center, and art gallery called Tia Chucha’s Café Cultural. Now we are a non-profit renamed Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural, serving 15,000 people a year, and teaching writing, theater, music, dance, murals, and Mexica/Mayan cosmologies, among other arts. We also have the only bookstore for 500,000 people in my section of the City of Angels. By the way, I named both the press and center for my late “Tia Chucha” Maria De Jesus Rodriguez who was the creative (often called “crazy”) member of my family.

Q: How has poetry affected your life?

A: There are many ways to obtain knowledge, and I can vouch for most of them—study, stories, paying attention, being inventive, making mistakes, trying again. Poetry is a path to knowledge as well as of the imagination. In my case, when I was a teenage drug addict and gang member, books became my saving grace. Once I was briefly homeless, sleeping in abandoned cars, all-night movie theaters, vacant lots, along the Los Angeles River. My refuge then was the downtown L.A. public library. I loved the African American experience books of the 1960s—Malcolm X, Claude Brown, George Jackson. But also later of Puerto Ricans and Chicanos like Piri Thomas, Miguel Pinero, Ricardo Sanchez, Sandra Cisneros, and Victor Villasenor. I went back and studied classical American poets such as Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, but also more contemporary poets like Haki Madubuti, Juan Felipe Herrera, Joy Harjo, William Stafford, Philip Levine, and many more. When my imagination grew to encompass the idea that I may be a poet, with books on the shelves, then this became the seed of an immense possibility. I let go of drugs and gangs by age 20; I went through 20 years of drinking after that, but I’ve now been clean and sober for almost 22 years. My writing, my poetry, proved to be medicine—a healing stone, a destiny. I’m blessed to have achieved what I’ve achieved. I’m a child born on the border, in El Paso, and for most of my life living in L.A., the San Francisco Bay Area, the “Inland Empire,” or Chicago I felt put down, dismissed, invisible. None of this stopped me in the end. I realized that my life like everyone else in my circumstances has value, meaning, direction. Poetry woke me up, and I’ve never let this go. 

Trini and Luis Rodriguez

Hitch Moves to the East Side

March 12, 2015, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Hitched Moves to the East Side

≪ Previous: The La Bloga interview with Luis J. Rodriguez, the new Poet Laureate of Los Angeles and founding editor of Tia Chucha Press

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Melinda Palacio

A hidden oasis in Alhambra

Terry Wolverton, Luivette Resto, Melinda Palacio, Lisa Cheby, and Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

Last Sunday, Hitched, the reading series, started by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo at Beyond Baroque in Venice five years ago, to Alhambra at Holy Grounds Coffee & Tea.

A week ago, everything was going without a hitch until two of the featured readers, Sharon Venezio and Karineh Mahdessian took sick. Terry Wolverton filled in for Sharon and I filled in for Karineh. In the spirit of women helping women and International Women's Day, there was an all-female lineup.

Terry Wolverton opened the set with her powerful poems.

Lisa Cheby read from her new chapbook, Love Letters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Lisa receives flowers.

Four years ago, I had the honor of reading in Hitched at Beyond Baroque with Alicia Partnoy, Ramon Garcia, Sholeh Wolpe  and Bilal Shaw. The space at Beyond Baroque is dark with all the doors and windows blacked out for an intimate theatre setting. Beyond Baroque is famous for being the place in L.A. where poets read.

Bird fountain at Holy Grounds

Holy Grounds is a light and airy oasis in the middle of East L.A.'s warehouse district. You really do feel like you're in church, listening to a poet read in front of a stage, surrounded by tall stained glass windows.

Luivette Resto and Melinda Palacio

I was happy to heed the call of poetry and get "hitched" with Luivette Resto and fill in for Karineh who lost her voice and was under the weather. Luivette and I are often paired together at poetry events since we are both Tía Chucha Press poets. In fact, we have both represented Tia Chucha Press at several events and venues, including Beyond Baroque, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Chicago's Guild Literary Complex, and the Words and Music Festival. 

Perhaps, this was why I felt comfortable reading in my temporary salon chanclas. In the morning, my sister Emily had insisted we get pedicures. This was my first pedicure since I broke my leg in July, and I had forgotten what a great deal of time needed for toe nails to dry. I had planned on putting on my shoes before the reading, but I was at home with fellow female poets on International Women's Day.

Luivette's butterfly tattoo and my spa chanclas.

Luivette closes the show with her memorable poems. (No RBF here; (you had to have been there))

Poet, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo was invited to be a curator at Beyond Baroque by then board member and poet, Jerry Garcia, who was also in the audience. In an email, she explained why she moved the series to Alhambra.

         "I was excited for the opportunity because it's a prestigious poetry center with a long history grounded in the Venice beat scene, but running the reading series grew difficult over time because it's a history and community I don't feel particularly connected to. I grew up going to school at the San Gabriel Mission and spent my weekends running after ice cream trucks at my grandparents' house in Boyle Heights, so the east side of L.A. is where my heart is. On top of that, so many exciting things have been happening in the last few years around the east and northeast parts of L.A. that I enjoy and support like the La Palabra and Blue Bird reading series at Avenue 50 in Highland Park, Las Lunas Locas women's writing circle at Here & Now in El Sereno, and the ZzyZx WriterZ, and I just hope HITCHED can add to the scene."

Alhambra avenue is full of surprises. Someone mentioned one of the furniture stores turns into a nightlclub. You never know what you might find, but a respite of poetry and cafe de olla is perfect for a Sunday afternoon.

Hitched is a quarterly series. The next reading will be June 21 at 4pm and features Rachelle Cruz with Micah Tasaka and Ben Loory with Tommy Moore.  

 

Hitched Moves to the East Side

March 13, 2015, 7:32 am

≫ Next: Points about spec lit written for all peoples

≪ Previous: Hitch Moves to the East Side

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Melinda Palacio

A hidden oasis in Alhambra

Terry Wolverton, Luivette Resto, Melinda Palacio, Lisa Cheby, and Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

Last Sunday, Hitched, the reading series, started by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo at Beyond Baroque in Venice five years ago, to Alhambra at Holy Grounds Coffee & Tea. 

A week ago, everything was going without a hitch until two of the featured readers, Sharon Venezio and Karineh Mahdessian took sick. Terry Wolverton filled in for Sharon and I filled in for Karineh. In the spirit of women helping women and International Women's Day, there was an all-female lineup. 

Terry Wolverton opened the set with her powerful poems.

Lisa Cheby read from her new chapbook, Love Letters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Lisa receives flowers.

Four years ago, I had the honor of reading in Hitched at Beyond Baroque with Alicia Partnoy, Ramon Garcia, Sholeh Wolpe  and Bilal Shaw. The space at Beyond Baroque is dark with all the doors and windows blacked out for an intimate theatre setting. Beyond Baroque is famous for being the place in L.A. where poets read. 

Bird fountain at Holy Grounds

Holy Grounds is a light and airy oasis in the middle of East L.A.'s warehouse district. You really do feel like you're in church, listening to a poet read in front of a stage, surrounded by tall stained glass windows. 

Luivette Resto and Melinda Palacio

I was happy to heed the call of poetry and get "hitched" with Luivette Resto and fill in for Karineh who lost her voice and was under the weather. Luivette and I are often paired together at poetry events since we are both Tía Chucha Press poets. In fact, we have both represented Tia Chucha Press at several events and venues, including Beyond Baroque, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Chicago's Guild Literary Complex, and the Words and Music Festival. 

Perhaps, this was why I felt comfortable reading in my temporary salon chanclas. In the morning, my sister Emily had insisted we get pedicures. This was my first pedicure since I broke my leg in July, and I had forgotten what a great deal of time needed for toe nails to dry. I had planned on putting on my shoes before the reading, but I was at home with fellow female poets on International Women's Day.

Luivette's butterfly tattoo and my spa chanclas.

Luivette closes the show with her memorable poems. (No RBF here; (you had to have been there))

Poet, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo was invited to be a curator at Beyond Baroque by then board member and poet, Jerry Garcia, who was also in the audience. In an email, she explained why she moved the series to Alhambra.

         "I was excited for the opportunity because it's a prestigious poetry center with a long history grounded in the Venice beat scene, but running the reading series grew difficult over time because it's a history and community I don't feel particularly connected to. I grew up going to school at the San Gabriel Mission and spent my weekends running after ice cream trucks at my grandparents' house in Boyle Heights, so the east side of L.A. is where my heart is. On top of that, so many exciting things have been happening in the last few years around the east and northeast parts of L.A. that I enjoy and support like the La Palabra and Blue Bird reading series at Avenue 50 in Highland Park, Las Lunas Locas women's writing circle at Here & Now in El Sereno, and the ZzyZx WriterZ, and I just hope HITCHED can add to the scene."

Alhambra avenue is full of surprises. Someone mentioned one of the furniture stores turns into a nightlclub. You never know what you might find, but a respite of poetry and cafe de olla is perfect for a Sunday afternoon. 

Hitched is a quarterly series. The next reading will be June 21 at 4pm and features Rachelle Cruz with Micah Tasaka and Ben Loory with Tommy Moore.  

 

---

Points about spec lit written for all peoples

March 13, 2015, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Finding Nepantla in _Ofrenda: Liliana Wilson's Art of Dissidence and Dreams_

≪ Previous: Hitched Moves to the East Side

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NPR's list of Top 100 Science-Fiction & Fantasy Books had one USican Spanish-surname, Diana Gabaldon. I left a comment that there really were zero, since Gabaldon, to my knowledge, doesn't call herself anything but "American" and doesn't write about any Latinos. At public readings, she insisted her name be pronounced as an English word. So, 0--zero--USican Latinos on another best-of list. [Actually, not even Octavia Butler was included!]

Kids and adults reading this may not realize the message NPR is sending. It's the message of same-ole exclusionary, white-privilege, not only that Latinos don't write spec-lit, but that none of it compares to The100. To use a kid-expression, it made me want to throw up in my mouth and deliberately swallow it.

Pero, ya basta. Times are changing. The old White Guy Hero Saves the World is being chipped away.

No matter what you read or write, pumping out the classic tropes, classic plots, cardboard characters and stereotyped fiction is the receding wave of the past. The ivory tower of USican literature has been spray-painted with the graffiti art of people of color. The cornerstones crumble.

To glimpse the promise of the future, here's excerpts from articles that are worth reading in their entirety. Again, no matter which genres interest you, nearly all these articles can serve your art. Most of them are by women--some white--which possibly says something about who's carrying the good fight. Hint: Not enough old white guys have found their huevos and jumped in.

10 ways white people are more racist than they realizeby Kali Holloway

Here's links to the science, the studies, the books, the facts that'll convince everybody but racists and right-wingers. Demographics that can be used in any fiction.

Set Truth on Stun: Reimagining an Anti-Oppressive SF/F by Daniel José Older

A great roundtable discussion of spec-lit authors, led by DanielJosé.

Putting the I in Speculative: Looking at U.S. Latino/a Writers and Stories by Sabrina Vourvoulias

"The U.S. Latino/a speculative fiction writer is largely invisible to the speculative mainstream editor, publisher, reviewer and anthologist. U.S. Latin@s are writing anyway. Fictions haunted by mestizo, Afro-Latino/a and indigenous ghosts, legends and magic. Fictions of future cities built on the foundations poured by Latino/a immigrants and Mexicans whose roots in the United States go back more than 400 years. Fictions populated by sinuous and spiky sentences in English mixed with Spanish, with Spanglish and Nahuatl and Chicano Caló."

They are not ghosts: On the representation of the indigenous peoples of North America in science fiction and fantasyby Maureen Kincaid Speller

Read this before you stick a Native American character in your next story. Or if you want to know what those Indians are doing in that novel. 

"In the same way that Hollywood relegates Native Americans to the Old West, so the Ghosts [novel] exist mainly in the Empire’s past. They have no present, and apparently no future either."

Boys Read Girlsby Ana S.

Enough with the excuses about why you didn't put girls in your YA or children's book.

"The problem that needs to be fixed is not kick all the girls out of YA, it’s teach boys that stories featuring female protagonists or written by female authors also apply to them. Boys fall in love. Boys want to be important. Boys have hopes and fears and dreams and ambitions. What boys also have is a sexist society in which they are belittled for 'liking girl stuff.' Male is neutral, female is specific.

On sniping, women and SFby Brenda Cooper

"Most of the men who are part of the problem in written science fiction simply don’t know it. They don’t mean women writers harm, they aren’t meeting in back rooms plotting against us, and they aren’t dreaming about misogynistic ways to express themselves. So when someone twitter-slams them over a clueless phrase, they’re either embarrassed, or more likely, defensive. When they’re defensive, they bite. I do too.

"We don’t want them to bite. We want them to change."

Writing Women Characters as Human Beings by Kate Elliott

"I get asked if I have any advice for writers on how to create believable female characters while avoiding clichés, especially in fantasy novels where the expectations and settings may be seen to be different from our modern world. There is an 'easy' answer to this. Write all characters as human beings in all their glorious complexity and contradiction…. Three Basic Pieces of Advice: 1. Have enough women in the story that they can talk to each other….

Writing Strong Female Characters? That's A Great Goal, But I'd Rather Write Strong Kick-Heart Characters by Catherynne M. Valente

Kick-ass females are not the ultimate.

"I have never once been asked how I write male characters, nor how to write strong, kickass male characters, nor whether I’m concerned about making the men in my books vulnerable as well as tough. Yet our culture at large seems to peer into novels (and movies and television) as through the bars of a cage at the zoo: Here we see the endangered strong female protagonist in her natural habitat! What strange markings she has! What goes through the head of such a bizarre creature?"

Rewriting the Future: Using Science Fiction to Re-envision Justice by Walida Himarisha

This article doesn't just shred the envelope; it throws it away to develop new packaging.  "We started an anthology with the belief that all organizing is science fiction. When we talk about a world without prisons; a world without police violence; a world where everyone has food, clothing, shelter, quality education; a world free of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, heterosexism, we are talking about a world that doesn’t currently exist. But collectively dreaming up one that does means we can begin building it into existence."

Es todo, hoy, but not for el futuro

RudyG, a.k.a. Chicano spec-lit author Rudy Ch. Garcia

Finding Nepantla in _Ofrenda: Liliana Wilson's Art of Dissidence and Dreams_

March 15, 2015, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Stanford Book Club Reads Corpi's Confessions. Gluten-free Chicano Cooks.

≪ Previous: Points about spec lit written for all peoples

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"My images come from the subconscious. Many of the figures I create appear in 'other-world' environments: their outward composure in direct contrast to their inner turmoil," writes artivist, Liliana Wilson on her website. With the publication of Ofrenda: Liliana Wilson's Art of Dissidence and Dreams, we are offered her paintings, and essays by various scholars and friends who focus on many aspects of her work. The book also includes song lyrics by well-known singer, songwriter, and composer, Lourdes Pérez that describe the intertwining of pain and joy in Liliana's art, (example of one line:  "They say that/With only one brushstroke/You drew yourself an exit"). As well, an essay by Gloria Anzaldúa, (author of Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza), describes Liliana's paintings through the lens of nepantla: "In her most successful paintings, the conscious aspects never overwhelm the unconscious elements, but are held in nepantla, the midway point between the conscious and the unconscious, the place where transformations are enacted" (from this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation).  

Born in Valparaíso, Chile, Liliana Wilson began drawing at a young age. But she didn't go to art school right away.  Instead, she was a law student in Chile. Her studies were interrupted in 1973 when military leaders took over the government and thus began a 17-year dictatorship in Chile.  In 1977, she fled the country and immigrated, settling in Texas. There, she turned to her art, depicting the horrors of war, violence, the policing of individuals via oppressive societal narratives, the marginalization of immigrants.  

Dr. Norma Cantú, author of Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera and professor in the Department of English and Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, is the editor of Ofrenda: Liliana Wilson's Art of Dissidence and Dreams. Today, Dr. Cantú gives us a "back-stage" glimpse into the making of this impressive book.  

Amelia Montes:  Tell us how about this book was conceived.

Norma Cantú: When I first met Liliana through our mutual friend, Gloria Anzaldúa, I was impressed by her artwork, but I had no idea that almost 30 years later, we would discuss putting together a book of essays on her work.  But that’s how it happened.  After Gloria died, we saw each other several times and the subject kept coming up.  I first submitted it to Palgrave but they couldn’t include color images and so we pulled it and submitted it to Texas A&M. 

Amelia Montes: The title of this book is “Ofrenda” and the title of your introduction is “Finding Nepantla.”  How do both titles complement each other? 

Norma Cantú:  In the introduction, I speak of how the book is an offering, an ofrenda, with its other meaning too, an altar.  I also speak about the in-betweenstate, Nepantla, where we exist as mestizos, as immigrants, as mujeres and lesbians in the United States.  These two concepts complement each other and are emblematic of the work itself. The  art and the essays work in tandem to render a view of Liliana, the person, Liliana the activist, and Liliana the artist. 

Liliana Wilson (left); Dr. Norma Cantú (right)

Amelia Montes:  In your introduction to the book, you describe Liliana as an “Artivist.”  What do you mean by “Artivist” and how does Liliana fit the description? 

Norma Cantú: The blend of Artist and Activist is not my coinage.  It has been around for a while to describe art with conciencia—with a social justice aim.  In many ways, Liliana’s activist work in the community, with her teaching and her prints, is an outgrowth of her art.  So it seems a very fitting term for who Liliana is as a committed artist and advocate for change. 

Amelia Montes:  When did you first become acquainted with Liliana’s work? 

Norma Cantú: As I mentioned earlier, I met Liliana through Gloria Anzaldúa sometime in the 1980s, but it was in the 1990’s, and more specifically, after the Third Woman Press edition of ThisBridge Called My Back that I became more interested in her work, attending her exhibitions, and talking to her about the conceptual background to the paintings.  After I moved to San Antonio in 2000, I saw her more frequently either at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center events or in Austin.

Amelia Montes:  How would you describe Liliana Wilson’s impact on Chicana and U.S. Latina art? 

Norma Cantú:  Her impact is tremendous in terms of influence.  First, the influence of Chicana and Chicano art on her is tremendous as she will tell you.  She studied art at Austin Community Collegeand became friends and hung out with the artivists in that community.  Her association with Las Manitas and MexicArte, both Austin institutions that promoted and promote art and artists, had a profound impact on her.  Then, through her teaching and her example, she has had an impact on younger artists.  Art is at the center of her life as an activist in Texas and, I would say, she thus impacts the artists just as they impact her—both working from a social justice perspective and with aims of educating and in some ways politicizing audiences through the work. 

"Muerte en La Frontera" by Liliana Wilson

Amelia Montes: Tell us about Liliana’s connection with Gloria Anzaldúa.

Norma Cantú: Well, for me, the connection was critical as I met Liliana through Gloria.  Perhaps the greatest connection was forged during their work together in the Nepantla workshops where they and two other Chicana artists came together to explore and create art around the concept of borders and Nepantlism.  I know that when Liliana moved to California, their friendship deepened, and that often Liliana would visit her and stay for extended periods, and it was very fruitful for both of them.  Moreover, if you notice many of the essays reference Liliana’s connection to Anzaldúa’s ideas and concepts.  I see that there is a deep connection at that level of how they see the world, how they analyze their role in the world, if you will—the level of the conceptual and intellectual engagement with the world.  In Anzaldúa’s case, it is manifested, obviously, in her writings.  In Liliana’s, it is in the artwork. 

Amelia Montes: Tell us about the essay contributors to the book.  How did you go about choosing them to write for Ofrenda.  What do you feel they bring to the text?

Norma Cantú: When Liliana and I first met to discuss the project, we drafted a rough Table of Contents:  mostly what we wanted to see, including Anzaldúa’s essay. We then added contributors based on the rough skeleton of the book.  We knew we wanted Marjorie Agosínas a fellow Chilena.  We felt it was important to have her voice included.  So the first section was set—it is a more imagist reaction to the work and not the more academic treatment that we find in the other essays.  I learned of Ricardo Romo’s fascination and admiration of Liliana’s work, so I asked him for an essay that became the preface.  I also invited Patricia Ruiz Healy whose work I knew from being on her MA committee at the University of Texas at San Antonio.  She was a doctoral student at UT Austin at the time, and she had conducted an interview with Liliana.  Her piece fit just right with George Vargas’s whom Liliana invited, as he had also interviewed her.  The others were invited because of their connection to Liliana’s work or because we felt they could contribute significant perspectives.  GuiselaLatorre, Laura Perez, Kay Turner, and Alicia Gaspar de Alba fit this category.  There were a couple of other contributors that we invited but it just didn’t work out.  I was more than pleased, though, when those we invited agreed and then turned in essays.  I then grouped them into the three parts. 

Left to Right:  Norma Cantú, Lourdes Perez, Annette D'Armatta, Jordana Barton, Gloria Ramírez, Liliana Wilson, Gloria Lopez.

Amelia Montes:  Yes, I find this a really well, thought-out design. Part one, two, and three, contain the essays.  What is the significance to each section?

Norma Cantú: Part two gathers the essays that specifically treat the artwork using particular scholarly approaches.  In other words, the authors take a particular lens to talk about Liliana’s work.  For instance, Part I is a more personal reaction to the work by two friends who obviously love and admire Liliana and her art.  Part two is a more academic treatment, and the essays reflect the author’s critical approaches.  As an academic, I was thrilled to see the level of sophistication of the analysis, and the intellectual engagement with the artwork.  The essays in Part three, while also academic and scholarly, are more grounded in the interviews conducted with Liliana and thus provide a slightly different analysis that employs the information from the interviews to conduct the scholarly analysis.  Now, the inclusion of Lourdes Pérez’s "Tango" constitutes a blending of genres—something I am very fond of doing in my own work.  I take the task of editor very seriously as a creative endeavor, and in this particular book, especially perhaps because of the connection with Anzaldúa, I wanted to leave my own mark.  I did something similar in Moctezuma’sTable:  Rolando Briseño’s Mexican and Chicano Tablescapes where I included personal essays along with academic essays and poetry.  When Liliana clued me in and shared Lourdes’s beautiful song dedicated to her and her work, I just had to have it in the book.  I consider it a variant, a kind of Anzaldúan mixed genre kind of text. 

Amelia Montes:  And it works beautifully.  You also placed the artwork at the end as if it would be Part IV.  It reminds me of Anzaldúa placing her poetry in the second half of  Borderlands/La Frontera. 

Norma Cantú:  Right.  It is Part four – a continuation of what the essays have prepared you for, although the essays refer to the artwork and the process should be interactive and recursive as the reader can easily flip back and forth from text to artwork. 

Amelia Montes:  Wonderful. I'm hoping many of our La Bloga readers will enjoy reading the essays, and appreciating the important and poignant artwork Liliana has offered us throughout the years.  Is there anything else you would like to share with our La Bloga readers?  

Norma Cantú:  Only that Ofrenda has a long publication history and that I am extremely grateful to everyone involved in it for their patience.  We are very happy to be part of the Joe and Betty Moore Texas Arts Series at Texas A&M UniversityPress.  Altogether I think it took almost 10 years for this baby to be born, but I for one think it was worth the labor and the long wait.  So I guess the lesson is to be patient and allow the process to happen as it must. 

Stanford Book Club Reads Corpi's Confessions. Gluten-free Chicano Cooks.

March 2, 2015, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Workshops at CABE 2015 (California Association For Bilingual Education)

≪ Previous: Finding Nepantla in _Ofrenda: Liliana Wilson's Art of Dissidence and Dreams_

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Michael Sedano

Dierdre, Lucha, Concepción / Michael, Carlos, Roberto, Manuel

Members of the southland’s Stanford Latina Latino Alumni Book Club had the immense pleasure of meeting Lucha Corpi in the club’s February quarterly meeting, discussing the author’s Confessions of a Book Burner. The book, and the conversation, were superb. One member calls it "mesmerizing from the start."

The Club enjoys reading contemporary titles, principally novels and memoir. Members welcomed the opportunity to share Corpi’s perspectives on movimiento literature, first in reading Confessions of a Book Burner, and now hearing first-hand stories about the colorful personalities producing art that became important elements of the US and Chicano Literary canon.

Dierdre and Concepción follow Lucha Corpi's reading in the book

Members came excited to meet the grandmother of raza detective fiction. They brought dog-eared books, notes, and questions galore. Corpi gave generously of her time, insight, and point of view, answered every question, and asked her readers to select what she should read.

Lucha Corpi is a story-teller. Any conversation is sure to range widely around and directly into a central idea enhanced with delightful detail, cultural insights, and the author’s intent focus on literary value and historical place.

A lot of the afternoon’s conversation is not in Confessions of a Bookburner. Anecdotes peppered Corpi’s observations both as a Mexicana lyric poet writing in Spanish in a burgeoning non-lyric, English-speaking literary movement, and as a woman in a male-centered milieu.

Corpi explores the heart of the matter: Las mujeres were there from the start, a first generation setting standards, holding tipos accountable, writing and producing art. Faced with benign contempt or aggressive competitiveness, women not only held their own but opened doors and through quality and endurance, kept those doors open.

Corpi points out that the first Premio Aztlán went to Rudolfo Anaya for Bless Me, Ultima. The second Premio Aztlán was awarded to Estela Portillo Trambley for Rain of Scorpions. 

While Lucha Corpi does not make the claim, it’s clear that Chicanas have become the premiere writers of today’s literary movimiento. Indeed, a Chicano Renaissance is underway, and it is led by women writers.


The club invites Stanford alumni in the Los Angeles region to join. Membership is not restricted to Stanfordians. The Confessions of a Book Burner meeting, for example, was held at honorary member Michael Sedano’s home, whose degrees are from UCSB, the US Army, and USC.

The May meeting will discuss Héctor Tobar’s Deep Down Dark. Click here for los datos.

Conversations with authors in someone’s home ordinarily are “you had to have been there” events. In this event, Jesús Treviño joined to interview Lucha Corpi and document the meeting for Latinopia. Latinopia is the definitive resource for historical footage of the movement. Latinopia also features readings and interviews with pioneers like Corpi, as well as emerging and newly-established writers like Reyna Grande and Melinda Palacio.

Read Amelia ML Montes’ interview with Lucha here for a sense of where the conversation headed. La Bloga will share a link when Latinopia showcases the Corpi interview and reading.



The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks
Creamed Tuna on Steamed Cauliflower

Some of the ingredients including a golden cauliflower

Eric Bromberger used to joke back at Redlands High School that he had an uncle named “Admiral Tuna, the chicken of the sea.” The leading canned tunafish marketer in the 60s, Starkist brand, popularized the sobriquet to win over reluctant consumers, like today’s “the other white meat” helps earn good repute for pork meat.

Starkist didn’t have to convince me, I always liked tuna, especially as family trips to San Diego often carried us to the tuna pier that today sports a towering plastic Marilyn Monroe, skirt aloft. Or has that changed, too?

This is an inexpensive dish, often served on toasted bread. It's Depression-era food, but elegant as can be and infinitely variable--it's the sauce that makes the difference.

The Gluten-free Chicano’s boyhood enjoyment of Creamed Tuna on Toast went by the wayside hace años. Ni modo. Mashed potatoes provide a delicious alternative to wheat, or, as in today’s The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks segment, a generous portion of steamed cauliflower.

Basic Directions
Start by making a roux. Add milk. Add cheese and stuff. Add tuna, or chipped beef, or hamburger (for deluxe SOS). Steam the vegetable or mash the papas. Serve.

Ingredients
A roux-based sauce can be elegant or down-home basic. Simple, and quick, to prepare, a white sauce requires only constant attention and vigorous stirring for ten minutes or so.

¼ cup gluten-free flour (not pancake mix)
1 cube butter
1 few drops olive oil
2 cups milk
1 whisk
2 cans tuna
salt, pepper, cayenne, paprika

This is worth repeating: Constant stirring produces the only acceptable results.

Roux
On a low medium flame melt the butter in a saucepan. Add several drops of olive oil as the cube melts. This controls browning and helps prevent burning. Stir to mix butter solids into the flow. Add the spices

Bring the butter to a boil. A couple of minutes is all it takes.

Add the gf flour and stir vigorously into the agitated butter. Stir the boiling mixture 3 or 4 minutes until the frothy mixture shows a darker color and a tempting toasty aroma wafts up from the saucepan.

Stir in a little milk and observe the mixture seize up into a stiff ball. Quickly keep mixing in the rest of the milk and stir until you discern no solids. Your roux sauce won’t be thick yet. Over time you’ll develop a technique for this stage, preferring adding milk gradually (neater), or dumping all at once (splashy).

You can relax the stirring vigor as the thin liquid begins to thicken. This is the judgment phase, deciding if it’s thick enough. Only a bit thicker than baby spit or the juice from nopales will be close to right.

The sauce will continue to thicken after adding the other ingredients, so don’t hassle the decision. Adjust next time.

Add ¼ cup frozen peas and carrots, and the cheese, cubed or grated.

Aged Gouda, sharp Cheddar, are fabulous. A couple inches sliced from a half-pound brick or gouda round, then cubed into ½ inch bites, melt and blend into the sauce quickly. Stir to dissolve any stringy material. The sauce has a silken appearance that drips slowly from the whisk or tasting spoon.

You can stop here, skip the fish and serve as cheese sauce on baked potatoes. (One day you’ll use camembert and add white wine to make soup).

Add the two cans of tunafish, liquid included, and stir to break up the bigger chunks. Stir until the sauce begins to boil slightly, or the tuna has heated all the way through and the veggies are warmed.

You’re done with the sauce part. Your sauce is quite hot and can sit on the stove some minutes while you prepare the vegetables. If steaming in hot water, do that simultaneously with making the sauce.

Steamed Cauliflower
Plan on at least ¼ head of white, purple, or golden cauliflower per serving.

Trim the leaves and the woody part of the stem. Slice in half then in half again. Wrap what you’re serving in plastic stretch wrap or put into a sealed microwave container and cook on high for two or three minutes. Test to ensure the vegetable is fork tender but not mushy. Remember microwaved food continues to cook when the oven is off, so a bit of crispness probably will be just right by serving time.

Put the ¼ steamed cauliflower on a plate. Cover with two or three ladles of sauce.

Provecho.

Workshops at CABE 2015 (California Association For Bilingual Education)

March 3, 2015, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Chicanonautica: Revolt on Black and Brown Planets

≪ Previous: Stanford Book Club Reads Corpi's Confessions. Gluten-free Chicano Cooks.

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Many children's book writers will be presenting at CABE.  This is a partial list of author's workshops in English and Español. If you are at CABE, please come and meet them. 

■Two Languages on My Tongue, Twice the Pleasure and Twice the Fun: U.S. Spanish in the Classroom- Thursday, March 5

10:30 AM - 11:45 AM Room: Clarendon

Amy Costales,
 Connecting Authors/University of Oregon

■Setting Up a Writers Workshop in the Common Core Classroom- Thursday, March 5

10:30 AM - 11:45 AM Room: Crescent

James Luna, Riverside USD

■Cuentos de abuelitas- Thursday, March 5,

10:30 AM - 11:45 AMRoom: Royal Palm Salon Five

Mara Price,  San Diego County USD


René Colato Laínez, Los Angeles USD/Author

■Mis Quince: A celebration of my first book, “My Very Own Room/Mi propio cuartito” and writing strategies for dual language and all classrooms

1:30 PM - 4:30 PM Room: Crescent

Amada Irma Pérez, Writers Groups of Ventura & Beyond

■Creating Art with Children’s Books- Thursday, March 5,  
1:30 PM - 2:45 PM Room: Tiki Pavillion

René Colato Laínez, Los Angeles USD/Author

Mara Price, San Diego County USD


Amy Costales, Connecting Authors/University of Oregon

James Luna, Riverside USD

■De niño immigrante a autor publicado: Los sueños se pueden cumplir. –Friday, March 6

1:30 PM - 2:45 PM
 Room: Royal Palm Salon Five

René Colato Laínez, Los Angeles USD/Author

Authors James Luna, Mara Price and René Colato Laínez at CABE 2014

Chicanonautica: Revolt on Black and Brown Planets

March 4, 2015, 11:01 pm

≫ Next: Guest Reviews From Sheryl Luna. New Books. Calls and Events.

≪ Previous: Workshops at CABE 2015 (California Association For Bilingual Education)

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by Ernest Hogan

About five years ago, I was moping around, yearning for another New Wave in science fiction/speculative fiction/whatever they're calling it this week. If writers of imaginative fiction were going to survive, we were going to need some alternatives to the collapsing world of corporate publishing that just didn't have a place for a Chicano scifiista like me.

Fast forward to now – and it's happening! Plug into the social media, and blerds are calling out for more blacks in all genres, Latinos are referring to science fiction and fantasy in their discussions, and all kinds of fantastic fiction, by and about all kinds of people, is being published and finding readers.

We've come a long way from when people would say that the reading audience was white, middle class males and not get any argument about it.

The whole science fiction/fantasy/horror genre conglomerate is no longer the intellectual property of an exclusive group. Everybody's doing it. All over the planet. Maybe even out on the space station . . .

A good place to catch up with this revolution isBlack and Brown Planets: The Politics of Race in Science Fictionedited by Isiah Lavender III. This collection of essays lets you know what's happening, but also tells about the past, including things I didn't know about – and I've been obsessed with this stuff for decades.

I did a Chicanonautica about a couple of the essays, the ones about High Aztech, and virtual reality applied to border issues. But since then I've been able to read the entire book, and it sent my mind soaring. It's a treasure trove of authors and titles to note and seek out. Reading it is just the beginning of the journey.

It's an expensive academic production, printed on paper that will still be around long after the first editions of my novels have crumbled to dust. It should be in libraries. Suggest it to yours. Your community will the better for it.

You'll also get the jump on the artistic/literary explosion that is just getting started.

Ernest Hogan's latest story, “Where Civilizations Go to Die” can be read free and online at Bewildering Stories.

Guest Reviews From Sheryl Luna. New Books. Calls and Events.

March 5, 2015, 11:01 pm

≫ Next: PEN Center USA celebrates Grabriel García Márquez's birthday

≪ Previous: Chicanonautica: Revolt on Black and Brown Planets

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Guest Reviews by Sheryl Luna

I Have Always Been Here

Christopher Carmona

Otras Voces - 2013

In the Prelude of I Have Always Been Here Christopher Carmona announces, “My Chican@ story is your Native story. We have the same roots.” He explores the Chican@ Indian past and shows us its importance to the present.

Carmona utilized Native words and mythology and ties them to the present day Chican@ experience. For example in Café Tsisdu he writes,

Aye Café Tsisdu where are you going?
Are you late for a date that just can’t wait?
no blonde British bobbins here
just raven-haired trenzas and kawi-skinned dreamers
whose ears are trying to hear your sweet sweet song
for suffering and survival.

“Tsisdu” means rabbit in Cherokee and “kawi” means coffee in Tsalagi. Later in “trickster got tricked blues,” he writes,

                In my dream I heard tsalagi songs sung

                by Latin@s on karakawan beaches after

                ships dropped iron anchors

                breaking rhythm like a guillotine

                severing head from neck and song from

                singer because trickster in his haste to

                have a world for his own did not think

                to make himself known to the men on ships

                so they wouldn’t kill him along with the hummingbirds

                dragonflies, snakes, and peoples of the land.

Later he pens,

                But West is the land of the dead

                where the wave broke

                and rolled off of the backs

                of the original peoples

Poverty and the lost hopes and dreams of the poor are both explored in poems like “the emperor changes his clothes.” The art of poetry is explored in poems such as “the poem will outlive us all” where Carmona writes,

                It is there. . .that poem. It is there waiting, waiting to be heard

                and that poem will outlive us all.

Family and place, particularly the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas are portrayed.

Colonization of Indigenous peoples is a central theme which emerges in many of the poems in the collection. In “i ain’t no immigrant” he writes,

                i ain’t no mojado, gringa

                i didn’t come here from across the sea

                i have always been here

                before the Americanos

                before the Mexicanos

                before the Spanish

Later in the same poem, “I ain’t no immigrant, ese.”

One poem deals with the speaker going through a Border Patrol checkpoint. In  “mexicans without means,” he pens,

                or maybe August is the cruelest month

                when 26 migrants were found locked in a railroad car

                broiled to death in a desert land where even the air burns

Many poems explore what it means to the speaker to be a writer and performer. For instance in, “I can feel it in my bones” where Carmona  states,

                Teach me how to be a warrior with pen and mic

The poems in this book are inherently political. They explore the indigenous past of peoples who have been colonized. Carmona shares the pride he feels in his culture and what it means for him to write poems that reflect that pride.

                


The Possibilities of Mud: Poems
Joe Jiménez
Korima Press - 2014

The Possibilities of Mud: Poemsis a collection with a taut lyricism. Words are always well chosen, and the poems are enamored with the natural world, particularly along the beach. The gulf coast figures prominently in the poems and the language is melodious and at times meditative.

Joe Jiménez’s speakers ask many questions about living. For example, in “”Light” sensuality is explored and nature is examined in terms of what it means to be human.

                 

What is the world telling you tonight?

                                I won’t fathom I could pry you open with spit,

                                                or compel you with my eyes to take it.

                But of light, I can say this:

                                I carry it, as do you, and the man

                                                sitting beside you on his way to deposit

                his Love inside another man, he also inside

                                of himself holds light.

Many of the poems look outward towards humanity, and they are far from self-involved. In “Redfish” he writes,

                I reassure you there are redfish

                                Beneath the thrown shadows of clouds

                                                recasting their shapely sparks. Underneath

                such a heavy and lucid sun—is zeal not ever-present?

Another beautiful poem titled “A Firelight Some Place in the Marshland” addresses human frailty with concrete descriptions of the gulf coast.

Jiménez’s language is detailed and packed with words depicting the coast. Most of the poems are extremely descriptive with evocative language, yet the poems are often about the coast and this can seem a bit repetitive. Yet the coastal descriptions do compel awe on the part of this reader. It is the coast and beach that is this collection’s glue. Therefore, the poems hold together very well thematically.

THE AUTHORS: 

Sheryl Luna 

Sheryl Luna earned a PhD in contemporary literature from the University of North Texas and an MFA from University of Texas, El Paso. Her first collection, Pity the Drowned Horses, received the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize and was published by the University of Notre Dame Press. It was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and the Colorado Book Award. Her second collection, Seven, was published by 3: A Taos Press in 2013.

Poems have appeared in Georgia Review, Poetry Northwest, Feminist Studies and elsewhere.

Luna was awarded fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo, the Anderson Center, the Ragdale Foundation, and CantoMundo. She received the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation Award from Sandra Cisneros in 2008.

 
Christopher Carmona


Christopher Carmona was a nominee for the Alfredo Cisneros de Miral Foundation Award for Writers in 2011 and a Pushcart Prize nominee in 2013. He has been published in numerous journals and magazines including Trickster Literary Journal, Interstice, vandal., Bordersenses, the Sagebrush Review, and tecolote. His first collection of poetry called beat was published by Slough Press and his second book, I Have Always Been Here is published by Otras Voces Press. He is also editing a Beat Texas anthology called The Beatest State In The Union: An Anthology of Beat Texas Writings with Chuck Taylor and Rob Johnson and is working on a book called Nuev@s Voces Poeticas: A Dialogue about New Chican@ Poetics with Isaac Chavarria, Gabriel Sanchez, & Rossy Lima Padilla to be published by University of New Mexico Press in 2015. Currently he is the organizer of the Annual Beat Poetry and Arts Festival and the Artistic Director of the Coalition of New Chican@ Artists.




Joe Jiménez

For another La Bloga review of The Possibilities of Mud and an in-depth interview with Mr. Jiménez, visit the post published by Olga García Echeverríaat this link.













_______________________________________________________________________________________

New Books

My Life As A Pencil
Ron Arias
Red Bird Chapbooks - March, 2015

[from the publisher]
A former English teacher and newspaper and magazine journalist, most recently for 22 years at People, Ron Arias has published the following books: The Road To Tamazunchale, a novel nominated for a National Book Award; Five Against the Sea, a true survival saga; Healing from the Heart, with Dr. Mehmet Oz; Moving Target: A Memoir of Pursuit, and White’s Rules:Saving Our Youth, One Kid At A Time, with Paul D. White. An amateur potter, he lives with his wife Joan in Hermosa Beach, CA, while their filmmaker son Michael resides in Japan, which increasingly has become a second home for them.

Pencils to the left, shooters to the right.

In this collections of short essays Ron Arias relates the ups and downs, ins and outs, and memorable people he met in his years as a magazine journalist. While traveling with a notebook and pen, a photographer, and not much else, Arias managed to capture the people as well as the places with honesty and understanding. Following the advice of his mentor Toby, Arias tells it personal, and makes it real.

Mexico on Main Street:  Transnational Film Culture in Los Angeles before World War II

Colin Gunckel

Rutgers University Press - April, 2015

[from the publisher]

In the early decades of the twentieth-century, Main Street was the heart of Los Angeles’s Mexican immigrant community. It was also the hub for an extensive, largely forgotten film culture that thrived in L.A. during the early days of Hollywood. Drawing from rare archives, including the city’s Spanish-language newspapers, Colin Gunckel vividly demonstrates how this immigrant community pioneered a practice of transnational media convergence, consuming films from Hollywood and Mexico, while also producing fan publications, fiction, criticism, music, and live theatrical events.

Mexico on Main Street locates this film culture at the center of a series of key debates concerning national identity, ethnicity, class, and the role of Mexicans within Hollywood before World War II. As Gunckel shows, the immigrant community’s cultural elite tried to rally the working-class population toward the cause of Mexican nationalism, while Hollywood sought to position them as part of a lucrative transnational Latin American market. Yet ironically, both Hollywood studios and Mexican American cultural elites used the media to present negative depictions of working-class Mexicans, portraying their behaviors as a threat to middle-class respectability. Rather than simply depicting working-class immigrants as pawns of these power players, however, Gunckel reveals their active participation in the era’s film culture.

Gunckel’s innovative approach combines media studies, urban history, and ethnic studies to reconstruct a distinctive, richly layered immigrant film culture. Mexico on Main Street demonstrates how a site-specific study of cultural and ethnic issues challenges our existing conceptions of U.S. film history, Mexican cinema, and the history of Los Angeles.

COLIN GUNCKEL is an assistant professor of screen arts and cultures, American culture, and Latina/o Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He serves as associate editor of the A Ver: Revisioning Art History series.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

EVENTS

Viva La Chicana

Join Museo de las Americas for an evening during the Chicanoexhibit celebrating the women of the Movimiento. Speeches, Stories, & Celebration of all things Chicana.

March 12, 2015
6:00-7:30pm
861 Santa Fe Dr
Denver, CO

RSVP:
Guestservices@museo.org

Victor Villaseñor at Librería Martínez
 

 _______________________________________________________________________________________

Calls for Submissions

Regeneración Tlacuilolli: UCLA Raza Studies Journalinvites submissions for its second issue, to be published in Summer 2015. The journal is committed to exploring intellectual, cultural, and historic issues pertinent to Chicanas, Chicanos, Latinas, Latinos, indigenous peoples, and Latin Americans. The journal’s interdisciplinary perspective enables a critical examination of the history and culture of these intrinsically related groups and the historic and social implications of colonialism, racism, capitalism, sexism, and homophobia for these communities. For information on submitting to the journal, see http://www.escholarship.org/uc/regeneracion_tlacuilolli or contact tlacuilolli@ucla.edu. Deadline for submissions: Sunday, March 15, 2015. Regeneración Tlacuilolli is sponsored by the Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA. 

Rebeldes Anthology

We seek new literary work that breaks from the confines of mainstream realism to surprise, delight, educate and challenge readers. The anthology should be composed by pieces that cross boundaries of form, content, and style either subtly or radically. We want nonfiction that’s too blunt, politically incorrect, surrealist, or experimental for traditional publishers.

The anthology should be as diverse as possible, covering a broad array of subject matter impacting the Latino community. We want voices that say what they have to say with a special, unique pitch.

Check out more at Editorial Trance (a royalty paying e-publisher) or email Marlena Fitzpatrick.

Other details you need to know :
Not more than 20 pages: APA and references
12pt Word or PDF
English, Spanish or bilingual
Email the complete essay, along with a cover letter with complete contact information as well as the title of the piece and word count to Marlena Fitzpatrick.
Deadline for submissions is June 1, 2015.

Bartleby Snopes Literary Magazine welcomes the opportunity to read your fiction. We want to publish the best new stories we can find, giving writers an opportunity to publish their best work and inspiring writers to create great works of fiction. We currently publish two stories per week online and end each month with our Story Of The Month contest. The winner receives $25 and publication in our semi-annual print magazine. We respond to all submissions within 5 days and provide personal feedback. Our online magazine had over 30,000 readers last year. Please send us your best fiction up to 3,000 words by visiting us at www.bartlebysnopes.com.

Later.

PEN Center USA celebrates Grabriel García Márquez's birthday

March 15, 2015, 11:01 pm

≫ Next: The Little Girl's Hands. Lucha Corpi Reads from Confessions of a Book Burner. SanAnto Writers in TIL.

≪ Previous: Guest Reviews From Sheryl Luna. New Books. Calls and Events.

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On March 8, PEN Center USA hosted a birthday celebration at EsCaLA in Koreatown in honor of the late Grabriel García Márquez who left this physical world last year. The featured writers (who were asked to choose a piece by Gabo) were Carolyn Castaño, Olga García Echeverría, Antonieta Villamil, and 2014 Emerging Voices Fellow Andrés Reconco. I was honored to be one of the readers, as well. The festivities were hosted by David L. Ulin, book critic of the Los Angeles Times, and sponsored in part by the California Community Foundation.

I want to offer a special shout out to Lilliam Rivera, the Program Coordinator for Emerging Voices and Workshops. Though many others helped make this a special evening, Lilliam—without a doubt—worked many long hours planning the festivities that included identifying and coordinating the authors who would participate in this event. Lilliam is, herself, a 2013 PEN Center Emerging Voices Fellow and 2013 Enchanted Land Fellow at A Room of Her Own Foundation. Her work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus.net, and Latina. Her young adult novel My Shelf Life is currently with agents for representation.

I note that 10% of all EsCaLA’s dinner checks was donated to PEN Center USA, a literary arts and human rights organization.

And now for some images from the evening’s readings.

Moments before the festivities, Lilliam Rivera (second from right) huddles with host, David Ulin

  

Lilliam Rivera welcomes the happy crowd

David Ulin

Carolyn Castaño

Andrés Reconco

Olga García Echeverría

Daniel Olivas

  

Antonieta Villamil

Friends and family enjoy food and literature

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The Little Girl's Hands. Lucha Corpi Reads from Confessions of a Book Burner. SanAnto Writers in TIL.

March 16, 2015, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Caravana 43: USA Tour of Families of the Missing Ayotzinapa Students

≪ Previous: PEN Center USA celebrates Grabriel García Márquez's birthday

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Michael Sedano

Grimy fingers curl triumphantly around the Alligator Lizard. The eight year old girl knows it’s angry because moments earlier the lizard’s jaws were clamped firmly around one of the little girl’s fingers and wouldn’t let go. The little girl wouldn’t let go, either, not with such a prize in hand!

A classic stand-off until Grampa reaches in gently squeezing the lizard’s mouth open allowing the little girl to extricate and marvel at the pain, then adjust her grip for the portrait.

Because Grampa got sick last summer, we are making our first visit since early July to Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia. The woods of Arcady are alive with lizards and ducks and turtles and carp and a friendly black heron. The arboretum is one of the little girl’s favorite places, so we are regular visitors.

Charlotte knows the territory and leads the way, paying little heed to the Guinea hens and Pea fowl. She’s here for lizards.

She crouches, sliding her feet sideways as she swivels her head side to side peering sharply at the ground and spying ahead to catch sight of her targets.

Almost immediately she slows, stops, then advances on something she’s spotted. Steadily reaching out an arm she suddenly grabs at the dirt where a gorgeous black Western fence lizard has scurried into the bordering groundcover. She wipes her hands off on her shirt. A few steps on, another lizard flits away untouched. “Darn it,” she laughs.

“They’re too fast in this heat,” I offer. Her look is a silent scoff. She set the record of 17 lizards last July, and it was hot as can be that day. The record is still in her thoughts as she misses another five targets.

She takes to crawling along the sidewalk, running her hands under the foliage and tree litter. She scares up a few swift reptiles and doesn’t lose her upbeat attitude as the score grows to Lizards 7, Charlotte 0. Through the blooming Aloe forest, the score mounts to Lizards 99, Charlotte 0, I joke. It’s a tough day for the World Champion Lizard trapper.

We abandon Australia and she makes a beeline toward the Sunset Magazine Demonstration Garden. Lots of vertical space here. Lounging on top of a wall gives the lizards ample exposure to the sun while allowing a little girl’s stealthy advance. Lawn bordered by low groundcover creates ample opportunities, too.

Charlotte’s fingers sift through the litter and sweep through the dirt hoping to flush the beautiful fat black lizard that escapes time and again. “Lizards one hundred, me zero,” Charlotte declares as she moves along.

Charlotte is stalking a likely spot ahead when I notice an alligator lizard cowering in the crook of cement steps rising along a rough wall of broken concrete. I worry some squeamish person has stepped on it and injured the fragile body. “Charlotte, look!” The substantial body and curled tail begin to slither away as it feels Charlotte’s excitement at such a prize find. She crouches above the step and leans down.

Catching a fly ball requires innate advanced physics to target, respond to trajectory, speed, environment, get to the spot and lift a hand at the same time and place the ball arrives. Lizard catching is exactly the same only a lot more fun.

The fleeing reptile climbs the broken cement, disappears into a shallow crevice. The little girl reaches in a finger and the lizard, finding nowhere to hide, slides out and up the wall. The lizard slides into another crevice that it immediately vacates. Here the wall makes a turn and the Alligator Lizard skids around the corner.

Charlotte seizes the moment when the lizard’s momentum has to slow as it slithers into the turn. She reaches out swiftly and gently seizes the Alligator Lizard behind its front legs. Her grip is sure but she doesn’t count on the flexibility of the snake-like body. The lizard turns and bites the little girl’s finger. Surprised, Charlotte drops her prize.

The lizard begins to scurry away but Charlotte kneels on the cement forming an imposing barrier. The lizard turns away. Charlotte slides her grimy fingers under its body and scoops it up, adjusting her grip behind the reptile’s front legs. Again, it bends toward her grip and this time latches its mouth around Charlotte’s index finger. The little girl’s eyes spark and she exclaims, “Hey, that hurts.” She won’t let go.

Grampa reaches in and gently squeezes the corner of the lizard’s mouth. That loosens its jaws enough for Charlotte to tear her finger out of the pink mouth. We hear a faint xylophone scale when the little girl’s fingers draw across the Alligator Lizard’s comb of tiny sharp teeth.

An Alligator Lizard is the golden ring, the golden fleece, ultimate goal, the best lizard one can possibly hope for. On the drive over, we’d talked about the chance of finding an Alligator Lizard as it were an impossibility, so Charlotte is not about to lose this prize. She adjusts her fingers around the Alligator Lizard’s body where it can no longer bend sharply enough to grab on again.

Charlotte lifts her prize to her nose, I take the foto, and the little girl relinquishes the golden fleece. Score: Charlotte 1, Alligator Lizard 1.

When she gets home, Charlotte proudly tells her mother the story of catching and being bitten by an Alligator Lizard. Her mother approves, proud of her girl. My daughter remembers a day when she called out, “Dad! I caught an Alligator Lizard!” When I look over, my six year-old daughter has an Alligator Lizard hanging by its jaws at the end of a finger. It’s a family story Charlotte has heard dozens of times in her eight years, and now it is her story, too.

What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice, and of course, lizards and dirty hands.


Latinopia Features Lucha Corpi's Pasadena Reading

Among the pleasures of being honorary member of the Book Club of the Stanford Latina Latino Alumni Association in Southern California is hosting an occasional meeting at Casa Sedano.

Recently, I had the triple pleasure of hosting both the club and guest Lucha Corpi, plus being joined by Jésus Treviño, who documented the meeting for Latinopia.



Latinopia stands as an important resource for Chicana Chicano literature and culture. Treviño's packed the site with interviews, historical footage, and readings from a stellar assembly of noted raza writers.

Content updates weekly, but nota bene: Latinopia is like that snack food; you can't watch just one feature and be done. Visit Latinopia and you'll spend hours clicking through the links to interviews, music, movimiento events, and a richness unlike any other culture and literature web service.

Latinopia is a work of puro love. There is no advertising or intrusive stuff. Pura cultura is what you'll devour.


Three San Antonio Writers Elected to the Texas Institute of Letters

From Rafael Cruz' desmadres to weird textbook content, Texas has earned itself a bad reputation. But not everything about the state warrants a sad shake of the head: Most of the guys I served with in Korea were Texans, trained at Ft.Bliss' Air Defense Artillery School.

Now, in some good news, La Bloga friend Gregg Barrios sends along a Texas highlight worth smiling about.

For nearly 80 years, Texas Institute of Letters has been recognizing outstanding writers with a Texas connection, the likes of  Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy, Dagoberto Gilb, Jan Jarboe Russell, Rick Riordan, Lawrence Wright, Robert Caro.

The purpose of TIL is fourfold: to recognize writers with membership; to award annual prizes for distinguished literature by Texans or about Texas; to sponsor the Dobie Paisano Literary Fellowships in conjunction with the University of Texas; and to promote fellowship among TIL members while promoting books and literature in Texas.

Joining the Texas Institute of Letters this year are Gregg Barrios, Michael Berryhill, James Crisp, Nan Cuba, Benjamin H. Johnson, William Sibley. The members will introduce themselves as such in a public reading on April 11.

Barrios, Cuba, and Sibley are the SanAnto writers. TIL's president, Andrés Tijerina, shares these brief bios of all the newly elected members

Gregg Barrios    
San Antonio-based playwright, poet, journalist, and author.  Board member of the National Book Critics Circle. 2013 USC Annenberg Fellow.  National productions of plays, which include “Rancho Pancho” “exploring the little-known relationship of Tennessee Williams with Tejano Pancho Rodriguez.”
 ____________________________________________________
 
Michael Berryhill              
Long-time journalist, winner of the Stanley Walker Journalism Award from the TIL in 1981.  Also a widely published poet, appearing in The Paris Review and other publications.  Returned to teaching in 2006 at UH, then Texas Southern.  Author of The Trials of Eroy Brown, The Murder Case that Shook the Texas Prison System.
 ____________________________________________________
 
 James Crisp      
Professor of History at NC State.  A noted expert on the Alamo and the author of several books and articles (including Sleuthing the Alamo(Oxford UP) and How Did Davy Die?)
 ____________________________________________________
 
Nan Cuba            
Founder of Gemini Ink in San Antonio.  Winner of TIL’s Steven Turner Award in 2013.  Reported for Life, Third Coast, D magazine. Assoc. prof of English at Our Lady of the Lake Univ. in San Antonio.
 ____________________________________________________
 
Benjamin H. Johnson      
History professor at Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  Author of two major books on Texas history that received substantial recognition, board member of TSHA, former acting director of the Clements Center at SMU.
 ____________________________________________________
 
William Sibley    
Novelist, playwright, screenwriter.  Founder of “Dobie Dichos” in Oakville. As a writer, “He seems nayrly the Texas version of Noel Coward...” Author of two novels set in Texas, both of which won national praise and recognition.

Caravana 43: USA Tour of Families of the Missing Ayotzinapa Students

March 17, 2015, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Chicanonautica: Revolt on Black and Brown Planets

≪ Previous: The Little Girl's Hands. Lucha Corpi Reads from Confessions of a Book Burner. SanAnto Writers in TIL.

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Please join Caravana 43: USA Tour of Families of the Missing Ayotzinapa Students, they will visiting 

Southern California this week.

This is the schedule,

43 students disappeared by the STATE. Parents speak out!

Author Reyna Grande is fundraising for Caravana 43. Join her by donating on this link,

https://www.razoo.com/br/causes/Caravana-43-Usa-Tour-Of-Families-Of-The-Missing-Ayotzinapa-Students

Chicanonautica: Revolt on Black and Brown Planets

March 4, 2015, 11:01 pm

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by Ernest Hogan

About five years ago, I was moping around, yearning for another New Wave in science fiction/speculative fiction/whatever they're calling it this week. If writers of imaginative fiction were going to survive, we were going to need some alternatives to the collapsing world of corporate publishing that just didn't have a place for a Chicano scifiista like me.

Fast forward to now – and it's happening! Plug into the social media, and blerds are calling out for more blacks in all genres, Latinos are referring to science fiction and fantasy in their discussions, and all kinds of fantastic fiction, by and about all kinds of people, is being published and finding readers.

We've come a long way from when people would say that the reading audience was white, middle class males and not get any argument about it.

The whole science fiction/fantasy/horror genre conglomerate is no longer the intellectual property of an exclusive group. Everybody's doing it. All over the planet. Maybe even out on the space station . . .

A good place to catch up with this revolution isBlack and Brown Planets: The Politics of Race in Science Fictionedited by Isiah Lavender III. This collection of essays lets you know what's happening, but also tells about the past, including things I didn't know about – and I've been obsessed with this stuff for decades.

I did a Chicanonautica about a couple of the essays, the ones about High Aztech, and virtual reality applied to border issues. But since then I've been able to read the entire book, and it sent my mind soaring. It's a treasure trove of authors and titles to note and seek out. Reading it is just the beginning of the journey.

It's an expensive academic production, printed on paper that will still be around long after the first editions of my novels have crumbled to dust. It should be in libraries. Suggest it to yours. Your community will the better for it.

You'll also get the jump on the artistic/literary explosion that is just getting started.

Ernest Hogan's latest story, “Where Civilizations Go to Die” can be read free and online at Bewildering Stories.

Guest Reviews From Sheryl Luna. New Books. Calls and Events.

March 5, 2015, 11:01 pm

≫ Next: Chicanonautica: Alternate Reality Politics Vs. Pure Entertainment

≪ Previous: Chicanonautica: Revolt on Black and Brown Planets

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Guest Reviews by Sheryl Luna

I Have Always Been Here

Christopher Carmona

Otras Voces - 2013

In the Prelude of I Have Always Been Here Christopher Carmona announces, “My Chican@ story is your Native story. We have the same roots.” He explores the Chican@ Indian past and shows us its importance to the present.

Carmona utilized Native words and mythology and ties them to the present day Chican@ experience. For example in Café Tsisdu he writes,

Aye Café Tsisdu where are you going?
Are you late for a date that just can’t wait?
no blonde British bobbins here
just raven-haired trenzas and kawi-skinned dreamers
whose ears are trying to hear your sweet sweet song
for suffering and survival.

“Tsisdu” means rabbit in Cherokee and “kawi” means coffee in Tsalagi. Later in “trickster got tricked blues,” he writes,

                In my dream I heard tsalagi songs sung

                by Latin@s on karakawan beaches after

                ships dropped iron anchors

                breaking rhythm like a guillotine

                severing head from neck and song from

                singer because trickster in his haste to

                have a world for his own did not think

                to make himself known to the men on ships

                so they wouldn’t kill him along with the hummingbirds

                dragonflies, snakes, and peoples of the land.

Later he pens,

                But West is the land of the dead

                where the wave broke

                and rolled off of the backs

                of the original peoples

Poverty and the lost hopes and dreams of the poor are both explored in poems like “the emperor changes his clothes.” The art of poetry is explored in poems such as “the poem will outlive us all” where Carmona writes,

                It is there. . .that poem. It is there waiting, waiting to be heard

                and that poem will outlive us all.

Family and place, particularly the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas are portrayed.

Colonization of Indigenous peoples is a central theme which emerges in many of the poems in the collection. In “i ain’t no immigrant” he writes,

                i ain’t no mojado, gringa

                i didn’t come here from across the sea

                i have always been here

                before the Americanos

                before the Mexicanos

                before the Spanish

Later in the same poem, “I ain’t no immigrant, ese.”

One poem deals with the speaker going through a Border Patrol checkpoint. In  “mexicans without means,” he pens,

                or maybe August is the cruelest month

                when 26 migrants were found locked in a railroad car

                broiled to death in a desert land where even the air burns

Many poems explore what it means to the speaker to be a writer and performer. For instance in, “I can feel it in my bones” where Carmona  states,

                Teach me how to be a warrior with pen and mic

The poems in this book are inherently political. They explore the indigenous past of peoples who have been colonized. Carmona shares the pride he feels in his culture and what it means for him to write poems that reflect that pride.

                


The Possibilities of Mud: Poems
Joe Jiménez
Korima Press - 2014

The Possibilities of Mud: Poemsis a collection with a taut lyricism. Words are always well chosen, and the poems are enamored with the natural world, particularly along the beach. The gulf coast figures prominently in the poems and the language is melodious and at times meditative.

Joe Jiménez’s speakers ask many questions about living. For example, in “”Light” sensuality is explored and nature is examined in terms of what it means to be human.

                 

What is the world telling you tonight?

                                I won’t fathom I could pry you open with spit,

                                                or compel you with my eyes to take it.

                But of light, I can say this:

                                I carry it, as do you, and the man

                                                sitting beside you on his way to deposit

                his Love inside another man, he also inside

                                of himself holds light.

Many of the poems look outward towards humanity, and they are far from self-involved. In “Redfish” he writes,

                I reassure you there are redfish

                                Beneath the thrown shadows of clouds

                                                recasting their shapely sparks. Underneath

                such a heavy and lucid sun—is zeal not ever-present?

Another beautiful poem titled “A Firelight Some Place in the Marshland” addresses human frailty with concrete descriptions of the gulf coast.

Jiménez’s language is detailed and packed with words depicting the coast. Most of the poems are extremely descriptive with evocative language, yet the poems are often about the coast and this can seem a bit repetitive. Yet the coastal descriptions do compel awe on the part of this reader. It is the coast and beach that is this collection’s glue. Therefore, the poems hold together very well thematically.

THE AUTHORS: 

Sheryl Luna 

Sheryl Luna earned a PhD in contemporary literature from the University of North Texas and an MFA from University of Texas, El Paso. Her first collection, Pity the Drowned Horses, received the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize and was published by the University of Notre Dame Press. It was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and the Colorado Book Award. Her second collection, Seven, was published by 3: A Taos Press in 2013.

Poems have appeared in Georgia Review, Poetry Northwest, Feminist Studies and elsewhere.

Luna was awarded fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo, the Anderson Center, the Ragdale Foundation, and CantoMundo. She received the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation Award from Sandra Cisneros in 2008.

 
Christopher Carmona


Christopher Carmona was a nominee for the Alfredo Cisneros de Miral Foundation Award for Writers in 2011 and a Pushcart Prize nominee in 2013. He has been published in numerous journals and magazines including Trickster Literary Journal, Interstice, vandal., Bordersenses, the Sagebrush Review, and tecolote. His first collection of poetry called beat was published by Slough Press and his second book, I Have Always Been Here is published by Otras Voces Press. He is also editing a Beat Texas anthology called The Beatest State In The Union: An Anthology of Beat Texas Writings with Chuck Taylor and Rob Johnson and is working on a book called Nuev@s Voces Poeticas: A Dialogue about New Chican@ Poetics with Isaac Chavarria, Gabriel Sanchez, & Rossy Lima Padilla to be published by University of New Mexico Press in 2015. Currently he is the organizer of the Annual Beat Poetry and Arts Festival and the Artistic Director of the Coalition of New Chican@ Artists.




Joe Jiménez

For another La Bloga review of The Possibilities of Mud and an in-depth interview with Mr. Jiménez, visit the post published by Olga García Echeverríaat this link.













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New Books

My Life As A Pencil
Ron Arias
Red Bird Chapbooks - March, 2015

[from the publisher]
A former English teacher and newspaper and magazine journalist, most recently for 22 years at People, Ron Arias has published the following books: The Road To Tamazunchale, a novel nominated for a National Book Award; Five Against the Sea, a true survival saga; Healing from the Heart, with Dr. Mehmet Oz; Moving Target: A Memoir of Pursuit, and White’s Rules:Saving Our Youth, One Kid At A Time, with Paul D. White. An amateur potter, he lives with his wife Joan in Hermosa Beach, CA, while their filmmaker son Michael resides in Japan, which increasingly has become a second home for them.

Pencils to the left, shooters to the right.

In this collections of short essays Ron Arias relates the ups and downs, ins and outs, and memorable people he met in his years as a magazine journalist. While traveling with a notebook and pen, a photographer, and not much else, Arias managed to capture the people as well as the places with honesty and understanding. Following the advice of his mentor Toby, Arias tells it personal, and makes it real.

Mexico on Main Street:  Transnational Film Culture in Los Angeles before World War II

Colin Gunckel

Rutgers University Press - April, 2015

[from the publisher]

In the early decades of the twentieth-century, Main Street was the heart of Los Angeles’s Mexican immigrant community. It was also the hub for an extensive, largely forgotten film culture that thrived in L.A. during the early days of Hollywood. Drawing from rare archives, including the city’s Spanish-language newspapers, Colin Gunckel vividly demonstrates how this immigrant community pioneered a practice of transnational media convergence, consuming films from Hollywood and Mexico, while also producing fan publications, fiction, criticism, music, and live theatrical events.

Mexico on Main Street locates this film culture at the center of a series of key debates concerning national identity, ethnicity, class, and the role of Mexicans within Hollywood before World War II. As Gunckel shows, the immigrant community’s cultural elite tried to rally the working-class population toward the cause of Mexican nationalism, while Hollywood sought to position them as part of a lucrative transnational Latin American market. Yet ironically, both Hollywood studios and Mexican American cultural elites used the media to present negative depictions of working-class Mexicans, portraying their behaviors as a threat to middle-class respectability. Rather than simply depicting working-class immigrants as pawns of these power players, however, Gunckel reveals their active participation in the era’s film culture.

Gunckel’s innovative approach combines media studies, urban history, and ethnic studies to reconstruct a distinctive, richly layered immigrant film culture. Mexico on Main Street demonstrates how a site-specific study of cultural and ethnic issues challenges our existing conceptions of U.S. film history, Mexican cinema, and the history of Los Angeles.

COLIN GUNCKEL is an assistant professor of screen arts and cultures, American culture, and Latina/o Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He serves as associate editor of the A Ver: Revisioning Art History series.

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EVENTS

Viva La Chicana

Join Museo de las Americas for an evening during the Chicanoexhibit celebrating the women of the Movimiento. Speeches, Stories, & Celebration of all things Chicana.

March 12, 2015
6:00-7:30pm
861 Santa Fe Dr
Denver, CO

RSVP:
Guestservices@museo.org

Victor Villaseñor at Librería Martínez
 

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Calls for Submissions

Regeneración Tlacuilolli: UCLA Raza Studies Journalinvites submissions for its second issue, to be published in Summer 2015. The journal is committed to exploring intellectual, cultural, and historic issues pertinent to Chicanas, Chicanos, Latinas, Latinos, indigenous peoples, and Latin Americans. The journal’s interdisciplinary perspective enables a critical examination of the history and culture of these intrinsically related groups and the historic and social implications of colonialism, racism, capitalism, sexism, and homophobia for these communities. For information on submitting to the journal, see http://www.escholarship.org/uc/regeneracion_tlacuilolli or contact tlacuilolli@ucla.edu. Deadline for submissions: Sunday, March 15, 2015. Regeneración Tlacuilolli is sponsored by the Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA. 

Rebeldes Anthology

We seek new literary work that breaks from the confines of mainstream realism to surprise, delight, educate and challenge readers. The anthology should be composed by pieces that cross boundaries of form, content, and style either subtly or radically. We want nonfiction that’s too blunt, politically incorrect, surrealist, or experimental for traditional publishers.

The anthology should be as diverse as possible, covering a broad array of subject matter impacting the Latino community. We want voices that say what they have to say with a special, unique pitch.

Check out more at Editorial Trance (a royalty paying e-publisher) or email Marlena Fitzpatrick.

Other details you need to know :
Not more than 20 pages: APA and references
12pt Word or PDF
English, Spanish or bilingual
Email the complete essay, along with a cover letter with complete contact information as well as the title of the piece and word count to Marlena Fitzpatrick.
Deadline for submissions is June 1, 2015.

Bartleby Snopes Literary Magazine welcomes the opportunity to read your fiction. We want to publish the best new stories we can find, giving writers an opportunity to publish their best work and inspiring writers to create great works of fiction. We currently publish two stories per week online and end each month with our Story Of The Month contest. The winner receives $25 and publication in our semi-annual print magazine. We respond to all submissions within 5 days and provide personal feedback. Our online magazine had over 30,000 readers last year. Please send us your best fiction up to 3,000 words by visiting us at www.bartlebysnopes.com.

Later.

Chicanonautica: Alternate Reality Politics Vs. Pure Entertainment

March 18, 2015, 11:02 pm

≫ Next: New Books. Ayotzinapa Families Tour. Los Dreamers Music. Tia Chucha's 14th. Bookmark.

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by Ernest Hogan

There’s something rumbling through Scifilanda. It’s happening all over. Even here at La Bloga. Rudy Ch. Garcia has been bringing up the Latino specfic (somebody has got to come up with a better name, dammit!), and David Brin is concerned about “political wrangling.”

Of course, none of this is new. It's practically the story of my life as an ancient Chicano scifisista who came of age in the New Wave/Dangerous Visions era. We had What If? And If This Goes On . . . but with the world tuning in, turning on, and dropping out, and running riot with all kinds of brave new strangness, it just seemed natural for speculative fiction to explore all kinds of new political possibilities.

Before that, just about every low budget sci-fi flick I watched on shows like KHJ-TV's Strange Tales of Science Fiction began with a prologue that explained that with atom bombs and space exploration, things people couldn't dare imagine a few years ago were today's headlines. Even Plan 9 From Outer Space's trailer explained that Tor Johnson and Vampira rising from their graves were the shape of things to come. The connection with our current reality has always made science fiction seem relevant, and flirted with the political.

And why not? Politics in the business of making and selling alternate realities. That's what Fox News does, so does the Daily Show. The same for Greenpeace and ISIS. And your friendly neighborhood politicians, no matter what party they belong to. You get more people buying into your alternate reality, actual reality starts looking more like like it.

In science fiction they call it world building. How do you build a world without dealing with political issues?

Throughout my career I've had to deal with those who don't want any nasty, old political commentary in their sci-fi. They think it should all be “pure” entertainment. Oh, for the nonpartisan, orgasmic joy of exploding spaceships and disintegrating nonhuman enemies!

But then, who decides who the enemies are? And just who are you calling nonhuman?

What if your participation in any kind of future depends on the world being changed?

Of course, when Star Warswas marketed as “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” the consumers were delighted to have sci-fi reconfigured in “pure” entertainment. As the juggernaut franchise took off, politics was pushed out of science fiction as being bad for business.

People said a lot of strange things in those days. Nothing sci-fi had ever been this popular. Looking back, it was just that they took old fashioned melodrama and dressed it up in new spacey fashions, but in those days strange theories abounded. A lot of people liked the fact that they didn't have to think, just sit back and enjoy it. No controversy. Nothing to disturb the fun.

Then a few spoilsports mentioned that all the people in the movie were white.

Fans and critics shot this down when ever it came up: “No, no! That was one of the things that made the movie so enjoyable! One black or brown face would have ruined my pleasure! Besides, that's not Earth, it's another galaxy! George Lucas is such a genius!”

But Lucas hadn't really invented anything. Some of us at the fringes of speculative fiction were complaining that most of it seemed to take place in an all-white universe, as if there was some secret plan for planetary ethnic cleansing that would make the world a Klansman's utopia by the year 2000. We were crying out for alternatives. I was seeking them out, reading them, and writing them.

Not much progress has been made, if you consider how long we've been struggling.

I don't think there is such a thing as “pure” entertainment. Even in a simple tale of good guys versus bad guys, you have to decide which side you're on. I've seen enough pulp entertainment from different cultures to realize what is possible. No matter who you are, you are a “bad” guy, or an alien to someone else.

Specfic has always been a good way to get out of your point of view, and see what it's like to be someone else, walk a few mile in their moccasins, so to speak. The world would be better if we all did that more often.

For decades I've been dreaming of a global cultural explosion in which we'd see science fiction of all kinds, from all cultures and points of view. Not political wrangling, but an orgy of possibilities. Not just futures, but other realities. That's what our imaginative genres are supposed to be about, but they rarely achieve it.

We're getting close in this age of Afrofuturism, Chicanonautica, Transhumanism, and new movements that are emerging as you read this. I think Latino specfic will lead the way, because all the peoples who are Latino are more diverse than the Anglos.

So, to What If? and If This Goes On . . . we should add Why Not?

Ernest Hogan lives and works in several universes at the same time. Manifestations will be appearing near you soon. Meanwhile, please support Caravana 43: USA Tour of Families of the Missing Ayotzinapa Students.