Giving the Presidential Address!

One of the many panels happening over the 3-day conference

The beautiful Pasadena City Hall

ASA Conference Panelists

ASA Conference Panel

 The final event was a concert by the Grammy Award winning group, "Quetzal."

Martha Gonzalez, Quetzal singer

Quetzal band and conference participants

A happy group of conference attendees on last night!  Orale!

Michael Sedano

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks
Antojado for Tacos de Papa

The foto was one of those food shots that some tipos complain about on Facebook, tacos dorados in a frying pan.

I asked if the FB friend was frying the meat inside the tortilla? It's a technique my grandmother and my mother both utilized from time to time, that I never learned. Orozco’s Tacos, on Soto Street just south of the San Bernardino Freeway, made fried-in-the-shell tacos, too. Dang, that was some good eatin', raza, but Orozco's has long-since been ploughed under.

“Mashed potatoes,” she replied and instantly I grew all antojado for tacos de papa.

RAE

Chicanas Chicanos know the antoja. Something you see, or smell, fleetingly crosses your mind, and you gotta have some. Like the time I stopped in at Puerta de Oro restaurant in Vernon, starved with an antoja for chorizo, papas, and blanquillos.

That wasn’t on the menu, but that’s what I ordered. In the corner, the owner nodded at the order-taker and as she passed, said something. When she brought me my chow he got a plate, too. “Me hicistes antojado,” he smiled.

Like that.

The Gluten-free Chicano had some boiled potatoes left over from making potato salad in the icebox, so this recipe uses that. Mashed potatoes, rich buttery creamy mashed potatoes, make super tacos de papa, so next time your menu calls for mashed potatoes, make an extra cup. Tomorrow’s tacos for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, will be sure to please every eater at the table.

Plan on a couple tablespoons of filling for each taco and a minimum of two tacos per mouth.


1. Chop a green onion or two. Any onion will do, the Gluten-free Chicano likes the green mixed in with the papa.

2. Finely mince the potato. Stir in salt, pepper, the chopped onion.

3. Soften tortillas de maíz. I wrap torts in a dishtowel and microwave them for under a minute. Separate them immediately to prevent sticking together.


4. Spoon the papa mix into the softened tortillas. Set aside.


5. Chop tomato, cheese, lettuce. Set aside. This time of year, tomatoes from the garden add extra deliciousness to tacos. If you have aguacate, all the better. If there's a chile huero to chop or slice, all the mejor.


6. Pour good olive oil into a shallow frying pan. I use just enough to coat the bottom.

7. Turn burner to medium heat and get the oil boiling. Drop a tortilla crumb into the oil and if it sizzles, the oil is hot enough.

8. Carefully place the tacos into the oil and fry for a couple minutes.


9. Use tongs or a fork, turn when crispy brown.

10. Remove to a dish and stuff with lettuce, tomato, cheese. Aguacate, a chile, cilantro, chacun a son cosecha.

11. Serve with a good hot salsa.

¡Provecho!



Troubling Chicana Chicano Art at Avenue 50 Studio: Discussing Karen Mary Davalos’ Forthcoming Book

Karen Mary Davalos, Mario Trillo, Mental Menudo at Casa Sedano, 2007

My gosh, how the years fly past. In September 2007, Magu invited Karen Mary Davalos to my house for a Mental Menudo. Davalos was a professor at Loyola Marymount University at the time, interviewing Magu as part of an oral history series on Chicana Chicano artists, commissioned out of UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.

Today, Karen Mary Davalos is professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and Magu, Magu has transitioned, QEPD.

Magu, 2007

Davalos’ forthcoming book, from NYU Press, Chicana/o Art Since the Sixties: From Errata to Remix, is going to make a tonelada of gente sentimental about historical events, and open eyes to a significant but little-appreciated United States art movement.

The book fills a vacuum in art history. With Davalos' pioneering history text, academics, but more so, artists, will grow anxious for what’s to develop from our shared experience and history. Will the field develop? Will artists gain wall space, and make a living?

Kathy Gallegos introduces the discussion

That, at any rate, is the gist of the discussion convened at Northeast Los Angeles’ cultural treasure, Avenue 50 Studio, on Sunday July 10th. Director Kathy Gallegos, raza arte's hardest-working gallerist, kicked off the afternoon, introducing professor Karen Mary Davalos to an audience of artists, collectors, community members, academics and Ph.D. candidates.

Davalos introduced the panel--all of whom play important roles in her book. The panel included artists John Valadez and Sandra de la Loza, and academician Sybil Venegas—cited as one of the founders of Chicana Chicano art criticism. Each highlighted chapters of Davalos' much-needed research volume.

Karen Mary Davalos with the book's TOC on slide projection

Davalos’ perspective of necessity celebrates accomplishments of past curators—including de la Loza and Venegas—for having chipped a small niche into the monolithic world of big time art exhibitions.

Noting the earliest such assemblages gathered principally men, hanging more women reflects the duality of the struggle to popularize Chicanarte. It was Venegas and de la Loza who invited more women to open the field of curated shows to a decent cross-section of important artists.

The Minnesota scholar epitomizes the essence of the struggle when she observes that getting a few hangings in major galleries, such as Los Angeles County Museum of Art, produced only tokens, nothing substantial has come of them. For example, the vaunted Getty museum has yet to sponsor a summer intern at Avenue 50 Studio, despite the Getty's lionizing of itself as a supporter of Chicana Chicano art. Getty does support--but keeps the effort exclusive to itself and a selected big places. Akin to other industries, there's no "farm system" to grow experience for youth.

The 2011 LACMA exhibit, Asco: Elite of the Obscure, A Retrospective, 1972-1987, offers a more public example of tokenism and disregard. LATimes critic Christopher Knight brushes aside the art in favor of a facile pun while glancing at Asco’s fashion and public persona, noting One great feature of the group's early years, before it fell into evident disarray in the 1980s (Asco finally disbanded in 1987), is how assertively stylish the artists are in the abundant photo-documentation. Posing like bored fashion models around a grungy Malibu sewage drainpipe, Asco put the chic in Chicano.

Davalos asked her guests to riff on themes she develops in various chapters. Her introductory remarks, an historical perspective, reflects the chapter on “errata.” Davalos suggests that Chicana Chicano exhibitions are much like the corrections and acknowledgements of minor flaws in larger work. One symptom of status as an afterthought, or footnote: there's no textbook suitable for a college or high school class covering Chicana Chicano art, despite its existence since 1848 when Mexican Americans became errata of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. Moreover, Davalos points out the first Ph.D. in Chicano Art History was completed only a few years ago!

John Valadez

Valadez reflected on the French thirst to learn things Chicano and California that he experienced in a residency connected to a 2014 exhibition at Musée d'Aquitaine.

Sandra de la Loza standing, Sybil Venegas, John Valadez

De la Loza focused on her artivism work of recent times, public installations such as large scale altares for Día de los Muertos, and a zumba die-in protesting an LA gang injunction.

Sybil Venegas

Venegas offered gratitude that her fellow scholar’s invitation required Venegas to revisit some of her earlier papers and exhibitions, to take stock of where Chicana Chicano art has been in her life.

Davalos credits Venegas’ early art history publications for helping create the field of Chicano Chicana art history. Any scholar embarking on a research project will begin with Sybil Venegas' publications.

Venegas doesn’t deny that, but self-abashedly recounts how she seemingly stumbled into the field, and how she became a curator in spite of herself, having been ripped-off by “name” curators who exploited Venegas’ personal acquaintances with artists and her role in the artistic milieu.

Sybil Venegas, Linda Vallejo, Judithe Hernández, Patssi Valdez. Magu behind Valdez, 2009. Foto:msedano

The energy and excitement for the discussion begs an important question; perhaps Karen Mary Davalos’ introductory chapter will address it. It’s a question WWII and Korea Veteran, and veterano Chicano sculptor Armando Baeza constantly asks—he and Magu used to go around and around over it—what is “Chicano art”?

Facebook post, July 10, 2016

Common at Ave50: Standing Room Only audience engages lively discussion

Chicana/o Art Since the Sixties: From Errata to Remix described as follows: Davalos combines decolonial theory with extensive archival and field research to offer a new critical perspective on Chicana/o art. Using Los Angeles as a case study, she develops an interdisciplinary model for a comprehensive art history that considers not only artists and art groups, their cultural production, and the exhibitions that feature their work but also curators, collectors, critics, and advocates.

La Bloga will share distribution details of this edition upon publication in the Fall. Place advance orders with college booksellers and independent booksellers now. Earlier editions may be available using ISBN 9780895511614.

Late-breaking news
Texas Organizes Teen Book Festival for 2/3 of Its Teenagers, Until Raza Speaks Up

The self-congratulatory broadsides were arriving left and right. The Texas Teen Book Festival would feature this smiling face, and that smiling face, and happy as any reader would be to see teens encouraged to read, and see writers write for teens, bitter dismay struck raza observers that 1/3 of the state’s teenagers—Mexicans, Chicanas Chicanos, Mexican Americans—had been totally excluded from the roster of smiling faces.

Then Sarah Rafael García spoke up, with fire. She struck a chord.


In a classic example of a chastened organization, a few years ago, public teevee blithely approved a Ken Burns film project on World War II that, like the TTBF, completely ignored the role of Chicanos in one of this nation’s bloodiest conflicts.

Raza raised the alarm and Burns told them to go to hell. Raza asked "why does Ken Burns hate Chicanos?" Ken Burns asked what part of "go to hell" did we not understand?

Only after PBS felt the heat would Burns grudgingly agree to expand the WWII project to acknowledge a token number of raza warriors.

La Bloga congratulates Sarah Rafael García for raising a ruckus that touched the conscience and souls of TTBF organizers. García has been invited to help TTBF’s organizers diversify this year’s line-up. This is late-breaking news and La Bloga lacks details. García begins the Macondo Workshop this week and will provide details as time allows.

Details will be forthcoming next week when La Bloga-Tuesday publishes responses to García’s Twitter and Facebook call for submissions to a select group of writers.

García, who fears becoming known as the “angry woman of Texas letters,” for protesting the closed mind MFA program at her alma mater, organized a call for papers via Facebook and La Bloga. The response has been substantial, from publishers and writers and parents. García writes:

We are inviting youth, educators, librarians, parents and writers to contribute to a collection of reasons why Mexican American writers should be included in the 2016 Texas Teens Book Festival (TTBF).

Although TTBF has featured such writers in the past, this year, Mexican American writers are not included in the line up of featured authors. We want to stress that their process should make a special effort to represent 35% of the population in Texas.

We plan on releasing this collection to the public via an online publication. Rather than collecting signatures to show our visibility, we are determined to not only put our words to action but to also educate, inspire and list Mexican American writers our community is interested in reading and seeing at such book festivals. We are not limiting anyone, feel free to include among the Mexican American writers other poc YA writers within your 200 words.

The 200 words could take on any format: poetry, prose, rant, flash fiction, proclamation, any language you wish too.

Teenagers need to read, need exposure to literary voices that reflect their world. For a festival to call itself "Texas" and "Teen" to have such a blatantly exclusionary program inculcates ignorance and prejudice. These organizers must live horribly isolated lives that, until Sarah Rafael García spoke up, the organizers had given no thought to deliberate inclusiveness. Now, chastened by the pedo and having an epiphany, García, for one, has been invited to help organize this year's TTBF, as well as a role at the adult-oriented Texas Book Festival.

Personal note: My father, Pfc. Marcel Sedano, won World War II. A machine gunner in Patton’s 777 Tank Battalion, my dad’s tank, the C’est la Guerre, was in the task force that fought a 15 hour battle to reach the center of Leipzig, the last stronghold of the Reich. His was the first U.S. tank to reach Leipzig City Hall. With C’est la Guerre’s arrival, German resistance collapsed. The war was won. Way to go, Dad, a Chicano won WWII.

The Newbery Medal was named for eighteenth-century British bookseller John Newbery. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.

Every Sunday after church, CJ and his grandma ride the bus across town. But today, CJ wonders why they don't own a car like his friend Colby. Why doesn’t he have an iPod like the boys on the bus? How come they always have to get off in the dirty part of town? Each question is met with an encouraging answer from grandma, who helps him see the beauty—and fun—in their routine and the world around them.

This energetic ride through a bustling city highlights the wonderful perspective only grandparent and grandchild can share, and comes to life through Matt de la Peña’s vibrant text and Christian Robinson’s radiant illustrations.

* * *

To read the complete acceptance visit,

http://www.hbook.com/2016/06/news/awards/2016-newbery-acceptance-by-matt-de-la-pena/#_

“I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.”

This is the last line of Denis Johnson’s short story collectionJesus’ Son, and it describes perfectly the way I felt way back in 2003 when I was informed that my first novel, Ball Don’t Lie, was going to be published by Random House. It describes the way I feel tonight, too, over a decade later, as I stand here among you all.

All dressed up and a fresh haircut.

A seat at the table.

Growing up, I never could’ve imagined anything like this. Me and books? Reading? Nah, man, I was a working-class kid. A half-Mexican hoop head. I spent all my afterschool hours playing ball down at the local pickup spot off Birmingham. I dreamed of pretty girls and finger rolls over outstretched hands.

But age has a way of giving a guy perspective.

Turns out I was wrong.

Turns out I’ve been a reader all along.

Maybe I didn’t have my nose in a novel, but I read my old man’s long silences when the two of us sat in freeway traffic in his beat-up old VW Bug. I read the way he pulled himself out of bed at 3:30 every morning to get ready for work. How he never took a sick day. I read my mom’s endless worry about the bills. About the empty fridge. But I also read the way she looked at me and my two sisters. Like we were special. Like we could make something of our lives. I read the pickup politics at Muni Gym in Balboa Park. How the best players assumed a CEO-like power the second they laced up their kicks and called out to the crowd, “Check ball.” And I read how these same men were stripped of this power as soon as the games died down and they set foot outside the gym, out of their domain and back into yours.

I didn’t read past page twenty-seven of The Catcher in the Rye, but I read Basketball Digest cover to cover. Every single month. I’d show up at my junior high library an hour before school, find an empty table in back, and tuck the latest issue inside the covers of the most high-brow book I could find — usually some Russian novel with a grip of names I couldn’t pronounce. Mrs. Frank, the warm-smiling librarian, would occasionally stroll past my table and say, “War and Peace, huh? How are you liking that one so far?”

“Oh, it’s great, miss,” I’d tell her. “I really like all the wars and stuff. And how it eventually turns peaceful.” She’d grin and nod and move on to the next table. I’d grin, too, marveling at my own slick ways. But then a few days later she’d confuse me by sliding the newest Basketball Digest across the table to me with a wink.

Back then I never would’ve described myself as a reader, but Mrs. Frank knew better. And the truth is, I wasn’t reading those magazines for stats or standings, I was reading to find out what certain players had to overcome to get where they were. I was in it for the narrative. And what I found in some of the better articles wasn’t that inferior to what I would later discover when I read War and Peace for real.

Sofía del Carmen Rodríguez Fernández

Katarina Boudreax at the piano with Reverend Goat singing at Live Oak Cafe

Michael Sedano

Invisibility, erasure, exclusion, subversion

Today’s La Bloga-Tuesday marks two important occasions, one of immense joy, another of bitter frustration, yet…

The first brings the joy of the month’s second La Bloga On-line Floricanto. The second brings forth a welter of frustrated voices that nonetheless compose messages of hope and reason, and more so an upswelling of a community speaking out against being invisibleized by people who are better than that, gente who could be our friends, colleagues, associates in our shared need for cultural growth.

A La Bloga On-line Floricanto is always important as it marks La Bloga’s ongoing commitment to poetry, to emerging voices, and principally to creating a space where raza writers--Chicana Chicano Latina Latino and our allied writers--have free expression. This is a space where no one needs to defend their identity, nor their writing, whether the writer elects a stringently political voice or sings out a lovely lyrical message, whether writing in English, Spanish, or mezcla.

Every La Bloga On-line Floricanto proclaims our existence. Our voices announce the ongoing affirmation of cultura. Aqui estamos. Punto final.

A community response to an act of cultural subversion is the second.

We belong here. In the United States, in school texbooks, in popular media, in uniform, in books. It’s a frustration that it appears we’re among the only people to recognize that we belong. There’s a profound sadness, identical to the motivation for saying “Black Lives Matter,” when raza is forced to say We. Belong. Here.

Not that raza cultura isn’t as Unitedstatesian as gluten-free empanadas de manzana and apple pie, but surveying the literary landscape of publishing and book festivals, others are proclaiming there’s no place for us. Case in point: the Texas Teen Book Festival.


Texas, where 32% of the population is Latino—70% of these native-born, where 48% of K-12 students are Hispanic [sic], Texas this year couldn’t find a place for us in the Texas Teen Book Festival.

Scheduled for October in Austin, the organizers chose not to invite any raza writers. This exclusion hasn’t always been the case, but nearly always so.

Last year, Sonia Manzano’s memoir, Becoming Maria, on the writer’s life as Sesame Street’s Maria, was the only Latina keynote author. It was the first year any raza writer was a keynote.

In 2013, Rae Carson set her novel, The Girl of Fire and Thorns, in a world “that emulates Hispanic culture.” An interviewer queried the setting. The writer laughed and said she was learning Spanish at the time. The interviewer notes, “She has a number of friends who are of Mexican descent. After eating the food and ingesting the culture through her friends, it just felt natural.”

Queries into TTBF’s database strike out on searches for various terms. “Latin” yields three hits, Manzano, a typo in a pinay writer’s surname, and a reference to the Latin language. “Mexican” finds Carson’s book. No results return on “Mexican-American,” and “Mexican American.” On “Hispanic” Carson again. “Raza,” nothing. Scanning the author lists since 2009 finds Matt de la Peña, Cristina Garcia in 2011,  Guadalupe Garcia McCall in 2012 and 2014.



When Barrio Writers founder Sarah Rafael García observed the triumphant announcements and smiling faces of this year’s TTFB keynoters and featured authors, that touched a nerve. Exclusion always appears subversive--of the broader culture's needs for perspective, and the invisibleized culture's need for inclusion.

García rallied gente via social media to speak to the organizers of the TTFB, to tell them “we are writers, too.” The responses are moving and heartfelt.

They’ve heard the call and will be making changes. 

Share the voices of our pueblo following today's La Bloga On-line Floricanto. It's another floricanto, for the TTBF organizers, for ourselves. Writers, classroom teachers, professors, mothers come together today in prose, in poetry, with reason, some anger, many with suggestions. At the close of el pueblo’s voice, read the TTBF’s response. The organizers have heard the call, heeded their consciences, and will be making changes. There are promised changes, too, in the larger Texas Book Festival.

Orale, Sarah. Who says our voices don’t count? A ver.

On-line Floricanto For July’s Penultimate Tuesday
John Meza (One Deep), Odilia Galván Rodríguez, Sharon Elliott, Kyle Newman-Smith, Tomás Riley

“My name is America” By John Meza (One Deep)
“Blood in the Streets” By Odilia Galván Rodríguez
“Newborn” By Sharon Elliott
“Addressed to: The Majority” By Kyle Newman-Smith
“Untitled” By Tomás Riley

My name is America
By John Meza (One Deep)

My name is America
Brothers and sisters
Because I am human
I bleed your red blood
Because I have faith
I worship beneath your blue sky
Because I have hope
White doves carry my prayers
To the heavens

My name is America
Brothers and sisters

Because my dream
Is your dream

I dream to live in peace
To be more than a neighborhood
To be a brotherhood
I am a poor man
Rich in culture and heritage
Hungry for the freedom
From your constitution
Free to laugh, live, love
And pursue happiness
My name is America
Brothers and sisters
Am I a fool to love you?
To believe in your soul?
I choose to love you America....
Please......
Love me back


I was born a migrant farm worker in Fremont, Ohio. Did that till I was 17 yrs old. Military service, 10 years active duty Army and reserves. From San Benito, TX. Currently lives in Corpus Christi, TX. No previously published poems. Compete in poetry slams in the valley as part of the RGV International poetry festival and Balabajoomba poetry slams in corpus. Been writing for over 20 years.







Blood in the Streets
By Odilia Galván Rodríguez

conspiracy theorists
concerned with the truth
not Hollywood versions
or reality TV
life bleeds red in the streets


Odilia Galván Rodríguez, poet-activist, writer, editor, and social justice activist, is the author of six volumes of poetry, her latest, The Nature of Things, along with photographer Richard Loya. She is co-editor, along with the late Francisco X. Alarcon, of Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, from The University of Arizona Press. Odilia was the English edition editor of Tricontinental Magazine in Havana, Cuba for many years. Currently she edits Cloud Women’s Quarterly Journal, facilitates creative writing workshops nationally, and is a moderator of “Poets Responding to SB 1070” and “Love and Prayers for Fukushima,” both Facebook pages dedicated to bringing attention to social justice issues that affect the lives and well-being of many people.



Newborn
By Sharon Elliott

my response to recent events

she felt the drum of the house
in her bones
she had known
what she was up against
furniture leaned in
from corners of the rooms
dark menace
fragmentary

heat split
meager days
into magnetic things
wound with wire
words
flickered through her
newborn and sharp
brittle

night tipped
thrummed with stars
close
bitter
sibilant
day toppled
derelict
lopsided

the tide came in
over the road
saltwater freed her
from weight
and circumstance
she shed her skin like a snake
craved paper
soft from her fingers
written on
with red ink
like vows



Sharon Elliott has been a writer and poet activist over several decades beginning in the anti-war and civil rights movements in the 1960s and 70s, and four years in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua and Ecuador. She is a Moderator of Poets Responding to SB1070, and has featured in poetry readings in the San Francisco Bay area. Her work has been published in several anthologies and her poem “Border Crossing” appears in the anthology entitled Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, Francisco X. Alarcón and Odilia Galván Rodriguez, eds. She has read it in Los Angeles at AWP and La Pachanga 2016 book launch, and at the Féis Seattle Céiliedh in Port Townsend, WA. Her book, Jaguar Unfinished, was published by Prickly Pear Press, 2012. She was an awardee of Best Poem of 2012 by La Bloga, for The Day of Little Comfort.



Addressed to: The Majority
By Kyle Newman-Smith

Your mother told you only the good die young,
But she might have gotten good confused
with black.

She might have forgotten to look back
and realize that birth as a black man
Comes with risk as serious and dark as our skin

Maybe she just didn’t realize
That the hashtags bearing our names
Were actually fathers, brothers, and sons
not just words on a screen

She might have told you that all lives
are equal, but never realized
That if white life was a dollar
Black life is sixty cents
And that’s just change we don’t need

Your mother may have told you
Police protect and serve, but maybe
She didn’t watch the news the decade
All my brothers were killed

Your mother told you what she knew;
It was wrong.


Kyle Newman-Smith is an African American poet whose work focuses primarily on racial issues in the United States. He is a recent graduate of Gonzaga College High School and a current rising freshman at Tufts University, where he plans to study economics. Kyle is an avid lacrosse player and plans to play, while studying in Boston, at Tufts. He has just recently found his love for writing and plans to produce more work in the future.







Untitled
By Tomás Riley

let the news come quiet as it's kept
shabby suede boots fall silently
like breath
but not to carry him away
they wrestle with the caskets
toward organ burials by moonlight
and all that sleep and dream
they cage into a moment
a fingernail space
for just night's peace
they are walking with the caskets
toward becoming
already becoming
twice this week
the cameras blur
the street color blue
a love supreme
lingering in picket signs
and rolls of yellow tape
masking the mouths
sealing the prayers in protest gospels
dying in tongues
in psalms for mothers' sons
and sweaty cop patrol cars
circling the pool
when the young men plunged
the stark sunlight wavered
swung through the neighborhood
from top to bottom
jordan broke 10,000 miles from herself
and caught their lashes
soaking through the clothes
and darkening the water
like reflections
on the porcelain sky
when the first shots came
abdomens whipped inside out
seeping down the tearless sidewalk
in a slow parade of bodies
diving into one another
bodies
floating through the air
suspended by sky
resisting
in a red
and black
repose


Tomás Riley is a poet, writer, educator and a veteran of the Chicano spoken word collective The Taco Shop Poets. He is the author of two collections of poetry entitled Mahcic (Calaca Press, 2006) and Post Chicano Stress Disorder (Tinta Vox, 2011). Currently he lives and writes in the Mission District of San Francisco.









Voces Del Pueblo: On-line Floricanto for the Organizers of the Texas Teen Book Festival

La Bloga has the pleasure of sharing the voices of our community on why all Texas teens need exposure and opportunity to see raza literature and writers in the Texas Teen Book Festival, this year and every year to follow.

I Still Remember…

I still remember the first Mexican American writer I read, it was my senior year in high school, Richard Rodriguez.


I still remember the first Mexican American teacher I experienced, it was my first year in community college, Lisa Alvarez.

I still remember the first Mexican American famous writer I met in person, it was my last year in undergrad, I helped bring him to campus, Tino Villanueva.

I still remember the first autograph I signed, it was in 2008 for my newborn nephew, Rafael Castellanos.

I still remember the first Barrio Writer who said she related to me, it was in 2009, I gifted her my teen diary, Valeria Alaniz.

I still remember the first conference where I was asked what I did when I couldn’t find a role model, it was the 2014 National Association of Chicano and Chicana Studies Tejas Foco conference in San Antonio, I responded, “I became one.”

I still remember the first time I challenged an institution on their lack of diversity, it was in 2015 during my last semester at Texas State University’s MFA program, they never responded.

I still remember the first time I emailed the Texas Teen Book Festival…

—Sarah Rafael García
First Generation Graduate, Author, and Barrio Writers Founder
Santa Ana, California


I am not writing to shame you. I believe shame is harmful, and when weaponized, shame, or the attempt to make one feel shame, does little if any human good. But I believe a mistake has been made. An oversight. I refuse to believe there is malice in a group that works tirelessly to benefit young people in Texas, and I also believe that most errors can be corrected, that we can hold ourselves accountable and acknowledge mistakes, even build stronger, more lasting relationships after rectifying mistakes like the omission of Mexican-American authors as part of this year’s Texas Teen Book Festival. I do have a personal stake in this. Not because I am a YA author, not because I am a Mexican-American man who grew up in Texas and makes his home here and loves this state with all the parts of my heart. I teach high school at Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio, Texas—I’ve done so for more than ten years—my stake in this speaks from my commitment to doing what is best for students in my classroom: literature by and about people like them needs to be included.

—Joe Jimenez, MFA
Texas High School Teacher, Author


Thought You Knew: We Are Writers Too

We are writers too
and have been
even when the emperor’s scribes
didn’t paint our individual stories
we told our own
passed down word
breath
life
ancient mouth to tender ear

We are writers too
We share our stories
at home
in front of the TV
along with the radio
on envelope, receipt, grocery list
spray painted on wall
in photo, digitally recorded—
we got cameras on our phones!
stepping, stomping, tapping, sliding, gliding
on the dance floor
in harmony
as cacophony when we yell, scream
“Glad to be alive!”
“We will survive!”

We are writers too
have been storytellers since forever
even though our codexes
our libraries of knowledge
were fired to ash
or stolen across an ocean
today they sit in sterile museums
or coffee tables of private collections

We are writing and publishing (!)
this story and countless others
even as you try to ignore us

We are writers too
and we’ll keep writing
and fighting
and living
and breathing
cuz that’s what writers do
thought you knew!

Cathy Arellano, Poet
Author of Salvation on Mission Street


As a queer writer, librarian, person of color, son of immigrants, and individual who has had to endure ridicule and the feeling of not being included, I can attest that it is not only important, but detrimental for Latino, Latinx, X/Chican@, Mexican American, Mexicano writers to be included in the Texas Teens Book Festival [and all festivals, conferences, and conventions]. Growing up in Santa Ana, California, a city known for its high density, crime, gang violence, drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, and high school drop-out rate, was a reality that I didn’t live alone. However, the reason I knew I was not alone was because of the few writers I was exposed to whose words I was gifted through mentors. Writers like Rodriguez, Cisneros, Villaseñor, Anaya introduced me to my gente. These writers helped me create the dream world I sought to discover as an aspiring writer. It is thanks to the diversity I saw in these books that I never gave up on myself and on my community. As a librarian, I fight this fight every day--to include everyone. I never forget that every day is an opportunity to make a connection and build community.

—David Lopez – Writer/Librarian
Santa Ana, CA



In this time of the violent erasure of Black and Brown lives, the total 2016 Texas Teens Book Festival omission of Mexican American writers (and near total omission of representation of writers of color) is dangerous. It dehumanizes peoples, devaluing the diversity of our complex communities and the human beings within them. Such a loss reveals a disregard for the validity of our stories, our ideas, our legacies. This absence enacts a trauma of omission. This MUST be changed, immediately changed. Our stories and our lives matter.

Be that festival that represents a community, wealthy in its cultural difference. Be that festival that serves as another educational space, supporting the voices that may well be absent from high-stakes-testing bound curricula. Be that festival that stands in community solidarity, celebrating our voices, our struggles, our joys.

—Raina J. León, PhD
Associate Professor of Education
Saint Mary's College of California


Nueva Generación

Jóvenes muchachos
Niñas mujercitas.
Adolecentes todos.
Llenos de vida y esperanza.

Quien eres? te preguntan.
Mejicano?
Salvadorena?

o Guatemalteco?
Mexico Americana?
Chicano?
Hispana?

Latino?
American citizen?
Ilegal alien?

Tantas preguntas
Que confusián
Solo venemos
con toda esperanza
buscando una vida mucho más mejor.

¿De adonde viniste?
¿De adonde eres?
¿Adonde naciste?
¿Adonde vas?

Busco a mi madre
quizàs mi padre
Trabajan duro
como burros,
o peor - esclavos.
Papá de obrero
Mamá de gallinera.

(Y no tienen papeles,
confiesas con una voz
casi silenciosa
como la de un ratóncito
en el sótano.)

Eso no importa, te contestan
y te invitan
a leer tu mundo nuevo,
a cantar tu própio mundo
Lleno de sagradas alabanzas de querida poesía de lo nuestro:
Neruda, Mistrál, Martí
Alarcón y Tafolla.

¿ Los conoces? te preguntan.
Ven. Acá. Acércate aquí
A este temple hecho
Especialmente para tí

En donde puedas acariciar
la Palabra,
cuando sientes
que te habla.

Diles que quieres saber todo sobre el mundo entero.
Que quieres leer
Que quieres recitar
y actuar
como cuando primero se creó el Quinto Sol.

Ven, jóven.
Ven.
Acércate
a la féria de estos benditos libros.
Son tuyos tambien!
Tus mejores amigos
Que te darán vida
Y toda esperanza
para un mundo
Mucho más mejor.

© Oralia Garza de Cortés
Bibliotecaria / Librarian
c/s


We are not rapists, drug traffickers, job thieves or lazy. We are not illiterate, unimaginative, antipatico, subversive or illegal. We have languages and poems, architecture and stories older than your world religions. We know how to pray to one god or the four winds. We read. We write. We are the body corrido. We are the body conga. We are the body of the sun. When you (enter in the name of any group that DECIDES not to include Mex-American writers) ignore us in formats, you are choosing to say “hey you Mexican kids, we’ll exclude you, because we know you don’t read to begin with.” Wrong. We want to sit in a space and read on the floor of a bookstore, of a living room, of a library just like any other kid. When you decided to not include a Mexican-American writer in your work, you are walking away from a conversation. You are erasing a people. We will no longer allow this to happen. We got a guy in the White House [Juan Felipe Herrera]. He’ll tell his people. Word will spread. The best chisme in town. Give us the books we need. For we ARE readers. #WeAreWritersToo

—Lupe Méndez
Poet/Activist/Educator/Macondista/CantoMundista/Librotraficante



When I visit high schools, you should see how eyes light up when the Mexican-American students realize that I’m not their tía or mother picking them up for an early dismissal. No, I am actually a brown-skinned writer who might look very much like a beloved family member. It is not lost on me that when these students sit up, engage and participate--even staying afterwards to ask for advice or reading suggestions--this means that seeing a Mexican-American writer at their school is an experience for which they greatly hunger.

I’ll never forget one Dallas high school, where I presented to hundreds of teens in the assembly hall. The applause was nice and the attention was flattering, but the memory I’ll hold closer is when a Mexican-American student approached me after the program and shrugged shyly, as if to say “Sorry, not sorry.” After my first poem, she was so inspired by my words that she tuned me out, grabbed her spiral notebook, and began eagerly to write. I told her that hearing how I’d motivated her to pen her own poems was the best compliment. Hearing my voice helped her honor and express her own.

—Tammy Melody Gomez
Poet/Performance Artist/Activist
Fort Worth, Texas


It is disheartening to see no Mexican American authors will present at the Texas Teen Book Festival in 2016. There are many reasons, that I hope are obvious, why young people need to see themselves (their communities, languages, etc) reflected in books. In Texas, where almost 40% of young people are of Mexican American heritage, it is vital to promote authors who speak from this experience. Historically and continuing to present times (for example the struggle for Mexican American Studies this year), Mexican Americans have been marginalized in political and educational institutions of Texas. The Texas Teen Book Festival has the opportunity to speak back to this marginalization. However, here I want to stress that Mexican American literature is important for everyone. In a year marked with racial and ethnic conflict in Texas, across the United States and the world, one thing is clear—we need more compassion and understanding across differences. How better to inspire this than with our youth? There is a wealth of talent within the Mexican American community who write for teenage audiences. Here are some recommendations from Texas:
· Joe Jimenez
· Guadalupe García McCall
· Xavier Garza
· Carmen Tafolla
· Benjamin Alire Saenz
· Diana Lopez

— Jesse Gainer
Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award


Untitled

I find myself looking at my face, always looking at my face.

Confused because for a lifetime mine was the face of awkwardness, of the other, always the other. A face that screamed Met-si-can or Chee-can-oh. That didn’t want to be one of those people,
THOSE people
THOSE PEOPLE

That contemplated killing herself over and over again until one day I found ‘me’. A ‘me’ reflected on the pages of books I never knew existed.

Literary doppelgangers who shared a love and hate relationship with our thick obsidian-colored hair. Versions of me that didn’t have to explain why my mom wouldn’t take us to the doctor but instead wiped away the bad with herbs or an egg. True to life me’s that spent parts of their childhood translating words like jail, disconnect notice, diabetes in a grownup world instead of having small talk about teenage crushes or the latest sale at the mall.

Salvation in the form of bound paper filled with the words of my world. Books about me, by authors like me, which challenged me. Made me see the world differently.

I find myself looking at my face, always looking at my face.

Now loving my face.

— Ofelia Faz-Garza
Writer, Dallas, Texas


The absence of Mexican-American authors from Texas Teen Book Festival reminds me of how easy it is to ignore the achievements people of color reach in this country and specifically this state. I want to know what the scale of quality TTBF organizers compared against recent YA releases from Mexican-American authors writing right in this state. What was wrong? Was it Spanglish they rejected? Was it the hard to pronounce names, or was it the use of a culture right outside their doors? I want to know why. What about our stories was lacking? I want to know why my youth is still not worthy of highlight, and I want to know why today’s youth must still reach into the shadows to find stories which can shine a light on their experience. The absence of Mexican-American authors from Texas Teen Book Festival reminds me of how easy it is for some to hide behind colorblindness and mediocrity because why know what it’s like to be different?

—Marilyse Figueroa
Texas State University MFA Creative Writing Candidate




You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.
You can’t ignore us.

—Daniel Farias - filmmaker
Garden Grove, CA


The importance of teens cannot be overstated. Their experiences will shape our culture in ways we cannot, for better or worse, conceive. Brown youth matter too. In Texas where a significant number of teens are like me, of "Hispanic" heritage, mestiza blood, of Mexican American origin, they have few experiences with literature, social sciences, or art that validate them, unless they look outside of school or literary festivals like these to their pop music icons like Jennifer Lopez or Shakira. The importance of being validated when we are young, by way of being included in the celebrated culture of our education, via leaders, histories, and artists also cannot be overstated. It can save lives simply because it reverses the charge in the one-way electric current that tells them their lives and heritage are not part of the picture they are forced to study and embrace that defines America. Include these authors conscientiously representing the population of your land, your vulnerable young, and there is one act that can have a most powerful ripple effect on our most fragile youth populations.

—Natalia Treviño
author, poet, and college professor of English
San Antonio, Tejas


Why Mexican American Authors Should Be Included in the 2016 Texas Teen Book Festival

1. Because if you’re going to celebrate a region’s literature, ALL voices should be represented.
2. Because if one of TTBF’s goals is to “connect teen readers to local and award-winning authors” and Mexican Americans are not included, then the accomplishments of Mexican American YA authors, like Carmen Tafolla, David Rice, David Bowles, Myra Infante-Sheridan, Pat Mora, Rene Saldana and many others, are being ignored.
3. Because I’m sure white authors didn’t have to compose a list such as this one.
4. Because many Texas teens are Mexican American and deserve to have the opportunity to celebrate their rich heritage of words.
5. Because Mexican Americans are here, have been here, and will be here long after this festival’s end.
6. Because how dare TTBF organizers forget the history of the soil they stand on.

—Nina Renee Avila- Writer/Educator
Weslaco, Texas


Brown on Both Sides

I.
The blue thorn crown gave light to the fact that poetry has become her glory.
History has described me as a fruit- full, juicy, and waiting to be picked.
The stars spread themselves thin along my thighs.

I am here.
Golden,
howled,
hard eyed.
Quiero nada.
Tossed and unloved.
I mend the wrinkles and my tongue.
Along the journey from the desert and moon rides on my fingers - I lost the language of desire.

I mean well by killing slow clicking clocks.
I've been poisoned by smoke and dreams.
Little girl from a refinery town - eyes grainy,
tears of yellow masa.

Strap your mystery to the bent backs of women.

II.
I walked across the border
drunk with hollow dreams.

Mezcal,
rage,
the moon,
and lowriders all became mirages here.


There- are candles,
little children crying,
link fences.

There is a butterfly close to death.

And still I ran,
hurried through
fields of horses,
rows of cotton,
streets of dust.
Payphones rang on the corners of the cement.

Then my feet stopped.
My hands laid on the sides of my thighs.

I stood there.
Looked up to the sun and mourned my breath.

—Diane Benavides Rios
Raza youth educator/artist/poet
Houston, Texas



Una voz es mas
voz que ni una.
Open your mouth
lips part the gates,
reinforcements follow,
teeth grind. Sharpening the dangers of words
sitting at the throat.
Ya estoy cansad@,
they tell you “no se puede”
y yo ya no puedo
con this silence.
Words are ready,
they launch from my throat into
my tongue. The speaker lashes out
“Si se puede!”
Unidos our voices are heard,
I am reminded.
Una boca sin lengua no es boca.

Saul Hernandez - Educator/writer
San Antonio, TX


In a city as culturally diverse and modern as Austin claims to be, it is shocking to me that you have failed to include authors of color in your programming. In order for us as a society to cultivate future readers and writers and to foster a love for reading and writing, the books and authors that young adults are exposed to should be a reflection of who they are. The books they read should contain stories by and about people they can relate to. And this should include teens from a wide spectrum of racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. As an educator and writer I am urging you purposefully to seek writers of color and promote their work as it is only going to help grow and improve the status of your organization. We are living through traumatic times as a country, and literature can be an outlet and a place of comfort for teens but only if the work they are reading is a reflection of their own experiences written by people who look and sound like them. It is imperative that you make space for writers of color and let our voices be heard.

—Jasminne Mendez, M.Ed.
Poet/Writer/Educator
Houston, Texas


Hispanics are the youngest major racial or ethnic group in the United States. About one-third, or 17.9 million, of the nation’s Hispanic population is younger than 18, and about a quarter, or 14.6 million, of all Hispanics are Millennials (ages 18 to 33 in 2014. Altogether, nearly six-in-ten Hispanics are Millennials or younger.

If for no other reason, this significant group needs to hear the voices of writers who have experienced life, community and history from their perspective. These are native-born citizens or Mexican-born immigrants who have adapted to life in the United States. A good deal of the Chicano movement’s literary energy was expended in chronicling the American takeover of the Southwest, a considerable portion of it by prominent southwestern Mexicans who had supported American annexation only to feel betrayed and discarded. Many Mexican American youth feel the same way. They are lost and not accepted by both cultures.

It starts with inclusion of stories written by writers who are culturally and linguistically competent to reflect on the experiences of growing up Mexican American in America who can connect our youth to their culture, history, values and struggle to achieve the American promise.

—Professor Alan Hing-Ying Woo
Public Policy, Advocacy and Social Transformation
Springfield College
Tustin-southern California Campus


The Narrative es en mi Sangre!!

From Viva La Revolution to Long Live the Alamo, this narrative in my blood continues to define mi gente. It is a narrative that not only crosses borders, generational lineages, declaring war amongst your brother and neighbors, but also determined your patriotism to one country vs. another. During the Texas and Mexican Revolutionary War, it pitted brother against brother, father against son, many with Hispanic Surnames who at once pledged allegiance to Texas or Mexico, cutting bloodlines and family ties. It thereby created a defunct system, a fear of deportation or never able to go back home. The War segregated families, forever stripping lineages, closed borders to one another. Unfortunately, greed, westward expansion, and disagreements with Mexican Ideology caused the new settlers unrest and an eventual break and war with Mexico. How many times should I allow you to lynch my people either in the world of Academia or in the Political Sphere? Ya Basta y Si se Puede in the Classroom, Legal & Political Field, Educational Field and surely Mexican Writers stories should be included in The Texas Teen Book Festival.

—Monica Zepeda
Teacher and Writer
Houston, Texas


Texas was once Mexico.
*FACT: Mexican Americans make up the majority of Raza in Texas.
Uh oh, it’s that word: ‘Raza’ That translates to ‘Race’. Must be racists! Uy Cucuy!
If the word makes you uncomfortable it is because you do not know or understand its meaning. Labels like Hispanic and Latino seem to only agglomerate Raza.
They do not bring a greater appreciation or understanding of our distinctions.

Promoting books written about and by Mexican Americans provides a much-needed perspective. Educators in Texas should have an understanding of this knowledge.

More importantly, our youth must know.

Without knowledge and communication, there is no understanding.
Without understanding, there is no respect.
Without respect, there is no peace.

And if you think about it for just one second, how much sense does it make to ignore
this demographic when so many scholarly articles express a need for books
and stories at all levels in authentic voices?

You have an opportunity to make a positive difference by being inclusive now.
For the sake of the future of our great State of Texas, I hope you do so.
______________________________________________________________________________
*Look it up. You are educated. If you don’t know where to start, ask a friend, call the Census or your favorite Reference Librarian.

—Carolina G. Martínez, MLS




Diversity has always been an essential element of great reading. As Rudine Sims Bishop wrote, books should be both “windows and mirrors,” and it is important that all young readers have access to both types of books. However, that urgency increases with the increasing diversity of our country, and it is now absolutely essential for young people to have access to books that reflect their lives, families, and existence.

However, putting the books out into the world is just half the battle; the other half, we know, is getting those books into the hands of readers. Book Festivals, conferences, and other literary events do the important work of bridging that gap. But they do no good when they reinforce the diversity problems in publishing by failing to include diverse authors. This is a deep disservice not just to the talented authors whose books remain hidden, but to the young readers who will never be exposed to those books and, even more importantly, never see authors who look like them on stage.

Book festivals should celebrate diverse talent, and should accurately reflect the makeup of their communities in the makeup of their author lineups. When this happens, everyone wins.

— Lee & Low Books


I did not meet a published writer until I was an adult in my twenties. I was thrilled to meet another adult who not only read science fiction, but wrote it, too. It did not bother me that he was a white male, because I knew that writers never looked like me.

In spite of many things, I eventually became a writer myself. I decided to write about all the things I never read about - a set of short stories, three novels set in 19th Century Mexico, and a collection of essays based on my family's history in Northern Mexico and the SW United States. These books were published by Calyx, Chronicle Books, and the University of Arizona. Now I have moved on to other people's stories, the small secret histories of food and community that make up our daily lives.

Imagine if I had met a writer who looked like me in my teens. San Bernardino would have to have been a very different place. But maybe Texas can be that place, one that recognizes all of us, and embraces all of our histories as your own.

—Kathleen Alcalá
Author, Bainbridge Island, Washington


We are writers too,
dedicated to the diosa.
Are you?

Can I listen to Carmen Tafolla
rhyming history
from el Alamo to the Maya?

Where is Rudolfo Gonzales'
'I am Joaquin'?
Can't find him anymore
in any schoolbook or magazine.

Do you know Américo Paredes
with his pen in his hand
describing how we come
from this land?

Sandra Cisneros
la genia con chistos
cantos y corridos.
Our gente can do it.
Just put us in the web
y los libros.

Then you will see
from codex to handpress
we chronicle our history
our folklore and our beauty,
our culture, our destiny.

Carlos Fuentes
Rigoberta Menchu
they need to be included
yes, yes them too.

And these others
don't leave them out,
or you will make Irene pout.
Xavier Garza
Lin-Manuel Miranda
and Tomás Rivera
he has some clout!

Then there is
'Bless me Ultima'
Anaya's book
that inspired so many,
let's take another look.
So you see
we are writers too.
Include our voices
for we belong on
bookshelves and in kindle
me and you.

—mary jane Garza
artist/writer/parent


Texas will not recognize Mexican American authors at the 2016 Texas Teen Book Festival. This is a mistake for a state that was rumored to want to introduce textbooks that claimed slaves were interns. It seems to me that Texas is trying to make colonization totally normal and to question it would be un-American. The thing Texas does not or does not want to acknowledge is this: America was built by non Euros. You all may have the wealth you may have done your best to make us lose our roots but here we are aware that we are different. The blame does not land on our shoulders it lands on those who would not only silence us but who treat us differently. I think that it is time for Texas to show its best face and show that it can celebrate diversity. Giving young people a story they can relate to does not make a person any less inclined to make their country great and isn’t that part of your state’s deal, you want to make America great again? Do it to celebrate all Americans not just the ones that fit into your mind as what an American should be.

—Maria Elena Pulido
Mother, Sacramento CA


I am appalled to learn that the 2016 Texas Teens Book Festival fails to include any Mexican American writers among this year’s featured authors. In a state with a 35% Mexican American population, it strains credulity to think that there are zero writers from this demographic that are worthy of such recognition. This is especially true since the youth in this population has been shown to exhibit great artistic ability in a variety of genres written in English, Spanish, and bilingually.

I urge you to reach out to this community and to recognize some of the best writers to include as featured authors. Their work will serve not only to please and enlighten the broader community, it will provide Mexican American readers additional reasons to take pride in the history and the culture of their own people.

Please include some Chicana and Chicano writers. Thank you.

—Eduardo Hernández Chávez
Associate Professor of Linguistics, Emeritus
Director of Chicana/o Studies, Retired
University of New Mexico
papa.cholo@wildblue.net



Oh to be American

oh to be American
born in the land of the free
to practice manifest destiny
as God gave us command
where we installed democracy
sweet land of liberty

we always say what goes
in this our homeland wide
we took great strides when we installed
the boundaries with our border walls
we’re fair we’re right we use our might
God made our institutions white

we freed the slaves to show our grace
too bad it took a civil war
and southern flags still fly…
we treated Mexico with gloves
by letting it retain half of its land
we could have taken all
we treated Mexico with love

oh to have white privilege
to stay away from stress
we took away the signs
no dogs or Mexicans allowed
and blacks can protest in the streets
under the big white cotton clouds

so what if we teach our white strength
you ethnic folks are always spent
our books and movies are just us
that’s why we got so many treaties
and you don’t even have committees

oh to be white to be white
to be beautifully light
and spread our fair pedigree
across this land of liberty!

Copyright by Nephtali De Leon


This summer I read, Bloodline, by Joe Jimenez and Playing for the Devil’s Fire, by Phillipe Diederich. In Bloodline, a 17-year-old boy tries to stay out of trouble. I could relate to that book; it reminded me of my own youth in urban San Antonio.

The second book takes place in a Mexican village and describes the drug-trade and violent atrocities experienced by a young boy. That book helped me understand more deeply why many Mexicans risk their lives to cross the border into the U.S.

I am Mexican-American. I want characters in books that I can relate to, genuine characters in realistic settings dealing with life’s challenges.

As a bilingual educator, my classrooms are 95% Hispanic. I use all genres of books with my students, but I also seek out books they can feel. The first time I read Chicano literature in college it energized me! I had never read about Hispanics as the main characters before! Reading Tomás Rivera empowered me! I want the same for my students.

Please invite Mexican-American authors to your upcoming Book Festival. Now especially, let’s use stories to bring diverse people together.

—Diana Garcia
Educator
San Antonio, Texas


In this age of so much racial and ethnic hate, it is extremely important to learn about each other. Many of us cannot travel to other countries or even to other states. But our travels can be done by reading books. Our understanding of other human beings can be accomplished with books. I, a Puerto Rican author and faculty member of the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts Whidbey, WA MFA Workshop can attest that my adult students began to understand humanity better in my diversity books class. But why do we have to wait until we’re grown up? Why not provide the understanding since childhood in the schools and libraries where the poor don’t have to pay for books? Why not read Matt de La Peña’s Newberry Award, Last Stop on Market Street or Mexican Whiteboy? Let me make it clear, books with Mexican or other Latino characters are not just for Mexicans and Latinos, but for everybody. But when the population is as high as yours on Latinos, you must have books that represent them. Otherwise you are doing a disservice not just to Latinos but to everybody.

—Carmen T Bernier-Grand


Writers are born observers. They listen, they record, they internalize.

They remember. I was a seventh-grader in McAllen, Texas, the first time I read a poem by a Latino writer. “Oranges” by Gary Soto was about a 12-year-old (like me) and his first encounter with love. The image of the boy’s peeled orange cradled in his hands, fiery against the gray December as he walks with a girl, was as striking to me as the poet’s name.

Up until then, I’d experienced literature as something that came from a place that felt foreign to me, full of faces and names that looked nothing like my own. My love for words turned this into a place I thought I should aspire to. Maybe one day, if I became good enough, I could trade my experiences for those “worth” writing about.

I would’ve silenced my own voice if not for writers like Gary Soto in seventh grade, Sandra Cisneros, Cristina Garcia and Eduardo Galeano in high school. Our youth need to see themselves in words, too, in writers like Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Valerie Tejeda, and Lilliam Rivera. In writers whose voices say, No. Literature comes from all of us, because we are writers, too.

—Natalia Sylvester
Writer, Austin, TX


I am heeding your call to comment on the fact that zero Mexican American authors are in this year's Texas Teen Book Festival. This is shameful! It implies there are no Mexican American authors for teens worthy of note, and that there is no audience, Mexican American and other, teen and older, for their books. Wrong on all counts. It does show that the TTBF organizers are out of touch.

Thank you for speaking up and encouraging others to join you.

—Tura Campanella Cook, President
Jane Addams Peace Association
Sponsor of the Jane Addams Children's Book Award since 1953
www.janeaddamspeace.org


One third swiftly tucked under the landscape of Texas.
Stories of my daughters,
mother,
and abuelas
a b a n d o n e d
at the back door of the Texas Teen Book Festival of 2016
like ragged mochilas before entry.
Did we forget our papers?

Not Welcomed, reads the sign at the authors’ table.
Oh, but we did not come empty-handed.
We brought stories too, tucked in our skin.
Indigenous,
piel Morada,
sagrada
ready to take up arms with books, festivities, and chatter.

We will no longer shapeshift to be included,
dangle like something in between fences and borders.
Our testimonies – a tapestry of narratives,
wrap the outstretched arms of Texas
like a mother wraps her newborn child before a deeply hospitable welcome.

TTBF should invite authors who represent the landscape of Texas more accurately.
Here’s some help:

Zoraida Cordova, author of Labyrinth Lost (Brooklyn Brujas), September 2016.
Melissa De La Cruz, author of Something in Between, September 2016.
Kami Garcia, author of The Lovely Reckless, October 2016.
Amalia Ortiz, poet of Rant. Chant. Chisme, 2015.
Christina Henriquez, author of The Book of Unknown Americans, 2014.

—Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros
Mother and Poet
San Antonio, Texas


As a young Chicana, I was not exposed to a single Chicanx author in school even though I grew up in the racial and cultural plurality of San Francisco. I did not read my first Chicanx author until college, when I enrolled in Chicano Literature and Popular Culture class, where the visiting professor generously exposed us to Chicanx writers, authors, storytellers writing in every form imaginable from corridos to punk rock songs to poems to graphic novels. Through this course, I finally read House on Mango Street, a novel authored by a Chicana.

Unfortunately, three decades later, the youth who arrive at Resistencia Bookstore are still struggling with an illusion of paucity that still plagues the mainstream understanding of Chicanx literature, which many schools, book festivals, bookstores, and public libraries still perpetuate. They arrive to our bookshop excited, starved, overwhelmed, and angry, after realizing their core formal education and other institutions have erased the existence of books, zines, publications, chapbooks, collections and anthologies written by Chicanxs.

Chicanx youth need to meet the authors and see themselves in YA titles that express their stories provocatively, with an understanding of the challenges, resistance, and rebellion that make up our lives collectively and individually.

—Dr. Lilia Rosas, Executive Director
Red Salmon Arts casa de Resistencia Bookstore, Austin, TX



Imagine, that as a child, you had no imagination. You’ve looked so long, on TV or in books, searched the shelves in your local library for someone who looks like you and knows how to pronounce your name. Imagine, that as a child, there was no one in the mirror, staring back at you. I ask you to imagine, because by not including authors of color, particularly authors of Latino descent, you are contributing to the ways in which young children, boys and girls, are unable to imagine themselves on the page, in the world, agents of imagining a better world. The onus, as cultivators and advocates of literacy, is to understand that some children want desperately to see their reflection on the pages they read, in authors who know from where these children come. Here is your opportunity as an organization to see that imagination soar. To see, if you are willing to do the work, that it is not that difficult to create moments when a child can a new world—their family, their community, their reality, see themselves—and say, yes. I can imagine, therefore I exist.

—Ángel García
Poet and Educator


Upside Down World: Or what Dick and Jane Taught Me About Being Mexican American

dick and jane told me mine was an upside down world
where everything was backward from the way they lived
in their blond-haired, blue-eyed world
with little sister sally and mother and father

bundled up in their snow suits dick and jane played
in the snow around the evergreen tree
that grew in their front yard

en mi valle, the magic valley, in south texas
all the trees are always green
so all the trees must be evergreens

dick and jane knew it was spring when the robins came
and fed on worms they plucked from the ground
around the evergreen tree that grew in their front yard

en mi valle, mi bello valle, the robins came in the winter
when the winds came from the north to fog our windows
and the smell from the cotton gin blanketed our barrio

no blondes or blue eyes at crockett elementary
---except for the teachers’---but lots of wide dark eyes
eager to read and to write and to learn

only to learn we lived in an upside down world

By Sahara © 2016


People have told me: Children can’t tell the difference. But they can. I remember I used to read Judy Blume and Beverly Clearly books and while I loved the characters in those books as a child, I did notice that their lives were vastly different from mine. I didn’t feel a real connection because they didn’t have Mexican names or eat tacos de barbacoa. It wasn’t until later in life when I picked up books by Rudolfo Anaya and later, Benjamin Alire Saenz and Sandra Cisneros that I really felt that connection with characters who actually represented me. I believe the root of a lot of our societal problems lies in the lack of multicultural literacy. If we fix that, then we’ll start seeing a lot more change.

When I learned that Chican@ writers would be excluded in a Texan book festival, I had to say something. This is a state where Chican@s have been fighting legislation that seeks to extinguish Mexican-American Studies programs in schools, and resisting textbooks that state that Chican@s “want to destroy this society”. That is why inclusion is important, to prevent people like that from erasing multicultural education in our schools and libraries. Mexica tiahui!

—Hugo Esteban Rodriguez,
Rio Grande Valley expat and Houston-based poet and writer
www.dosaguilas.org



Without the works of authors such as Sandra Cisneros, Gloria Anzaldúa, Héctor Tobar, Oscar Casares, and Esmeralda Santiago, I would not to be the teacher and educator I am. Writing by Tejan@ and Latinx writers opened my eyes to what it means to be American, to be celebrate my heritage, and wrestle with the blood-stained pages of US history. Youth, especially youth of color, need to see Texas and the US in all its complexity, from all different perspectives. We demand that the Texas Teens Book Festival represent the people of Texas whose ancestors are Mexican, indigenous, immigrant, German, Black, white, and so much more.

—Regina Mills
Educator


gray timber

I am alien; a person;
brown-skinned;
living in a land
of covetous milk
absent of voice,
alone

I've no place
in America,
I've no culture
to cede to either
I've no heritage
to bud from;

a big leaf blossoming;
un-timbered
my golden eagle
long flown away;
my presence
a measured plank
drawn & quartered
long thrown away
set adrift

I don’t know
my road home,
home is a shadow
of ruin, home
is exile

my lifetime
is a pit
of grappling tongues
and leathery Industry;
I’m not even sure
what that means –

I can’t hear the singing
of the carpenter,
or the boatman
or the shoemaker,
Whitman

I can’t hear
what belongs to the day;
there is nothing robust
or friendly
about the song of America;
maybe there was once,
but there isn’t
anymore.

How can I sing of myself;
my river flows all ways
and you want to divide me
with walls, America?

I am an oak,
hard as wood;
un-timbered
set adrift
with no road
home

But I have hope
of something more;
because hope
is not just a word;
it’s a being together,
it’s admitting
the intersection
of our oak
growing
from the same
thicket.

It’s listening
for a song
that may
never come.

—G. F. Harper
Writer
Austin, Texas


I am a writer! My recollections of Papa’s exploits in the war, Mama, Abuelita who had remedies for anything, and a man who sold bananas from a horse drawn cart were published in a weekly column in the El Paso Times. My stories are like salsa with enough spice to whet any appetite.

Border Buster is my novel about Gabriela Alegria, a border Mayor faced with trade stoppage when angry Mexicans block the 2000 mile border. She finds a solution but instead of sending the State Department, the American president asks that she travel to Mexico with the proposal. Faced with corruption in the U.S. and Mexico, Gabriela confronts her fears.
I write about what’s happening in the world, how it affects my children and grandchildren. The evolution of technology, the simplicity of life, and the complications of aging. I write about anything that strikes my fancy.

Soy escritora, escribo en español, el idioma de mis antepasados e en inglés, el idioma de mi país natal con bastante orgullo en ambos.

My stories make you smile, laugh out loud, and shed a tear because I write what I know, and it comes from the heart.

—Margarita B. Velez,
a writer from El Paso, Texas


TEXAS VOICES

The voices, las voces
echo in Texas
In Texas
las voces want to be heard
the beautiful voices
deserve to hear
the beautiful voces
echo
in Texas
En Texas
dreams of freedom together
Together
Freedom dreams
Dreams
of unity in freedom
of peace in unity
of flower and song
shared
echoing across tejas
into our homes
into humanity’s spirit.

—Paul Aponte, Chicano Poet
Sacramento, California



Serious Gap

“Our daughter has clear instructions not to tell anyone she’s half Mexican. If they ask, she’s to tell them she’s Cuban, or Puerto Rican or Ecuadorian. Anything but Mexican.”

“Why?” I asked, as a headache formed in my temples and a heaviness filled my heart.

“Because people will think less of her; they’ll make assumptions about her. That she’s lazy or not very smart.”

- An interaction at work

“You absolutely must finish this book and see it through to publication. I work with migrant children in eastern Washington. Many come from Mexico each summer. I am constantly looking for children’s books by Mexican authors, with protagonists the kids can relate to - so they can see themselves in the stories, so they know someone like them can become an author, too. Books like that are very hard to come by. It’s a serious gap. So, please, don’t give up! What you’re doing will have an impact, beyond what you know.”

- Note passed to me during a breakout session at a writers’ conference

“I’ll keep at it and do my little part to address the gap. Thank YOU for the inspiration,” I wrote back.

—Diana J Noble
Author – Mariposa, middle grade historical fiction, coming in 2017 from Arte Público Press
Edmonds, WA


Young people need to see themselves represented in the books they read both in the characters and the authors. By not including Mexican-American authors in the 2016 Texas Teens Book Festival you are doing a serious disservice to the 35% Latino/a teens living in Texas as well as the other 65% who are being deprived of exposure to Mexican-American authors. As a former Library Associate who helped plan and deliver literacy programs to young D.C. residents I know that when children and teens see characters who look like them and share their cultural heritage they're more likely to develop reading habits that will benefit them throughout their lives. Please don't sell Texas teens short.

—Toroitich Cherono - former Library Associate


Reasons to Include Mexican-American Authors at the Texas Teens Book Festival:

Because the next Mexican-American author at your festival might be a Rosario Castellanos or an Octavio Paz.
Because including Mexican-American voices provides bright mirrors in which our youth can see positive reflections of who they are right now or who they might aspire to be in the near future.
Because Mexican-American writers have a unique voice with unique stories that no one else can tell or should tell.
Because we need cultural diversity in every cultural area present and accounted for in the United States of America.
Because our young Mexican-American children are starving for rich narratives that will ignite their own imaginations.
Because I have been teaching for 18 years, and the Mexican-American presence in the form of literature has decreased instead of increased in elementary school textbooks.
Because there is a dire need for our young people to learn critical thinking skills that only well-crafted literature can provide.
Because about one-third, or 17.9 million, of the nation’s Hispanic population is younger than 18, and about a quarter, or 14.6 million, of all Hispanics are Millennials (ages 18 to 33 in 2014).

Because statistics don't lie.

—Julieta Corpus
Proud Mexican-American Poet


As a Language Arts Teacher educator and an avid reader who follows Chicano literature, I would love to see a greater inclusion of Mexican-American Authors at the Texas Teen Book Festival. It is vital that young people are able to see themselves and their concerns reflected in literature. It can also be very uplifting to meet authors in person who create relevant books and share their stories. Some of the outstanding authors whose work I've read recently are Reyna Grande, Maceo Montoya, Angela Cervantes and Luis Alberto Urrea. It would also be great to have someone from Huizache, the premiere Latino literary magazine represent. We have an amazing range of talent in the U.S and I'm convinced that the Latino Literary renaissance is upon us! Let us not discount Juan Felipe Herrera, our US Poet Laureate!

—Leticia Del Toro


As a migrant student, I went to various schools in Texas. Sadly, I didn't see any books written by Latinx authors until I went to college in upstate New York in 1993. What a world of possibilities opened up for me when I first read writers like Helena Maria Viramontes, Ana Castillo, Francisco X Alarcón, Sandra Cisneros, and many more. I would not be the poet writer I am today without their work and my exposure to them. 23 years later there is no reason for any Latinx youth in Texas not to be exposed to our rich literary heritage or to all of the exciting new Mexican American, Latinx, and writers of color who are creating and publishing a tremendous new body of literature.

—ire'ne lara silva
writer, concerned community member
austin, tejas


If you were to see me, would you think that I, a brown skinned and black haired man, was a college graduate? Would you believe me if I told you I was a PhD candidate? Well, I am not that either, at least not yet—but I will be, soon!

And, still as a Mexican-American doctoral student, my brown skin continues to mark me as a labor worker (you know the guy outside of Home Depot stealing your job), a gang member (part of cartel that supplies Americans with their demand for…well, you know what I am taking about), or just an illegal alien (yeah, like from another planet or something—actually, I never understood this one). What I do know is that in the U.S., brown skin is never imagined as the skin of the tenured college professor, the novelist, or the poet. And yet, here we are in mass.

This is not a matter of belonging or asking for recognition—we are just simply making you aware of our existence. We too are Writers, Educators, Veterans, Doctors, and more!

—Manny Galaviz
Doctoral Student, Department of Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin




I believe that is fundamentally important to have Mexican American writers at the 2016 Texas Teens Book Festival, because our brown youth should be able to see themselves and a representation of their culture in literature. As an advocate for Ethnic Studies and Mexican American Studies in K-12th grade, it is important for students not only to know that there are writers in this world that look like them, but also understand that it is possible to write about our own experiences and history. Inclusion can create opportunities for students that they may have not been aware of and also be encouraging to future writers. With access to the Mexican American authors booklists created by the festival, we as educators can use these sources in our classroom since it is our responsibility to create bridges between communities and cultures. It is the responsibility of the festival to create a foundation of cultural connections beyond the literature that our brown youth has been exposed to, which predominantly has been viewed through one lens.

—Michelle Tovar
Advocate and Educator
Houston, Texas

We look forward to sharing details later this week of new author confirmations and programming plans


From the Organizers of the 2016 Texas Teen Book Festival:

Our mission at the Texas Teen Book Festival is to celebrate great books and to foster a love of reading in Texas teens. Over the last eight years, we’ve tapped into an enthusiastic community of readers eager to connect with all kinds of authors with something to say about the world. As Festival curators as well as librarians, booksellers, and literary advocates, we’ve seen first-hand how empowering it is for kids to see themselves in a published story. With so many young people of Mexican-American and Latino heritage in Texas, we want to ensure that our Festival represents these important voices. We agree there's work to be done, and pledge to work more closely with the Latino writing community to keep making our Festival better. We look forward to sharing details later this week of new author confirmations and programming plans that have come out of collaborations with Barrio Writers, Red Salmon Arts casa de Resistencia Bookstore, and the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award. We're excited about partnering with them to celebrate Mexican-American writers at this and future festivals. After all, great stories help build a world in which we can all begin to really see each other.

—The Texas Teen Book Festival

by Ernest Hogan


Federico Schaffler is one of the driving forces behind science fiction in Mexico. The last time we met he handed me a stack of books that he had written and edited, and I enjoyed reading. It's not a surprise to see that he's done another anthology Teknochtitlán: 30 Visiones de la Ciencia Ficción Mexicana. And, in keeping up with the times, it's an ebook!












But then, we need more cross-border collaboration. Mexico is right next door, but America treats it like an distant planet. Think I'll look over those ideas, bite a hole or two in the Tortilla Curtain.

My Bad: A Mile High Noir will be published by Arte Público Press at the end of September, 2016.  I just finished going through my final nit-picky editing of the galleys. The next step, after we decide on a cover, will be for the Press to send the book to the printer. Yahoo!

This book picks up where Desperado: A Mile High Noir ended. Gus Corral, the Northside vato introduced in Desperado, returns to the streets of Denver along with his sisters Corrine and Max, and his edgy friends.  This time around he's working for the lawyer Luis Móntez and almost immediately he finds himself on a wild, twisting ride that starts as a mundane investigation of a bad debt case but ends up in blood for Gus and danger for his friends, all against a background of an icy Colorado blizzard. A rogue Mexican cop, a missing client, and pirates in the Sea of Cortez add up to trouble for Gus and Luis, both of whom narrate the story as it unfolds. In the following excerpt, told by Gus, Gus has been tasked by Luis to  carry out surveillance of a man named Valdez. He uses the office carsharing account to drive to the target address ...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© Manuel Ramos 2016

 

Colorado Winter Sky

The rental was a blue and white toy, almost too small for me, but Luis told me the rates were cheap and I could park it almost anywhere without worrying about meters, tickets or gas. As I drove south on always-busy I-25 from the Northside to the Westwood neighborhood, I felt exposed, vulnerable, silly. The car was smaller than Corrine’s Kia. If any other car or truck hit me, my ride would crumble into a tiny ball of smashed metal and plastic, with me jellied in the middle of the ball.

I knew how I looked to all the drivers who passed me, some honking their horns even though I was in the slow lane. In the tiny car I came off as a brown-skinned, muscle-bound hulk pressed up against the steering wheel of a car that had no business carrying me.

Westwood was one of the few remaining neighborhoods in the Denver city limits where the word “barrio” still fit. Working families who’d been residents for decades, damaged but proud houses and small shops that dealt in everything from motorcycle repairs to marijuana cookies, all mixed together in a crooked rectangle bordered by Alameda, Mississippi, Federal and Sheridan. Tattoo artists collected books for neighborhood kids, Mexican taquerías sprung up and died like mushrooms, while the public art of Chicano artist Carlos Frésquez welcomed visitors to the community at Morrison Road, the diagonal street that cut through the heart of Westwood.

I drove past the address. Valdez lived in a gray aging house that must have had all of four rooms. The dirt yard had no plant life. No life period. I parked the car several blocks from his house, locked it up and electronically closed the account. I walked back to Valdez’s house. The lights were on but I didn’t see anyone. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, or what Móntez expected from me. He’d simply said, “Watch him.”

I stood in darkness under a tall pine tree with rough branches and hoped that I would stay awake. I made myself as comfortable as possible. I bent my knees and squeezed into the darkness of the tree. From where I stood I could see the front and a side door, and a large dirty picture window covered with dark blinds or curtains.

The night was filled with throbbing noise. Thumping bass rhythms mixed with barking dogs, ambulance sirens and hollering children. Screen doors slammed, water flowed along the curb and traffic moved on the major streets in a constant hum. 

I watched and waited and managed to stay awake until midnight, but I drifted in and out of awareness. Then I must have dozed off because I jerked against the tree when I heard a distant car alarm.

A pickup truck painted primer gray sat on the gravel driveway that ran along the side of the house. It looked like a late 1970s Ford.

The lights were still on in the house but there was no movement, no sign of any life.

I wrote down the New Mexico license plate number hanging on the back of the pickup. I thought I could check that out back at the office and then Móntez could decide how he wanted to use the information, if it mattered at all. I hadn’t expected much, so even a license plate number struck me as worthwhile.

I turned to walk to the rental car when headlights lit up my side of the street and I jumped back in the shadows. A dark, late model Camry pulled to a stop in front of the house. For almost five minutes nothing happened. The driver’s door opened and a woman stepped out. I couldn’t see her face because of the scarf wrapped around her head. She carried a large handbag. She rushed to the side door and tapped on the cracked wood. Light from the house surrounded her when the door opened. A man grabbed her arm and pulled her inside. The door slammed shut. 

I walked around the tree and looked for a way that I could approach the house without being seen. Such a route did not exist. As soon as I entered the street I would be exposed and in clear view from the picture window.

I stood where I was and waited. 

Fifteen minutes. The side door opened abruptly. The woman emerged wrapping the scarf across her forehead. She ran out of the house, looked over her shoulder, then jumped in her car. She sped away almost immediately. 

Two minutes. A tall man wearing a dark hoody slipped out of the house and climbed in the pickup truck. He backed out of the yard and drove down the street in the opposite direction from the woman. The lights in the house remained on. 

I looked up and down the street. I saw no one, not a kid on a bike or an old-timer out for a walk. It was late, I reminded myself. I ran across the street and peered in through the side door window. A man lay on the kitchen floor. He looked unconscious or dead. Then I saw the blood seeping out of a gaping wound on his right temple. I backed away from the door, checked the street again, then ran to my tree and called Móntez.

“Get out of there and meet me at the office,” he said.
 
“Shouldn’t I call the cops?”
 
“I’m calling my client first. I’ll see you in about twenty minutes. You sure he’s dead?”
 
“Yeah. That hole in his head is too big.”
 
“Get out of there,” he repeated.
 
For an instant I toyed with the idea that no matter what Móntez said, I should report what I’d seen. But that old feeling crept up my spine and I reacted as I always had. I didn’t want to connect with the police right then. I jogged through the Westwood night back to the car, away from the bloody scene. I felt like the kid who was blamed for everything—the sucker, the punk, the kid who never knew what hit him. I couldn’t shake the feeling.

Colorado Winter Sky 2

_____________________________________________________________________


I have several events lined up for the rest of this year, including a few for the new book. Hope to see you at one. I'll post the details here on La Bloga in the coming weeks.

Later. 

Manuel Ramos is the author of several novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction books and articles.  His collection of short stories, The Skull of Pancho Villa and Other Stories, was a finalist for the 2016 Colorado Book Award.  My Bad: A Mile High Noir is scheduled for publication by Arte Público Press in September, 2016.

On the Road With Jesús
Michael Sedano

Next week, La Bloga-Tuesday joins Rudolfo Anaya in Alburquerque to interview him in conjunction with my review of Anaya’s latest novel, The Sorrows of Young Alfonso. Getting there is half the fun.


This week, Jesús Treviño and I began a road trip to Anaya's home where Jesús will produce video interviews for Latinopia, as I gather material for La Bloga.

Leaving behind the billowing smoke from the drought-fed Sand fire that rages in the mountains north of our LA area homes, Treviño and I looked forward to the cleaner air of the high desert. As a gloomy reminder of the suffering of folks in northern Los Angeles County, the smoke clouded the western horizon with tendrils infiltrating our route along Interstate 15 toward Las Vegas.

Engaged in conversation and stunned by the amazing CDs of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, we cruised through Barstow and missed the cut-off for the direct route to Winslow AZ, the first stop of our itinerary.


The arresting sight of what looked to be alien installations in the Mojave Desert stopped us in our tracks. Blinding white light glowed at the top of towers rising from shining blue lakes. We took the Nipton Road exit for a better look at what I learned via the internet is the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System.

The blue water is the sun reflecting from acres of mirrors installed at the base of solar energy collectors. These heliostats reflect light onto the solar receiver where the heat converts water to steam to drive electricity-generating turbines. Far from an alien attack, the wondrous installation represents a future of clean energy.

We had missed our turn-off, but we weren’t lost. Nipton Road is one of those “blue highways” William Least Heat Moon recommends in his engaging travel adventure, Blue Highways: A Journey Into America. Once across the California state line, Nipton Road becomes Nevada state route 164, dubbed the “Joshua Tree Highway.”

Highway 164 provides an enchanting route through a forest of small-limbed Joshua trees, remarkably dissimilar to the massive-trunked beauties of the Southern California desert. The landscape was dotted with spiky jumping cholla and salt bush. I spotted barrel cactus nestled among the basalt outcroppings that remind of the land’s ancient volcanic activity.

The Joshua Tree Highway meets Highway 95 at Searchlight NV, where Terrible’s Roadhouse serves a hearty breakfast and, this morning, an empty casino featuring rows of slot machines.

From Terrible’s Roadhouse the 95 takes us south to the I-40 and a trek across the Colorado River then up to the high country and piney woods of Flagstaff, where our journey treated we thirsty Californians to the rare and wondrous sight of spectacular lightning bolts and rain. Treviño’s SUV seemed to leap with joy at the necessity of windshield wipers, but it was probably hydroplaning as the weather forced us to slow down.


Nonetheless, we made excellent time and arrived at La Posada in Winslow Arizona. As we turned onto Second Street, tourists were taking photos with a bronze sculpture of a man standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. It was a fine sight to see the quaint hotel.

As I walked to my second-floor room I looked at photographs of local men hauling coal from a nearby mine to the railroad, where cars would take the bitumen to a power plant somewhere to be converted into dirty particulate air pollution and non-renewable energy.

La Posada wasn’t welcoming to one visitor, who was having a bad day. “That’s the way it is, John,” I heard one of five cops tell a fellow as I carried my luggage past angry confrontation. A few minutes later I watched from my window as John was catching a ride somewhere.



TTBF Reaffirming Inclusive Values

Last week, La Bloga-Tuesday had the immense honor of sharing a community’s restrained outrage that the Texas Teen Book Festival had omitted raza writers and books from the 2016 iteration of this important event scheduled for October 1 in Austin.

El pueblo was definitely browned out by their exclusion from TTBF. Yet, the letter-writers composed with dignity, maturity, and honor, seeking rapprochement rather than rebellion. Their voices of reason made a difference and were met with open eyes and ears at the TTBF.


It’s a pleasure to share the following announcement from TTBF’s website: 

We are beyond excited to announce that we have scored FOUR more amazing authors to add to our 2016 #TTBF lineup! So, ready your reading list for an update, and add four more great books to those pre-fest reading goals! Today we celebrate the addition of Guadalupe Garcia McCall, author of Shame the Stars; Joe Jiménez, author of Bloodline; Rene S. Perez II, author of Seeing Off the Johns; & Isabel Quintero, author of the award winning Gabi, A Girl in Pieces and recipient of the first annual Barrio Writers Featured Author Sponsorship, given this year in partnership with the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award!

El pueblo responds again. Sarah Rafael Garcia, who organized the letter-writing campaign, reports her email inbox is bulging with letters from gente expressing appreciation for TTBF’s response.

La Bloga-Tuesday shares these next week.

For today, here is a pair of responses from the community to the news. Please visit TTBF’s website for additional developments of a Barrio Writers Workshop and extended programming.

Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros
Texas Teen Book Festival,

Thank you for listening ears and a quick response to our concerns. I grew up reading nothing but white writers until I was in college. Palo Alto College was the first place I was introduced to and read any Latinx author. Had I not gone to college, I may have missed out. And too many of us do.

I don’t want my daughters to grow up in a world where they don’t see themselves in reputable positions such as academia and literature, especially and more importantly, in our own state. It is not lost on me that this does not happen often. Our inclusion is something we always fight for, incessantly and loudly. We are born with this fight.

We appreciate your attentiveness and the four new authors you’ve chosen. You went right into the heart of our neighborhoods and chose a Barrio Writer. Bravo! Then, you invited the Barrio Writers to host a writing workshop. That is community in action.

I didn’t plan to attend the TTBF. That has changed. I’m elated to bring my family and invite my community.

Gracias,

/signed/

Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros
Mother and poet
San Antonio, Texas

Hugo Esteban Rodríguez
One of the greatest allies we could have in the push for diversity are people that listen to concerns and take decisive action to address these concerns. So I am here joining my fellow Latinx writers and poets in thanking the Texas Teen Book Festival and its sponsors for their recent decision to add four fantastic Latin@/Chican@ writers to their author list and a BarrioWriters workshop to the event.

The TTBF didn’t faux-pologize or tell people “you’re wrong, how dare you?” They said: “We are hearing your concerns, and you’re right, we need to change things.”

It shows me two things: One, engaging in constructive criticism and dialogue can bring about positive change. Two, the people (Texas Book Festival and BookPeople) running the show are truly concerned and are very receptive and welcoming of change.
They have my praise and my thanks, and I look forward to a continued dialogue about diversity in young adult literature. I know that the concerns all of us writers have about YA lit are concerns that are best addressed through unity. After all, la unión hace la fuerza.

Hugo Esteban Rodríguez, Houston-based writer and poet
www.dosaguilas.org

Mail bag
Emerging Writers $10 Opportunity to Emerge
PEN Center USA offers a fellowship application with an upcoming deadline. There's a ten dollar fee to apply. Here's an email from the fellowship coordinator.
It's Ronisha, PEN Center USA's Emerging Voices Fellowship Program Outreach Coordinator. I emailed you recently about the Emerging Voices Fellowship application. The August 1st deadline is rapidly approaching and we would like to give potential applicants enough time to apply.

Would you be interested in sharing information about our mentorship program in order to help find the next Emerging Voices Fellows? We are looking for diverse and underrepresented voices without MFAs. You can find the application here https://emerging-voices.submittable.com/submit/53291

131 writers have successfully completed the fellowship since its inception in 1996, including writers like Natashia Deón and Cynthia Bond. Mentors have included such well-known talents as Sherman Alexie, Aimee Bender, Harryette Mullen, and Ron Carlson. We are not seeking paid advertisement but welcome you to feature the Emerging Voices Fellowship in your blog, journal, or magazine.

By supporting our search, you are simultaneously supporting PEN Center USA's mission to defend freedom of expression and championing voices that would otherwise not be heard. We truly appreciate your help. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Best,
Ronisha Hayden
Program Outreach Coordinator
Emerging Voices Fellowship
PEN Center USA
PO Box 6037
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
ronisha@penusa.org
Phone: 1.323.424.4939 ext. 1007
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La artista neomexicana Anita Rodríguez escribió el peculiar libro de memorias Coyota in the Kitchen (Coyota en la cocina), donde el pasado cobra vida con la hábil incorporación de los sentidos. Publicada por la editorial de la Universidad de Nuevo México en la serie Querencias, la obra combina historias y recuerdos de infancia con recetas y estampas pictóricas y meditaciones sobre identidad.

Melinda Palacio




Last night, I watched the culmination of the Democratic National Convention. I'm sure glad I finally acquired a television set. It's been a few years since I've had tv, but I've gotten so used to being clueless as to what shows are popular that I might as well not have a set taking up 18 plus inches in my living room. Clinton was the first President I voted for and Clinton will be the first female President I vote for. I had planned on posting an interview an editor for this week, but all the parts are not yet in my mailbox so I will share a poem that I wrote over a year ago after hearing President Obama's eulogy for Reverend Pinckney last June. One of the videos this week, reminded me of the poem. Sometimes a word or an image will remind me of a poem that I have tucked away in a notebook or on my computer. This one was easy to find.

Review: Rudolfo Anaya. The Sorrows of Young Alfonso. Norman: UofOklahoma Press, 2016.
ISBN: 9780806152264 0806152265

Michael Sedano

There are stories within stories within stories in Rudolfo Anaya’s newest novel, The Sorrows of Young Alfonso. There’s the story of Alfonso the author, the title character. There’s the story of Agapita and the llano. There’s the story of the letter-writer in this epistolary novel. But more than any of those there’s the story of how one writer’s mind works, and because that writer is his generation’s most acclaimed author, The Sorrows of Young Alfonso takes its place as Rudolfo Anaya’s most rewarding work.

Here is a work that challenges casual reading. Complex, philosophical, engaging, The Sorrows of Young Alfonso will send readers back and forth through its pages, finding linkages, allusions, references, familiar ideas in new forms, new ideas in familiar forms. Above all, “sorrow” is synonymous with memory, some good, some painful. All of Alfonso’s sorrows—memories—are a way of reminding readers that memories make up our soul, that remembering is a way of recreating one's soul.

As with any novel, there’s the overlying story of the reader and the book. For readers, The Sorrows of Young Alfonso spills out in a stream-of-consciousness that requires attention, and perhaps, patience. The latter reflects the underlying story of the workings of a keen mind pulling together disparate memories of a literary life, revisiting ideas, memories, crafting a character’s soul while addressing the nature of memory and the writer’s own soul.

The story of Alfonso, the author, takes the form of an epistolary recounting. An unidentified voice addresses the similarly unidentified “K”. Whether K is an admirer, a relative, a scion, remains unspecified. Only that K is someone who deserves the letter-writer’s promise to relate Alfonso’s story. It’s a story told as if Alfonso is somehow absent from K’s world, perhaps dead, perhaps simply retired and out of touch.

The persona of the letter-writer offers a story in itself. Alfonso’s life-long companion who speaks authoritatively about Alfonso’s birth, whose memories contain Alfonso’s youth on the llano, high school, and university years. A voice who knows the sorrows of the title so intimately that the voice and Alfonso meld into the same person.

“K, my mother was like Alfonso’s mother, Catholic to the core. I identify with Alfonso; we had the same upbringing. As I write these letters, I become Alfonso. I am Alfonso.” 63

There remains a mystery around whether such intimate knowledge developed from experience or was gleaned in long hours sitting around in a bar or college dorm, good friends philosophizing their way out of dogma only to find themselves in a welter of challenging ideas.

At one point, the narrator identifies “Dennis” as Alfonso’s best friend. The writer raises Dennis’ name, then drops the person entirely from the narrative. Still, “Dennis, his best friend,” lingers in the reader’s mind; is the letter-writer this Dennis? Only four people would know what pleasures the college men enjoyed with the pizza shop girls, the women--whose names escape memory--and Alfonso and Dennis. Only Dennis would know that Alfonso’s greatest sorrow—losing his faith—would have developed during those late-night philosophical discussions. The letter writer, it turns out, is not Dennis. In the final letters, Anaya finally discloses the identity of the correspondent.

The story of Alfonso the author is very much the story of Anaya, the author. The narrator reveals how Alfonso wrote a book called Ultima, that it won El Premio Quinto Sol. The heart of Alfonso’s story is his second mother, the old woman of the llano, Agapita. Ultima and Agapita are two different people, though they share a thirst for nurturing boys in mind and spirit to ground them in the llano and the stories of their gente.

Agapita’s immense role gives this novel standing as Anaya’s literary autobiography. As when the letter-writer begins telling K about Agapita, it is as if time folds back upon itself so that Ultima and Agapita must exist simultaneously but distinctly:

“Who was Agapita? Was she just another name from those blessed names of long ago? Was she just another curandera? . . . . You know Ultima’s story. Fonso’s little book became quite well known. So I’m just trying to fill out the story, give it flesh as they say.” 61

Agapita and Ultima occupy the same mythic and literary space in the life of Anaya’s characters. Not as if Anaya feels driven to revisit his most successful character—or that the character insists on resurrection in this autobiography-like book. The Sorrows of Young Alfonso illustrate the workings of this writer’s mind, dealing with unfinished business, obligated to create, to write, at liberty to pass from idea to inspiration to focus and dissolution, and ultimately big ideas and profound thoughts.

Anaya unfolds the story in a spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment structure, alluding to incidents then divagating into some historical or cultural dissertation that seems to wander afar. Sometimes it does, but then the incident comes roaring into attention as the reader finally sees the connections that exist within the moments of memory.

Readers will find this on every page, informing every incident tiny or major. One of Alfonso’s seven sorrows, a crippling accident, comes as an aside on page 21, amid an allegory of a wheel of fortune, and the anti-randomness of el destino. “Martin, Alfonso’s father, believed that Fonso’s accident was the working of destiny.” Readers haven't learned of an accident yet, only now learning that one is coming.

Next a discussion of destiny and God’s will leads to a narrative concerning snakes, passing trains and the people inside them. There's Agapita’s magic, Ash Wednesday, La Llorona, a boy who breaks his neck diving into a water tank. These wrap into a connection between La Llorona, Medea, and video games.

The next letter talks about the boy who died in the watertank—water for the steam engines—then leads into a train-chasing game the boys play. The letter outlines how Alfonso’s hand gets caught on a speeding car and in the moment a hand and foot are mangled and the boy becomes a cripple.  Other memories intercede until twenty pages on, the story of the accident is fleshed out.

Agnes’ story is another sorrow that works itself slowly into being. This is likely Alfonso’s greatest sorrow, despite the narrator’s claim that his loss of faith was that. One’s first love holds a permanent space in memory, its absence an even bigger hole.

As the story of the injured boy’s recuperation develops, a fleeting mention of Agnes piques a reader’s curiosity. The familia has moved into a pueblo where Martin can find work and the boy improved schooling. The atomic bomb shakes schoolchildren's world. K’s correspondent says their names:

“June of the blue eyes. Agnes, who drowned. Mary Lou. Lydia, his cousin. Sadie he had kissed in the supply closet. Lloyd he always beat at marbles. Horse and Bones who were always so rough with him. Kiko, his fishing buddy. Bobby, Tony, Manuel, Chris, Abel, Red, Ernie, Ramon…” 80

The bomb, playground sports with a crippled hand and foot, then romance blossoms. Agnes reappears. She takes his crippled hand—no one but Agapita had touched it—and they walk to her home. Later they will swim in isolated places, lie naked in the warming sun. “Agnes was a creature of nature, as he was, a blessing.” The letter-writer adds, “Their days together make my story worthwhile.” Here is unparalleled joy, its loss unparalleled pain.

The narrative delivers an account of the river, of the pueblo Santa Rosa de Lima, how its name alludes to a miraculous curing of cripples, Alfonso sees the golden carp, Alfonso dives into shallow water and breaks his neck, watches himself drowning in an out-of-body experience.

The account fast-forwards to university days, ponders the formation of one’s soul, the power of curses and the presence of evil. Agapita cures Raphaelita from curse. The book’s most significant question builds from a bowl of menudo, and fond memories:

“Is soul memory? If soul is eternal, so is memory. . . . Are we merely repeating a life that has been lived before in other forms? In other places?” 107

Forty pages after first reading Agnes’ name, interrupted by the river, the soul, the fateful dive, Agnes is swept away by the river, her body found six days later, taken by La Llorona, the Coco Man, el Cucuy. “Now Agnes had become a spirit, a mermaid, a Persephone of the historic Pecos River that flowed past Santa Rosa de Lima.” Agnes has taken a big piece of Alfonso’s soul with her.

Moments likes these flow like a river out of disjointed time and the letter-writer's memory. The swift current floats huge questions, sustaining dramatic conclusions that will challenge and tempt attentive readers to discuss with friends, to thirst for more information. 

The Sorrows of Young Alfonso offers a richness that Anaya has not crafted before, not like this. The Old Man’s Love Story and Randy Lopez Go Home, masterpieces in their own right, make a deeply satisfying trilogy with Young Alfonso. Readers should complete all three as a set.

A story told in a book is finished only because a book has a first page and a last page. Alfonso's story, however, is continuous, it existed before page one, and continues after the final. Reading the trilogy is a way of linking the story emotionally and an avenue to greater understanding of this capstone work of Anaya’s art.

The Sorrows of Young Alfonso is a book that isn’t finished, still in the process of unfolding and spilling off the author’s hands. But a publisher is an unyielding power, pages have to fit between covers to reach booksellers and eventually, a reader’s hands. This is what we have for now, a capstone work, until Rudolfo A. Anaya’s duende and ever-renewing soul leads his pen to gift us with the continuation of young, and old, Alfonso’s sorrows. By the way, Rudolfo Anaya’s middle name is Alfonso.



Texas Teen Book Fest: Letters of Appreciation.

In recent weeks, La Bloga has spotlighted what appeared a travesty in Texas. A book festival that appeared deliberately to exclude raza writers and Young Adult books from a literary festival for teenagers.

In a delighting change of policy, the organizers of the Texas Teen Book Festival reversed course, invited the founder of Barrio Writers to a parley and meeting of minds. As a result, several authors have been invited to the festival, and TTBF scheduled a workshop for young writers, to be organized by Sarah Rafael Garcia, founder of Barrio Writers.

The Texas Teen Book Fest deserves recognition for opening its doors and reaffirming principles of openness, diversity, and inclusion. Several letter-writers do just that.

Sarah Rafael García
In a time when our society is divided by racial politics and a complex presidential race, it’s important to find a way to exchange dialogue, critical-thinking and build common ground for our youth and community. It’s also important to know the difference between establishing equity versus portraying diversity. I’m grateful to have such a conversation with the Texas Teen Book Festival (TTBF) organizers. Although the TTBF is a small event in comparison to the national headlines, I feel the dialogue we established will help build common ground in Austin, Texas. There is still a lot of work to be done and I’m excited Barrio Writers will be a part of it. Now some of the responsibility also lies on me, I hope to engage more folks, especially people of color, to join us, attend the TTBF, and promote more diverse books. With all of this in mind, the TTBF has the opportunity to influence young minds to think critically and beyond their own race and culture—with the addition of Mexican American authors to this year’s TTBF line up more young readers can open a book, find themselves in it and see their role models on and off the page.

—Sarah Rafael García
First Generation Graduate, Author, and Barrio Writers Founder
Santa Ana, California


Manny Galaviz
Dear Texas Teen Book Festival Organizing Committee,
I want to commend you on the new partnerships with Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award, Barrio Writers, and Red Salmon Arts for the Texas Teen Book Festival. As a first generation Mexican American graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, I am pleased to see authors such as Guadalupe Garcia McCall, Joe Jiménez, Rene S. Perez II, and Isabel Quintero on the 2016 line-up. I am also pleased and excited to see that Barrio Writers will provide a writing workshop. Thank you for providing space for Mexican American authors, community organizations, and for demonstrating that indeed the Texas Teen Book Festival supports diversity.

Best,
Manny Galaviz
--
Manuel Guadalupe Galaviz
Graduate Student
Department of Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin
https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/anthropology/graduate/profile.php?id=mgg978


liz gonzález
In 1971, I was ten years old, and Island of the Blue Dolphins was my favorite book. It was the only book I knew of with a protagonist who was a little brown girl, like me. Although I read other good novels as I was growing up, I often returned to Island because visiting Karana was like coming home. Until my adulthood, it remained the only book I could find with a character that reflected me.

Fortunately, today, young people of color have many books to choose from with protagonists that reflect them--and by authors of color! Now, because of the additions to the Texas Teen Book Festival 2016, teens of color can learn about these books and see some of the authors speak. This, and the opportunity to participate in the Barrio Writers workshop, will be a valuable experience for them. For some, it will be life changing.

These additions will benefit everyone attending the festival, for we learn about people who are different from us through books.

Thank you for having your festival reflect the population in the great state of Texas. Your festival will be more inclusive and magnificent!

Thank you!

liz gonzález
Writer and Educator


Cristian Dominguez
I am so thankful that there is more diversity. More Latinos means more fun. People just need more diversity, and when they bring it together, it makes a fun loving place. Also, I forgot to mention that I am proud that Barrio Writers is partnered with Texas Teen Book Festival. It brightens my day because I am a Barrio Writer. Thank you so much!

—Cristian Dominguez, 13 year-old Barrio Writer in Austin, Tejas


Latino Family Book Fair Coming to Los Angeles


The festival site is adjacent to La Placita and Olvera Street, one of the founding commercial centros of historic Los Angeles. Only a short walk from Union Station, public transportation makes sense for families attending the festival and discussions.

Vendor applications are open and available at this link.



The National Hispanic Cultural Center has begun a renewal process with new staff leadership and a host of attractive programs. Visit NHCC's website for details of the August 7 reception for its new exhibition "The Art of Acquisition: New New Mexican Works at the NHCC", as well as tours of the Art Museum's collections.

by Ernest Hogan




Part of the Wild and Wooly West Books series from Filter Press of Palmer Lake, Colorado. 1978 was on the title page. The copyright was 1968. The illustrations were from de Baca's 1896 Spanish account. The last page dates “the present writing” at 1938.

This puts the story of Vicente Silva well before Hollywood, and the “bandito” stereotype. Maybe it's one of the sources.

Silva isn't romanticized. There's no Robin Hood shades to his image in the manner of Billy the Kid. He was a mean guy, who liked money and had a genius of organizing ways of getting it, and he didn't have anything against killing anybody who got in the way.



They robbed and killed across Northern New Mexico, and were the reason for the creation of the Sociedad de Mutua Proteccion Unido (Society of Mutual Protection), a group along the lines of the Vigilantes of California.

It's hard to like Silva or his gang – de Baca uses the then-new term “gangster” to describe them -- so it's no surprise that American pop culture hasn't celebrated him. He was more a villain than hero, and was eventually killed by his own men.

And the criminal career of his gang went on afterwards. Prices were on their heads, and people collected – a Manuel C. de Baca, received $30,000.00 for his part in the investigations -- and the gangsters “walked the thirteen steps” and “have gone to face the Great Judge.”

Except for El Moro, AKA Martin Gonzalez y Blea, who ended up in the New Mexico State Hospital for the Insane at Las Vegas, New Mexico where, “At times he seems to live again the scenes of his horrible crimes, his awful wailing through the long night, sticking terror to the helpless inmate of the somber institution.”

The story would make good material for a western, echoing that crime does not pay.

But then I remember how my father would quote his grandfather, who was a genuine New Mexico cowboy, that who the good guys and bad guys were depended on who was in power.

Or maybe the election is getting to me.

Ernest Hogan is a law-abiding citizen who wrote High Aztechand Cortez on Jupiter.