Daniel Cano

I wanted to know what my mother remembered of Mexico or at least what she had heard about it. She was born in Santa Monica, California, in 1926. She told me that she thought her mother had taken her twice to visit the family ranch in Mexico as a child. The she went again, reluctantly, in her late teens, after spending three years in Olive View Hospital.


When she was about thirteen, my mother was misdiagnosed with tuberculosis. In the 1940s, doctors didn’t always take the time necessary to examine children carefully or correctly diagnose the disease that afflicted so many poor, young Mexican, and lower-class kids. Considered a highly contagious disease, many children and adults ended up in sanitariums, isolated from society.

Complete and total rest in a dry climate was the most common cure. My mother told me, “What should have been my best years of my life, I spent at Olive View.” Then thinking, she added, “It wasn’t until I was an adult that a doctor who examined my lungs told me, I’d never had tuberculosis. The doctors had made a mistake.”

When she was finally released from Olive, she tried to make up for lost time. She finished high school, worked at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills, went to dances, movies, and beach parties. Mexico or her parents' lives in Mexico were the furthest things from her mind, so when her brother Chuy invited her to visit the family ranch in Mitic, Jalisco, she answered with an emphatic, "No!”
She was about eighteen or nineteen years-old at the time. Chuy was relentless. He insisted, but she had no interest in going to Mexico or in visiting family she didn’t even know. But her oldest brother persisted. She knew he had sacrificed for the family. He left school to work and help support his mother, brother, and sisters after their father’s, untimely, death.

She remembered, “We all worked, but my brother Chuy would leave home, go work in other states, and send my mother his check, every week.”

Her father, Nicolas, was in his forties when he contracted emphysema after working for years in Santa Monica’s brickyards.

My father once told me, “In those days, they didn’t wear masks or any type of protection. They worked in clouds of red dust all day with just hankies over their noses and mouths. They didn’t know they were breathing in pieces of brick. Over time, their lungs just disintegrated. They ended up choking to death.”

My uncle Chuy finally convinced her. Who knows what he promised her. As she spoke to me, and thought about it, she came to realize, as if working through a math problem: "Chuy, my brother," she said, chuckling, "had lived in Mitic for a few years. He had a girlfriend there. I didn't know then, and he didn't want my mom to know, and he was taking my mom with him. I guess he figured I could keep my mother distracted while he went to see his girlfriend. But, I think he had a baby, too. He might have even been married but nobody really knew. My brother was private."

Mitic, was a once thriving village until revolutions, revolts, and draughts devastated most of it, sending the people fleeing to San Juan, Aguascalientes, and the United States, many to Santa Monica, where the people from Los Altos de Jalisco had already settled in and around Pico Boulevard and 20th Street, going back to the late 1800s.

I visited Mitic in 2012 and my elder cousin Francisco, and his family still own and work the ranch. The old adobes are gone, replaced by a modern brick home, cows, and the automatic milking machines. In the distance, corn fields and trees cover the hills. Other dairy and cattle ranches dot the landscape. A small river runs adjacent to the property. It is a beautiful ranch, but still, even today, it was a jarring half-hour taxi ride over a pot-holed dirt road from San Gaspar, the closest town. I can only imagine what my mom endured in 1946.

At 18, my mother was fully Americanized and not a hint of Mexican ranch life in her. She wore slacks and blouses, Rita Haworth-style, at a time when ranch women in Mexico wore long, dark dresses down to their ankles.

"They were so poor," she said, referring to her relatives living in Mitic. "All they had to offer us were cooked beans and a little soup."

As my mother spoke, it was as if she had transported herself back into time. She was a teenager again. She said that while her mother stayed with relatives in San Juan, she decided to rough it and stay on the ranch with a young cousin, Patricia, whom she had met.


By the 1940s, the village was nearly deserted, the dirt streets empty, and many of the adobe homes decaying. Mitic had fallen onto difficult times.

"I had to sleep on…not even a bed. It was like a cot, and it nearly rested on the dirt floor."
She told me the house was old, made of adobe and in poor condition. At night when she tried to sleep, she could hear scampering in the house followed by banging noises. Sometime in the early morning, she opened her eyes and saw the face of a large rat staring back at her. She realized the rats were everywhere. It terrified her. The next day she told her mother she could not stay in that house another night. "I felt so bad because I had planned on staying a few nights, but the next day I packed up and left."

What made her departure worse was that she and her cousin Patricia had formed a bond. My mother remembered, “She was about fifteen and very pretty…a beautiful girl."

Patricia asked my mother to stay for her confirmation ceremony, which was coming up soon. My mother said Patricia had confided in her, saying she had nothing nice to wear for the confirmation.
Reluctantly, my mother left the ranch. She and my grandmother stayed with their cousins in San Juan de Los Lagos, while my uncle stayed at the ranch. At the time, San Juan was already a small city and a holy site for hundreds of thousands of pilgrims throughout Mexico who traveled there by bus, car, and on foot. The great Mexican writer Juan Rulfo captured the mystic of San Juan in a short story “Talpa” in his collection “The Burning Plains and Other Stories.”

My mother said her family in San Juan was middle-class. She remembered that one of her aunts was a teacher and college educated, but still their home was very modest. The children, her cousins, all played musical instruments, and she described them as "average" referring to their income. “They were all very friendly but didn’t have much.”

After leaving San Juan, they went to visit relatives in Aguascalientes, a major city, and back in the 40s, hours from San Juan. "Those relatives who lived in Aguascalientes were very, very wealthy."
My mother described how my grandmother's sister had married a banker. The family owned a house with many rooms, the floors covered in Saltillo stone, a courtyard and fountain, and maids to care for the children. These relatives, my mother remembered, were very polite and friendly but a bit reserved, and they were wealthier and more refined than any of the relatives that had come to the U.S., including her own.

As soon as my mom arrived home to Santa Monica, she excitedly told her mother she wanted to buy Patricia a confirmation dress. My mother said she picked the prettiest one she could find. She hoped the dress would fit. She and her cousin were about the same size. She wrapped it, took it to the post office, and sent it to Patricia. She wanted it to surprise her younger cousin.

A few months passed. She heard nothing from Patricia or her parents. Then, after what seemed a long time, my mother received a letter from Patricia's parents. They wrote, telling my mother how much Patricia loved the dress. However, Patricia had become ill not long after my mother’s departure. After a little time, Patricia grew worse, and she died. They thanked my mother for the dress and told her their daughter looked beautiful wearing the dress in the casket.

As she told me this, my mother looked at me and said, her voice cracking, "It was so sad."
I think there was a little tinge in her voice, as if saying, “So you want to know what it was like in Mexico and why our family came to the United States?”

On top of what's left of the Jefferson Davis statue

The winner, Hannah Bonnette. Judges compared her to a Disney princess.

Nancy Staggs, a professional singer judges compared to Natalie Cole.

Kelly Dixon

Toulouse Quartet

Jonathan Marcantoni is committed to Latinx literature, showcasing writers and has a lot of strong, and some would say, controversial opinions. (Perfect for La Bloga, right?) He's a Puerto Rican transplant to the West - living in Colorado. He definitely is all about pushing the envelope on what's considered Latinx literature, and has a critique of Latinx writers and the marketplace. Take a closer look at what he thinks and why. 

Olga García Echeverría

July 31, 2017 marks the five-year anniversary of the passing of nuestra querida amiga, hermana, escritora lésbica and fellow blogera, tatiana de la tierra. Today we pay tribute to her by sharing one of her stories, "Wings," which was originally published in Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class. Ed. Michelle Tea. Emeryville: Seal Press, 2004. 91-96. 

To learn más about tatiana de la tierra or to read more of her amazing work which delves into issues of memory, sexuality, identity, and language, please visit delatierra.net

Diosa Labiosa: tatiana de la tierra

Wings

Placing a pink feather headband in my hand, my Abuelita Blanca kissed me good-bye, crying. I cried, too. I didn’t know why. The perpetually gray Bogotá skies joined in, sprinkling us with cold rain. I ran up the narrow metal staircase as wind bit my wet cheeks, into an airplane that would take me and my family far from Colombia. It was 1968 in May and I had just turned seven years old.

Thick, warm Atlantic air greeted us as we clambered, wide-eyed, out of our metal cocoon. The air in Miami was nothing like the air I knew in the Andean mountains. But being yanked from the love and protection of my aunts, grandmothers and great aunts was the most momentous change. It was bigger than air itself. I walked to the market with them, chit-chatted on the sidewalk, made corn arepas at the crack of dawn, collected eggs in the morning, accompanied them in the evening for hot chocolate. They cooked for me, bought dresses for me, introduced me to all their friends. But in Miami, everybody was a stranger.

At the airport I played with stairs that moved and doors that opened magically. A strange twig of a man who wore ripped denim and spoke halting Spanish greeted us. “Yo aquí para ayudarte,” he said, offering a warm handshake. Harvey was a friend of a friend of my dad’s; they embraced as if they already knew each other. My mom looked at him cautiously through her reddened eyes. Finally, she extended her hand.

Everything seemed brand new and shiny those first few days. All the blades of grass were uniformly green and stood properly on plush manicured lawns. The clean-shaven policemen wore immaculate starched uniforms and drove sleek cars crowned with blue and red domes that sometimes flashed and made wailing noises. Neat rows of containers housing exotic foods filled the spotless stores, where clerks counted crisp bills over Formica counters and gave back the change without stealing. Exquisite paintings graced cereal boxes and cans of soup, and luminous rays emanated from curvy Coca-Cola bottles branded with fire-red labels.

My father took me to a 7-11, where I marveled at the cans decorated with vivid color images of the foods they contained. “This one, Papi,” I said. We both scrutinized the can. It had a picture of reddish brown beans on the label. Beans, a mainstay of our diet, had to be soaked in water the night before and took hours to cook. Yet there they were in the palms of our hands, ready to eat. We went home with the can. My father opened it and heated up the beans with some rice. I could tell they were different; they were watery and didn’t smell right. Still, I brought a spoonful to my mouth. I gagged as the flavor hit my palette. They were sweet. Beans were supposed to be salty and spiced with onions, garlic, tomato, and peppers. They were supposed to be thickened with green plantains. They were not supposed to be sweet or watery.

My mom, who disliked cooking and had little time for it, took advantage of the cheap and instant foods. She went grocery shopping and came home with Kool Aid, white bread, processed cheese, frozen chicken pot pies, sugar-coated cereals, and Hamburger Helper. The Colombian foods I was accustomed to—fresh blackberry juice, farmer’s cheese, Creole potatoes, tamales, and empanadas—quickly became a memory.

But my dad’s hunger for familiar foods roared incessantly. He truly enjoyed eating and cooking and went to great lengths to find magical ingredients. He discovered that you could find fresh coconut milk in the shell, ripe guanabanas, cumin powder and plantains in bodeguitas like La Ideal and Los Pinareños. You could get an entire meal—a bandeja paisa with real arepas—at La Fonda, a Colombian restaurant. One day, my father took the bus and went foraging, his eyes bulging with the thought of Colombian food. He returned late in the afternoon, his shirt splattered with drops of sancocho, his breath greasy from fried empanadas, his belly expanded with sobrebarriga, his fingers sticky with dulce de leche. He was beaming. He brought us avocados, coconuts, yucca, plantains, and Colombian delicacies.

On Saturdays we took the bus to Miami Beach and went swimming by the pier, on the southern tip. There, I dug my toes into the sand and bobbed in the salty ocean. My mom, who was pregnant, sat on the beach and read a book while the rest of us played in the water. We ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with Kool Aid. Once, as a treat, we went to Kentucky Fried Chicken after being at the beach all day. They had a special offer—two pieces of chicken with a biscuit and a small Styrofoam cup of mashed potatoes and gravy for $1.29. We got a special and sat down to share the food. I bit into a drumstick. It was good, crunchy and spicy. But as I swallowed I recalled what happened the day before we left for Miami, and my stomach became queasy.

We were in El Libano, at my great aunt’s house. It was our last day there. I was in the corridor that faced the garden when I saw that Cuki, my favorite chicken, was being hunted down. “Run, Cuki, run!” I screamed as I saw a shiny machete swinging in her direction. I gripped the wooden porch railing as she ran, headless, fluttering her golden brown wings in a futile attempt to levitate. Cuki, who used to peck at my feet when I showered on the patio beneath blue skies, was our last supper. I missed her, and I missed the black earth that caked my feet when I played in my great aunt’s garden.

Our first home in our new world was a room in Harvey’s house. Blond, blue-eyed and eccentric, Harvey slept on the beach, washed dishes for a living, and drank rainwater that he collected in an oxidized metal container in the back yard. He nourished himself on tropical concoctions, blending whole papayas with fish guts and honey. Restaurant napkins for toilet paper and roadside-discarded produce for dinner were his gifts. He taught my mom to walk on the grass to extend the life of shoe soles. He came home every few days to drink the rainwater, wash up and change clothes. Harvey didn’t believe in pesticides so roaches crawled freely on the walls and even on us. He didn’t believe in banks or the government, either. His living-room library was stocked with books about politics, anthropology and history. He let us live in his house for free, until we could afford to rent a place on our own.

Another Colombian family soon joined us, moving into the room across the hall. The coziness of our home disappeared with the violent intrusion of our new neighbors. José Miguel was my dad’s military companion from Colombia. He was a construction worker, thick and muscular, who wore a constant snarl on his face and stank of liquor. His wife, Irma, took care of us while my parents worked. My mom came home earlier than expected one day. My brother and sister and I were cowering in our room as José Miguel beat Irma. Their little girls, Nubia and Cacallo, were screaming throughout the house. My mom grabbed a broomstick and busted in on him. “Bestia!” she yelled, leading a sobbing Irma into our room.

The scenes repeated like tired reruns. When José Miguel wasn’t home we were free to run and play, but as soon as we heard his boots step into the house, we froze. “¡Chito!” we warned each other, walking on tiptoes, trying to be invisible.

But not everything was bad because I was with my brother, Gustavo Alberto, and my sister, Claudia. They were my only friends. The three of us walked around the neighborhood together, marveling at the gringo houses and the gringo lawns and the gringo postman and the gringo talk. Gone were the mountains that ringed Bogotá, the matriarchs in the countryside, the gamines who begged for money on the street, the fresh air. We didn’t understand why we had left Colombia or what the future held for us. So we did what we knew how to do, no matter where we were. We played. We ran and kicked bottles, climbed trees, played tag. We dueled as cowboys and Indians. I wore my pink feather headband and protected my tribe. My brother brandished his miniature machete. My sister was the village elder, scheming to outwit the troops.

In August, three months after our arrival, my little sister was born. Natasha came home in a white wicker crib that my mom had bought used for $1.50. Cushioned with a new white satin pad and lined with pink balloons floating in flannel, the crib wobbled on uneven legs. Natasha, who was conceived in Colombia, was the only U.S. citizen in my family. She was a real gringa and even had golden hair. She was my life size doll. I changed her diapers, prepared her bottles, and cradled her in my arms.
My childhood had come to a close. Summer was ending and school was about to start. Irma found a job and couldn’t take care of us any more. My mom worked as a maid in the Tudor Hotel in Miami Beach and my dad worked in a paper factory. I was the oldest, so my responsibilities increased. I began to cook, clean, and take care of my siblings. I became a miniature adult. “Wash that plate!” I scolded. “Clean up that mess!” I nagged. But my commands were never responded to in the way that I expected.

If we hadn’t left Bogotá I would still be wearing my gray uniform to school and learning to pray the rosary. I would come home to my mom and play outside and do my homework and have arroz con lentejas for dinner. I would be a seven-year-old girl, just like all the others. But Bogotá grew distant every day. After four months in Miami it seemed that we were there for good.

School was an enclosed city surrounded by banyan trees and hibiscus bushes where I became indoctrinated into another people’s culture. Gimnasio Palestina, my first grade school in Bogotá, was a private school in a small brick building. But Shadow Lawn Elementary took up an entire block. It was made of concrete and had dozens of classrooms, a cafeteria, a gymnasium and a playground. In Bogotá my school had one class and one teacher, but in Miami there were hundreds of students, many teachers, and a principal. I was the only light-skinned girl in my class and one of the few Spanish speakers in the entire school. I couldn’t speak English and was just beginning to understand some of the words.

I sat in silence at my desk with a thick pad of baby-blue-lined paper and a yellow number two pencil that had been given to me for free on the first day of school. Mrs. Clara sent students to the chalkboard to write words that she dictated. She called on me; I stood at the front, looking at my feet, frozen. She read her list: ocean, river, stream. I fingered the chalk and she repeated the words, eventually chanting them as if they were commands. “Ocean! River! Stream!” I didn’t even attempt to write on the board; I went back to my desk, my fingertips dusted with white chalk.

I dreaded those public moments that highlighted the fact that I was a foreigner. Sometimes I sat at my desk, plotting my revenge. I would master the English language. I would infiltrate the gringo culture without letting on that I was a traitor. I would battle in their tongue and make them stumble. I would cut out their souls and leave them on the shore to be pecked on by vultures.

One pivotal afternoon, I squirmed in my seat. I had an itch between my legs like a red-hot ant bite. Finally, I arched my hand toward the ceiling to ask for permission to go to the bathroom. Mrs. Clara looked at me; I knew no words to express my state of emergency. I pointed to the door; she stared back blankly. The whole class looked on. I grabbed my crotch, squeezed and grimaced. Finally, she understood, but as I darted out of the room, warm pee exploded between my legs, trickling into my socks, and splashing in droplets on the floor. I ran out of school, my moist shoes pounding on the speckled tile, squeaky drum beats echoing in the corridor.

Past the banyan tree by the playground and through the neighboring streets, I sprinted as if being pursued. I ran with the inside of my legs soiled, wet and sticky with urine, sucking oxygen into my bursting lungs with wrenching gulps. I wished that the stiff metal airplane that had ripped me from my home would just take me back. Pumping my arms, I wished for silver angel wings that glided or long broad eagle wings that soared. But I knew that my flapping was useless.






Born in Villavicencio, Colombia and raised in Miami, Florida, tatiana de la tierra was a bicultural writer whose work focused on identity, sexuality, and South American memory and reality. She completed a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso and a Master of Library Science from University at Buffalo. tatiana was a founder, editor, and contributor to the Latina lesbian publications esto no tiene nombre, conmoción and la telaraña. She is the author of For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology / Para las duras: Una fenomenología lesbiana, Xia y las cien mil siernas, and the chapbooks Porcupine Love and Other tales from My Papaya, Píntame Una Mujer Peligrosa, tierra 2010: poems, songs, and a little blood, and Pajarito, pajarito, régalame una canción. She passed away in Long Beach on July 31, 2012.  For more on tatiana and her work visit delatierra.net 

Review: Rudolfo Anaya, Francisco A. Lomelí, Enrique R. Lamadrid, eds. Aztlán: Essays on the Chicano Homeland. Revised and Expanded Edition.  Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2017.
isbn 978-0-8263-5675-8

Michael Sedano


What if we wanted to climb
To the mountains
And seek lakes of serpents
And eagles hunting
In the carrizales



You can’t run and try to hide away
Here it comes, here comes another day
You can’t run to try to hide away
Here it comes, here comes another day
Where you are, never really far away
Good morning Aztlán


Aztlán is in the hearts of our Chicanos



From the emergent stirrings of movimiento consciousness in the late 1960s continuing into the 21st century, raza art has found rich resources in an edenic vision of our separate genesis in a place named Aztlán. Like the primordial land Alurista describes, Aztlán stands for a vision of purity free even from Original Sin. We’re still in Aztlán, Los Lobos observe, only today living the rat race bedevils our lost and ruined homeland.

Through poetry and song, Aztlán gained rhetorical potency as a source of identification and inclusion. A separate Eden supported the movement’s underlying sense of Peoplehood. The place expressed counterstatement to exclusionary attitudes infecting la raza’s historical context. Few things are as useful as a powerful idea. Aztlán quickly escaped the chapbooks and found its way into scholarly considerations.

The first anthology of these academic speculations titled Aztlán appeared in 1989. © renewed in 1991, the landmark title signalled the apex of Aztláncentric scholarship in its time. Now the University of New Mexico Press has published a 2017 update to the original anthology. Edited by Rudolfo Anaya, Francisco A. Lomelí, and Enrique R. Lamadrid, the volume includes new essays as well as dusting off the old standards of Aztlánian scholarship.

This is an important book, equivalent, I think, to the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, though of course, focused on that single seminal idea. The contents divide into four themes: Aztlán as Myth and Historical Conscience; Historicizing the Dialectics of Aztlán; Redefining Aztlán as a Discursive Concept; and closes with Comparative Applications of Aztlán.

As a reformed scholar, I couldn’t prevent myself from first reading Francisco Lomelí’s Introducton. An accomplished scholar, Lomelí’s essay reads easily and is packed with details every scholar or grad student will eagerly note. For less intense readers, I’d begin with Rudolfo Anaya’s elegant—what else would one expect?—discursive analysis in Chapter 1. Ever the writer of fiction, Anaya’s opening paragraphs visualize the 1960s naming ceremony raza conducted when we took Aztlán as the name of our homeland.  I was in the Army and missed it.

The author of Bless Me, Ultima, where boundaries between myth and actuality propel the story, argues for the value of blurring the lines in social science, writing “Aztlán is real because myth is real, we argued. Aztlán was potential because it was a place of prophecy. Migrating groups of Asians, in the process of becoming indigenous Americans, had settled in Aztlán. There they evolved new levels of spiritual orientation to cosmos, earth, and community. . . . so it happened to these tribes of Native Americans…they created a covenant with their gods, and from there they moved south to Mexico to complete the prophecy.”

Anaya sees a magical conecta between story and subject, how belonging and place are the same, posits an arguable genetic historicity, and illustrates a literary continuity between this recent expression and Alurista’s image of “Eagles, hunting in the carrizales” of some primordial Eden.

People like me who do not spend a lot of time in nonfiction will want to parcel out their reading, leaf through and read paragraphs at random. Select one of any provocative title in the ToC and read that essay. There’s a rhythm and often self-constricted style to scholarly scribbling that eventually releases its hold on a reader’s comfort. After that sets in, essays are more readily digested.

“On the other hand, the terms Chicana and Chicano identify a subjectivity marked by a heritage and culture distinct from and devalued by Euro-American society. The interplay between these two meanings of the terms Chicana and Chicano is complex and not at all resolved. Although the claims for Chicano cultural agency have been to a greater or lesser degree effective, their translation into social empowerment has been largely unsuccessful.”

That’s all true, and perspicacious. But dang, that’s a lot of syntax! When the going gets tough, I imagine one of these scholars standing at a lectern reading the piece verbatim.

This is not to single out Rafael Pérez-Torres, he’s a fine academic writer, along with his colleagues filling the 424 pages of 10-point type. Thankfully, the designer allows merciful line spacing so my weak eyes can read without too much squinting. There's a lot of information on the page that only a practiced academic skimmer will capture. Thankfully, the subject compels interest and one attends carefully to the sentences.

One of the book’s most useful voices comes with the closing theme that examines critical and racist responses to the advocacy for a separate origin in Aztlán. I find the antepenultimate chapter by Lee Bebout particularly useful. These final essays offer a sobering perspective on the place of Aztlán when it’s not “in the hearts of our Chicanos” as a misremembered poet sings. Bebout collects evidence of wingnut reactionaries pushing back against the joyousness of something of our own.

Bebout draws some material from pop culture, pendejos like Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, and the entire state of Arizona legislature. The Arizona State professor of English, did his homework, assembling disparate materials from novels to scholarly sources to craft a strong analysis in reasonable and clear language.

“Buchanan simultaneously narrates and delegitimizes Mexico’s historical grievances. He does this in several ways. First, he recognizes that the United States did take half of Mexico’s territory, but he also repeatedly notes Mexico’s ineffective rule and the “unsettled” nature of those lands. This notion of a vast, empty frontier may of course be surprising to the Mexican and Native peoples whose ancestors lived for centuries in those territories.”

I can see movimiento organizers outlining that and other chapters as notes for a teach-in preparing supporters with effective talking points. Informed argument rarely fails to claim a rhetorical advantage in our increasingly confrontative market-place of ideas.

Fittingly, the editors allow the final two words to Alurista and Sergio Elizondo. Inspiring as Elizondo’s closing words are, I might have given the ultimate pages to Alurista, who one evening told me he “invented” Aztlán. I had just told him that Adán y Eva’s last name was Sedano, and people’s last names showed how distant they’d traveled from the purity of Original Sin, but he was OK being an Urista. While he may have invented Aztlán, my familia owned it. I’m not sure he fully dug the broma.

The book’s 20 chapters would serve effectively as the textbook for an introductory course in Chicana Chicano Studies, at any level. This is challenging stuff for lower division kids, or a gift for departing frosh. Welcome to college kids, here are some ideas to hash around.

Aztlán makes an ideal starting point for graduate students launching a career in ideas. In the collection readers have a model of what scholarly books want to be, accessible to general readers, but more importantly, interesting.

The title, one of UNM Press’ Querencia Series, will be available through a local bookseller who will order it from the publisher. You can go publisher-direct via the publisher’s website (link),

• Hardcover:368 pages
• Publisher:Cinco Puntos Press (January, 2018)
• Language:English
• ISBN-10:1941026710
• ISBN-13:978-1941026717

Winner Announced for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing

From Restless Books:

Dear readers,



Grace Talusan Wins 2017 Restless Books Prize
Grace Talusan has been named the winner of the 2017 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing for her book The Body Papers. In their citation, the judges called The Body Papers "a remarkable memoir" that trains "an unflinching eye on the most delicate and fraught contours of her own life as an immigrant and survivor of trauma and illness.... The Body Papers may be Grace Talusan’s debut, but it is the considered, artful work of one who has been processing these experiences with the diligence and courage of a true writer." Talusan is a Fulbright Fellow and a graduate of the MFA Program in Writing at the University of California, Irvine.

Author’s Statement on The Body Papers

[from the publisher] 
 In 1926 a young Peruvian woman picked up a gun, wrested her infant daughter from her husband, and liberated herself from the constraints of a patriarchal society. Magda Portal, a poet and journalist, would become one of Latin America’s most successful and controversial politicians. In this richly nuanced portrayal of Portal, historian Myrna Ivonne WallaceFuentes chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of this prominent twentieth-century revolutionary within the broader history of leftist movements, gender politics, and literary modernism in Latin America.

An early member of bohemian circles in Lima, La Paz, and Mexico City, Portal distinguished herself as the sole female founder of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA). A leftist but non-Communist movement, APRA would dominate Peru’s politics for five decades. Through close analysis of primary sources, including Portal’s own poetry, correspondence, and other writings, Most Scandalous Woman illuminates Portal’s pivotal work in creating and leading APRA during its first twenty years, as well as her efforts to mobilize women as active participants in political and social change. Despite her successes, Portal broke with APRA in 1950 under bitter circumstances. Wallace Fuentes analyzes how sexism in politics interfered with Portal’s political ambitions, explores her relationships with family members and male peers, and discusses the ramifications of her scandalous love life.

In charting the complex trajectory of Portal’s life and career, Most Scandalous Woman reveals what moves people to become revolutionaries, and the gendered limitations of their revolutionary alliances, in an engrossing narrative that brings to life Latin American revolutionary politics.

Myrna Ivonne Wallace Fuentes, born in Guatemala, is an Associate Professor of History at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia.

Back To School Time is Volunteer Time
Michael Sedano

Here comes another school year. Education policy failures will roll downhill in coming months in the form of shrinking money, eliminated programs, walking papers to beloved members of school communities, classroom crowding, disillusioned professionals. The schools are up against it, but they’re not in it alone. Not if you are retired or between jales. You can volunteer.

Money helps, of course,  as do reams of paper and Post-it notes. The most valuable commodity anyone has is their time. Write a check drawn on your free time, no penalty for overdrawing. Maybe you’re a former Boy Scout and you owe a decade’s worth of daily good turns. Maybe you simply want to help a kid become a capable reader. Maybe math and science are your métier. Maybe you could move chairs around and clean off bulletin boards.

Young people keep old people alive. Used to be, I walked past the joyous noises of the nearby school playground. Kid screams and games easily dumped me into reverie of my own playground days. But that’s as far as I got, reverie. Then I learned on social media that Reading Partners offered an organized approach to volunteering at that school and in a short while I was signed up and scheduled.

I got to be a Reading Partner twice a week last school year. I drew a fourth grade boy who lagged behind his classmates., but he has a good mind. He wants to read better, that is clear. The Reading Partners structured curriculum moved him along from making sounds to making sense of stories, summarizing orally and in writing. The boy grew confident in his skill and by the end of the year he was walking in and out of the classroom with his head held high and a sense of accomplishment.

And I didn't have to pay for that reward. Neither would you. It’s free. And there's that immediate gratification that comes of seeing a kid learn. Reading fluency begins with time, people sitting with a kid for extended time, listening to the kid practice, or reading a story while the kid follows along. In no time at all the kid becomes an achiever.

While my local school had Reading Partners, an Americorps program, your school might have its own volunteer program. Finding your local equivalent for Reading Partners is a simple matter of phoning a local public school and asking how to volunteer to help kids learn to read.

Reading Partners sustains a nationwide presence, perhaps in your locale? There’s a Facebook page  and an organizational website (link) where you can find details.

"Never volunteer for anything," goes a bit of conventional wisdom. That's wrong. Somewhere out there is a kid who, despite all the crud happening in school boards and federal agencies, needs only a small boost to become a reader. If you had an opportunity to be the person who provided that boost, would you? Only if you want to make a difference. Be a volunteer.



The Mexican Flyboy Earns American Book Award

Alfredo Véa has given readers an unbroken string of novels that belong in their respective year’s “Top ten” or “Best of the decade” lists of United States literary fiction, not to mention Chicana Chicano Literature. Now, an independent group of writers has singled out Véa’s most recent novel, The Mexican Flyboy, as an American Book Award winner.

In a press release, the Before Columbus Foundation explains the qualifications and process for these Thirty-Eighth Annual American Book Awards:

The American Book Awards were created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community. The purpose of the awards is to recognize literary excellence without limitations or restrictions. There are no categories, no nominees, and therefore no losers. The award winners range from well-known and established writers to under-recognized authors and first works. There are no quotas for diversity, the winners list simply reflects it as a natural process. The Before Columbus Foundation views American culture as inclusive and has always considered the term “multicultural” to be not a description of various categories, groups, or “special interests,” but rather as the definition of all of American literature. The Awards are not bestowed by an industry organization, but rather are a writers’ award given by other writers.

La Bloga is happy to congratulate The University of Oklahoma Press and author Alfredo Véa on this recognition of outstanding contribution to U.S. letters. The public awards gala will be held in October at the San Francisco Jazz Center.

The 2017 American Book Award Winners are:

Rabia Chaudry. Adnan's Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial
(St. Martin's Press)

Flores A. Forbes. Invisible Men: A Contemporary Slave Narrative in the Era of Mass Incarceration (Skyhorse Publishing)

Yaa Gyasi. Homecoming (Knopf)

Holly Hughes. Passings (Expedition Press)

Randa Jarrar. Him, Me, Muhammad Ali (Sarabande Books)

Bernice L. McFadden. The Book of Harlan (Akashic Books)

Brian D. McInnes. Sounding Thunder: The Stories of Francis Pegahmagabow (Michigan State University Press)

Patrick Phillips. Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America (W. W. Norton & Company)

Vaughn Rasberry Race and the Totalitarian Century: Geopolitics in the Black Literary Imagination (Harvard University Press)

Marc Anthony Richardson. Year of the Rat (Fiction Collective Two)

Shawna Yang Ryan. Green Island (Knopf)

Ruth Sergel. See You in the Streets: Art, Action, and Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (University of Iowa Press)

Solmaz Sharif. Look (Graywolf Press)

Adam Soldofsky. Memory Foam (Disorder Press)

Alfredo Véa. The Mexican Flyboy (University of Oklahoma Press)

Dean Wong. Seeing the Light: Four Decades in Chinatown (Chin Music Press)

Lifetime Achievement: Nancy Mercado

Editor/Publisher Award: Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, Ammiel Alcalay, General Editor






The 6th annual Mariposa Poetry Retreat provides poets and writers time and space to focus on their work in a serene setting away from the pressures and distractions of daily life.

The retreat promotes a safe and instructive environment that identifies and addresses creative challenges faced by writers of all genres.

The 2017 weekend retreat takes place at the Capital Retreat Center in Waynesboro, PA from Friday, October 6h to Sunday, October 8h and is open to writers 18 years of age and older.

Registration and lodging total $400. Meals are nut-free and kosher. Details via  Maritza Rivera, the organizer, at  mariposapoet611@gmail.com or call (520) 309-5115.



Early August On-line Floricanto
Lara Gularte, Mónica Alvarez, Paul Aponte, Irene Lipshin, Briana Muñoz

“The Old Woman's Last Days,” by Lara Gularte
“In response to the tweet that labeled my son as ‘somebody else’s baby’,” by Mónica Alvarez
“Cesar Chavez Drive,” by Paul Aponte
“Shadowlines,” by Irene Lipshin
“Barriers,” by Briana Muñoz


The Old Woman's Last Days
By Lara Gularte

The people stop on the rocky hilltop, look out at the world, watch it wane. The land drained of color, of life, the hills gray. Below them the rust-stained valley, the smell of spilled oil lingers in the air. The brown snaking river the only thing to follow. The old woman leads their way, walking days of weary distances towards mountains. They don't hear the footsteps behind them, or see human faces forming from the granite rock. Scattered by the fright of sudden movement, a flock of birds fly off.
The people make camp, build a fire. The old woman gathers fistfuls of twigs, throws her arms into the fossil moon. She stamps the ground makes small cracks appear. Her long white hair floats as she turns and spins, blurring the world around her. She needs to believe in a place beyond her mind, what her heart finds when she closes her eyes. Inside her skull, oceans and continents, forests and plains.
Men in camouflage hunt the people down. They say the old woman is a deer. They eat her.





Lara Gularte was featured with an interview and 18 poems in the Autumn 2014 issue of The Bitter Oleander. Her poetic work depicting her Azorean heritage is included in a book of essays called "Imaginários Luso-Americanos e Açorianos" by Vamberto Freitas. Her work can be found in The Gávea-Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry. Her poems have appeared in such journals as The Bitter Oleander, California Quarterly, The Clackamas Review, Evansville Review, Permafrost, The Monserrat Review, The Water-Stone Review, The Fourth River, The Santa Clara Review, and she has been published by many national and regional anthologies. Her manuscript “Kissing the Bee,” will be published by The Bitter Oleander Press in 2017. She is an assistant editor for Narrative Magazine.





In response to the tweet that labeled my son as “somebody else’s baby”
By Mónica Alvarez

“We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies” -- Republican Iowa Congressman Steve King

Somebody else’s babies
Anchor babies
I’ve been hearing these terms
a lot lately. They take over
the news, disguised
in suits and
lively sports
segments: who won
the game today?
small dosages of intolerance
polluting our brains with
“political correctness”
and
Make America great again!
They take over the internet,
epidemic of hate
infecting my Facebook feed
with revelations of modern philosophers,
thoughts shared with bad grammar
and an even worse intent.
A tsunami of xenophobia
dragging us back to the
good old days
when fascism was celebrated with parades
but now
it even has its own holiday.
And I hear them say we’re aliens,
and it hurts, but I’m OK.
And I hear them say we’re illegals,
and it sucks, but I’m OK.
And I hear them say we’re criminals,
and it makes me want to scream
because I know this is not OK.
Because I see my son smiling,
telling me what he learned in social studies,
not knowing that the history book
he’s reading in class
repels the presence of brown bodies
at the core of its white,
shiny sheets.
Because I see my son excited,
telling me he wants to be a police officer
to protect the town and drive a cool car.
He wants to be an engineer
to build bridges and big buildings
enough for all the people in the city
to work, earn money to feed their families,
as he has seen his mother work daily,
as he hopes one day to contribute too…
Because he doesn’t know
he’s an anchor baby.
He was born on the land of the free
yet, he didn’t know he wasn’t free to be born here.
He didn’t know this land had been claimed,
appropriated,
segregated.
Because the current system
force us
to prove
day by
DAY
that we have a right to be HERE,
that my son has a right to be BORN HERE.
Because he doesn’t know
he’s somebody else’s baby.
He’s an American citizen with a Mexican mom,
a hybrid heart that pumps
love and acceptance
through vibrant bicultural blood.
Because he doesn’t know he’s a threat
to the country and the flag
that he has learned to love and respect.
Because he has a tongue of fire
that can recite the pledge of allegiance
in a thick English or a playful Spanish.
Because he doesn’t know that
the pride he feels for his culture
and his mother tongue
became red flags that his teachers see
in his information chart
Because I still can’t comprehend
why my son has to fight
for the same right to the land
for the same right to education
for the same right to a future
when the white sons of republican congressmen
are naturally born with those rights and privileges.
Because I fear for the day
my son realizes
the world around him
only views him as:
an anchor baby
somebody else’s baby
a statistic
a threat
Because I want to know
how would
YOU FEEL
if your sons and daughters were labeled the same?




Mónica Alvarez is a Mexican writer whose work is committed to social justice, utilizing art as a vessel to share the stories of those who have been overlooked and silenced by the ones in power.

She holds a Master’s in Spanish Literature, and a Master’s in Interdisciplinary Studies in Mexican American Studies; and is currently working in obtaining her MFA in Creative Writing. She has participated in local literary and academic events, such as: Tercer Coloquio Estudiantil sobre lengua, literatura y creación literaria en la frontera, Los Santos Días de la Poesía, XI Congreso Binacional Letras en el Estuario, Espirales al Viento, Festiba, NACCS Tejas Foco, The International Poetry Festival, etc.

She is committed to activist work that advocates for the rights and values the cultures of her community.






Cesar Chavez Drive
By Paul Aponte

I write no poetry about this subject.
The poetry is already written.
Cesar Chavez' actions wrote it.
In his fight to unite people for a common struggle,
In his speaking for workers that couldn't speak for themselves,
In his passion to uplift those around him to continue fighting for worker rights.

.. that is how he continues to drive us,
.. that is how he lives in us

Cesar Chavez Lives!

Cesar sparks movements.
Chavez blooms poetic minds.
Lives in our own deeds.
........… our smiles.

Cesar Chavez lives
in the sorrows that continue in the lives of all people

Cesar Chavez lives
in the fight against poisoning of workers
in the struggle for safe working conditions
in the often treacherous climb to improve our lives economically
in our unity with our black brethren in preventing more
unnecessary killings
in our outraged unity when another one falls
when we take the action to write over and over again to political leaders
when we sustain the pressure about the 43 killed and the corruption that allows it
when we sustain the pressure against the government
of Arizona over their racist limited view of what
education should be

Cesar Chavez lives
He lives in the face of the child of color first arriving to the first grade class
He lives in the face of the mother that is already setting up her puestecito
He lives in the face of the father that is working the fields,
still amidst pesticides
He lives in the middle class parents that were the children of farmworkers
He lives in the grandchildren of farmworkers now getting a better education

Cesar Chavez lives
when we sustain pressure over equal pay for women
in our fight against the continued disparity and divergence in corporate vs. middle class income.

Cesar Chavez is alive
because Corky's "Yo Soy Joaquin" is alive
because Nancy Aidé González's "Virgen De Las Calles" is alive
because Francisco X Alarcón's "Mariposas Sin Fronteras" is alive
because Jose's "El Louie" is alive
because the art of the RCAF is alive
because the art and poetry of the NEW artists is alive.
.... because we are all alive. WE are here.

José Montoya, Martin Luther King, Emiliano Zapata, Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy, Cesar Chavez:

The leaders of justified outrage are alive,
if we want them to be.
If YOU let them light the fire,
that sparks your words to be heard,
that inflames your art that moves leaders to action,
that generates movement across borders,
that have the same goal as Cesar Chavez




Paul Aponte is a Chicano Poet from Sacramento. He is a member of the writer's groups "Círculo" and "Escritores Del Nuevo Sol" (Writers Of The New Sun). He has been published in the El Tecolote Press Anthology "Poetry in flight", "Un Canto De Amor A Gabriel Garcia Márquez" a publication from the country of Chile, in the Anthology "Soñadores - We Came To Dream", in "La Bloga" - an L.A. online publication, and in the "Los Angeles Review Volume 20 - Fall 2016". He was also the editor's choice in the online journal "Convergence". Very soon to be published in: Escritores del Nuevo Sol / Writers of the New Sun: Anthology. This new book includes an Escritores historical perspective by JoAnn Anglin, a forward by Lucha Corpi, many great writers/poets, and several poems by and also honoring one of its founders Francisco X. Alarcón.




Shadowlines
By Irene Lipshin

The border is a rusted hinge that does not bend. “The Border: A Double Sonnet” Alberto Ríos, 1952

Moving to a new house,
its old hinges stuck
from years of closing
out the world,
we loosen the locks,
release the shutters.

Sunlight filters
through wide slats,
I read between
shadowlines-
light opens darkness,
heat vanquishes the chill
of gathering tempests,
banishing the dark
backward of time.



Irene Lipshin writes with Red Fox Underground Poets in the California Sierra Nevada Foothills. She weaves universal human experiences, family stories, socio-political and environmental issues into her narrative poetry. Her work has been published in print and online journals and anthologies, including Poets Responding; Poets Against the War; We Beg to Differ, An Anthology for Peace; Because People Matter: Women Poets Speak Out Against the War; Broken Circles, A gathering of poems for hunger; a broadside, Territorio Nuevo and a chapbook, Shadowlines.
Irene’s study for a Pacific Oaks College MA in Human Development focused on Diversity, Equality and Social Justice. This life-changing practice remains a constant influence in her teaching and activism and inspired her poetry writing as Art for Social Change.

A teacher of English Language Learners, Irene integrated poetry written in English and Spanish by Poet Francisco X. Alarcon and others into the bilingual lessons. She brought the Latino Family Literacy Project to her Spanish speaking students and families, with dual language books, encouraging parents to read and speak to their children in Spanish and supporting student proficiency in both English and Spanish. She coaches students for the National Poetry Out Loud program and has organized poetry readings for Season for Nonviolence.
Irene recently read poetry in Cuba, as a member of the Delegation of American Poets, lead by Odilia Galván Rodriguez, for the Festival Internacional de Poesia de la Habana.





Barriers
By Briana Muñoz

The brown, elderly woman
Somewhere around four foot nine
Waited for the bus with an umbrella, as the rain came down
Brand new cars busily bumpered by
To arrive on time
To their nine to five office jobs
Freshly detailed rims picking up gutter rain water
Splashing unto the elderly woman’s toes

Her skin like the worn leather
That was made into her woven sandals
Through her face, you could almost see
The poverty and corruption in the village that she came from.

The small elderly woman mirrored my own grandmother
Who on Christmas, slaved around our kitchen
Making us a fanciful stew called posole
My grandmother, who raised all six of her younger brothers
The same woman who began working when she was only eleven

As I slowed at the stop light
I wondered where her family was
Why no one had yet offered her a ride
I pulled over, and sat
On a bench covered in street hieroglyphics
I noticed in her shaky hand, her wrinkled bus fare

“Can I offer you a ride?”
She looked at me, nodded her head with a slight smile
And slowly moved her head back looking the opposite way
She didn’t speak my language
And when I realized, that I, too, didn’t speak hers
I just sat there and involuntarily began to cry.



Briana Muñoz is a writer from Southern California. She has had a love for writing ever since she can remember.

Her poetry and short stories have been published in the Bravura literary journal. In the 2016 publication of the Bravura, her short story “Mockingbirds” was awarded the second place fiction prize.

She has also been published in LA BLOGA, Poets Responding and in the Oakland Arts Review. Briana’s poem “Raiz” was one of ten chosen for The Best of LA BLOGA from 2015. When she isn't typing away, she enjoys traveling, live music, cats, and thrift store treasures.

• Age Range: 8 - 12 years
• Grade Level: 3 - 7
• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1481457500
• ISBN-13: 978-1481457507

Daniel Cano

I try making it up (or down) to Kings Canyon and Sequoia every couple of years. I’ve been doing this since 1975 when my kids were still toddlers; though I may have gone as a child. Each year, my outdoorsman uncle, Mike, would take us into the mountains fishing, and we may have camped along the Kings River when my cousins and I were kids.


To reach the canyon, I first drive up from Fresno to Sequoia National Park, reach the 7500-foot level, and drop down into the canyon on a two-lane winding road as sheer canyon walls rise taller and appear to close in on me as I reach the canyon floor, where the wild Kings River tumbles outward, following its jagged path over waterfalls and through shale canyon walls on its way down into Kingsburg, crossing Highway 99, and filling the myriad of man-make canals, until it hits the All American Canal, which carries the icy water to the reservoirs, and into our homes, of course, with more complexity than I’ve described here.

A two-hour drive out of Kings Canyon to the east sits Sequoia National Park, home to the General Sherman tree, the oldest living creature in the world, and the largest, as well. Some scientists estimate that when Buddha and Jesus walked the earth, the General Sherman was already 1200 years old. Looking down a mountainside at the General Sherman, another mind-numbing sight unfolds before me, a near mystical experience, an entire forest of giant Sequoias.

The first time I stood under the massive arms of the General Sherman tree, I was eleven. My friends and I had joined the Boy Scouts, and to earn a merit badge, we had to hike into Sequoia’s backcountry for three days. For suburban kids, it was a humbling experience, trekking up to alpine lakes, cooking over an open fire, and sleeping in pup tents or beneath the stars.

I haven’t forgotten it, so each time I leave Kings Canyon, I take the long way across Sequoia, just so I can stand in the shade of the giant Sequoias, take in their energy, and listen to visitors from around the world “ooh” and “ahh” as they lift their heads to see into the branches, many the size of large city trees.
Sometimes I travel into the canyon with family or alone. This year I met my son, granddaughter, Celia, and my son’s friends, who stayed two days while I stayed a week. Once everyone has departed, I notice some campers who stare inquisitively at me, an elderly mestizo with a white beard and campesino hat, sitting alone in front of a campfire, stirring the embers with a long stick. I smile at them, but it’s only the flickering flames that burn my imagination. The crowds have grown and changed since 1973, a lot more raza crowding into the canyon, but the mountains and river have remained the same


I’ve travelled into the canyon to make some of the most important decisions of my life. Corny as it sounds, I’ve let the sounds of the warm wind, rustling leaves, and rushing water provide the answers I’ve sought. I sat on huge boulders beside the rambling river after I returned from Vietnam and needed mother nature’s purifying power to, if not heal me, at least offer a helping hand in my spiritual restoration.
This is my 70th birthday. I set up camp on a hill where I have a view of the solid rock canyon walls peeking through the tall pines and cedars. There I sit, sometimes for hours, and ponder God’s wonder. It’s difficult to be an atheist or agnostic before an artistic creation unimaginable by the human mind. Even our greatest art is but a bleak imitation compared to nature’s handiwork.

The greatest human minds, from our wise indigenous ancestors to the most ingenious among us, from Moctezuma to Sitting Bull and from Galileo to Einstein, bow before the Creator’s canvass. If I remember correctly, many of our greatest thinkers and artists admitted to rejecting theologians’ view of religion and God, but passionately believed in a higher power, a grand creator of the universe. How could I do any less.

Evening falls. Billions of stars appear. The wayward ones shoot across constellations and galaxies of which I possess little knowledge but an abundant appreciation. Tonight, they put on another dazzling performance.

Melinda Palacio

New poetry book by La Bloga's Daniel Olivas

Daniel Olivas

The Life of Death, Love and Death, After Life

As writers know, birthing a book is hard. Not as hard as the many things that life throws in front of us, but artistically speaking, it ain't easy. Why? Well, we toil in the privacy of our studies, kitchens, dining rooms, or wherever else we write our books. Then we spend time (sometimes years) trying to place our manuscript with a publisher who will respect our vision and produce a nice looking physical and/or electronic version of our words.

And if all goes well and your manuscript finds a home, it will go through further editing, then designed and typeset. And after you've done all that in collaboration with your publisher, you fill out the author's questionnaire and turn over your master list of potential reviewers and bookstores that might carry your book and host a reading.

Oh, I almost forgot: BLURBS! If you're lucky enough to know several writers who are willing to read the galleys of your book and offer some kind words of praise that will adorn the back cover, you must confirm blurb writers. I am very blessed in this regard.

Then you and your publisher will decide on a birthday for your book.

Well, I've done this nine times so far. I've written seven books, and edited two. Each one made its way into the world with the help of many, and they each hold important and mostly good memories for me as a writer.

This year, I will birth two books. As shown by the lovely flyer that heads this post, my latest short-story collection, The King of Lighting Fixtures (University of Arizona Press), will come into this world on Mexican Independence Day at Other Books in Boyle Heights. As a lifelong Angeleno who grew up in Koreatown and whose father lived in Boyle Heights for a portion of his childhood, the venue for the launch is particular special. 

The book launch is co-presented by The New Short Fiction Series which is run by the talented, hardworking Sally Shore. This means that actors will be reading a few selections from my collection, so this will make the evening that much more special. And the event is FREE!

I paste below the blurbs for The King of Lighting Fixtures (thank you, blurbers!).

In November, I will be launching my debut poetry collection, Crossing the Border (Pact Press), which Melinda Palacio wrote about last Friday in a thoughtful review. More on that birthday later.

For other updates, visit my website.

The Author

The Conversation

But is Tommy ready for love again? As he helps his best friends Rico and Carlos prepare for their weddings, Tommy must reexamine his past relationship with his ex Mikey who had issues with the bottle in Boston. And with two potential love interests on the horizon, will it finally be Tommy's turn to walk down the aisle in his own necktie?

From the author of Boston Boys Club, Beantown Cubans, Take the Lead and Looking for Providence comes another fun, heartwarming story about the power of love and friendship.

It's the U in DOOM That Counts

Review: Mario Acevedo. University of Doom. Erie, CO: Hex Publishers, 2015.
ISBN 9780996403986 (print. also in E-book 9780996403993)

Michael Sedano


Upon first reading Mario Acevedo's YA thriller, University of Doom--a real joy-ride of a novel--I had to stop and figure out how he does it, create the voice of a teenager in my head via the novel's omniscient narrator. Sabes que? Go with the flow and don't over-think stuff. Just enjoy the ride. Does anyone know what an E-Ticket ride is? University of Doom ia a whole book of E-coupons.

Wait! Don't judge this novel by its cover. The really heroic figures are two girls. A boy,  for sure is the lead--Alfonso Frankenstein, with a second fiddle partner, Greg Kaminsky. But behind this burgeoning mad scientist is a fearless, indomitable public school girl--Sarah--and a mad scientist-in-training, Lilith Vampira.

Acevedo packs a page with details, so many that a bare-bones outline does little to explain how much fun this book will be for teens and young readers.

Alfonso's dad, a descendant of that Frankenstein, gets booted out of his faculty spot at the University of Doom. Broke in spirit and money, father and son move into a real dump in a poverty neighborhood. Alfonso is totally immersed in his studies and knows nothing about girls, women, sex, and baseball.

Parents will be pleased at some of this. There is no sex, despite the author's reputation from his adult work for a no-holds-barred lubricity that makes his vampire/werewolf novels rare gems of adult speculative fiction. But there's baseball. Sarah introduces herself by flinging a catchable baseball Adolfo's way. He catches it with his face when he doesn't understand Sarah's friendly gesture, "catch!"

There's a jerk of a bully, a baseball star whose prowess makes him largely immune to rules. How does a kid deal with an overpowering bully? Stand up to him. Fight him. Beat him in baseball. Except for the latter, that's Alfonso's way. He takes no crud from the punk, but corking baseball bats with mad scientist gear is cheating, and cheaters never win. There's more than one lesson for kids here, and that's a big one. The author makes sure the argument doesn't disappear by placing the cheating baseball game at the early chapters, then reminding readers of that episode as the book begins to wrap up the plot.

The biggest cheater is dad's nemesis, make that deadly enemy, Dr. Moriarty. Of those Moriartys. The evil-doer's plan to steal children's brains to drive cyborgs is genuinely lethal, but in a "oh, no, Alfonso and Sarah are going to foil this plot" way. As thrillers will do, every time the kids get close to that goal, a monster or another cyborg mucks up the works. Or Moriarty captures them and it looks like the kids are goners. Maybe they are--University of Doom features that kind of plotting and this review ain't gonna say.

Excitement reigns in this YA page-turner. YA and younger readers will thrill at Acevedo's wildly imaginative critters, and they'll learn a few things: some Latin, a handful of powerful vocabulary words, that Krakens and other monsters exist, that imagination, knowledge, and kid power overcomes all. That's not a spoiler because every step of the way comes with a montón of danger. Sarah is captured by a grizzly shark, but when Alfonso goes to save her, Sarah's baseball arm saves them by tossing a capsaicin-producing toad into the beast's gorge. No, that's not a spoiler. After that escape, they get captured again and... buy University of Doom. Read it. Give it to a kid. Once that kid gets into this absolutely fun novel, the kid will devour the pages like a furry land octopus devours anyone who moves near the campus quad.

University of Doom is 364 pages of puro fun. Let it be the last summer read before school starts. Kids will be back to school with a different perspective on rules, bullies, pendejas in the front office, pendejos behind the big desks, and will want to ace those SATs to qualify for matriculation to the University of Doom.

My copy of University of Doom arrived with a cool decal to mount in my car's rear windshield so I can pretend to be a degreed alumnus. Fight on for ol' UD.

Read Ernest Hogan's review of University of Doom (link)




Have You Volunteered Today?


Click here to view the Full Impact Report.

Unities, Imperatives, and Regeneration: Getting Involved in Your Future

Organizers invite adults and 17 or older teenagers to this modern teach-in. Community, educators, student activists, parents will find value in the meeting and take home effective strategies to launch or support programs of relevancy and inclusiveness in their communities.






No Border Wall On-line Floricanto: First In A Series In Alliance With Resistencia en la frontera: Poets Against Border Walls
Brenda Nettles Riojas, Odilia Galván Rodríguez, Rodney Gomez, Priscilla Celina Suárez,

Two Lands Kissed Into One, Brenda Nettles Riojas
Hands, Odilia Galván Rodríguez
Rio Grande Valley Litany, Rodney Gomez
The camera captured the beautiful landscape made more beauteous by the line of determined figures who headed for sites along or near the Rio Bravo. There, subversives intend to destroy wildlife habitat by bulldozing miles of earth through pristine riparian environments. Government-sponsored terrorists act entitled to erect a wall there. The line of people heading to the site will use the force of their character and the content of their poetry to erect a spiritual wall constructed of soul, heart, mind, and tears. There will not be a wall through here, unless evil has its way.

La Bloga invites you to join with those poets at la frontera, wherever you are. Today, and in following weeks, La Bloga-Tuesday takes you to the border to share in this vital resistance, in a special and particularly useful manner. Poetry performed by the poets, accompanied by the poems themselves, comprises one of the best ways to enjoy a poem. Please enjoy the video reading as you accompany the reading in your voice. The magic of media means you can repeat the experience as many times as you wish, so long as there's electricity feeding your computer. With each audition you'll find something new, in the video, in the lines, in yourself. Multiply the experience by sharing this column or a favored reading with friends and allies. You'll find links after the poets' biographies.


Two Lands Kissed Into One
By Brenda Nettles Riojas



Aquí crecí en la frontera,
wearing Singer sewing machine dresses
cut from yards of itching polyester;
tomboy play climbing mesquites,
daring, reaching the next branch;
Skateland Saturdays, sunsets,
fishing on Boca Chica Beach;
siempre protegida con una bendición.

Aquí comí
platillos, enchilados con chile piquin
y salsas hechas en el molcajete,
Fruity Pebbles breakfasts,
fideo y tortilla lunches,
steak and potato dinners,
guayaba and mango desserts.

Aquí oi
stories of La Llorona followed,
con miedo de dormir, or listening
for La Sirena or El Gallo
to fill Chalupa spaces, ansiosa de ganar.
Other nights, classics read out loud;
knights and pawns maneuvered
across a chess board.

Aquí conocí dos sures.
Mama Pepa in Matamoros,
preparando su tesitos de manzanilla;
vendiendo coronas para los difuntos.
Mama Lucy in Charleston,
birthday cards delivered by mail.
Hablando español con mi mami,
English with my dad.

Aquí estoy.
Two lands kissed into one.

Dos mundos se unieron con un beso.



Brenda Nettles Riojas is the host of Corazón Bilingüe, a weekly radio program. She is a CantoMundo Fellow and earned her M.F.A. from the University of New Orleans. La Primera Voz Que Oí is her first collection of Spanish poetry. She is the Diocesan Relations Director for the Diocese of Brownsville and editor of The Valley Catholic newspaper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WFVGPpohno&app=desktop




Hands
By Odilia Galván Rodríguez


we storm
the border between
here and there

the border
has been replaced
by people

holding hands
outstretched
a human chain

across the Southlands
our hands joined
our hands holding

our hands sharing the power
from one palm to the next
a chain of energy

thousands of hands
held in hope
held in love

holding and sharing
in solidarity
for a new world

made possible
in positivity
in visions

of other realities
our hands
thousands

of our hands
red, yellow, black, and white
hands

unmarked
undocumented
legal hands

just because
they are human
hands

sending out
a message
hands

sending out
love hands
saying basta ya!

hands
holding
out the hate
hands


Odilia Galván Rodríguez, poet, writer, editor, educator, and activist, is the author of five volumes of poetry. Her latest book, The Nature of Things, is a collaboration with photographer Richard Loya, Merced College Press, 2015. She is co-editor, along with
the late Francisco X. Alarcón, of the award-winning anthology Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, University of Arizona Press, 2016. She has worked as the editor for several magazines, most recently at Tricontinental Magazine in Havana, Cuba and Cloud Women’s Quarterly Journal online.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB5Q-0f_jis&app=desktop



Rio Grande Valley Litany
By Rodney Gomez



Not the wealth
Not the census place with all the wealth
Not the thousand among the million
Not the wealth of the thousand
Not the segregated place
Not the segregated classroom, the segregated desk
Not the punishment for the brown mouth that says zarzamora
Not the amnesiacs and the enablers
Not the old Harlingen
Not the place with all the wealth
Not the pristine verandas, Mexicanized lawns
Not the land grants
Not the wine tastings
Not the platinum wedding package
Not the brown bodies who forget the people who live among the huisache
Not the brown bodies who forget the salt that was here before them
Not the Dallas Cowboys
Not the charcuterie, not the opera cake
Not the sons and daughters sent off to St. Edwards and St. Mary’s
Not the Playboys of Edinburg
Not the vanity press
Not the ranches and farmland passed down from one thief to another
Not the bayside condos
Not the interlopers, drawn from one wealth to another
Not the Island and the lesser islands
Not the vanity boutiques and treasury bonds
Not the poet laureate
Not the elsewhere degrees and certifications
Not the royal decrees
Not the Brownsville Raid
Not the lineage
Not the noble stock
Not the breeding
Not the ennui
Not the payday loans
Not Kris Kristofferson
Not the brownfields
Not the real estate swindlers
Not the poetry of the visible
Not the trivial mention of tacos and enchiladas
Not the opportunistic use of the mariachi
Not the classroom Spanish
Not the museum director, not the conductor, not the doctor, not the writer, not the poet (especially not the poet)
Not the free time to write
Not the free passes for this and that crime
Not Saint Joseph Academy
Not the power brokers
Not the educated patriarch
Not the insouciance
Not the inheritance
Not the car dealerships
Not the mayor
Not the city council
Not the exclusion
Not the wealth in the hands of the few
Not the priest who drives a Benz
Not the cotillion
Not the "founder" of this city or that city
Not the maleness
Not the white beauty pageant
Not the high school peacocks
Not the teeth-whitening agent
Not the antibiotics
Not the after-Mass mimosa
Not the tax write-offs
Not the estate planning
Not the luxury hotels
Not Vail, not Breckenridge, not Copper Mountain
Not the microbreweries
Not the bistros
Not the Broadway show tunes
Not the private collections
Not the garden party
Not the real estate ventures
Not the nonprofit boards
Not the doctor-owned hospitals
Not the baroque revivals
Not junkyard chic
Not pioneer, not Confederate
Not any name like Shary or Stillman
Not the inability to distinguish migas from chilaquiles
Not the brown Republicans
Not the owner's box
Not the "small" business owner
Not molon labe
Not the casual sexism
Not the business done on a golf course
Not the public golf manager's salary
Not the lighted tennis courts and pitch black soccer fields
Not the Polo shirts
Not the starched khakis
Not the smugness
Not the Ray-Bans
Not the Lexus
Not Noah, not Liam, not Mason
Not the central air
No the paved roads
Not the Duck Dynasty clones
Not the ones who disown the ghetto in their hearts
Not those who leave and never return
Not the indoor plumbing
Not the redesigned garages
Not the comfort
Not the comfort
Not the comfort
La taqueria




Rodney Gomez is a member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop and the proud son of migrant farmworkers. He is the author of Citizens of the Mausoleum (forthcoming) and the chapbooks Mouth Filled with Night, Spine, and A Short Tablature of Loss. His work has appeared in Poetry, Rattle, Blackbird, Pleiades, and Puerto del Sol. He was awarded the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Prize, RHINO Editors’ Prize, Gloria Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, and Rane Arroyo Prize.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1-qTmAiKbk&app=desktop



McAllen: Our Rinconcito
By Priscilla Celina Suárez



Dancing on bare feet
as I jump into my car, I hear ama
remind me
not to forget the pan dulce
before heading to wela’s house.

KTEX slowly drowns outside noises
as I slip on my chanclas
and Bo Garza’s I’m home
catches my attention – “I’m home, everybody I’m home”.

The air-con on full blast
competing with the 105° heat index
Tim Smith predicted. ¡Ay, que calor!

There’s nothing like a blue coconut raspa
from Young’s Snow Wiz
to cool off with during the Dog Days of summer.

Driving off from my parent’s home in McAllen
the scent of citrus groves
swims in through my car windows.
A quinceañera’s baile
drumming tunes from a neighboring dance hall.

De Alba’s bakery is but a moment’s drive
the scent of fresh corn tortillas
and empanadas hitting me as I walk in.

Los Tigres del Norte on the intercom
belting out Golpes en el Corazón.
“Pero tu que me has dado golpes en el corazón...”
Golpes en el corazón
are sometimes the memories
that have brought my familia closer.

A viejito pays for his tamales
and asks for extra salsita. With his accent
and sombrero, I cannot help but think of my abuelo.

I slip back into my car
and change the station –
Ramon Ayala sings about Un Rinconcito en el Cielo…

A little piece of heaven
is belonging. It is listening to cumbias and corridos
while studying at the library – knowing the best taquitos
and papas asadas can be served from a food truck – it is
using dichos and getting your point across.
Being an English speaker
and somehow having a strong ‘che’ accent -
it is looking forward to the fall
because our Winter Texan friends come home – this little piece
of heaven is acknowledging your roots
will always holds on.

It is remembering our home
is a community that warms
memories
because it forever embraces us.

This is our rinconcito.



Priscilla Celina Suárez is the 2015-17 McAllen Poet Laureate and has been a recipient of the Mexicasa Writing Fellowship. A RGV native, her poetry is a hybrid of rancheras, polkas, pop, rock, and musica internacional. A past contributor to the American Library Association’s YALS magazine, she has also authored the Texas State Library’s Bilingual Programs Chapter – allowing her an opportunity to gain experience in writing poetry, rhymes, and tongue twisters for children and teens. Most recently, Lina released an eBook titled Cuentos Wela Told Me: That Scared the Beeswax Out of Me!. Her poetry was included in ¡Juventud!: Growing up on the Border and Along the River III: Dark Voices from the Río Grande. In 2003, her work was selected by the Monitor staff as ‘The Best Poetry of the Year’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nznahng4hjk&app=desktop



Struggle in the Borderlands
By Celina A. Gómez


Today, I pulled up from the earth, in handfuls, thigh-high weeds, plentiful from weeks of rain. Some came up from the roots bringing rings of soil, soft and littered with shell and worms that stiffened into curls of black dotted yellow. Snails crack under feet packed dirt. No breeze from outstretched wings of the kiskadee.

I carry this land as each fingernail is filled with dirt, still damp from the midday rain—dense and bitter with the raising of the sun. Today, I became part of the earth, part of Tejas—covered in rain and shreds of green splintering into small cuts on the inside of my fingers, forearms, and wrists. Bloodless and scarless but proof of the land’s fight to remain serpented and circled, universe and chaos, roped and rooted. But I am not part of this land’s history—a history hidden from its people, untaught and ignored. This fight is fruitless and my hands are sore from pulling in the borderlands—into me.

The soil has hardened and the sun has dried remains piled in mounds across the barren patch of earth. Everything grows back lush around the Rio Grande. For now, stubborn roots remain with tendrils roping themselves to a rusted post once used as a lasso. Roots forged on the divide between lands, languages, and selves. Foraged but forked in their resolve—stinging when pulled. Today, I pulled from the earth hunched over with hands gripping my heart that yearns to remain.



Celina A. Gómez is a high school and college teacher and performance poetry coach. Her work appears in Ostrich Review, Outrage: A Protest Anthology for a Post 9/11 World, and numerous chapbooks and conference proceedings. The reigning Ultimate Poetry Boxing Champion of South Texas, she received her MFA with a certificate in Mexican American Studies from the University of Texas Pan American.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PMtuaEkguU&app=desktop