Presenting the current submissions criteria from a few of our favorite publishers - Akashic Books, Arte Público Press, Bilingual Review Press, and the University of New Mexico Press. In the spirit of an optimistic new year, I give our readers these guidelines with the hope that soon we can feature a new author who wrote a masterpiece, successfully followed the rules, and then ended up on La Bloga's Author List.

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First,Akashic Books, a press we've featured several times here on La Bloga because of books such as Indian Country Noir and Havana Noir, and authors like Achy Obejas, Sarah Cortez and Amiri Baraka. Although Akashic is not accepting print submissions, it does want content for its online presence. Here are the details:

Akashic Books Submissions


PRINT SUBMISSIONS:

Akashic Books is not accepting print submissions at this time, as our small staff is overwhelmed with work on our current release schedule and forthcoming titles. To uncover other publishing opportunities, we suggest you follow the threads at the Independent Book Publishers Association, The Center for Fiction, and the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, all of which are excellent organizations of independent publishers.

FLASH FICTION WEB SUBMISSIONS:

Submissions for our Mondays Are Murder, Terrible Twosdays, and Duppy Thursday web series are currently open. We only consider one submission per author at a time. We respond to every submission we receive, typically within 6-8 weeks. Please do not submit multiple stories for simultaneous consideration, and please familiarize yourself with the guidelines of each series before submitting.

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Duppy Thursday. Though we’re based in Brooklyn, our location envy of the Caribbean is evident throughout our catalog. One aspect of Caribbean literature that appeals to us is the integration of folklore into contemporary stories—a perfect example being Jamaican author Marlon James’sdebut novel John Crow’s Devil, which we published to great critical acclaim in 2005. Whether it be the spider Anansi, the devil woman La Diablesse, the Soucouyant, Mama Dlo, or Papa Bois, these mythical beings have injected life (and death) into the literature of the region. As with our other flash fiction series, we challenge you to tell your story in 750 words or less.

Do you have a story you’d like us to consider for online publication in the Duppy Thursday flash fiction series? Here are the submission terms and guidelines:

—We are not offering payment, and are asking for first digital rights. The rights to the story revert to the author immediately upon publication.
—Your story should be set in a Caribbean location and incorporate some aspect of folklore, whether centrally or tangentially.
—Include the location and the referenced folk tale or figure of the story with your byline.
—Your story should not exceed 750 words.
—Please include a short bio with your submission.
—Accepted submissions to Duppy Thursday are typically posted 2–4 months after the notification date, and will be edited for cohesion and to conform to our house style.
—E-mail your submission to info@akashicbooks.com. Please paste the story into the body of the email, and also attach it as a PDF file.

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Mondays Are Murder. Mondays Are Murder features brand-new noir fiction modeled after our award-winning Noir Series. Each story is an original one, and each takes place in a distinct location. Contributions to the Akashic Noir Series are bound by mood: our authors are challenged to capture the sometimes intangible moods of “noir” and of “place.” The stories run the gamut from darkly-toned literary glimpses to straight-up crime fiction, while similarly capturing the unique aura of the story’s location. Our web model for the series has one more restraint: a 750-word limit. Sound like murder? It is. But so are Mondays.

Do you have a story you’d like us to consider for online publication in the Mondays Are Murder flash fiction series? Here are the submission terms and guidelines:

—We are not offering payment, and are asking for first digital rights. The rights to the story revert to the author immediately upon publication.
—Your story should be set in a distinct location of any neighborhood in any city, anywhere in the world, but it should be a story that could only be set in the neighborhood you chose.
—Include the neighborhood, city, state, and country next to your byline.
—Your story should be Noir. What is Noir? We’ll know it when we see it.
—Your story should not exceed 750 words.
—Accepted submissions are typically published 6–8 months after their notification date and will be edited for cohesion and to conform to our house style.
—E-mail your submission to info@akashicbooks.com. Please paste the story into the body of the email, and also attach it as a PDF file.

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Terrible Twosdays. Are you a parent going through the Terrible Twos? Did you live through them and survive? Terrible Twosdays is a place to commiserate over the unending shenanigans of your Darling Children (as the online parenting communities say). Nonfiction stories will be considered, so long as names have been changed to protect the guilty. Inspired by our best-selling gift book for parents, Go the Fuck to Sleep, Terrible Twosdays joins the roster of our other online short fiction series. Unlike Mondays Are Murder, we’re looking for stories with a light and mischievous feel, all about the day-to-day challenges of parenting. As with our other flash fiction series, stories must not exceed 750 words.

Do you have a story you’d like us to consider for online publication in the Terrible Twosdays flash fiction series? Here are the submission terms and guidelines:

—We are not offering payment, and are asking for first digital rights. The rights to the story revert to the author immediately upon publication.
—Your story should focus on the challenges of parenting. Ideally, stories should be about children aged 0 to 5, but any age (up to early teens) is acceptable. Stories may be fiction or nonfiction.
—Include the child’s age at the time of the story next to your byline.
—Your story should not exceed 750 words.
—Accepted submissions are typically published 2–4 months after the notification date and will be edited for cohesion and to conform to our house style.
—E-mail your submission to info@akashicbooks.com. Please paste the story into the body of the email, and also attach it as a PDF file.

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Next, our good friends at Arte Público Press, which bills itself as the nation's largest and most established publisher of contemporary and recovery literature by U.S. Hispanic authors. 

Arte Público Press Submissions
 
Arte Público Press, affiliated with the University of Houston, specializes in publishing contemporary novels, short stories, poetry, and drama based on U.S. Hispanic (Cuban American, Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and others) cultural issues and themes. Arte Público also is interested in reference works and non-fiction studies, especially of Hispanic civil rights, women’s issues and history. Manuscripts, queries, synopses, outlines, proposals, introductory chapters, etc. are accepted in either English or Spanish, although the majority of our publications are in English.

Response time is 2-4 months for queries and proposals and 3-6 months for manuscripts.

Please take time to familiarize yourself with our current and previous titles, as well as specialized fields, and send only the material relevant to our publishing needs. Due to the overwhelming amount of submissions we get each year, we would advise that the writer take time to distinguish whether or not his/her work is appropriate for APP so that response time is diminished. We recommend that writers include an introductory sample of the manuscript instead of sending the entire manuscript.

Piñata Books is Arte Público Press’ imprint for children’s and young adult literature. It seeks to authentically and realistically portray themes, characters, and customs unique to U.S. Hispanic culture. Submissions and manuscript formalities are the same as for Arte Público Press. Illustrators are welcome to update files by submitting new art samples online through our website at: Printers – Illustrators – Artists Guidelines

The Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage series publishes recovered literature written by Hispanics between the colonial period and 1960 in the geographic area that has become the United States.

Thanks for considering Arte Público Press to review your manuscript.

Please submit your manuscript using the Manuscript Submission Form. If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at submapp@uh.edu

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Bilingual Press, associated with Arizona State University, has been in business since 1973. One of its projects is preserving classics of Chicana and Chicano literature through the Press’s Clásicos Chicanos/Chicano Classics imprint.
 

Bilingual Press Submission Guidelines

Book-length Manuscript

Description: The Bilingual Press publishes hardcover and paperback originals and reprints on U.S. Hispanic themes, including creative literature (novels, short story collections, poetry, drama, translations), scholarly monographs and edited compilations, and other nonfiction. We are always on the lookout for Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban American, or other U.S. Hispanic themes with strong and serious literary qualities and distinctive and intellectually important topics.

Publisher: Gary Francisco Keller

How to Contact: Send query letter first and include self-addressed, stamped envelope. Do not send complete manuscript until requested. Query letter should describe the book and, as appropriate, give a plot summary or table of contents, sample chapter or sample poems, and any other information relevant to the rationale, content, audience, etc., for the book. Also include a brief resume or vita of the author. Response time is 3-4 weeks for queries, 3-4 months for manuscripts. Simultaneous and photocopied submissions are OK. Electronic submission is not acceptable.

Terms: Creative literature and general nonfiction books pay 10% royalties, with an advance on royalties of $500-$1000 (average) and 10 complimentary copies of the book. For scholarly titles payment is generally in copies. Note: Writers should take the utmost care in assuring that their manuscripts are clean, grammatically impeccable, and have perfect spelling. This is true not only of the English but the Spanish as well. All accent and other diacritical marks need to be in place. We are interested in publishing creative literature that treats the U.S. Hispanic experience in a distinctive, creative, revealing way. The kinds of books that we publish we keep in print for a very long time irrespective of sales. We are busy establishing and preserving a U.S. Hispanic canon of creative literature.
Address for Submissions 

Gary Francisco Keller, Publisher, Bilingual Press, Hispanic Research Center, Arizona State University, PO Box 875303, Tempe, AZ 85287-5303

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Finally, the University of New Mexico Press. As noted on the Press's website: "UNM Press is a well-known and respected publisher in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, indigenous studies, Latin American studies, American studies, Chicana/o studies, art, architecture, and the history, literature, ecology, and cultures of the American West."

UNM Press Submissions 


University of New Mexico Press does not accept unsolicited fiction, poetry, children's, or young adult book proposals. Due to the many hundreds of submissions the press receives annually, we cannot respond to unsolicited queries. Thank you for thinking of UNM Press in conjunction with your work.

We require that authors send an initial query letter describing their manuscript.
Please provide brief replies to these five points:

1. Begin with a description of the issue, problem, or subject your manuscript addresses. Why is this an important topic?

2. Document the need for a book on this topic or in this area. Why should your manuscript be published? How does it differ from other works on the subject?

3. Define your purpose and audience. Why will people want to buy the book?

4. Describe your work's scope and contents. Please append a contents page. What is the page length or word count of your manuscript? What unique features characterize your treatment of the topic? How many illustrations do you intend to include?

5. When do you expect to complete the manuscript? Are there scheduling priorities involved with the publication of this work; for instance, an event or exhibit anticipated to coincide with its release?

Send letters to:
Clark Whitehorn
University of New Mexico Press
MSC05 3185
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001

Send letters regarding literary and cultural studies/criticism, art, and photography to:
Elise M. McHugh
University of New Mexico Press
MSC05 3185
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001

For questions about the Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series, please e-mail Elise M. McHugh at elisemc@unm.edu. Please note that submissions to the series are by invitation only.

For questions about editorial procedures and book proposals, please email clarkw@unm.edu.

For all other questions, please email unmpress@unm.edu.

Your proposal will be considered and you should receive a response in four weeks. If we invite the manuscript and have it reviewed, the process typically takes 6-8 weeks. If your work is accepted for publication, please print and follow the instructions in our Author Handbook. In addition, if accepted for publication, your final manuscript must be accompanied by the UNM Press Final Manuscript Checklist. If you wish your materials returned to you, please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope.


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Later.

Ed's note: This column originates from Quinones' blog True Tales: A Reporter's Blog.La Bloga is pleased to welcome Sam Quinones as a semi-regular contributor to La Bloga. Quinones' columns will appear as La Bloga-Saturday features.


By Sam Quinones

It would have been easy to miss some stunning news a few days ago.

It came buried in the back pages of a December 30 LA Times article on how crime was rising. Rising across the board! First time since 2003! Yikes!

The real stunning story, though, was this:

The city will register only 280 homicides for all of 2015. That would seem sad, and for 280 victims and their families and friends, it most certainly is – I can say this as a reporter who has covered hundreds of murders in his career. I know how murder can destroy not just one life, but the lives of the surviving family as well.

To understand, however, why that number could actually be encouraging news, a remarkable event, you need the context. Here’s some:

Pitched as a 10 percent increase, 280 homicides is actually the city’s third lowest homicide figure since 2000 and part of a drop in crime that has been going on since roughly 2007. In fact, apart from 2013-2014, the city hasn’t had that few homicides since 1967, when L.A.’s population was a third smaller than it is today (roughly 2.4 million people then compared with 3.8 million today).

You’ll remember, perhaps, that in August there was a collective freak-out at the increase in homicides that month. I thought folks should have maintained some calm and context, and dealt with it seriously and professionally, which is what it appears LAPD proceeded to do. The rest of the year saw monthly homicide numbers fall again.

My guess is that in a heavily armed culture, and a very large city, we won’t see homicides dropping to, say, 200 a year. So it’s possible that we’re at about the lowest crime levels a city the size of L.A. can reasonably produce. I’d love to be proved wrong, but barring a deep change in our permissive gun culture or a massive tax increase doubling the size of the LAPD, I’d bet against it.

If those numbers crept up consistently year after year, that would be cause for great concern. But at this point, if crime figures rise 10 percent, or drop by that much, from one year to the next, it’s worth understanding and addressing with calm and context — but not frothing over.

I say this after, again, years as a crime reporter, and fully aware that some areas of the city, and of the region, still have serious problems and that these need attention.

Nor am I saying murder is okay if it’s below a certain number. Just that there are stories we ought also to pay attention to.

The real story is not that crime or homicide rose 10 percent.

The real story is that, while we witness blooms of intercultural savagery around the world, in our region of races, languages, and religions from every corner of the globe, crime has become negligible – a minor part of life and not just for wealthy folks, but, importantly and especially, for working people.

Some notorious headlines notwithstanding – yes, Rodney King, we can all get along and, by and large, in Southern California, we are. In the end, the 2015 homicide figures, as painful as they are for some families, did reflect that.

(Hate crime, btw, is almost nonexistent, certainly compared to the volume and the sheer violence of those crimes in the early and mid-2000s, most of them committed by Latino street gangs against blacks, which you can read more about in a chapter essay that I wrote for this anthology.)

The real story is that this drop in crime began during the country’s Great Recession, and is taking place in a region where poorly paid service jobs have replaced so many good-paying union jobs with solid benefits; where dense apartment complexes have replaced so many single-family homes.

The real story is how many working-class neighborhoods, where murder once stunted life and commerce, are now mercifully at peace, and property values are reflecting that.

And, above all, the real story is that gang violence has dropped so precipitously. (Remember: L.A. used to have way more than 280 gang-related homicides, in years when total homicides topped a thousand.) And so has gangs’ public behavior that did so much to blight those working-class neighborhoods that could least afford their crap. Gangs no longer have the run of the region.

This morning I was out on a street that was notorious for its gang in the 1990s. I found it quiet, pleasant, unscarred by graffiti. On the contrary, the houses seemed improved, freshly painted – one of many such neighborhoods all across Southern California.

Braulio Garcia. Foto: S. Quinones

Later, I was in Lincoln Park, talking with Braulio Garcia, a Mexican immigrant who has owned La Guadalupana Market (pictured above) since 1988. Up to about decade ago, he said, gangs were everywhere in Lincoln Park. A few blocks away is a gang mural, apparently from the 1990s, that lists the members of the neighborhood crew, and giving an RIP to a few friends who didn’t make it. Now, Mr. Garcia told me, he doesn’t see gangs or their graffiti at all.

Certainly lifted my spirits.

So on that note I’ll leave you, while daring to suggest that things are looking up, and hoping, meanwhile, that we have a Happy New Year, one and all.


Meet Sam Quinones

Sam Quinones is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and author of three books of narrative nonfiction. His latest book is Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (Bloomsbury, 2015), for which he traveled across the United States.

Dreamland recounts twin stories of drug marketing in the 21st Century: A pharmaceutical corporation flogs its legal new opiate prescription painkiller as nonaddictive. Meanwhile, immigrants from a small town in Nayarit, Mexico devise a method for retailing black-tar heroin like pizza in the US, and take that system nationwide, riding a wave of addiction to prescription pills from coast to coast. The collision of those two forces has led to America's deadliest drug scourge in modern times.

Dreamland was selected as one of the Best books of 2015 by Amazon.com, Slate.com, the Daily Beast, Buzzfeed, Seattle Times, Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Entertainment Weekly, Audible, and in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Business by Nobel economics laureate, Prof. Angus Deaton, of Princeton University.

Quinones’ previous two highly acclaimed books grew from his 10 years living and working as a freelance writer in Mexico (1994-2004).

True Tales From Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx was released in 2001. It is a cult classic of a book from Mexico’s vital margins – stories of drag queens and Oaxacan Indian basketball players, popsicle makers and telenovela stars, migrants, farm workers, a narcosaint, a slain drug balladeer, a slum boss, and a doomed tough guy.


In 2007, he came out with Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration. In it, Quinones narrates the saga of the Henry Ford of Velvet Painting, and of how an opera scene emerged in Tijuana, and how a Zacatecan taco empire formed in Chicago. He tells the tale of the Tomato King, of a high-school soccer season in Kansas, and of Mexican corruption in a small LA County town. Threading through the book are three tales of a modern Mexican Huck Finn. Quinones ends the collection in a chapter called "Leaving Mexico" with his harrowing tangle with the Narco-Mennonites of Chihuahua.

Sam Quinones is formerly a reporter with the L.A. Times, where he worked for 10 years (2004-2014).  He is a veteran reporter on immigration, gangs, drug trafficking, the border.

Contact him at www.samquinones.com.

Olga García Echeverría



I was half way through Lolita, when my friend Sandra passed on The Story of My Teeth, a contemporary Mexican novel by Valeria Luiselli. I know Lolita (AKA the Confession of a White Widowed Male) is a revered classic, but Nabokov just wasn't doing it for me.

In contrast, Luiselli's Teeth instantly intrigued. I confess, the initial pull was racially and sexually motivated; I've got a thing for Mexican women writers. Also, the cliché “timing is everything” rings true. I began reading The Story of My Teeth about an hour after my last dentist appointment, my upper gums raw and still tingling from three novacaine injections.

All biases aside, though, this book truly entertained and surprised. After the first paragraph, I knew I was dumping Nabokov's nymphet-obsessed Humbert Humbert for Luiselli's fantastic Gustavo Sánchez Sánchez, who welcomes us into the novel with, “I'm the best auctioneer in the world, but no one knows it because I'm a discreet sort of man...I can imitate Janis Joplin after two rums. I can interpret Chinese fortune cookies. I can stand an egg upright on a table, the way Christopher Columbus did in the famous anecdote. I know how to count to eight in Japanese: ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi. I can float on my back.”

Gustavo, affectionately called Highway by his friends, often quotes Napoleón (the Mexican singer, not the French emperor). Gustavo/Highway has worked as a security guard at a juice factory in Mexico City for nineteen uneventful years. On his 40^th birthday, however, “Fortuna spins her wheel, as Napoleón, the singer, says.” Highway's good fortune? The Pasteurization Operator at the factory suffers a panic attack while attending to a DHL messenger, and Highway saves the day by taking the Operator into his arms and cradling him until the attack passes.

Soon after, the manger at the juice factory, highly impressed with Highway's handling of the situation, promotes him to Personnel Crisis Supervisor. Highway is given a desk and an adjustable swivel chair, but there is really nothing for him to do. After complaints from other employees that Highway is getting paid to stare at the ceiling and bite his nail all day, the manager sends Highway out of the factory and into the world to take specialized courses and workshops. Highway becomes “a collector of courses,” taking First Aid, Nutrition and Dietary Habits, Contact-Improv Dance, Literature, and eventually, after a series of amusing events, an Intensive Initiation Course into the Art of Auctioneering. This is where Highway's auctioneer adventures begin. His dream—to make a lot of money so he can leave his wife and fix his teeth.



Teeth, My Mother's Molcajete, and the Granada I'm Going to Eat When I Finish this Blog

There is so much to chew on in this book--a wacky protagonist, eccentric details, a unique and outrageous (although not completely implausible) storyline. Mini-stories, fortune cookies, pictures, obscure quotes, and a time-line all work together to constantly veer the reader into unpredictable literary places/spaces. Also refreshing is Luiselli's ability to deconstruct, challenge, poke fun at, and redefine the notion and structure of the traditional novel. Highway states on page one, “This is the story of my teeth, and my treatise on collectibles and the variable values of objects. As any other story, this one begins with the Beginning, and then comes the Middle, and then the End. The rest, as a friend of mine always says, is literature: hyperbolics, parabolics, circulars, allegorics, and elliptics.”

The Beginning, Middle, and End of Highway's story are then brilliantly presented in 26 short pages. This first section of the novel closes with a Chinese cookie fortune, “Each tooth in the head of a [wo]man is worth more than a diamond.”

Valeria Luiselli Hiding Her Diamonds: Photo by Alfredo Pelcastre

The remainder of the novel? You'll have to read the book yourself to find out how the storytelling around auctioned objects is fleshed out in the following sections. I won't tell you what happens to Highway and his Marilyn Monroe teeth. What I will give away is that the originality of this book is partly due to Luiselli's ingenious idea to invite a group of Jumex factory workers in Mexico to collaborate with her in the formation of what eventually became The Story of My Teeth. These factory workers read versions of Luiselli's story in installments and recorded their comments, criticisms, and informal discussions, at times offering their own personal stories, many of which were eventually integrated into the text with some modifications. Co-writers from the factory include: Evelyn Ángeles Quintana, Abril Velázquez Romero, Tania García Montalva, Marco Antonio Bello, Eduardo González, Ernestina Martínez, Patricia Méndez Cortés, Julio Cesar Velarde Mejía, and David León Alcalá.




My Favorite Jumex Juice

Also, in a truly collaborative gesture that “destabilizes the obsolete dictum of the translator's invisibility” in literature, Luiselli invited her translator, Christina MacSweeney, to contribute a chapter to the novel. How awesome and unconventional is that? MacSweeney's chapter, "Chronologic," is a highly informative and humorous timeline on Highway's life that fits perfectly into Luiselli's overall quirky novel.

Christina MacSweeney Photo "Borrowed" From Words Without Borders

The Story of My Teeth was not only a total trip and a lot of fun to read, it also came across as a book that must have been very enjoyable to create. It reminded me of how writing and reading need not make us suffer; literature (whether we are creating or reading it) should be something delectable we can sink our teeth into and chew on long after we have finished eating the last page. Bravo, Luiselli, for doing that, and leaving me hungry for more.

La Granada's Sweet Bloody Teeth

  

Ten Best Poems of 2015 La Bloga On-line Floricanto
Francisco X. Alarcón, Sandra Barrios Del Mar, Mario Angel Escobar, Kai Coggin, Briana Muñoz, Donny Jackson, Jackie Lopez, Ana Chig, Juliana Aragón Fatula, Lara Gularte


Since 2010, La Bloga and  the Facebook Poetry Community, Poets Responding to SB 1070 Poetry of Resistance, founded in 2010 by Francisco X. Alarcón against the background of repression in Arizona, have worked together to present an on-line floricanto featuring emerging and established poets.

La Bloga On-line Floricanto originated as an adjunct to 2010's reunion floricanto of the 1973 Festival de Flor y Canto. La Bloga On-line Floricanto provides an international platform for poetry inspired by, and inspiring the ongoing movimiento of mind, spirit, and expression essential in building community that reflects current exigencies as well as a lasting record of who we are and what we stand for.

In the course of a year, hundreds of poets submit work for consideration for La Bloga's monthly On-line Floricanto. Organized this month by Iris De Anda, the Moderators combed through the year's already acclaimed works to nominate ten poems as 2015's best.

La Bloga proudly presents these works for your enjoyment and celebration of poetry and the spirit of activism that inheres in poetry of resistance.


“Poeta Macehual” Por Francisco X. Alarcón. Also in English and Scots
"Nací Mujer" Día Internacional de la Mujer Por Sandra Barrios Del Mar
"I can't breathe"By Mario Angel Escobar
“Planting An Acorn After A Massacre” By Kai Coggin
“Raíz” By Briana Muñoz
"41.52" By Donny Jackson
"We Are Humans Just Like You: Detention Centers" By Jackie Lopez
"Conversación con poeta preocupado del tiempo" Por Ana Chig
"The Wall" By Juliana Aragón Fatula
"Crossings" By Lara Gularte


Special Announcement from Juan Felipe Herrera:

It is an honor to announce the first YOLTEOTL POET LAUREATE AWARD to Francisco X. Alarcón. 

Yolteotl — the Nahuatl term for Divine Heart. In the time of the Aztecs it was designated to the artists who demonstrated and accomplished an art that was for the people at all levels and all life. 

Thank you Francisco, dear brother - for giving every ounce of your life in the last thirty-five years (and more) to our communities - through your poems, translations, poetry, children’s books, presentations, teaching, performances, keynotes, international travels and most of all the love that poured out of you at every instant. In Xochitl in Cuicatl - in Flower & Song.

Art by Joaquín Ramón Herrera

POETA MACEHUAL
Por Francisco X. Alarcón

Macehual: término náhuatl (azteca) para la gente común que forma la mayoría del pueblo y cuya labor constituye el meollo vital de la sociedad.
soy un poeta
macehual, seguidor
de mariposas

un trovador
sin corte, sin cuartel
que anda a pie

por los senderos
sin caminantes fuera
de los linderos

mi voz es flor,
canto silvestre libre
como el rocío

la Luna de abril
es mi madre del cielo
que me bendice

el río revuelto
que un huracán desata
es hermano mío

soy un poeta
hacedor de versos
de vida y lluvia

sin otro templo
que la cima del monte
bajo el Sol

mi cara la hallo
en las caras y sonrisas
de mi gente

soy un poeta
macehual, seguidor
de mariposas

sin otro techo
que el cielo raso
lleno de estrellas

mi bandera es
blanca nube del cielo,
paloma de paz

el mundo entero
-ya sin fronteras- es
mi casa y solar

MACEHUAL (COMMON FOLK) POET
By Francisco X. Alarcón

I am a macehual
poet, a follower
of butterflies

a troubadour
with no court or quarter,
a hiker on foot

trekking paths with
no other walkers, beyond
well travelled ways

my voice is a flower,
a wild song free
like the dew

April’s Moon is
my mother blessing me
from the sky

the unruly river
a hurricane brings about
is my own brother

I am a poet,
a wordsmith of verses
for life and rain

with no other temple
than the mountain summit
under the Sun

I find my face
on the faces and smiles
of my people

I am a macehual
poet, a follower
of butterflies

with no other ceiling
than the open sky
full of stars

my sole flag is
a white cloud in the sky,
a dove of peace

the whole world
-already borderless- is
my home and backyard

Macehual: A Nahuatl (Aztec) term for the common folk, the bulk of the people, whose labor constitutes the vital core of society.



FOWK POET
By Francisco X. Alarcón
Trans. to Scots by John McDonald

am a fowk makar,
a follaer
o butteries

a fowk singer
wi nae coort or quarter,
a traiker on fuit

traikin peths alane,
ayont
weill-traikit weys

ma vice's a flooer,
a wull sang lowse
lik the deow

Aprile's muin's
ma mither sainin me
frae the lift

the gurly watter
blowster steert
is ma ain brither

am a makar,
wrochtin verses
fir life an weet

wi nae ither tempel
than yon muntain peen
unner the sin

a fin ma neb
in aw the smiles
o ma ain fowk

am a fowk makar,
follaer
o butteries

wi nae ither ruif
nor the apen lift
fou o sterns

ma yin flag's
a fite clud i the lift,
a doo o Pace

the hail warl
-a'ready mairchless -
is ma hame, ma back coort




Francisco X. Alarcón, award winning Chicano poet and educator, is the author of thirteen volumes of poetry, including, Ce•Uno•One: Poems for the New Sun (Swan Scythe Press 2010), From the Other Side of Night: Selected and New Poems (University of Arizona Press 2002), Snake Poems: An Aztec Invocation (Chronicle Books 1992), and Sonnets to Madness and Other Misfortunes (Creative Arts Book Company 2001). His most recent books are Canto hondo / Deep Song (University of Arizona Press 2015) and Borderless Butterflies / Mariposas sin fronteras (Poetic Matrix Press 2014). He has published six books for children available through Lee & Low Books, among them, Animal Poems of the Iguazú (2008) and Poems to Dream Together (2005). He teaches at the University of California, Davis, where he directs the Spanish for Native Speakers Program. He is the creator of the Facebook page POETS RESPONDING TO SB 1070 and co-founder of Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol / The Writers of the New Sun, a writers’ group of Sacramento, California.




NACÍ MUJER !!
By Sandra Barrios del Mar

Poema dedicado al día internacional de la mujer
Cuando mi madre me dio a luz....
Llegaron los delfines..
A la orilla del mar....
Saltaron de felicidad...
Y juguetearon en el azul golfo de fonseca....
Y ángeles y querubines
Han sostenido mi alma....
Mi alma rebelde e inquieta
Que nació con la bravura
De las olas al estrellarse
En las rocas...
Bendito sea el esperma de mi padre ...
Y bendito el vientre de mi madre...
Que nací mujer...
Nací del amor ....
De un hombre valiente
Y de una mujer sorprendente...
Hoy tengo la sabiduría
De las estrellas...
Tengo la convicción...
De amar sin dolor...
Tengo un arcoiris
En el corazón....
Cuando me entregó al amor
Nacen volcanes en erupción...
Tengo la fuerza de mover
Montañas...
Tengo alas para volar...
Tengo sueños por los cuales luchar...
Tengo dos ovarios en su lugar...
Tengo en mis pupilas el secreto del universo...
Tengo la perfecta linea en mis labios para entregar
El beso qué nadie aún no descubrió....
Nací mujer
Y dentro de mi brota un verso cristalino....
Un verso ... Un verso..
El dulce verso...de libertad...
Nací mujer...
Nací poesía...
Tengo la fuerza de un tornado....
Tengo la magia en un puñado....
Soy mujer poesía
Porque nací de un gran amor !!!
Bendito sea el creador
Qué nací mujer !!!!!
Soy madre
Soy guerrera
Soy poesía
Soy revolución....
Porque soy la misma evolución...
Soy creadora de vida
Con el privilegio más alto
De la creación...
Soy divina...
Soy mujer...
Soy extraordinariamente
M u j e r......!!!
Gracias al creador del universo por permitirme
Nacer ....
Nacer mujer !!!!!
Autora: sandra barrios del mar
Como un tributo al día internacional de la mujer !!




Sandra Barrios del Mar lives in Los Angeles. She is originally from El Salvador.













"I can't breathe”
By Mario Angel Escobar

In memory of Eric Garner

Officer, officer,
My family is waiting for me.
Please listen to me.

I can't breathe!

Officer, officer,
I don't want to be another anonymous death
in the holocaust of indifference.

I can't breathe!

Officer, officer,
Don't let me fall on the sidewalk.
Dirty pavement where I've been since the days of slave patrol.
Ancestral language
stripped naked
in chains.

I can't breathe!

Officer, officer,
people will missed me at the dinner table.
I am lifeworthy.
Please listen to me.

I can't breathe!

Officer, officer,
The soul bleeds.
Please don't let darkness open its jaw.
Earthquake in my lungs.

I can't breathe!

Officer, officer,
Don't deny me of that precious oxygen.
This drum still beats strong.

I can't breathe!

Officer, officer,
don't dismiss my plight.
Don't erase my name.
You and I travel together
in this floating asteroid.
Please let me be.

I can't breathe!

Officer, officer,
Every time you see me,
you try to mess with me.
Please listen to me!

I can't breathe!




Mario A. Escobar (January 19, 1978-) is a US-Salvadoran writer and poet born in 1978. Although he considers himself first and foremost a poet, he is known as the founder and editor of Izote Press. Escobar is an assistant professor in the Department of Foreign Languages at LA Mission College and also teaches at Cal State University. Some of Escobar’s works include Al correr de la horas (Editorial Patria Perdida, 1999) Gritos Interiores (Cuzcatlan Press, 2005), La Nueva Tendencia (Cuzcatlan Press, 2005), Paciente 1980 (Orbis Press, 2012). His bilingual poetry appears in Theatre Under My Skin: Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry by Kalina Press.








Planting an Acorn After a Massacre
By Kai Coggin

When I heard the news
of the 132 school children massacred,
the taliban suicide bombers in
explosive-lined vests
blowing up the lights of brightened futures,
emptying thousands
of shell casings into the heads of innocents,
I went outside with my grief,
couldn’t hold it indoors,
I walked in circles
and wondered
how the sun
could continue this charade,
how the breeze could decorate
the almost barren trees
with dancing dried skirts,
quivering leaves.
I held the hands of the sky
and whispered unknown names
into the afternoon silence,
as two turkey vultures
cut the blue by
flying infinities overhead.
I walked.
Each step accompanied
by the sound of dried leaves
crunching underfoot,
and fallen acorns shone slick
in the light of the sun,
some dusted with grains of sand
that reflected prismatically
into the tiniest rainbows,
almost invisible.
I picked one up.
It had cracked open,
its red root arm reaching out for earth,
seed sprout seeing possibility,
the process of growth
inherent in its nature.
Without question and without fail
scores of acorns around me
had split open
in these cold months,
split open and started the process of
digging themselves down into the dirt,
the brilliant design that unlocks
wooden hinges and breaks free.
I thought of the children,
their arms reaching toward futures
that they could not see
but could feel,
their brilliant design,
their chubby reddened cheeks,
their laughter,
their learning becoming
scattered schoolbooks
and bomb-blasted classrooms,
they will not become trees,
they will not get past the point
of just barely breaking through,
red blood arms shielding faces
that wonder how this could be the end,
then it is,
was,
blackness,
ending.
The innocents should not die
for a God that does not live by the moral code
that innocents should not die.
I get lost in all this,
the soft breeze,
the blood,
the peaceful valley of my home,
the massacre that touches the same earth floor
dirt on which I stand and gather bursting-open acorns,
juxtaposition of death and life,
my red root fingers dig for the meaning,
for the karmic and cosmic balance,
and all I can do is find a patch of softened moist soil,
a spot that gets good sunlight,
and I shovel a small hole with a jagged flat rock
and lay the
acorn
inside
the hole
with the red root
pointing toward the planet’s core.
“Something small must have a chance,”
I say to myself,
and I cover the acorn with the supple ground.

I encircle the life burial plot
with a mandala of 11 acorn caps,
(you know the little hats that acorns wear)
I make a circle,
because circles are unbroken,
because life should be unbroken,
because something small must have a chance.
I close my eyes,
and let the sun kiss me
until I am warmed inside
with the red of late afternoon,
until I see the mightiest oak tree in my mind,
132 sprawling green limbs
reaching up, up, up,
for
Heaven.




Kai Coggin is a poet and author living on the side of a small mountain in Hot Springs, AR. She holds a degree in Poetry and Creative Writing from Texas A & M University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Split This Rock, Yellow Chair Review, ANIMA, Blue Heron Review, Lavender Review, Broad!, Elephant Journal, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Cliterature, ITWOW, [empath] quarterly, Catching Calliope, and other journals, as well as anthologized in several collections.

Kai is the author of PERISCOPE HEART (Swimming with Elephants Publications, 2014). Her poetry has recently been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Bettering American Poetry 2015.  She is also a Teaching Artist with the Arkansas Arts Council, specializing in bringing poetry and creative writing to youth.  www.kaicoggin.com

Planting an Acorn After a Massacre was previously published at Elephant Journal.




Raíz
By Briana Muñoz

You tell me that my scars are hideous.
I respond by saying “Hideous, tu madre.”
You formally inform me, in a Times New Roman letter
That my school work is “below average”
I ask you, “And exactly what is your definition of average?”

You laugh at the music blaring out of my
’93 nearly broken down pick-up truck
Rusty paint, chipping away like the old folks at the country club
But my music,

My music es de mi papá
This music represents beautiful colored women
In beautiful colored dresses
Multicolored ribbons
Floral head pieces

Canciones del país de mis abuelos
México Lindo
What my nana calls it.

So please, continue making fun
Of her thick Spanish accent
While you sit there
Ordering wet burritos and carne asada fries
From the Mexican food restaurant
Down the street from the multi-million dollar houses
In Del Mar

Because my culture is pinche beautiful
And so is my abuelita in her plaid mandil and sweaty forehead
And those mariachi lyrics I yell out proudly
Beautiful are my dark eyebrows which you make fun of
But I know they were passed down from my hard working mother
My culture is pinche beautiful; I refuse to allow you to tell me otherwise.





Briana Muñoz is a young Hispanic writer from San Marcos, CA. She writes poetry and short stories. She has been previously published in LA BLOGA, Palomar college's literary journal, the Bravura, and the Oakland Arts Review.














41.52
By Donny Jackson

habtom

my baby boy, my baby boy
you make me look good
like a handsome bracelet on my wrist
like the jewels on my neck
should i start all over again
from conception to birth?
you are such a delight.

from meseraseri
an eritrean lullaby

knife

fear

gun

boot

bench

not one of them looked like a fiber until braided they were a noose

knife

no one is a monster before they’ve seen one

a stabbing
how to grieve in metal

the monster they were looking for was not the one they got

fear

although he was finally crawling on the ground they way they often saw him
standing
he still looked like a terrorist when someone needed to catch the word
thrown into the air

his complexion is sticky

his hands are too scraped to remember injera
too soft
to bore into the ground and hide

no one around him looks like him except the enemy no one can identify

until him

they have saved the afraid of their every day to be able to fight back

they live like a land mine

it is not his fault he resembles a nightmare

gun

the why and final of firearms is that they are fast
so he
is a silenced scream

not his

he is not civilization or surrender
he
is capture

he did not hear the shot that drilled his prayers into the floor

boot

they stomped his head when the gun made him a small enough insect

they walked away not knowing how much of him they carried in their stride

bench

a reminder to people in these bus stations to wait
until they can travel to another
target

they used it
as a sledgehammer

it may be true they were trying to kill it and him at the same time


afraid to die alone
as mother’s milk
for a how a mob countries
this tender of plants
before he closes his eyes
one last time
asks of his blood
to seep below this moment
through to the black
from which all plants grow
and nurse a stalk
eager with fruit
that will outlive
all his witnesses





A former professor and psychotherapist, Donny Jackson holds a doctorate in clinical psychology, and works currently as a Executive Producer and director in unscripted television and film. In the written arts, Donny has enjoyed stints as an autobiography ghostwriter, playwright, and book critic, as well as speech writer for a diverse set of clients, from Blair Underwood to the Clinton White House. An award-winning poet (but only because of the $2 prize he won in a city-wide poetry contest at age eight), Donny has featured as a spoken word artist throughout southern California and the northeastern United States. His one man, multiple character spoken word show, One Man Shown, is returning to southern California in the summer of 2016. Foto: Donny Jackson with Kelly Grace Thomas.





We Are Humans Just Like You: Detention Centers
By Jackie Lopez

Dehumanization

Colonization

Segregation

Genocide

Rape

Sexual Assault

Profit

Some deserve safety more than others.

The love of power over another feeds
the beast within a colonialized mind.

And, some of them work in detention
centers with women and children.

Some of them have raped a woman
in front of her child.

Surely, our voice is stronger
than the fascists.

Surely, our compassion is stronger
than those who have a thrill with power over.

For we are humans after all, or
are we reptiles?

Surely, the status quo does not turn a blind eye
to such atrocities as we are living today.

And, today, we are living it,
Ladies and Gentleman.

Welcome to the world of “You have
less rights than I do. ”

You ignore me because, somehow, I am
a human being with less rights than most.

We are one.

Yes, this woman with dark skin
and a soul to die for says, “We are one”

because it is the truth that is hidden.

And, what you allow to be done to
me will be allowed to be done to you.

If that is not the good enough
reason to despair and proclaim our humanity,

then I don’t know what being a
human being really stands for.

Ah, Love.

It was all about love after all.

That was the purpose to come here
in the first place: It was about love.

It was about how much you loved and how
you loved and all that you would embrace

in the name of love.

Our purpose: to love.

So, I love myself enough to tell
you the truth.

So, I love YOU enough to
tell you the truth.

Coming here to this Earth plane
was all about love and courage.

Wow, honey child, because it takes
courage to love in this day and age.

I love the woman and child in
that detention center so much that I feel her

searing tears within my own eyes.

And, what am I to do?

What am I to say?

I write a poem.

That is my power.

What is yours?

Soon, they will be after the Gypsies.
What is life?




Jackie Lopez began writing poetry at 15 years of age because a young boy in her class wrote poetry for her in notes.  When she entered UCSD, she won a poetry award and that is when all hell broke loose and she began to write poetry in her special journals.  She majored in history and began writing what were to be her activist poems.  After graduation from UCSD, she became somewhat known in the poetry field in mostly Southern California.  She became known as an activist poet.  She has read for Janice Jordan, Centro Cultural de la Raza, The World Beat Center, N.O. W., and many other venues for over 20 years.  She was founding member of The Taco Shop Poets.   Graduate school for her consisted of time in The New School for Social Research in New York and at SDSU in San Diego.  She experienced a spiritual awakening in graduate school and dropped out only to join a writers’ group called “Cabin 20” headed by Luis Alberto Urrea.  He is still her mentor and has learned much about writing through this remarkable mentee/mentor relationship.  She has been published in “La Bloga” six times, “The Hummingbird Review” twice, “The Border Crossed Us:  An Anthology to End Apartheid” and other Literary journals.   You can contact her via email or facebook.  Her email: peacemarisolbeautiful@yahoo.com and her facebook:  Jackie Lopez Lopez in San Diego.





CONVERSACIÓN CON POETA PREOCUPADO DEL TIEMPO
Por Ana Chig

Soy yo, eres tú, la vida.
Es quizá, el cuerpo desnudo en oscuro de tu cuarto.
Es quizá, mi cuerpo desnudo en sigilo de la casa.

¿Qué pides al tiempo?

No habrá un corazón detenido, no lo habrá,
ni ambulancia recogiendo cuerpo, ni aviso a quién dar.

La noche vuelve claros los cabellos, todo lo muestra, todo lo oculta,
confunde edad.

Nada es lo que parece, hay una perspectiva.

Si mis labios en los tuyos y aún percibes el sabor que el lustro ha dejado.
Si la piel desnuda bajo una escalera, tus manos continúan indagando.
Entonces, concede extensión a la hora, el humo, tu trago.

Dame más, la palabra siempre llena; es la música, entiendes.
La música que de ellos, tus dedos que de mí…
El tiempo.




Ana Chig (Los Mochis, 1974). Es poeta y promotora cultural  radicada en Tijuana. Funda y dirige la Revista Mensual de Poesía Frontera Esquina y el proyecto editorial Nódulo Ediciones. Su obra ha sido incluida en antologías de Estados Unidos, Colombia y México.












The Wall
By Juliana Aragón Fatula

El otro lado
of the wall, el jefe
builds a pyramid
of stones. También, like
Babylon it will
tumble down, las madres
scatter unable
to speak the same tongue.
No hacen voz. You've
crossed the barrier,
no hay turning back.
The wall es almost
impossible to
scale in a single
bound; you must run, dig,
swim, and crawl to
el otro side. No one
returns. Nunca. Why
would they? Los Estados
Unidos is the
land de leche y azúcar.




Juliana Aragón Fatula’s, three books of poetry are Crazy Chicana in Catholic City, 2nd edition, Red Canyon Falling On Churches, Conundrum Press; and her chapbook, The Road I Ride Bleeds, Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. She is a Southern Colorado Native, a member of the Sandra Cisneros’ Macondo Foundation, and a writer-in-residence for Colorado Humanities’ Writers-in-the-Schools Program. She teaches cultural diversity and believes in the power of education to change lives. She is a performance artist who likes to stir the political melting pot and shake things up.







Crossings
By Lara Gularte

The Monarch flies from México
in a sliver of sunlight.

Alert and calm,
coyote trots across a busy intersection.

Hungry people push themselves
along the dusty road.

Trails radiate animal auras,
tufts of hair.

Scorpions, lizards,
cling to rock face.

Geese leave what they know,
rush to routes of migration.

Carrier Pigeons return with dirty feet.
They huddle together.

Iron doors sweep shut,
after entry to the gated community.

A woman travels light
with her backpack,

desperate to move on
before the borders close.




Lara Gularte was featured in the Autumn 2014 issue of The Bitter Oleander with an interview and 18 poems.
Her poetic work depicting her Azorean heritage is included in a book of essays called "Imaginários Luso-Americanos e Açorianos" by Vamberto Freitas. Her poems can be found in The Gávea-Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry. Gularte earned an MFA degree from San Jose State University where she was a poetry editor for Reed Magazine, received the Anne Lillis Award for Creative Writing, and several Phelan Awards. Her work has appeared in such journals as The Bitter Oleander, California Quarterly, The Clackamas Review, Evansville Review, Permafrost, The Monserrat Review, The Water-Stone Review, The Fourth River, The Santa Clara Review, and she has been published by many national and regional anthologies. She is an assistant editor for Narrative Magazine.

 
 
"The Revolutionary 1930s and Aftermath"
Ariel Mae Lambe (University of Connecticut) is an emeritus professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of CUNY. He was born and raised in Cuba and has written numerous books and articles about the country. His most recent book is Cuba Since The Revolution of 1959. A Critical Assessment published by Haymarket Books in 2011.


Moderator: Samuel Farber, Brooklyn College

Ariel Mae Lambe (Ph.D., Columbia University) is assistant professor of History as the University of Connecticut. Her areas of specialty include Latin America and the Caribbean, Cuba, social and political movements, and activism. Lambe’s research interests are Cuban antifascism and involvement in the Spanish Civil War; transnational movements, activism, networks, and solidarity; the 1930s in the Atlantic World. 



YOUR COMPUTER:

Little Patuxent Review is open for submissions. They are looking for ESSAYS and MEMOIR in particular for their un-themed Summer issue. Little Patuxent Review is a community-based publication focused on writers and artists from the Mid-Atlantic region, but all excellent work originating in the United States will be considered. *Submit up to 3000 words. Reading period closes March 1, 2016.*  For more info: http://littlepatuxentreview.org/submissions/


The Vermillion Literary Project (VLP), an award-winning creative writing and literary student organization of the University of South Dakota, is accepting submissions of poetry, fiction, and B & W art for its annual literary journal. *The deadline for submission is January 15, 2016.* For more info: http://sites.usd.edu/projlit/vlp-magazine

Guest Post by Linda Rodriguez

A Lucent Fire by Patricia Spears Jones

By Guest Blogger Maritza Alvarez

-Hikuc (The Revenant, 2015)

 

Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) Standing Before a Pyramid of Bison Skulls

 

 

Glass (DiCaprio) Left for Dead After Grizzly Attack

As the story unfolds, we witness the protagonist's relentless determination to physically endure the harsh conditions and terrain. Through Hugh's journey, we are introduced to the key characters that essentially help to keep Hugh Glass alive. Glass’s deceased Pawnee wife (Grace Dove) flies in and out of his dreams, providing him the required strength to keep trekking onward. Through her visits, we witness the plight of the destruction of her village and people. Through Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), Hugh's only beloved son, we see the constant racism of the time, as some of Glass’s peers refer to Hawk as a “half-breed dog.” Although Hawk verbally defends himself, Glass immediately reminds his son that if he wants to stay alive, he must remain invisible and keep his mouth shut, because they (the White men) do not hear him. They only see the color of his face.

Glass and Young Hawk

Hikuc (Arthur RedCloud), a Pawnee man, travels south to reconnect with extended family. He has compassion for Glass’s needs and admires his determination to survive from the vicious bear attack. Hikuc befriends Glass and gently doctors him during a severe winter storm. Then there is Pawaqa (Melaw Nakehk’o), the Sioux daughter of Elk Dog (Duane Howard), who is abducted and repeatedly raped by a band of American fur traders. She is later assisted by Glass, and has the opportunity for sweet revenge. Throughout the scenes with these secondary characters, stunning cutaways are creatively utilized to allow the audience a moment to reflect, and to catch a much needed breath.

Duane Howard as Elk Dog

Through the character of Hugh Glass, Iñárritu skillfully appeals to the general American audiences' narcissistic desire to see themselves portrayed as the all-American hero. Iñárritu, however, uses this all-American hero to creatively inject social and historical elements into the film that are rarely explored in Hollywood. The film, for instance, sheds light on the often overlooked American and French’s violent treatment of First Nations peoples (Arikaree and Pawnee), and the ongoing rape and pillaging of the women and the land which was justified by American capitalism.

Another central thread in the film is nature. Early in the film, Hugh's encounter with the grizzly is symbolic of the overall theme: man vs. nature. From the onset, the audience is immediately captivated by the silences and sounds of mother nature and her vast photogenic landscapes. 


From the extreme close-up shots of the golden autumn leaves frozen in winter ice, we learn her story. From the torrential teal waterfall glaciers surrendering to the roaring river, we hear her songs. And from the glistening dense emerald forests, where sunlight rays extend their hands for a dance with the hanging moth strands on giant pine trees, we feel her tenderness. As a viewer, one is transported into the grand vastness of mother nature and her profound spiritual and physical powers. The audience is pulled into the story at every juncture and often times reminded to stop and pay attention to the full spectrum of the beauty that lies within the landscape, from the macro to the micro. We can’t help to be humbled by her grandness and awe-struck by her fierce and gentle strength. We are virtually guided to reconnect to her in order to better understand the harsh juxtapositions between nature and man. In this way, we are reminded that mother nature, like man, is complex. She cannot be understood in singular terms. For man to attempt to understand her, he must listen, keenly observe, and ultimately maintain an intimate and reciprocal relationship with her and all her inhabitants. As a human species, in order to survive and to evolve, man must connect with her on her terms. Once again, Iñárritu creates an exemplary film to remind us of this simple but profound truth.

Iñárritu: Borrowed from Getty Images

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday celebrates the life and legacy of a man who brought hope and healing to America. We commemorate as well the timeless values he taught us through his example -- the values of courage, truth, justice, compassion, dignity, humility and service that so radiantly defined Dr. King’s character and empowered his leadership. On this holiday, we commemorate the universal, unconditional love, forgiveness and nonviolence that empowered his revolutionary spirit.

We commemorate Dr. King’s inspiring words, because his voice and his vision filled a great void in our nation, and answered our collective longing to become a country that truly lived by its noblest principles. Yet, Dr. King knew that it wasn’t enough just to talk the talk, that he had to walk the walk for his words to be credible. And so we commemorate on this holiday the man of action, who put his life on the line for freedom and justice every day, the man who braved threats and jail and beatings and who ultimately paid the highest price to make democracy a reality for all Americans.

The King Holiday honors the life and contributions of America’s greatest champion of racial justice and equality, the leader who not only dreamed of a color-blind society, but who also lead a movement that achieved historic reforms to help make it a reality.

On this day we commemorate Dr. King’s great dream of a vibrant, multiracial nation united in justice, peace and reconciliation; a nation that has a place at the table for children of every race and room at the inn for every needy child. We are called on this holiday, not merely to honor, but to celebrate the values of equality, tolerance and interracial sister and brotherhood he so compellingly expressed in his great dream for America.

It is a day of interracial and intercultural cooperation and sharing. No other day of the year brings so many peoples from different cultural backgrounds together in such a vibrant spirit of brother and sisterhood. Whether you are African-American, Hispanic or Native American, whether you are Caucasian or Asian-American, you are part of the great dream Martin Luther King, Jr. had for America. This is not a black holiday; it is a peoples' holiday. And it is the young people of all races and religions who hold the keys to the fulfillment of his dream.

We commemorate on this holiday the ecumenical leader and visionary who embraced the unity of all faiths in love and truth. And though we take patriotic pride that Dr. King was an American, on this holiday we must also commemorate the global leader who inspired nonviolent liberation movements around the world. Indeed, on this day, programs commemorating my husband’s birthday are being observed in more than 100 nations.

The King Holiday celebrates Dr. King’s global vision of the world house, a world whose people and nations had triumphed over poverty, racism, war and violence. The holiday celebrates his vision of ecumenical solidarity, his insistence that all faiths had something meaningful to contribute to building the beloved community.

The Holiday commemorates America’s pre-eminent advocate of nonviolence --- the man who taught by his example that nonviolent action is the most powerful, revolutionary force for social change available to oppressed people in their struggles for liberation.

This holiday honors the courage of a man who endured harassment, threats and beatings, and even bombings. We commemorate the man who went to jail 29 times to achieve freedom for others, and who knew he would pay the ultimate price for his leadership, but kept on marching and protesting and organizing anyway.

Every King holiday has been a national "teach-in" on the values of nonviolence, including unconditional love, tolerance, forgiveness and reconciliation, which are so desperately-needed to unify America. It is a day of intensive education and training in Martin’s philosophy and methods of nonviolent social change and conflict-reconciliation. The Holiday provides a unique opportunity to teach young people to fight evil, not people, to get in the habit of asking themselves, "what is the most loving way I can resolve this conflict?"

On the King holiday, young people learn about the power of unconditional love even for one's adversaries as a way to fight injustice and defuse violent disputes. It is a time to show them the power of forgiveness in the healing process at the interpersonal as well as international levels.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is not only for celebration and remembrance, education and tribute, but above all a day of service. All across America on the Holiday, his followers perform service in hospitals and shelters and prisons and wherever people need some help. It is a day of volunteering to feed the hungry, rehabilitate housing, tutoring those who can't read, mentoring at-risk youngsters, consoling the broken-hearted and a thousand other projects for building the beloved community of his dream.

Dr. King once said that we all have to decide whether we "will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. Life's most persistent and nagging question, he said, is `what are you doing for others?'" he would quote Mark 9:35, the scripture in which Jesus of Nazareth tells James and John "...whosoever will be great among you shall be your servant; and whosoever among you will be the first shall be the servant of all." And when Martin talked about the end of his mortal life in one of his last sermons, on February 4, 1968 in the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church, even then he lifted up the value of service as the hallmark of a full life. "I'd like somebody to mention on that day Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to give his life serving others," he said. "I want you to say on that day, that I did try in my life...to love and serve humanity.

We call you to commemorate this Holiday by making your personal commitment to serve humanity with the vibrant spirit of unconditional love that was his greatest strength, and which empowered all of the great victories of his leadership. And with our hearts open to this spirit of unconditional love, we can indeed achieve the Beloved Community of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream.

May we who follow Martin now pledge to serve humanity, promote his teachings and carry forward his legacy into the 21st Century.

[To read and listen to the “I Have a Dream” speech, visit this page of American Rhetoric: Top 100 Speeches.]

Francisco X. Alarcón?

Francisco X. Alarcón?


Michael Sedano


Francisco X. Alarcón presenting at the National Latino Writers Conference in 2011. This is my favorite portrait of Francisco, doing what he so enjoyed, presenting to an audience. The poet liked this image, too, and adopted it as his social media portrait. QEPD.

Fortunately for history, a multitude of recordings exist of Francisco X. Alarcón. In 2010, Jesus Treviño documented the reunion floricanto of the 1973 Festival de Flor y Canto. Both took place at the University of Southern California. You can download Francisco's reading, including his signature salute to los cuatro vientos, at USC's Digital Library (link). The video is too large for this channel.

In addition to videotaping the three days of readings, Treviño interviewed Alarcón for Latinopia, the nation's most comprehensive video archive of Chicana Chicano history, art, and literature. La Bloga is happy to share a pair of video tributes to Francisco from Latinopia.



Here, Francisco reads two poems to the interviewer



Lucha Corpi composed this poem for her friend of many years. La Bloga shares it with Lucha's permission as our eulogy for Francisco X. Alarcón.

Carta a Francisco
By Lucha Corpi

Escucha bien, Francisco,
Aquel día
que encontraron muerto a aquel joven,
tú  y yo leíamos poemas
bajo la luminosa intimidad de Diego Rivera.
A tu casa llegaban los policías
llenos de falsas acusaciones y prejuicios
con el reportero a los talones.
Cateaban tu casa.
Marchaban con sus botas sucias
sobre tus versos dolientes
esparcidos por el piso.
Y dejaban al salir
el púrpura
altanero
de su fuerza
como una terrible bocanada
que permanece  enrojecida
aun
bajo los párpados cerrados

A través
del cristal de la prisión;
yo te sentí dolido, Francisco,
tambaleante la esperanza,
hechos trizas tus noches y tus días,
llenos los ojos de cólera muda
esa ira de raza
que inunda de pronto la mirada
cuando el látigo del desprecio
deja su huella profana
en la espalda del alma.

Y cuando al fin aprehendieron
al desvalido homicida
aquel que se cobró
con otras vidas
tan desamparadas como la suya
el abuso que sufrió
de niño
yo te ví levantarte, Francisco,
y pedir misericordia por ese hombre
por quien hubieras podido morir tú.

Su muerte en la cámara de gases,
dijiste,
es una cuchillada a la dignidad humana.

Ese día te sanaron casi todas las heridas

Pero a veces, Francisco,
Todavía veo
esa íntima trsiteza
navegarte la mirada
porque
siempre habrá
unn hechicero azteca
en lo recóndito
de tu noche
quien seguirá
conjurando versos
para ganarse la libertad de vivir
un día más
aunque sea
bajo fianza de palabras.
Francisco X. Alarcón?
¡Presente!




Breaking News
Raza Writers Named for National Book Critics Circle Honors

Few, and far between, are the major literary prizes awarded to raza writers. Our gente routinely get over looked instead of looked over by the panels tasked with nominating for major prizes.

This year marks the beginning of change as a handful of raza writers are named winners or finalists, including the most recent member of La Bloga's regular writing team, Sam Quinones. Sam is finalist in the Non-fiction category for his book, Dreamland.

In fiction, Valeria Luiselli's The Story of My Teeth is a finalist. La Bloga's Olga García Echeverría reviewed the work just last week.

Poetry finalists include Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things.

Winners of the National Book Critics Circle awards will be announced on Thursday, March 17, 2016 in New York city, where finalists will read at a free event. The Awards will be broadcast live on C-SPAN and on the net at the NBCC website.

Already named a winner is Carlos Lozada. Lozada is 2015's winner of the NBCC Balakian Citation for Literary Excellence. The award comes with a $1000 prize endowed by NBCC board member, and La Bloga friend, Gregg Barrios. La Bloga thanks Gregg Barrios for this important act of giving back to the community.

Also already named a winner is First Novel Prize awardee  Kirstin Valdez Quade for Night of the Fiesta.

La Bloga offers our heartfelt congratulations to all the finalists and winners. For details on the NBCC awards, click here.


Check your local listings for the February 1, 2016 NPR debut showing of Director  Renee Tajima-Peña's arrestingly engaging film, No Más Bebés. Click here for details.

The film is a masterful documentary of the forced sterilization of women at Los Angeles County's Women's Hospital in the 1970s, and the court battle they pursued to force LAC to give up its eugenics program that victimized indigent mostly Mexican and Black women.

The film offers a powerful indictment of an obstetrics service that told C-section prospects they could not have their babies unless the drugged and laboring women signed a consent form allowing tubal ligation. The forms, in English, explained the procedure, but the often-monolingual in Spanish women did not understand either the surgery or the consequences.

While the history is a horror story, the film engages the audience by interviewing warm, funny, loving women, and men, whose tragedy highlights one of the most pernicious tactics in the war on women. Denying women their reproductive rights as a routine element of public health care was seen as providing "good medicine" by the male doctors and the female lawyer who defended the medicos in a Federal Civil Rights lawsuit. Also featured is the male doctor who blew the whistle on the egregious practice.

Virginia Espino produced the film

Recently, Producer Virginia Espino joined a panel of women in Los Angeles to show the film to a rapt audience and engage a public discussion of what "choice" and reproductive rights entail.

The most unnerving scene in the documentary shows the actual sterilization. "Tubal ligation" implies that fallopian tubes are tied off, but that they can be untied. Instead, as the film illustrates, the surgeon ties each tube, lifts the isolated organ, and cuts away the flesh.

Director Renee Tajima-Peña does a masterful job of keeping the film visually interesting with historic footage of movimiento activism while the soundtrack plays audiocassette interviews recorded in the 1970s. The showing at the California Endowment auditorium before a packed house was an especially moving evening owing to the interaction of audience members who gasped, laughed, cried, grew irate in all the right places. Don't view the film alone, on February 1. Invite a houseful of friends and have a viewing party to recreate the ambience of that evening.



Huizache Pachanga In Los Angeles Features Floricanto, Tacos, Musical Headliner

The magazine of Latino Literature. 

Let that sink in a moment.

That there is a magazine of Chicana Chicano and related literature is a wonder in itself. That it--Huizache--arrives in its fifth iteration is even more a marvel.

Even more marvelously wonderful, the latest edition features thirty-eight writers, four full-color plates, and cover art by Diane Gamboa. Among the writers are both well-known as well as debut artists, Latinas, Latinos, and literary compañeras compañeros from other communities, making Huizache the nation's single most important proponent of writing that challenges ethnic, gender, or social stereotypes.

In fact, distinguished filmmaker and Director Jesus Salvador Treviño thinks so highly of Huizache and its Founding Editor Dagoberto Gilb, that Treviño presented Gilb a beautiful nicho recognizing the editor as San Dagoberto, the Patron Saint of Writers.


Gilb brought the current edition to Los Angeles recently, where Hector Tobar and Virginia Espino hosted a pachanga celebrating the publication. Tabor is author of two novels, The Tattooed Soldier and The Barbarian Nurseries. Tobar's non-fiction account of trapped Chilean miners, Deep Down Dark is the source of the popular movie, The 33.

"Primer día de clases"

parado frente                                                                                                                                           
a la teacher

apreté aun                                                                                                                                               
más fuerte

la mano de                                                                                                                                             
mi abuela

la teacher                                                                                                                                                
se sonrió

dijo algo                                                                                                                                               
en inglés,

pero yo no                                                                                                                                     
entendí

mi abuela                                                                                                                                              
luego me dio   
                                                                                                                                     
su bendición                                                                                                                                          
y se fue

yo me quedé                                                                                                                                           
hecho silla
                                                                                                                                             
en un mundo                                                                                                                                          
muy extraño.


F. Isabel Campoy

Alex Segura writes crime fiction -- the reluctant private investigator sub-genre to be more precise.  His first novel, Silent City: A Pete Fernandez Mystery, was published originally in 2013 by Codorus Press. The Miami Herald said:  “Segura’s command of tight plotting and realistic characters keeps this energetic debut on track.” 

Alex's debut quickly found an eager readership and his hero, Pete Fernandez, attracted plenty of good press. The second book in the series, Down the Darkest Street: A Pete Fernandez Mystery, is set to be published in April by Polis Books.  Polis will reissue Silent City in a new edition in March.

Alex also has written comic books, including the best-selling and critically acclaimed Archie Meets Kiss storyline, the “Occupy Riverdale” story and the upcoming Archie Meets Ramones. 

 _________________________________________________________________________________


RAMOS:  First, give us a brief synopsis of each of your books, Silent City and Down the Darkest Street. What can readers expect from a Pete Fernandez mystery?

SEGURA:  Pete Fernandez is a washed up journalist. His dad just died, forcing him to move back to his hometown. He’s working a dead-end copyediting job at a Miami newspaper. His fiancée, fed up with his drinking and antics, has left him. He’s pretty much hit bottom. This is where we find Pete at the beginning of my first novel,Silent City (March 15, Polis Books). When a colleague reaches out to Pete, asking him to help find his missing daughter, Pete leaps at the opportunity to get out of this self-imposed rut. What he finds is much more than he bargained for. His search for the missing woman drags him down into the Miami underworld, and face to face with an urban legend known as the Silent Death – a mob killer of killers who’s identity has haunted the city for years.

Down the Darkest Street (April 12) finds Pete recovering from the events of Silent City trying to get his life in order. Pete is trying to live a quiet, nondescript life. But that’s not possible in Miami. As a series of murders stuns the city, Pete discovers a deadly connection between the current flurry of deaths and the city’s own, dark past. But as Pete and an unexpected partner get closer to unearthing the truth about the serial murderer cutting a deadly swath across Miami, Pete must also overcome his own demons – before they consume him.

RAMOS:  Why crime fiction? And in 2016, why a private eye? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’m curious about the thinking behind your choice of genre and the protagonist’s occupation.

SEGURA: The question is posed as if the decision was purely intellectual/tactical, as opposed to instinctual, or from an emotional place, which is more accurate, for me at least. I write crime fiction because I love the genre – I love the possibilities it opens up that go far beyond “Who killed so-and-so?” Crime fiction is about social commentary, setting as a vibrant character and exploration of people through challenging situations. To me, if we have to talk about boxing your writing into a space, crime fiction gives you the most room. 

And, not to quibble, but Pete isn’t a PI per se. At least not in Silent City– and that’s by design. I didn’t want to write about someone like Marlowe or Archer – that’s been done and done better than I could. I didn’t want to find the detective fully-formed. I wanted to write about someone who was still figuring out how to be a detective, or if they even wanted to be one. Which isn’t to say he won’t be a PI. By Down the Darkest Street, we see him embracing it a bit more, but I was less interested in the case-of-the-week and more in the journey. The creation of Pete was inspired by books like George Pelecanos’s A Firing Line, Dennis Lehane’s Darkness, Take My Hand and Laura Lippman’s Baltimore Blues. Flawed protagonists who might not want to be detectives, or aren’t very good at it yet. I like origin stories and I like heroes that, while striving to do the right thing, might make mistakes on the way.

RAMOS:  I understand that you are a native of Miami, now living in New York. Correct? Your books take place in Miami, but it’s not a Miami that many of us are familiar with, or that we think of when we’re planning a vacation. Pete Fernandez’s Miami is a boozy and very corrupt soiled dove. How much of the setting of your stories is based on your own relationship with the city? And has there been any blowback from the Miami Police Department or the city fathers because of the bleak and gritty picture you paint about the department and the city in general?
 
SEGURA:  Yes, I was born and raised in Miami. I’ve lived in New York for almost a decade, though I make frequent trips back home to visit family and friends. In terms of my portrayal of the city, no, there hasn’t been any blowback that I’m aware of. I just wanted to write a book that showed a different side of Miami than the version I think most people are exposed to on TV – the palm trees, beaches, fruity drinks and so on. There’s much more to it, and not just in the sense of crime. It’s a big, spread-out, culturally diverse and layered place. It can be gritty and dangerous and menacing, too. There are dangerous corners and parts of the city that aren’t on a beach. All that said, I didn’t start Silent City as a manifesto – I wanted to write about the Miami I knew growing up, which, just by the nature of being a native and not a visitor, is different.

RAMOS:  Let’s talk about Pete’s drinking problem. Or maybe you don’t think he has a problem? The guy stumbles from one hangover to another, one sleazy bar to another. It’s not an admirable trait. He also tends to get beaten a lot and has more than once ended up in the hospital. Do you worry that readers will react negatively to your hero because of his faults? Is that even a concern?
 
SEGURA:  It’s not really my place to decide whether he has a drinking problem – it’s up to him, and that’s the journey we’re on, and part of the story explored in Silent City and Down the Darkest Street. Obviously, it’s affecting him. It’s hurting the people around him, too. He’s not perfect and we’re watching him make mistakes and learn as he goes. That’s interesting to me. To see a character confront his problems and decide – gradually, sometimes – to change is a story that I want to tell. I’d be more worried if readers wanted a character that wasn’t flawed. I think people want to read about people that are like them – maybe not identical, but definitely not perfect. I can only write about what I find interesting, and that means writing about characters that struggle and don’t always make the right choice. Who, yes, do get beat up but find a way to stand up and fight again. That’s Pete.

RAMOS:  How would you describe the role that the Cuban American community plays in your books? Is the portrayal of that community important to your writing?
 
SEGURA:  It’s part of the story, but it’s not in your face – which is how I grew up. You were Cuban-American, you knew about the struggle your parents and grandparents went through to get to the US and to freedom, but it wasn’t something you yourself struggled with. It was in your DNA. That’s where we find Pete. He was born in Miami and didn’t have to fight for his freedom the same way his father did, but it’s always on his mind. The community is part of the fabric of the books, of the Miami I want to show, but the politics of the exile community aren’t front and center. But that is something that will change by the time we get to book three…

RAMOS: Your comic books carry intriguing titles, like Archie Meets Kiss, Archie Meets Ramones. How would you compare writing a novel with working on a comic book in terms of process, time, research, etc? Which do you prefer to work on – comic, short story, or novel, and why?

SEGURA:  Comics stretch different writing muscles than prose. I don’t like one over the other, because they’re so different. Comics are collaborative – you work closely with an editor, artist, letterer, etc. You’re more part of a team and you’re jamming to create something greater than what you could do on your own. Prose is much more solitary. You spend big chunks of time sitting alone, typing on your laptop and dealing with the insecurities that come with that. By the time you’re ready to share a draft of a novel, you feel like you’ve lived in the work for a lifetime. With comics, in terms of a script – you’re putting pieces together. Breaking down panels and pages and fitting in dialogue and directions to the artist and trying to play to the strengths of your fellow creators. Both are fun for different reasons and I find that one serves as a good form of therapy when recovering from working on the other. So it evens out nicely.


RAMOS: What’s the future look like for Pete? Do you intend to continue with this series? Any other Pete Fernandez books in the pipeline?
 
SEGURA:  Yes, definitely. I’ve finished a draft of the third Pete book, Dangerous Ends and I’m well into the fourth. I also have a rough idea for a fifth. So, no plans to leave Pete just yet, which is good, because I like the guy.

RAMOS:  How about other projects – what can we expect to see from Alex Segura in 2016 – 2017?

SEGURA:  Well, Bad Beat, a short story featuring Pete and Ash McKenna, the series character of fellow Polis Books author Rob Hart is out now. It’s a prequel story detailing some of Pete’s time as a reporter in New Jersey, and a nice intro to his world and the world of Ash, who stars in his own novels by Hart (check out New Yorked and City of Rose– both great PI capers). In terms of my novels, Silent City is reissued in March and Down the Darkest Street hits in April, which should take up a big part of the year for me. Archie Meets Ramones, a one-shot crossover comic I’m doing with co-writer Matt Rosenberg and artist Gisele hits later in 2016 and the third Pete novel, Dangerous Ends, is slated for early 2017. So, I’m keeping pretty busy, which is nice!

RAMOS:  Thanks, Alex.  Always great to learn more about crime fiction and a fellow crime fiction writer. 

Later.

 

Photo by Monica Orozco

She is looking for clues.
There is a timestamp sealed in the bone's marrow.
The bone is a puzzle piece.
The bone is a treasure...

                   
                        Wendy C. Ortiz, Excavation

 

 

 



 

I was stuck on a personal essay and looking for inspiration in my Must-Read-Memoir pile. I had gotten to a section in my own writing that made me feel frustrated, vulnerable. How long had I been writing the same story? It pissed me off that my father (who a good friend once labeled The Patriarch) was yet again showing up on the page all messy and in ways that set off emotional triggers. The plan was to read a few pages of someone else's vulnerability, feel better, and then go back to tackling The Patriarch. I picked Ortiz' Excavation from the stack because the title had long been tugging.

 

Excavate (verb):

to expose or lay bare by or as if by digging;

to unearth;

to excavate an ancient city, for instance.
 

 

Excavation in set in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the San Fernando Valley, where Ortiz grew up as an only child. The primary focus of the memoir is Ortiz' relationship as a teenager with a private school teacher fifteen years her senior. From the onset, the story is unsettling, complex, and deeply compelling. Those "few pages" of Excavation that I had planned on reading for inspiration turned into 50 pages, then 100, then 200, and so on, all in one sitting. My vision was blurry and the barrio roosters were crowing by the time I finished.

During the following days, I couldn't stop thinking about Ortiz' book. I thought about how writing creative non-fiction takes a lot of ovaries (or balls, depending on your gender preference). As Ortiz makes clear in her writing, memoir is an art form that requires courageous digging, uncovering, and mending. Think archeology where the terrain is The Self. Ortiz mentions some tools that might help in the process of excavating stories—a bulldozer, a backhoe. Or you can zoom in and get meticulous, as Ortiz does, and bring in the pick-axe, the shovel, and the brushes. Don't forget the brushes! Found objects must be handled with care, dusted off, and examined.

The other thing I kept thinking about after reading Excavation was how much I would love to interview Wendy Ortiz and pick her brain on the art of writing memoir. I put that wish into action by contacting her via Facebook with an invitation for an interview. She graciously accepted, and we are fortunate and excited to have her with us today.

 

Wendy, bienvenida! I have so many questions about memoir, but I will begin with one that has been buzzing in my mind recently. I did an interview with author Ben Saenz a couple of months ago (http://labloga.blogspot.com/2015/11/on-writing-and-discovering-secrets-of.html) and asked him if he'd ever consider writing a memoir. His response was an immediate and adamant “No,” which made me laugh. I love Ben's writing and was hoping a memoir was in the works, but he described the memoir as “a dangerous genre” that necessitates the author become the hero of his or her own narrative. “Writers are self-involved already,” he said. “No thanks.” I can relate to what Saenz shared.  However, I also think that memoir too often gets dismissed as literary neurosis. Any thoughts on this? Are those of us who delve in creative non-fiction a bunch of self-centered junkies?

 

I’d argue that the description of memoir as necessitating that the author becomes the hero of their narrative is a pretty narrow description. Yes, there’re a ton of books under the genre heading “memoir” that fit that description—however—and that’s a big HOWEVER—there are plenty of books, on some radars, but mostly off the big radars—in which the author is actually an anti-hero, or their identity is complicated in some way that makes the word “hero” not applicable. This is the type of memoir I’m interested in. If memoir were simply authors writing themselves as heroes in their narratives, I wouldn’t want to read or write memoir.

 

What about this notion that memoir is dangerous?

 

The idea of memoir as “a dangerous genre”—well, I write in multiple genres, I hybridize, and can only hope all of it is “dangerous” because to me that means I’m getting to the heart. I want to feel the danger as I write. Maybe in this way I am indeed a junkie?

 

Sometimes I think writing memoir and putting it out there is like getting naked in public. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is so much revelation and vulnerability in creative non-fiction. How did you deal with the issue of vulnerability when writing Excavation?

 

Vulnerability is where it’s at. It took me a while to get this and I still struggle with it. Vulnerable, to me, does not mean getting naked in public, though. It’s about getting to the uncomfortable truths, usually buried in old shame, and looking at those truths from different angles, with as little judgment as possible. There are many stories I left out of Excavation, partially because they didn’t enhance the narrative—they would have been like an unnecessary exposure. In the writing of Excavation, I had moments where I felt physically ill, or noticed an anxious thrumming underneath everything as I worked, but I took those to mean I was on the right track. Vulnerability is not so much an issue to me as it is a desired state of being. I see strength in that.

 

Dorothy Allison says that whereas in a novel we can always have redemption, it's not always possible in memoir. The nature of the genre requires a distinct type of honesty and truth, and as Allison writes, “memoirs are messy, relentless, and give no quarter...”

 

This helps illustrate my point about memoir not simply being a hero narrative! The messiness is what I crave and will go after. There are times when I try writing a story from my life in a different genre, such as poetry or fiction, as an exercise. I used to hide many of my selves in my fiction in my early twenties, when I was too scared to claim the mantle of “true story.”

 

Did you ever consider publishing your stories in a different genre?

 

The decision to publish, for example, Excavation, was mainly because I looked for exactly this type of book when I was going through the experience the book describes and never found it.

 

One of the issues I struggle with when writing family history is that I don't always have all the pieces. I may have fragments of a story passed down by a relative who is no longer living. Or I may have two radical versions of the same story. In memoir those gaps can't always be bridged as they are in poetry or fiction. Were there gaps in the narratives of Excavation or Hollywood Notebook and if so, how did you handle them?

 

If I were to write family history, there’d be a ton of gaps. My grandmother, who was the only grandparent I grew up with, didn’t have a birth certificate, for example. I’d have to do some extensive research to piece together “the facts” of both sides of my family because people have died, people have secrets, and we’re largely estranged. Both of my books, though, come from the journals I wrote, so gaps in narrative aren’t much of an issue there.

 

Did you grapple with the reality that in telling your story you would also be telling the stories of others in your life? Was there resistance from family, for instance, or self-censorship as a means to protect loved ones?

 

I’m pretty ruthless when it comes to writing a story that took place years ago. I did look at who I wrote about and how they’d come off and examined my intentions. I changed names but there is no one who needed actual “protecting” in Excavation. I didn’t experience any resistance from family, but I also don’t share my writing life with, for example, my mother. This is shocking to some people, but it’s real. Writing has always been a hobby to my parents, something I do on the side, and I didn’t see a reason to share the book with my mother, just as I don’t share with her the details of my publications in journals, etc. (my grandmother and father, who are in the book, are deceased). So, in a sense, maybe I’m protecting her, maybe this is where the self-censorship comes in. But honestly, it just feels like a function of the limited relationship we have as mother/daughter.

 

Last year I went to a writer's conference where I met an author whose memoir I had recently read. I didn't personally know this writer, yet the memoir had been so revealing and intimate that as a reader I felt a strong connection.  I went up to this author feeling/acting like we were old buddies, actually wanting to embrace him. It was presumptuous of me to think I really “knew” this person because I had read his memoir. Do you ever experience this type of behavior from readers and if so, does it bother you? How do you find that balance between sharing private aspects of yourself in writing and setting boundaries with readers you meet in public?

 

I experience this all the time! It’s actually a lovely thing until someone crosses a line (yes, lines have been crossed, but nothing outrageous). My training as a therapist and all the years I worked on boundaries in my own therapy make me pretty firm when it comes to readers who presume a relationship with me after reading my books. I mean, I understand what it’s like, I have those feelings of wanting to connect with the author of a memoir I just read and loved and gush all over them. I did that recently in a Twitter direct message after reading one author’s book. A total, “Oh my god, I loved it, I relate so much, I’m the age now that you were writing about it, and I’m going through this, wow!!!” sort of thing, and I was aware I was doing it and knew, actually, from the book, that this author probably had very good boundaries and would let me know if I’d crossed a line. I felt pretty safe, though. I wasn’t saying, YOU AND I ARE THE SAME PERSON or, like, We must be best friends now!! When I meet people they mostly behave graciously, kindly, warmly. I also think I’ve developed an invisible shield from truly shitty behavior (knock on wood). A friend of mine has described me as “unfuckwithable” and I think that’s part of what the shield’s composed of.

 

In 2013, sculptor and MacArthur Genius Teresita Fernandez presented her speech, “On Amnesia, Broken Pottery, and the Inside of a Form,” to the graduating class of her alma mater,

Virgina Commonwealth University's School of the Arts.

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/what-it-takes-to-be-artist-macarthur.html

In one part of the speech,  Fernandez shares how, while visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she was fascinated by a Greek ostracon, a broken piece of pottery or stone engraved with a message (these broken clay pieces were many times used like paper and for such things as voting). The ostracon reminded Fernández of the natural fragmentation that is part of life and creativity, and yet, she states, “we are conditioned to think that which is broken is lost, or useless, or a setback...” She goes on to talk about the Japanese art of mending broken bowls with gold, Kintsugi, where that which is broken is not only repaired but also renewed and beautified. I couldn't help but think about the act of writing memoir as I listened to Fernández' speech. Can you speak to this notion of fragmentation, mending, and recreating in relation to your writing?

Wow…you describe this beautifully. When I relate this to writing memoir, I think of how I often take experiences that some would consider ugly, or tragic, and try to make a thing of beauty out of them. Lately, too, my work has become more and more fragmentary. My tumblr, which I think of as my public notebook, feels like a bunch of fragments that I’m waiting to show me how they will connect and turn into something else. There’s also something here about the “mending” of situations I write about in memoir—a mending that is constant, never really ends.

 

Along that same vein, she who writes memoir is very much like an archeologist who has to get her hands dirty and excavate those broken pieces and stories. I loved this metaphor running through Excavation. One question I often have when writing autobiographical pieces has to do with this process of excavating. There is so much to uncover! What do we choose to salvage and recreate? We can't reveal every detail or scene (or can we?), so how do we determine what pieces are worth mending?

 

I don’t tell or reveal every single detail or scene, partially because every detail or scene won’t advance or enhance the narrative, but also because I need to keep some things, some stories, to myself. I get off thinking about all the stories I contain that will never be written. They are the stories I share with the people closest to me in my life, and then the deeper heart container of stories I won’t even share with those same people. It thrills me that it will never all be known.

 

What advice can you offer writers out there who are trying to write their first memoir?

 

Advice I received from Bernard Cooper, my first faculty mentor in my graduate education: write everything out chronologically THEN play with narrative structure. Consider how far away you are, in years, in emotional distance, from the experiences you describe, and how that may impact the story.

 

Okay, and one final question for fun. You're invited by NASA to put 5 books into a time capsule that will be buried and then excavated by future humans in the year 2115. What five titles do you choose?

 

1. The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

2. Seek: Reports from the Edges of America and Beyond by Denis Johnson

3. Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko

4. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

5. I’d pull one random poetry book from my collection and assume that was the one that was meant for a reader in 2115.

 

What appears to just be a huge heart-shaped rock floating in space is really the Wendy C. Ortiz time capsule full of awesome books. Future humans decided to launch it into space! Photo "borrowed" from NASA.

 

 

Upcoming events for Wendy C. Ortiz: https://www.goodreads.com/event/list_author/8168754.Wendy_C_Ortiz

Wendy C. Ortiz Website: http://www.wendyortiz.com/

Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of Excavation: A Memoir (Future Tense Books, 2014), Hollywood Notebook (Writ Large Press, 2015) and the forthcoming Bruja (CCM, 2016). Her work has been profiled or featured in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, and the National Book Critics Circle Small Press Spotlight blog. Her writing has appeared in such places as The New York Times, Hazlitt, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Nervous Breakdown, and a year-long series appeared at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Wendy lives in Los Angeles.
 

 

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks: Roux-based Enchilada Sauce

Michael Sedano

Roux is a magical ingredient in sauces, as a recent La Bloga column noted. Starch, oil, heat, milk are the ingredients of some roux. For enchiladas, a chile-based roux, water-based thickened with corn starch, is the secret.

Making an enchilada sauce gluten-free is not a secret: use corn starch and water to thicken the sauce. Use more chili and water (or broth) to make as much sauce as you want. If you want to add more thickener during cooking, always mix the corn starch into cool liquid and add it in that form. Otherwise, the cornstarch lumps.



The Gluten-free Chicano likes the Gebhardt's brand of blended chili powder. Mild and non-picoso, it's the ideal base for children and gente who claim not to like to burn themselves. When I want a more lively enchilada, I use a 50-50 mix of pure New Mexico chili powder, and Gebhardt's.







Nature Photography Facebook Challenge

Rosalio Muñoz, is an early-morning hiker and avid photographer. Recently, he joined a social media game where a poster invites individuals to post a poem or a photograph for seven consecutive days. Rosalio challenged me to join in, with the theme of Nature.

Here are the seven fotos I selected. I found insects, birds, weather, and sunrise that illustrated Nature.

Brown Widow Spider and Egg Sac

Metonymy of a Curlew

Curlew Wading

California Quail Covey

The California State Bird is the California Quail. When developers razed the hills behind my family home in Redlands, the abundance of Quail disappeared within months. Ground dwellers, coyotes and foxes devoured their eggs and hatchlings. Ironically, the monstrous homes that stole the wild habitat stand empty on starkly barren land, the rolling hills paved with asphalt and criss-crossed with unused cement sidewalks and gutters. A few small coveys now visit the old homestead. When this covey emerged from cover at Montaña de Oro state park sweet nostalgia kept me smiling as I caught the leader taking the first bold steps into the open.

Swallowtail XCU

Macrophotography magnifies small objects to life-sized or closer. Photoshop lets the photographer scale the image to ever closer range. Ordinarily a flitter, this recently-hatched giant rested on a flower. I was able to lean in closely with the 100mm lens to focus a few inches from the beauty.

Foggy Ridge in Crystal Springs Pass, Redlands California

Sunrise and Three Sisters