Olga Garcίa Echeverrίa
The latest chapbook that arrives in the mail is Raquel Gutiérrez’ Breaking Up with Los Angeles. The large stenciled-looking title, all caps, is painted in opaque gold. On my copy, some of the initial letters appear partially cut-off. When I turn the book around, though, I see that the letters have bled onto the back cover. I wonder if this is intentional or if it is one of those lovely imperfections that comes with chapbook making. Anyone who has ever made chapbooks knows it can be highly laborious and at times painful. Fingers can get stapled or cut. The layout of the text can go berserk. Pages can accidentally get glued or inverted. Living space begins to look like a messy workshop full of scattered papeles and art supplies.
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| Photo "borrowed" from Raquel Gutierrez' website |
Looking at Raquel’s cover, I can’t help but get nostalgic about my own chapbook making aventuras. The last time I put together a poetry chapbook was in 2010 with tatiana de la tierra. Inspired by the cardboard books of Latin America, we set out to make a limited edition of self-published cardboard poetry books. For months, cardboard book-making ruled our worlds. We loved cardboard. We explored its strengths and weakness. We folded it. We punctured it. We painted it. We hoarded and fought over it. We slept near our growing piles of cardboard; carton thoughts and energy seeped into our dreams; we were one with the cardboard, tatiana and I. And despite the cardboard cuts and mess, these little poetry books filled us with utter joy and self-publishing power. Of course, we blogged about it: http://labloga.blogspot.com/2010/05/cardboard-creations-homemade-libros.html |
| tatiana eating cardboard poetry |
Raquel's chapbook isn't made out of cardboard, and it has its unique estilo and presence, yet it reminds me of tatiana de la tierra, Myriam Gurba (whose chapbooks I blogged about a couple of weeks ago (http://labloga.blogspot.com/2014/03/queer-little-chapbooks.html), and every other hardworking two-tongued, two-spirited escritora/artista out there creating arte a su brave manera. In the end, despite todas las diferencias, it's the same general fuerza that propels us forth and fuels creation, poesίa, self-published libritos. Locura. Passion. Because you have to be kinda crazy and in love with words to make your own books. Resilience is a must, and humor is a definite plus. There's no big bucks earned here. You can purchase Raquel's Breaking Up With Los Angeles for a very affordable seis dolares: http://raquelgutierrez.net/chapbook/ Or Gurba's latest A Flower for That Bitch for a muy barato $3: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Lesbrain. That's freshly made literature for the cost of a couple of tamales and a café or a champurrado. There's no glory or guarantees in rasquachi book making either. The writer usually distributes and hustles. Libritos! Libritos! Calentitos y deliciosos! Compren sus libritos! It's like blogging or writing a poem or knitting a bad-ass scarf or sweater. You may pour out your heart into your arte, spend countless hours refining the finished product, and get back a, "That's cute." |
| Photo by Kevin Campbell |
Having moved from LA to the Bay Area a little over a year ago, Gutiérrez shares that her new chapbook Breaking Up With Los Angeles marks a “habitual haunting” of the city she broke up with. In her blog (http://raquelgutierrez.net/blog/) she writes: "This project is simply the receptacle for the ache...of leaving home...Poetry has always functioned as a site of no rules...A small holder of my psychic messes. A document. A textual object. Or an embrace for when all other embraces fail to keep me safe." Using numbers instead of titles, Gutiérrez delivers 22 poems about loving, living in, and leaving Los Angeles. In poem #11, she write: Partner with loss Embrace change Resist nostalgia It's a mantra that thematically echoes throughout the collection. Whether she's recalling a nightclub in Hollywood full of joteria and Naco Power, a sighting on Silverlake of a truck with "lavender colored testicles hanging so low," the haze of Sour Diesel, her mother's laughter welcoming her home, or the busquedad of her "Ole Dad" and herself in cantinas, Gutiérrez weaves in and out of the cityscape, gathering poetic fragments of the distant and recent past, re-membering/re-constructing that which has been lost or broken, all the while resisting nostalgia. But where one lives and loves, there are always those glimpses of nostalgia, no? In poem #7, Gutiérrez recalls a few of "the good things:" telling white people to not speak Spanish to me having everyone at Homeboy Industries know me by name I want to stay.. Despite the grappling with grief and loss, and the resistance to nostalgia, there's a sense of love and longing for Los Angeles. For example, in poem #13, Gutiérrez leaves behind a poetic directive of her last rites:scatter me in the mouth of Los Angeles her stomach the desert her shoulders the mountains and her womb the east Los Angeles freeway interchange for the 5 brought me all of California while the 101 took me to where it was possible impossible on the 10 during rush hour and the 60 carried my broken teenage heart home Tributes to the recently deceased are also found in Breaking Up With Los Angeles. In poem #8, LA poet Wanda Colemen who inspired so many of us is remembered. The impact of her loss deeply felt: |
| Photo by Mark Savage |
I mourned her from a lonely bedroom Deep in the East Bay Her departure underscoring an exile from Angels a burn, a light and tender a severe degree that severs me Although this is her first chapbook, Gutiérrez isn't knew to the arts. She has long been a performer, curator, playwright, and cultural activist. She was a co-founding member of the now retired performance ensemble, Butchlalis de Panochtitlan (BdP), a community-based and activist-minded group aimed at creating a visual vernacular around queer Latinidad in Los Angeles. Raquel also co-founded other Los Angeles-specific art projects: Tongues, A Project of VIVA and Epicentro Poetry project. Raquel's work has been published in The Portland Review and Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing (edited by Lázaro Lima and Felice Picano). Poems are forthcoming in Sinister Wisdom and Huizache next year. During the past two weeks, I had an opportunity to ask Gutierrez a few questions over email. Here are my questions and her responses:Can you share a little about your current transition from performance to poetry? Are you still doing both?I like the insularity of writing poems. Performing relies on collaboration and a certain familiarity. Being in a new place, living away from Los Angeles, made me retract, reflect...I think I am done with the stage for now but when I read some of these poem aloud, there's a different rawness present that isn't so much about proving myself as an artist. I'm regenerating in a new way. When I was in El Paso, Texas all I did was write about Los Angeles. I found that the distance and desert allowed to write about LA in ways that I may not have been able to do had I still been at home. Did you have a similar experience when moving to the Bay Area? When I was living in New York I couldn't write anything about L.A. The distance of course helps, but I don't know if being in a new city leads to being able to produce writing about L.A. I think a new place coupled with the ability to inhabit certain truths makes the writing come easier. What do you miss most about Los Angeles? I miss the 24-hour-ness of L.A. The thrift store near the old Sears. La Estrella's fish burritos. The 110 freeway tunnel from Chinatown into Figueroa. The sun coming up on Bandini Boulevard. Literary rock stars that you admire? Rubén Martinez, Wanda Coleman, Charles Bukowski, Roberto Bolaños, Helena María Viramontes, John Rechy, James Baldwin, Chris Kraus, Ali Liebegott, Salvador Plascencia. Are you taking on any new projects any time soon?I'm excited about a chapbook press endeavor I am taking on called ECONO TEXTUAL OBJECTS. This [making chapbooks] was so much fun I don't want it to stop. I'm working on another chapbook for the Spring, along with chapbooks by friends and conspirators Félix Solano Vargas and Nikki Darling. These chapbooks are due out in May 2014. In closing, even though you broke up with her, do you still love LA?I'll always love LA. To learn more about Raquel and her current projects, visit:
http://raquelgutierrez.net/ To visit Raquel's blog:
http://raquelgutierrez.net/blog/To purchase
Breaking Up With Los Angeles: http://raquelgutierrez.net/chapbook/breaking-up-with-los-angeles
Olga Garcia Echeverria
Real, old-fashioned mail can brighten even the gloomiest of days. The parcel that arrives is the size of a record album, the weight of a sturdy book. It’s traveled all the way from Mexico City to Lincoln Heights. It’s littered with cool rows of orange Día de Muertos stamps and numerous black postal seals, faded and smeared. The envelope is made of brown paper bag, its edges beaten and gnawed. It's obviously been "manhandled" on both sides of the border. The calendars inside, though, are remarkably unscathed. This is Rotmi Enciso and Ina Riaskov’s 2014 calendar project, VIVAS, where women who love women and women who love words are featured in every month of the year. The cover of the calendar is a lucha-libre-masked mujer running in a blur. She's zooming by in a white nightie, hot pink fishnet stocking, a black and gold cape, matching botas and fingerless arm-length gloves. Me gusta. Run, Lucha Libre Mujer, Run!
I open up the calendar to February. A black and white profile of an older woman stares back. There is some kind of fierceness in her face. No Botox. No airbrush. No commercial standards of youth and beauty. Yet, she’s beautiful, her skin weathered and sculptured by time--the same way wind and sun carve out the face of the earth.
When I turn to March, I see that my friends in Mexico have gifted one of my poems a page, “Vuelo.” It’s a poem close to my heart, about my maternal grandmother, who many moons ago in Mexico is said to have lost her mind. “Perdió la razón” is how the story goes. I like to envision it as a wondrous flight instead of madness. Vuela, abuelita, vuela!
In August, cumulous clouds and a poem by tatiana de la tierra greet me, “Prisionera de tu perro.” My heart warms and I laugh aloud, remembering this querida amiga, bloguera, escritora. It’s a true story, the poem. tatiana once got dumped for a dog. She was indignant when it happened. “Can you fucking believe it? A dog! A cat maybe, pero un perro comemerida?” Her revenge was to write a poem-song (with a loud barking chorus) to the ex-lover. “You don’t seem too heartbroken,” I said to her once while she was practicing the poem with a yowling gusto. She barked, and then kept on singing.
Gracias Ina and Rotmi. Your international parcel is greatly appreciated. Las mujeres en este calendario están VIVAS.
Calendario de mujeres opportunity: I have two extra VIVAS calendars to share. It's bilingual queer word and mujer visual art to hang on a wall porque every day is a good day to celebrate International Women's Day. If you'd like a calendar, email me at [email protected] and I'll send the first two people who respond a cool parcel in the mail.
Rotmi Enciso & Ina Riaskov: Artistas, Activistas, Femenistas, Revolucionistas, Lesbianistas, Internacionalistas.
To learn more about VIVAS contact Rotmi and Ina via Producciones Y Milagros Agrupacion Femenista, A.C. [email protected] or on twitter: @prodymil
rambling update on debut novel by Rudy Ch. Garcia
My head's spinning, there's not enough time, I don't know where to look next. Welcome to the wonderful world of first-time published novelist getting ready for the BIG day.
You can read about my debut novel
here and about some of my prep work
here.
Like I said, my head's spinning. I want everything to be perfect, timely, on time, and as much of a success as it can be. At the same time, not everything is in my control. Luckily, I have friends, acquaintances and contacts who know more than me.
Manuel Ramos, author of several novels, authors and poetesses Lisa Alvarado and Melinda Palacio are just some helping me navigate this episode in my lit life that comes only once. First novel. Debut. Book signings with audiences who will read the bared revelations of this writer. Scary? Nerve-wracking? No, I've got too much prep work that's muscling in on all my time and not allowing for that much true feelings.
Again, luckily, I've also got supporters and friends and family who're helping me with setting up a book tour, speaking, interviewing engagements. I couldn't do it alone, otherwise.
For those of you who anticipate your first book-length MS getting published, I can't tell you how it will affect you. For me, it's mostly a blur.
When I tell someone new about the book, they go, "I bet you're feeling great." It goes in una oreja and out the other. I know I should be feeling that, maybe I will be when I stand in front of my first audience to conduct a reading. Vamos a ver.
I've had to research the Internet, blogs, publications, and contacts and found surprising things. For instance, I'm going to attempt to focus people's buying the book. For the first month of Sept., I'm aiming for the Denver bestseller list. Why?
Because bookstores in other parts of the country, book reviewers of major publications and media gente look at such numbers. If The Closet of Discarded Dreams can make the Top 5 for one week in Denver, it will get noticed, possibly, nationally. It might get reviewed. I might be interviewed. Etc. You can help me accomplish this.
So, that's why I entitled this post the way I did. Don't buy, don't pre-order, don't go for it until you hear where and when. It's a small window, making a bestseller list. Even harder with a first novel.
tatiana de la tierra
Sometimes, things happen because they were destined to, even if you don’t realize it at the moment. Like today. I was hanging out on Facebook and clicked on a headline posted by a friend: “Estudiante UN gana concurso de novela de la Cámara de Comercio.” I read a few paragraphs about a fine arts student from the Universidad Nacional in Bogotá who won a creative writing contest with his experimental novel. Bogotá Vagabundo is a romantic science fiction tale about a 19-year old who falls in love with another man out in the planet of Uranus. Intriguing, I think, but what stands out is that this young university student has written13 novels. I, on the other hand, have not written even one.
Driven by envy and curiosity, I look for him on Facebook. Seconds later, I have a new friend, Luis Barragán. We chat and I waste no time before asking him to send me a story or something, anything, of his. He obliges with “Mujeres ornitófilas que amé,” a short story about a guy who ends up in bed with a woman who has a flower blooming between her legs. This is not a metaphor-type of flower. It’s an actual flower that attracts insects, bees and birds. The story is kinky, creative and cool. I am smitten and, minutes later, we have ditched Facebook for Skype.
We decide to have a conversation between us as writers. But first I have to ask him about his profile picture in Facebook. It is of a black man with an afro. But he didn’t look brown in the article I read about him. “Is that you?” I ask. “Are you black? “
“No, I’m mestizo. I am black, white and indigenous. But that is a version of me, a browner version of me. I wish my skin were darker, that’s true. It’s like an upside down version of Michael Jackson. The way he changed skin color, I saw that as going from an oppressed race to the oppressing race. I thought it would be interesting to do the opposite. But more than that, it’s a way to shift ways of thinking. Especially those that culturally represent race and gender.” I notice other Photoshopped images, such as one in which he looks Asian, and another that emphasizes light skin.
This writer-creature before me is twirling my curls with his words. What about transgender? I ask. I remember that the friend we have in common in trans. “Well, people may think that a female-to-male trans goes from the oppressed gender to the oppressor gender, but those structures melt in the act of transing. What I’ve learned from my trans friends is that cultural limits disappear in being a man, woman, or intersex. It doesn’t matt
Dear editors & agents del mundo,
As a writer, I've worn a self-made button to writing conferences that reads: "Willing to work for serendipitous editor or agent." I inevitably get comments and once got an agent to ask me what I was pitching. He didn't take me on as a client, but the button did its job, one time.
In that spirit La Bloga provides this feature column with the message: Hechate un vistazo, which means take a peak. Here we're letting editors and agents, and all Bloga readers, get a peak at book-length stories hungry for an audience, and patron.
These will only be never-published works--novels, novellas, poetry collection, novelettes, screenplays, other collections, memoirs, children's books, anthologies--written by our contributors, complete and just itching to lock in your interest.
Consider this a service to our contributors as well as to publishing magnates out there. In the future we may give La Bloga readers a chance to feature their MSS here, so if you have one, send a 150-word pitch of your obra and a 25-word publishing history, as well as a way for people to contact you. Include the word count, genre, a photo and at least a working title for the story. If you want to include the opening 3 sentences of the story, we'll include that, too. Send to r.ch.garcia (ala) cybox.com. BEWARE: yes, your idea may be stolen because nothing is sacred nor secure in the Internet world.
Even if you're not an agent or editor, you may know one who one day writes you a big fat finder's fee for bringing one of these works to their attention. At least, we can imagine so.
Two MSS lead off today's parade. Who knows? Maybe this will do the job as well as my button and one day an editor/agent will call. BTW, if anyone should luck out, you MUST let us know.
____________________
Nine Days Dead a novel
by Lisa Alvarado
Florinda Cienfuegos, daughter of Oya and owner of a Chicago botánica, has dreams about criminals getting murdered and visions of a man flashing a detective's shield. Last night, she finally sees a name on the badge--David Ortiz, and tries to tell the police what she knows. When she's laughed out of the local precinct, she's overheard by Det. Naftali Gonzales. Gonzalez doesn't think it's a laughing matter. He had the same disturbing dreams; David Ortiz was his partner, killed in the line of duty nine days ago. What happens against a backdrop of Chicago's Puerto Rican and Mexican neighborhoods is a tale of the supernatural, crime/noir and two people drawn together to find out who or what has pierced the veil to exact justice.
Publishing bio: Lisa Alvarado is an educator, poet, novelist, and journalist. She is founder of La Onda Negra Press, and author of Reclamo and The Housekeeper’s Diary, originally a book of poetry and now a one-woman performance. Her first novel, Sister Chicas (written with Ann Hagman Cardinal and Jane Alberdeston) was bought by Penguin/NAL, and released in April '06. Sister Chicas is a coming of age story concerning the lives of three young Latinas living in Chicago and won 2nd place Best First Novel in English (Latino Literacy Nov. '07). Her book of poetry, Raw Silk Suture, is a recent release by Floricanto Press, and was reviewed by
tatiana de la tierra
It’s a new decade and times are grim as we head into the scripted doomsdays, with 2012 just around the corner. Will the world (as we know it) end with the Mayan calendar? Will there be a massive shift toward higher consciousness that will lead the planet to true healing? Or will humanoids continue to limp on amidst wars, poverty, corporate deceit, and rampant consumerism? Religious zealots are talking cataclysm and spreading the word with glossy pamphlets urging sinners to give it up for the Lord. Others are chanting for peace, meditating on divine love, and gearing up with vibrational healing tools.
I barely know what’s in store twenty-four hours ahead of time and make no claims about the future. But let me suppose that things will stay on the same course at least a bit longer. Today’s hot issues—unemployment, global warming, gay and lesbian marriage, health care, war, education, hunger, and immigration, to name a few—are also tomorrow’s. And they’re not going to magically go away as long as corporate interests continue to reign or as long as misogynist (mostly white) men are making decisions to affect us all.
What to do? If you’re tired of waiting for social justice or if you’ve lost all hope for change, you can take a few things into your hands. Make your own change, or speed up the process of deterioration so that the prophetic transformations can finally take hold. There’s a magical spaceship out there—there has to be.
Meanwhile, as a public service, I offer up some ideas of things you can do in times of doom.
1. Become a communist. Republicans claim that having health care for everyone is a sure sign of socialism. They’re right! Want health care? Go socialist!
2. Join the military. Out of a job? Can’t get into college? Can’t afford a gym membership? If you’re young and in your prime, the military is a great option for getting in shape, learning discipline, and being part of the brotherhood. Sure, you may lose a limb or end up with post-traumatic stress syndrome, but if you make it through, you might have a shot at an education.
3. Buy an illegal immigrant. They’re great for taking care of your house and kids. They can cook, clean, build things, do errands. And they’re cheap since there’s no comprehensive immigration bill being considered and they have no guaranteed rights. It’s the deal of the century!
4. Have more babies. Disposable diapers do a great job of choking up landfills, are wonderfully toxic, deplete the earths’ resources, and take a few hundred years to decompose. Want to push pollution and global warming along? Use disposable diapers!
5. Heal yourself and others. Medical doctors are great at diagnosing and prescribing pharmaceuticals, but they’re out to lunch when it comes to herbs, supplements, nutrition, and energy medicine. There are a zillion alternative healing modalities you can train in, such as homeopathy, Reiki, Quantum Touch, acupuncture, Tong Ren, crystal healing, sound healing, shamanism, Emotional Freedom Technique, midwifery, and naturopathy. They’re fabulous, low tech, and cost-effective modalities that people are tuning into more and more.
6. Learn Chinese. Want to be forward-thinking and speaking? Already a quarter of the earth’s population, the Chinese have a commercial and economic edge and will be a dominant force in the future. Learn the Mandarin mother tongue to get in step with the times, ahead of time.
7. Become a reverend. Gays and lesbians are busting to do the “I do’s” and more and more state legislations are permitting same sex unions. Who’s going to marry all these queers? Who’s going to baptize all their babies? If you become a reverend, you can be the one to do the honors.
8. Get a medical marijuana license. Who knows when we’ll have a health care plan that favors the people instead of insurance companies, medic
Okay, you say when and where. We'll synchronize watches, only I don't wear one. But I am online a few times during the day (sometimes all day as I get my novel ready), and that countdown clock haunts me.
Ready? Set. G . . .
Sounds exciting. Thank you for sharing how it feels to be newly published and how to strategize your book release. There's several of us out here who are looking for direction for when our time comes. be well on your new journey.