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Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Las Comadres, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 5 of 5
1. Las Comadres Interview Author Reyna Grande



This is the second interview for Count on Me: Tales of Sisterhoods and Fierce Friendships virtual Book Tour organized by Condor Book Tours. Las week, Las Comadres interviewed author Lorraine López about her story in this wonderful anthology. To read the interview visit http://www.labloga.blogspot.com/2012/12/guest-comadres-golden-age-of-bookstores.html


Today, Las Comadres interview author Reyna Grande.


Reyna Grande on Count on Me

LAS COMADRES: Have you had a chance to read any of the stories?

REYNA: I have. I think I have read most of the stories and I’m really impressed with them and I think that my favorite is Carolina DeRobertis’ piece- because it was very profound and I just love her writing .As I was reading it, a lot times I felt like getting up to grab a highlighter so I could highlight some of those sentences because they were just absolutely beautiful. The last essay which I just read last night was Luis Alberto Urrea’s piece. And again, they’re just really incredible and very touching and I love the topic – writing about a Comadre. The comadres that I am reading about are just really amazing people.

LAS COMADRES: Is there a character in the book you most identify with?

REYNA: I think I just really enjoy reading these stories because every writer who has written a story for the anthology, they all come from… it’s just interesting to me to see how the writing prompt which was to write about a comadre, how everybody just made that their own, you know? And how diverse each story is… and that is what I really like about this and also I love learning about who the people in their lives are because some of these writers and some of them I have met in person and some of them I haven’t met in person but I’ve read their work and these essays are so personal.  But, it really gives me a chance to get to know them through these pieces they turned in for the anthology. For me that’s been one of the reasons why I enjoyed reading the anthology so much because it really gives me a chance to get to know these authors whose works I admire; to get to know them in a more personal level.

LAS COMADRES:  Your story is about a mentor and about friend, about somebody that… really – truly is credited with where you are and how you moved forward as a student. What do you hope readers get out of your personal story?

REYNA: Well there’s two things, the first thing is that what I would like them to see is that when you are going through really difficult times its okay to ask for help. I think that sometimes we fail to do that; sometimes we are dealing with problems on our own and we’re afraid to seek help. And for me- that was the best thing I could ever do was to go look for Diana and to share with her what I was going through. Otherwise she wouldn’t have known about it and wouldn’t have been able to offer that help to me.  The other thing that I would like my readers to learn from my story is how teachers and especially right now – with the situation that education is in – with so many teachers that are being criticized and being laid off and all these horrible things that are happening to teachers right now I would like people to see what a big difference a teacher makes in the life of a student. There’re so many people like Diana who go above and beyond what a teacher is. They don’t just limit their teaching to the classroom. (But) They also care about their students enough that they worry about their students’ personal lives and what’s going on outside the classroom with them.  For me – this is my love letter to Diana and all teachers.

LAS COMADRES: So Diana, does she know about it?

REYNA: Yeah, she knows about it. I sent her a copy just before I submitted it. I wanted her to read it, (just) out of respect, because I wanted (her) to see what I had written about her, and I wanted her to tell me if she was okay with that.  Just to get her approval.  Yeah, she… I think the first time I ever thanked Diana for what she did for me was in 1999 when I graduated from UC Santa Cruz and the university actually flew her up there so that she could be at my graduation. So, Diana knows and I always make sure to tell Diana how grateful I am for everything she’s done for me.  She was very happy when I told her about the anthology and when I told her I was writing about her.

LAS COMADRES:  So, you’ve seen the theme of the book and the topic of everybody choosing to write about a comadre. Do you think there’s a distinction between saying you have a friend or saying you have a comadre?

REYNA: In a way – yes, because a comadre, (I think) its a little bit more than a friend. You know, I think the meaning of a comadre definitely goes beyond just a regular friendship. And, for me – that’s why I consider Diana my comadre, because she’s not just a friend that goes in and out of my life.  She’s someone that’s really important and whom I’ve known for a long time and who knows everything about me and who is always there for me. And, she accepts me for who I am, and she has always been very encouraging, always pushing me to become a better person. So to me – that’s what a comadre is – and it’s someone you know and you want to have a relationship with for the rest of your life.

LAS COMADRES:  So why do you think – give me three (if you can narrow it down to three) main reasons why a woman needs a comadre in her life.

REYNA: Well, I think a woman needs a comadre because… there’s always going to be moments in your life that you cannot face on your own and they can be great moments that you want to share with someone and they could be very difficult moments that you need someone to hold your hand, to tell you that things are going to be okay. And sometimes your family – you might not have that kind of relationship with the family member, and you might find it in a friend that might give you that support and who can be there for you when you need her.

LAS COMADRES:  Now I'm going to shift over to questions about you.  Where do you get your inspiration from – not just from writing – but just life in general? Are there sources that you get your inspiration from?

REYNA: I’ve always drawn my inspiration from my childhood experiences because I had a pretty difficult childhood and a lot of the things that happened were just very traumatic and they left a lot of scars.  And what I've always done –(like) with my writing but also with anything, anything that I try to do; any goals that I have. I always look at my childhood and all the hardships that I went thru and the sacrifices that had to be made. I always tell myself that I have to honor those sacrifices and I have to honor all that pain and hardship and heartbreaks that I went through. The way to do that is by making good choices and by working hard to make my dreams a reality. (So), you know things sometimes get hard but I always tell myself that I have gone through worse. If I made it through that, I can make it thru anything.

LAS COMADRES: So you use your experiences in your childhood.

REYNA: Yeah, I think I definitely learned a lot when I was a kid about sacrifices and working hard and not letting anything bring me down. I learned to find my inner strength.  And that’s what I …when things get hard or I have challenges that I’m dealing with, I always look at my childhood and try to find that strength that I know is there within me.

LAS COMADRES: Are there specific literary works that you might draw your inspiration from?

REYNA: I have a lot of favorite books, actually and sometimes when I have writers block and I can’t write, I go to those books and I read through them and I find my favorite sections and I get inspired again to write. Some of those books are The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, which is one of my favorites; The Prophet, by Kaliel Gibron; and I like The Fountainhead by Ann Rand; and I like Margaret Atwood’s works also.  So that’s what I do –I just look thru my bookcase and pick out a book and I read – and then pretty soon I feel like writing again.

LAS COMADRES:  What do you consider your greatest achievement?

REYNA: My greatest achievement is getting my MFA, because I come from a family that didn’t have a lot of opportunities when it came to education. I know - my grandmothers …probably only went to first or second grade and my own father only went up to the third grade. My mother only studied up to the sixth grade. So, you know going from that kind of background to having an MFA and being the first in my family to graduate from college – to me, that’s the greatest thing because I feel that because I have been able to accomplish that – now my own children are going to go to college and my nieces and nephews are going to go to college because I’ve done it already.  I can push them to do it; I can give them advice; I can guide them through their college experience.

LAS COMADRES: Yes, you’ve definitely changed the future for your family, for the next generation…sometimes I think we take that for granted.

REYNA: Yeah, I think so too.  But I always tell people –especially, you know I do a lot of speaking at high schools – I always tell those kids that it only takes one person to change the course of a family. And so I encourage them to be that one person that going to make a difference.

LAS COMADRES: Do you get a chance to spend much with family? …with family from Mexico?

REYNA: Oh, from my family from Mexico… I don’t get to see them a whole lot. I try to go to Mexico as often as I can – which is not as often as I would like. I would say maybe like every three to four years I’ll go to Mexico to visit my family. And I have some uncles and aunts and cousins down there and I like to go there because it keeps me humble. You know, I think sometimes I lose sight of things and sometime I forget that there are people that have less than I have and that I shouldn’t complain or that I shouldn’t want more than what I have. So when I go down there, it makes me appreciate what I do have and it snaps me back into reality.  Like for example, a few years ago when I had my daughter we were living in a two-bedroom house and one bedroom was for me and my husband and the second bedroom was for my son and when we had my daughter she was sharing our bedroom.  You know we had her crib in our bedroom. And then my husband and I decided to start looking for a bigger house. Now that we had two kids we said “well, lets look for a three bedroom house” and I went to Mexico around that time that we were looking for houses. I went to Mexico to see my family and my uncle said ‘oh, what’s new in your life” and I just started telling him that we were house hunting and we were looking into a bigger house because my daughter, who was nine months old, needed to have her own bedroom.  And then, I just caught myself and I looked around and I realized who I was talking to; and I was talking to my uncle who lived in a one room shack with his seven children and his wife and I’m telling him that we need a bigger house because my nine-month old needs her own bedroom. Do you know what I’m saying?

LAS COMADRES: Yeah, yeah – it snaps you back to reality.

REYNA: I wanted to slap myself. It’s so inconsiderate and I wasn’t doing it to brag or to be inconsiderate. I just lost sight of where I was or whom I was talking to…. Then I realized that over here in the US, a lot of times we want a bigger house and we want a bigger car and we want more of this and more of that and a lot of times we’re not happy with what we have. When I go to Mexico – I remember that. I remember that!  And that’s why I try to go -so that I don’t forget where I come from.

LAS COMADRES: Do you have a favorite motto or quote – something that stays with you every day? That guides you?

REYNA: Well, there’s one that kind of ties in to what I was just talking about, and it goes
“The less I want, the less I need”

LAS COMADRES:  Do you know who said it?

REYNA: I don’t know who said it…but it just stayed with me. You know I try to say that to myself everyday.  ‘The less I want, the less I need’ because sometimes I do start wanting things that I really don’t need. So, I say that to myself.  And then, there is a quote by Ernest Hemmingway that I really love about writing. “There’s not much to writing, you just sit down at the typewriter and bleed”. I love that quote because I feel like a lot of times people don’t understand what – all the emotional exhaustion that comes when you write because you really are bleeding, you know.  Especially like my writing – I write about pain and about loss and my writing is really depressing because it comes from this part of myself that has a lot of that pain that just needs to come out. A lot of times when I'm done writing for the day, I just feel so emotionally exhausted, and I do feel that I just bled all over the page. 



2 Comments on Las Comadres Interview Author Reyna Grande, last added: 12/12/2012
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2. Librotraficante in New York Guest Post. La Bloga Represents in Brooklyn.



Rich Villar adjust the mic for Librotraficante and banned book author, Martín Espada 






The Decisive Act: On Orwell, Arizona, and 50 For Freedom
by Rich Villar, special to La Bola


They didn't show up, and I shouldn't be surprised.  A press release was generated, an email address and phone number was distributed, the messages went to the right people, and my phone didn't ring, and no messages hit my inbox.  None of them showed up, and I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, because there are always more important things to be discussed, like Mitt Romney's ignorance about the physics of airplane cabin pressure, or striking football referees, or the technical specs behind the iPhone 5.

There will be no articles written, no reporting, no witness from the press (except for what we do on our own, clearly).  They've got to report on the Presidential election, and the issues surrounding our economy, and health care, and illegal immigration.  No time for a bunch of rabble rousers talking about banned books, books you can still buy on Amazon.  Because if you can still buy things on Amazon, then all is well.

Did you know that Amazon once bannedGeorge Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm?  Of all the books to ban.  Supposedly it was a dispute over rights, but it led to a massive outcry—similar, it could be said, to the outcry over Tucson's book ban.  But it's okay, Amazon said at the time, because it offered refunds to the buyers.  Point being, the technology to control what you read exists.  Point being, if Arizona had known this sooner, perhaps they wouldn't have to physically remove any books from the classroom.

Let's be clear.  The issues in Arizona are only peripherally about books.  Though it should be said, the first thing you do—if your aim to disappear a nation—is to throw their literature in the trash.  Burn it, ban it, box it, just don't read it.  And so they did just that, Arizona: they banned the books, and they boxed the books, and they made the Mexican-American Studies program in Tucson disappear, along with their teachers, along with any mention of it in the schools.  Ah, but they told us, they reassured us, that the books are not banned.  They just can't be used to teach Mexican-Americans about being Mexican-American.  And they told the rest of their teachers, that any attempt to teach any of the banned literature, all 80 titles on the list (it should scare you, to death, that there's a banned books list, and that it used to be a curriculum), could result in their termination, should any complaint about their rabble-rousing content be raised by a concerned parent.  Or, anyone, really.

This is where the story ended, even after Tony Diaz and the group Librotraficante had the audacity to quote the law in public, show its unconstitutional application toward one group of people, report to us the students' discontent, and organize a series of panels and lectures around the years-long battle between Arizona and the teachers, which is still ongoing in the courts.  They told us about the school district suing the former teachers for damages.  They told us about the threats to other people's jobs, to keep them in line, to silence them.  And they (meaning Luis Urrea) told us about the Orwellian implications of banning books, unbanning Shakespeare, and rewriting history, and covering themselves in doublethink and Newspeak.

Aurora Anaya-Cerda, owner of La Casa Azul Bookstore welcomes the SRO crowd, along with Rich Villar
We gathered, though the press did not, last Friday at the 50 For Freedom of Speech reading, because this is not simply about banning books.  Banned author Martín Espada knows that; which is why, when I asked him to do the reading, he brought himself from Amherst, Masschusetts, on his own dime, to be with us, the very night before another reading in Boston.  And banned author Luis Urrea knows that; that's why he drove straight to La Casa Azul from the airport when Tony Diaz made the call.  (And Tony flew up from Houston himself.)  It's about freedom, the fundamental right to know that down is down, and up is up, and that 2 + 2 = 4. 
Sergio Troncoso, Tony Díaz, Martín Espada, Melinda Palacio, Luis Alberto Urrea

What do you think it means when a government entity does not want you to read a book called 500 Years of Chicano History?  Do you honestly believe it has anything to do with the ideology of the authors?  Has anyone in the state of Arizona actually met these authors on the banned list?  They are not concerned with how well the students do in school.  They've admitted that much: despite the success of the program in sending children to college, the program was cancelled anyway.  The state of Arizona is concerned with what, and how, children learn in school.  But it is not the facts they're concerned about, specifically.  It's the narrative they're worried about.  The story.  They are concerned, as Big Brother was concerned, with controlling the past; as Orwell points out to us, whoever controls the past controls the future.

The United States has a past that it would like to forget.  The United States has, in its past, summarily executed brown people, Hispanics and Latinos from every walk of life.  The trouble for Arizona, and everywhere else, is that there are history scholars, activists, students, thinking people, some with U.S. college educations, who had the audacity to write textbooks, and to think to themselves the following: Hispanics and Latinos did not drop from the clear blue sky, or from some mystical war-drawn border.  In Arizona, we're actually learning the same story again, about whitewashed history, and changed facts, and misleading narrative.  We're learning about context, the same kind of context that created activists like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, Pedro Albizu Campos, Lolita Lebron, and James Baldwin, who was also banned in Arizona.  Today, it's Mexican-Americans.  Take you pick as to who's next.  Who's due, as it were.  Where the fire will be next time.

If Chicanos have a context, and a history, before the advent of white supremacy, before the advent of European conquest or Pax Americana, there might be a reason for them to walk a little straighter, to understand their histories in context, to see themselves in a continuum from Aztlan, to zoot suits, to The House on Mango Street.  500 years ago, Chicanos existed.  Africa existed.  Latinos existed.  They had just different names.  When will we learn these names?

And when will the media learn to write long pieces about the systemic dismantling of civil rights?  When will they show up to poetry readings by authors on the banned list, in community spaces like La Casa Azul bookstore, in other states besides Arizona and Texas?  When will they tell you about Latinos uniting against their own genocide?  When will they tell you about the counterspells being cast by poets and writers, the ones who still believe in language, and history, and meaning, and roots?

Maybe when they find themselves being downsized, or commanded what to say, by their bosses, by their governments, by financial concerns.  Maybe that day is already here.

What's left for us, poets, Latinos, is to wake up and understand what is happening, to understand it in the context of lightning-fast information being passed and passed over.  We have to speak, and we have to speak often, in new ways and old ways, to keep these fights fresh.  And we must always be ready to tell the world our history, never tiring of the truth, never weary when people tell you they don't get it.  Never scared when the media doesn't show up.
Rich Villar at La Casa Azul (Luis Urrea posing for another photo in background)

And we have to remember love:  that's what was present in massive amounts last Friday at the Casa Azul, and in many places around the country, reading banned literature out loud, casting counterspells into the universe to reverse the trends, defy conventional wisdom, and survive the way we always have.  We have to remember love because our children thrive on it, because we thrive on it, because we will not become automatons unless we allow ourselves to be.  We have to remember love, because love banishes indifference, and because love will keep us rooted, our histories intact, our people whole.

Remember love, now and until the day you die, by reading every book that the state of Arizona tells you not to.  Read them, and quote from them, and steep your children in them.  Love every day, and do not give in to indifference.

While you're at it, write some of these things down.

"To mark the paper was the decisive act."

–George Orwell, 1984



***

Some of Melinda's photos from last weekend's Brooklyn Book Festival

Melinda Palacio works the crowd at the Brooklyn Book Festival

Lucrecia Guerrero, Luis Alberto Urrea, Melinda Palacio, Toni Margarita Plummer, and Reyna Grande at the Brooklyn Book Festival

A trip to Brooklyn would not be complete without a walk across the  Brooklyn Bridge. 

Melinda Palacio and Reyna Grande sightsee.
Toni Margarita Plummer and Melinda Palacio


La Bloga's Melinda Palacio will make a return trip to New York for the Las Comadres y Compadres Writers Conference, Saturday, October 6 in Brooklyn, NY. Don't miss the poetry panel moderated by Rich Villar.

Bloguero Garcia en Albuquerque mañana

LaBloga-ero Rudy Ch. Garcia will do a reading & signing of his Chicano fantasy novel tomorrow Sat. Sept. 29th at 2:00pm in the National Hispanic Cultural Center, 1701 4th St. SW, in Albuquerque. Please inform anyone you think might be interested. The Closet of Discarded Dreams on sale for $16. (NHCC contact Greta Pullen 505-724-4752)



2 Comments on Librotraficante in New York Guest Post. La Bloga Represents in Brooklyn., last added: 9/28/2012
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3. Count on Me: Tales of Sisterhoods and Fierce Friendships


Melinda Palacio

Las Comadres Para Las Americas shares the power of literature and friendship. On Friday, La Bloga covered their upcoming Comadres and Compadres Writers Conference next month, October 6, in New York.


For those that cannot take advantage of the Comadres Writers Conference, a new book, out next month, Count on Me: Tales ofSisterhoods and Fierce Friendships, offers readers a view into the role of comadres and compadres for authors; there's one essay by compadre Luis Alberto Urrea.


Nora Comstock is always busy, but the next two months might prove her busiest with the writers conference and publication launch party of Count on Me at La Casa Azul Bookstore, September 20, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. 143 E. 103rd Street, NY, NY. 


Comstock, the founder of the international and national group, talks about seeing the book in print.

"I have the advanced reading copy and I sleep with it! It is the most amazing feeling to have it actually finished. It seems like a dream. Everything seemed to get done so fast. When you work with consummate professionals, it is a seamless process. I did not expect it to go so smoothly. Writing the intro was very hard both because I am not a writer and because I had so much to say. I kept trying to put all my feelings and thoughts into a small space. They had to cut a lot."


The book is inspiring to anyone who's ever relied on a friend, not just any friend, but the kind of friend you know will be there for you no matter what. One of my good friends and comadres, Reyna Grande, is in the anthology. Reyna's moving memoir, The Distance Between Us, is garnering rave reviews. A modified chapter from her memoir is in Count on Me. Reyna writes about her teacher and mentor, Diana Savas. Diana is a perfect example of a comadre because she immediately recognized that Reyna needed more than a friend and offered to fulfill the role of family, confidant and nurturer in order to support a young woman, very much like herself, who wanted to do well in college. Thanks to her comadre Diana, Reyna went on to publish two novels and a memoir and participate in the Las Comadres Book Club as an author and presenter. Reyna says she felt very honored to contribute to the anthology:

"The topic was especially appealing because I immediately thought of my former teacher and mentor as the subject of my piece. I'm grateful to las Comadres for giving me the chance to thank my teacher publicly for what she did for me."



Upcoming Events in Los Angeles, CA


September 4, Reyna Grande presents her new memoir, The Distance Between Us, Tuesday at Vroman's at 7pm, 695 E. Colorado  Blvd, Pasadena CA 91101.

(You can wish Reyna a happy birthday, September 7)










Saturday, September 15, Latinos in Lotusland at the Autry, 2pm to 4pm. Don't miss a full day of Latino Heritage month at the Autry Museum at Griffith Park, CA.






Over in Denver...


La Bloga's Rudy Garcia presents his debut novel, The Closet of Discarded Dreams, at Su Teatro, Sunday Sept. 16 at 5pm.














Countdown to publication...

Less than two months until the release of How Fire Is a Story,Waiting. 




Last, but not least...
Happy Labor Day

1 Comments on Count on Me: Tales of Sisterhoods and Fierce Friendships, last added: 9/6/2012
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4. Las Comadres y Mas plus Notes from the Road Ahead

Las Comadres, LAPCA, West Hollywood Book Fair, Media News and More...

by Melinda Palacio

Nora Comstock


Nora Comsock of the lower Rio Grande Valley didn’t imagine she’d lead the way to share Latino Literature and pioneer a movement networking Latino authors with readers across the country. Las Comadres has grown into a vast organization thanks to Dr. Nora de Hoyos Comstock, national and international Founder, President, and CEO of Las Comadres Para las Americas. Comstock has transformed the organization from an in home gathering to an international comadrazo with several services for authors and readers.

The businesswoman, with a technical background, understood the mechanics behind social networking before the term was coined. “I was a businesswoman,” she said, “but I also wanted a connection to my community, to my culture.”

In 1984, Comstock worked in computer marketing and communications: “I read manuals and created programs. I didn’t write software.”

Fastforward to the millennium, Comstock finds herself in East Austin. She wants to create community. She used her networking skills to help with the Las Comadres Book Club by sending out emails to hundreds of people. The email turns into a yahoo group, then an evite. The evite outgrows it maximum capacity, but more and more people want to join the conversation on Latino Books. The current result is an international teleconference with an author, a moderator, and hundreds of readers. Comstock is proud that she was able to grow the network of Latina women interested in books by Latina and Latino authors.

“If I understood software, I would be rich beyond belief, but I am not a programmer. I am a developer. I could make computers do things. I understood the package.

She kept up with the technology and now Las Comadres with the help of many others, including Jack Bell, Nora Comstock’s husband is an international Latino book club with monthly networking opportunities for Latinas. The Las Comadres website also includes Comadre University, online courses in topics as diverse as how kids (10-18) can start a business to The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing to How to Hire (or Fire) an Agent. Comstock is proud that she can share her love for books and her culture.

Next week, Comstock will moderate a literature panel at the 26th National Hispanic Women’s Corporation Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, Thursday October 6 at 2:15 pm. The conference takes place over two days October 6-7 and features several professional development and leadership session. The Thursday literature panel features three Latina authors: Sandra Rodriguez Barron, author of Stay With Me, Kathy Cano-Murillo, author of Ms. Scarlet’s School of Patternless Sewing and of Crafty Chica fame, and Melinda Palacio, author of Ocotillo Dreams.


This weekend in Los Angeles two literary festivals: Saturday the first Cuentos del Pueblo at LAPCA and Sun

1 Comments on Las Comadres y Mas plus Notes from the Road Ahead, last added: 10/1/2011
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5. Las Comadres and El día de los niños

My comadres over at Las Comadres Para Las Americas have sent the folowing email about a very important teleconference.

To learn more about Las Comadres please click here.

Queridas comadres...it's TELECONFERENCE TIME! To
Register...

http://www.lascomadres.org/home_e/events/teleconference7.html

We ask that you consider purchasing the children's
book we selected for April and donating it to an
elementary school in your area.

In celebration of El día de los niños/El día de los
libros (Children's Day/Book Day)on April 30, we are
combining an interview with authors of a children's
bilingual book on activism with a university professor
studying when and how children should be taught about
racism. This is a different format just for the month
of April. In May we'll be starting our partnership
with the American Association of Publishers and
Borders, Inc. Reading With Las Comadres where we
interview Latina authors about their newly
published book and their work.

TELECONFERENCE DATE AND TIMES:
DATE: April 24, 2008 / duration approximately 1 hour
TIME: 5:00 PM PST
6:00 PM MST
7:00 PM CST
8:00 PM EST

Call in number (long distance charges will apply)
1-712-432-2323 / Access Code: 162718#

That's Not Fair! / ¡No Es Justo!

by Carmen Tafolla and Sharyll Teneyuca

Illustrated by Terry Ybáñez, Spanish translation by
Carmen Tafolla, Translation editors: Celina Marroquín
and Amalia Mondríguez, Ph.D.

THE STORY
In the 1920s and 1930s, the pecan shellers of San
Antonio, Texas, were some of the lowest-paid workers
in the nation. They were all Mexican-Americans, who
had fled the revolution in their home country. Pecan
shellers worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week,
for as little as six cents a pound. In addition, they
had to work in dusty, closed rooms. This made many of
them ill. And then, in 1938, their wages were cut in
half. They needed someone to be a voice for them,
someone both brave and caring. They needed a hero. A
young woman, barely twenty-one, answered their call.
Her name was Emma.

But Emma Tenayuca was not born a hero of the poor.
That's Not Fair! / ¡No Es Justo! tells how the seeds
of Emma's awareness and activism were sown when she
was very young. This story of courage and compassion
shows how each of us, no matter how young, can help to
make the world more fair for everyone.

SOME PERTINENT RESEARCH ON THE TOPIC

White Children More Positive Toward Blacks
After Learning About Racism, Study Shows

Challenging the idea that racism education could be
harmful to students, a new study from The University
of Texas at Austin found the results of learning about
historical racism are primarily positive. The study
appears in the November/December issue of the journal
Child Development.

"There is considerable debate about when and how
children should be taught about racism," says Bigler,
director of the university's Gender and Racial
Attitudes Lab. "But little research has examined
elementary-school-aged children's cognitive and
emotional reactions to such lessons."

TELECONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS

Carmen Tafolla is one of the most anthologized of all
Latina writers with work for both adults and children
appearing in more than two hundred anthologies. With
work translated into Spanish, German, and Bengali,
Tafolla has been published in a great variety of
genres. Carmen Tafolla has also published five adult
poetry books, seven children's television screenplays,

and numerous short stories and articles.

Sharyll Tenayuca is an attorney in San Antonio and the
niece of Emma Tenayuca.

UT Professor of Psychology Dr. Rebecca Bigler,
director
of the University of Texas at Austin, Gender and
Racial
Attitudes Lab

Interviewed by:
Adriana Dominguez is the Executive Editor who manages
the children's division of HarperCollins' Latino
imprint, Rayo. Before joining Harper, she was Críticas
magazine's Children's Review Editor. She has many
years of publishing experience in the children's
market, and has worked for most major publishers.

Nora de Hoyos Comstock, Ph.D.
LAS COMADRES PARA LAS AMERICAS
Connecting Latinas Everywhere!
http://www.lascomadres.org ;
[email protected]
Comstock Connections, Austin, TX
512-928-8780 voice/fax; 512-751-7837c

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