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Here are some Christmas stickers I designed for the greeting cards class I was taking at School of Visual Arts with Cheryl Phelps. I became one of those students who showed up with very little work....which defeated the purpose of taking the class in the first place. I've been pretty busy (very thankful right now in this economy.) It was a great class though and I felt very inspired. Cheryl is a great artist and very open and generous with information. (thank you!) I would love to take this class again.

I'm off to San Francisco for Christmas! I definitely need the warmer weather and a change of scenery. Happy holidays to all of you!

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I just got an email today from the Society of Illustrators announcing a workshop with Illustrator Marcos Chin. He is pretty famous for his illustrations for the Lavalife ad campaign that is all over NYC. I can't be more excited since I am a big fan of his work (plus all that time sitting in the subway staring at his ads and wondering how he did it.) I signed up after 2 minutes I got the email.

This workshop requires that you "bring your own fully charged laptop," which I thought was really funny. Even though I am a digital artist and I do indeed have a laptop, I've never gone to a workshop that runs that way. Welcome to the new age of technology.

Another note- The Original Art show is now up at the Society of Illustrators, which showcases art from children's books of the year. I haven't gotten a chance to check it out yet, but will hopefully go this weekend (and dreaming to be in the show one day.) Running now till November 26th.

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I'm currently taking a greeting card/licensing class at The School of Visual Arts this semester. Many people are asking why someone like me need to take a class like this. The main reason is that I need deadlines, and it seems that if I don't have them, I don't get anything done. I've been talking about venturing out beyond children's books for a long time but can't get my butt into gear.

Don't get me wrong. I have alot more goals I need to accomplish in the world of children's books (like writing my own book, having a series, taking over the world with chickens, etc.) but there are so much more beyond, like licensing and even "grown up" editorial work. If I don't get those things cooking, it won't magically happen over night.

On another note, I feel like I've been writing alot of "sorry for the late reply" emails. I've been very absent-minded lately, so I apologize to anyone who has emailed or commented here and I haven't replied. Please know I always appreciate them. Cluck cluck!

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Well...I at least looked at the Illustration Friday topic and even doodled a few thoughts. But, this just isn't going to be the week to get something like that done.

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WOW! Last week was about as busy a week as I've had in a long time, and the really weird thing about it is that I didn't do a single piece of illustration or design work. Not one!

This week is my wife's first back at school and it's a new school to boot. Because of that I spent all of last week moving everything from her old classroom that we had plopped down into storage, out of storage and into her new room...by myself.

You may not think that sounds like a whole heck of a lot, but this woman has collected a LOT of books in her twelve years of teaching and a lot of books mean a lot of heavy boxes. We actually had to rent a 16 foot U-Haul in order to move all this stuff.

After the moving was done I spent a good eight hours a day, every day, moving desks, moving tables, organizing papers, papering her walls, hanging stuff on those walls, creating more stuff to be hung on those walls, then hanging that created stuff up!

Toss in the fact that the air conditioning wasn't working because the school was still being built, and it was well over 100 outside and you've got a recipe for a tired and very stinky me.

Anyway, all is well that ends well I suppose, and her first day back went decently so I guess it was worth it.

She's going to owe me though...oh yes, she surly is...

Hopefully I can find some time this week to put the kibosh on this darn monster piece.

Steve~

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I tend to have a love/hate relationship about books with rich kids. Done right, I like and feel sympathetic towards the rich main character, or treat the book as escapist; but done wrong, I turn into the "get a real problem!" type of reader with a side dose of "and imagine if that were your problem and you didn't have any money!" Yes, Holden Caulfield, I'm looking at you.

Carlie takes issue with a column that says all YA is about the rich folk nowadays (she also takes issue with the conflating of YA and middle grade, but that's another issue.)

I know we've done this before, but heck, let's do it again! (See here for our look at Class in YA books).

List of YA/middle grade books, written in the past few years, that do not have Rich Kids as the main character. Yes, I'll count struggling to stay in middle class as not being rich. Let's try to keep this contemporary, that is, not fantasy or historical fiction.

I'll start!

Beige by Cecil Castellucci

Clementine books by Sarah Pennypacker

Gilda Joyce books by Jennifer Allison

A Room on Lorelie Street by Mary Pearson

Rules of Survival by Werlin

The Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr

That Girl Lucy Moon by Amy Timberlake

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I've started up with the local free community college illustration course on saturday mornings. There's really not a whole lot of instruction - it's more of an "independent project/discussion" situation. We come up with our own projects that we want to work on and not everyone who signs up has an art background.

It only meets for 6 Saturdays over summer, and it's an opportunity for feedback and a social outlet. I've been watching the SCBWI calendar for my region and there's been squat for illustrators - everything is for writers. Seems I'll have to consider driving to Los Angeles.

Anyway, I've been spending time between doctor visits (my daughter got a lovely blue cast this morning) working out my idea for that class. So, again, not much has happened in the studio. The project will be a series of about 12 illustrations - not really child oriented, but more personal. It will be a different direction from what I've been doing, so I can't wait to see what comes out. It certainly won't be finished in 6 classes (but that's the nice thing about taking this "class" - no grades, no deadlines - just participate).

I think I will be using ink again. I like the ink and colored pencil combination. So, in honor of that - and since I don't have anything else to share - here's an ink sketch of a tree stump in our backyard. Then again, since the concept is quite different, perhaps I'll use something like charcoal and pastel (gasp!).

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Just a quick note, I am teaching a one-day continuing education class at Simmons’ Mount Holyoke campus on Sunday afternoon, March 30th. The topic is Intellectual Freedom, basically providing the foundations of the idea and then going over current topic type issues that we’ve seen in libraryland lately. Here’s the official description. If you’re in need of CE credits or just want a refresher, feel free to sign up.

The importance of intellectual freedom is a cornerstone of modern librarianship in the US, and yet for many people is only understood as an abstract idea. This workshop will cover the foundations of intellectual freedom in American librarianship and provide concrete examples of how the concept applies to today’s library environment.

We will look at the Library Bill of Rights, the Freedom to Read Statement, and state library privacy laws as well as legislation which abridges the freedoms of library workers and library users. We will discuss the thorny issues that arise when intellectual freedom principles conflict with local practices and cultures and ways to unpack and address those issues. Social software and its implications for intellectual freedom in libraries will be another facet we will address. Participants will gain an understanding of ALA’s work laying down the foundation for intellectual freedom and leave with concrete examples of IF in action in today’s libraries.

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Do you want to write for the Educational Market? If so, you are in luck because the very talented and in the know instructor, laurasalas is conducting another one of her online classes. Read all about it and sign up soon. Class starts on March 10th.

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Reaching waaay back in time (all the way to 2007!), there the YA YA YAs initiated a discussion about social class in young adult literature. Whether/where poverty is depicted in YA lit, whether/how it's tied up with race, etc. Figures that in the month since, I've read several good books that deal with class differences.

1. Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve.

   I'd tried reading Larklight and just couldn't get into it, so I was intensely surprised and pleased when I discovered I LOVED Mortal Engines!

   It's a steampunk adventure set on a far-future Earth where wheeled cities roam the continents devouring smaller towns. The gentry live on the top tier, slaves operate the engines in the bowels, and everyone else falls somewhere in between.

   Our story’s heroes are Tom, an apprentice historian (middle-class), Katherine, the Head Historian’s daughter (nouveau riche), and Hester, a would-be assassin (outsider/untouchable). All become embroiled in London’s sinister plot to dominate Eurasia. It’s a page-turner with three glorious sequels.

   To me, it read most like Kenneth Oppel’s Airborn and Skybreaker, but it will find fans among most literary fantasy/science fiction (Philip Pullman, Garth Nix, Diana Wynne Jones, etc.) lovers, junior high and up.

2. Taken, by Edward Bloor.

   In this near-future suspense, 13-year-old Charity has been kidnapped, presumably for the high ransom her parents will pay. Kidnapping children from wealthy families has become an industry in this America of intense social stratification (yes, even more intense than today). Fully expecting to be returned home safely within the typical 24 hours, Charity is forced to reevaluate everything she knows when the kidnappers stray from protocol.

   In this book, race and class are definitely intertwined. In Charity’s South Florida community, the people living in gated communities seem to be mostly white, while the new servant class is largely Hispanic, African-American, or otherwise “of color.” Taken sort of hits the reader over the head with its social commentary, but it’s still one of the better written and thoughtful suspense novels for the junior high age group available. It should appeal to both boys and girls.

3. Another Kind of Cowboy, by Susan Juby.

   And now for something completely different. This contemporary YA book explores teenagers Alex and Clio’s coming of age. Alex is a reserved, closeted gay teen who lives for horses. Clio is a spoiled and naive debutante at the local equestrienne school. Alex’s lack of money causes problems in his quest to pursue the dressage method of riding, while Clio has more money than she knows what to do with. In spite of their glaring differences, they somehow become good friends.

   I really enjoyed the book’s realism and dry humor. It reaches a very satisfying conclusion, and avoids the obvious solution to Alex’s financial problems by having Clio bail him out.

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I first saw the "Did You Grow Up Privileged" Meme at E. Lockhart's blog. And while there are definitely some weaknesses to it, c'mon, it's a 31 Question meme. Given that, it's interesting.

And it relates to children's literature (and story) because it ties in to the discussion about poverty and class in literature; and I think how a person grew up affects many things that they never realize. I think that's why I look at books and movies and TV to not only be needed mirrors, but also needed windows, because the person who grows up thinking the way they grew up is the ONLY way; and all others are "less", grows up very narrow. And that is dangerous.

At the same time, whenever I do think of poverty/class lit, I also fear the danger voiced in the song Common People: the person who views poverty as some type of place to visit because "you think being poor is cool." (For the record: I adore William Shatner's cover of this song. Seriously.)




Ahem.

Time for the meme:
From What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.


(note from Liz: like others, I'm commenting on the statements, using italics. . So, this is probably a bit different from the original meme.)


Bold the true statements.

1. Father went to college

2. Father finished college (and grad school)
Actually, I am not sure about grad school. He may have.

3. Mother went to college

4. Mother finished college (and grad school)
Here is one of those examples where, due to the limitations of the meme, it's not very nuanced. My mother dropped out of college when she got married; which meant that when my sister and I were little, she was balancing being married, a mother of two small children, working a job at night to help pay tuition, going to school part time, and also teaching full time at a local Catholic school that so needed teachers that it was OK she didn't have her degree, yet.

5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
I believe there is second cousin or some such who graduated law school a semester or two before me; and there are those who did so after me. But in terms of growing up, did I have or know of family with these degrees? Nope.

6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
Probably "same". Definitely not higher. But I'm not sure, especially since we had some financial reversals around this time.

7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.

8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.

9. Were read children's books by a parent.

10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18.
Not nuanced enough. As a child, I had a summer of swimming lessons; around 8th grade or so, a year or two of art lessons; and, depending on where we lived, took advantage of summer rec programs such as pottery, etc. Music lessons? No; because having or renting an instrument was too expensive (that was what my mother said when I asked for them.) My sister had ballet lessons, and I know it was a sacrifice. And ended for financial reasons, not because my sister lost interest.

11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18.
While answering yes, I think this is not nuanced enough; that I had swimming lessons at age six and art lessons from ages 11 to 13 hardly is the same as a child who each year has swimming, piano, dance, etc.

12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
I'm trying to remember this as a child; has the "Jersey accent" always been mocked? With the whole big hair thing? Yep; but as I never had that accent or that hair I wouldn't say "like me." Ditto for the often ridiculous and sometimes insulting portrayals of Irish Americans, Italian Americans, and Catholics.

13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.

14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
Scholarships and loans which I am still paying off. If I were doing this meme, I would also add a bit about parents giving money towards a home purchase. Because these two factors are not just about how one grew up, but one's current lifestyle, and what one can give to their own kids. Why? Because it's about the amount of debt one is carrying. Put two people in the same job, one who has no college/school debt and a down payment from their parents, and who is paying college debt and rent so cannot save for a down payment and cannot expect that from their parents, and you see the consequences beyond one's own childhood.

15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.

16. Went to a private high school.
I went to Catholic high school. Which is not quite the same as private high school. As an aside, both my sister and I went to Catholic grammar schools for part of our K-8 schooling; at one point, the sacrifice my mother made to meet tuition was moving in with her parents and living with them.

17. Went to summer camp.
For three years I went to a one week long sleepaway Girl Scout camp. Fun, yes; but not some summer long expensive thing.

18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.

19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels.
One thing my mother valued was vacations, and being together as a family. Plus, financially, some things changed upon her remarriage. So, from the time I was about 5 to 13, my mother, sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins went to Myrtle Beach, staying at an inexpensive motel, one block from the beach, several people to a room. My grandparents took me to Ireland when I was about 12; we stayed with family or in B&Bs. For my stepfather's business trips, we went to Disneyworld.

20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.
Some new, as I was the oldest; but others were handmedowns from older relatives.

21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them.
Hell no. Bought my own car. However, the family attitude, and mine still, is better to buy a new car than someone else's problem, so I have always bought new and once the repair/upkeep exceeds what a car payment would be, buy another one. New.

22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.
For some reason, this makes me giggle.

23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.
I moved 13 times in my first 18 years; at times living in apartments, rented homes, rented condominiums, and grandparents. Looking at it averaged out, most often I lived in a single family house.

24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
Not nuanced enough. For the years we rented, I can tell you that other kids (even those who are friends) are bastards. Often told, even by friends, that it wasn't my real house because we didn't own it. (The things that were said about my mother being divorced? Such as of course someone would think twice about marrying me because of the bad example? Another meme. But still, being the single working woman renting in a neighborhood of SAHMs? Not pretty.) We owned one home for a year when I was in 8th grade, thanks to my mother's remarriage, but for family reasons (the death of my grandfather) sold that home and moved in with my grandmother; a new home was bought right before I left for college.

25. You had your own room as a child.
It depended on the place we lived at the time; I'd say more than half the time my sister and I shared. During high school, we shared.

26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.

27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course
Wow, this is a big one. I grew up thinking these courses were for kids who needed it; didn't realize the game was you took it to make a good score better.

28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
Nope. And I am a firm believer that TVs do not belong in kids bedrooms. But I think I'll save that for a "how to watch TV" post.

29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college

30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16

31. Went on a cruise with your family
In college, we (and another family) rented sailboats as a vacation. But that was after 18.

32. Went on more than one cruise with your family

33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
Part of the benefit of living close to cities like Philadelphia and NYC; and part from a divorced Dad looking for things to do on weekends.

34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.
Again, not nuanced enough. Unaware of heating bills. But aware that at one point we needed to move in with grandparents because of finances; aware of how much clothes and shoes and coats cost; aware of how much food cost.

So that is 17.

Bringing it back to books for kids and teens. In the books I read, sometimes people lived in apartments but more often they lived in homes. That the family owned. I cannot recall reading about renters. Even now, the default, I believe, is a family living in home it owns; oh, sometimes it's "the city" and apartments, but how often is it apartments in the suburbs? Or a renter?

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Have you ever wanted to learn more about writing for the educational market? Now's your chance - our own Laura Salas laurasalas (with more credits in this field than I have fingers and toes to count) is bringing her in-person class online. Check out her post today for more information.

Laura is a terrific teacher and I highly recommend her class to anyone wanting to learn more about writing non-fiction for the educational market.

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I often tell people after my talks to email me their questions if they’re longer than I can reasonably answer during a quick after-talk chat session. A librarian from New Hampshire emailed me yesterday to ask about the email classes I’ve taught, both in the library and in the adult ed classes I teach at nights. I wrote her a long chatty email about the ins and outs of teaching email classes mostly to older adults. Then I figured I’d copy it over and linkt o it here. Then I figured I’d include it a few different ways so that readers could see a few ways you can get content on the web, instantly. For those of you who just want to read about my email classes, any of these will work.

• email class on Jottit - a very smooth interface where you get a subdomain of your choosing and can put text there. You can do this short-term or own your page wiht the addition of a password and an email address to send a lost password. Brainchild of Aaron Swartz
• email class on pasta mostly just a text box that you can paste words into that will automatically link it to your del.icio.us account. I’ve used this for years and while there is no guaratnee, it often fits the bill for text I don’t want to dump directly on the blog but want to be able to talk about.
• email class on cl1p.net - lets you post as text, rich text or “message board” and pick a URL starting with cl1p.net. For a small donation you can own the URL for some length of time. Pretty basic but functional

And my question. I say in the email that I’d really like a “getting started with email” book, something totally brand-neutral that just discusses email concepts and mechanisms. I don’t care if there are branded examples, but I’m not looking for a “how to use Yahoo mail” tutorial and I’m looking for PRINT though I know I can print out a website. So, I can Google like anyone, but does such a simple book exist? I’m feeling maybe it could even be a pamphlet that if it doesn’t exist, might be better off being created one of these days.

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Well it's really the beginning, so I'm not suppose to be learned! But I'm learning a lot!
And I love this a lot!

Here are a few draws I made till now!

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The lovely photo is of an equally lovely and powerful writer, Tara Betts. (Not quite the plain brown wrapper...) It's been almost ten years ago that I was paired with Tara as her mentor in a City of Chicago arts program. To this day, I'm not sure what I taught her, but it has been my privilege to read her work, watch her develop and soar as a writer, a performer, and as a critical thinker. She is a person of crystal clear intent and ethics and it is that clarity and that moral compass that infuses all of her work. Tara is that rara avis who is able to dive into the canon, retrieve what she needs and resurface to the real world where the rest of us dwell. She knows her sestinas, her villanelles, her haikus, but she is not seduced by the prettiness of form over content. Her work is rigorously constructed, but framed with direct, clear language, unambiguous. Tara Betts knows where her loyalties lie --- the African American experience, femaleness, urban life, the place where class and race intersect, and as readers we are all the better for it. Take a close look at the pieces following this interview, and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Describe your odyssey in becoming a writer. How does African American and female identity influence your work? What would you say are your major influences, both personally and in a literary sense?

My major influences initially were ntozake shange, Maya Angelou, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Langston Hughes. When I was around 12 or 13, I kept a diary a little before this point, but began writing poetry shortly after I read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I had always been a reader, but I didn’t always see books in the library that looked like they talked about people of African descent at all. When I was in high school, I worked at the Kankakee Public Library and learned the stacks better. Sometimes, I would sneak off and read. It was then that I aspired to be a journalist so Rolling Stone, Essence and U.S. News & World Report were also part of my obsession as well.

When I started attending Loyola University on the North Side of Chicago, I kept writing, indulged more and more in Vibe and The Source, and eventually did an internship in New York at BET Weekend magazine in conjunction with the New York Daily News office. It was an amazing summer too. It solidified that I had to keep writing, even though I was a student activist and editor for The Loyola Phoenix. It was in college that I read more about Hurston, the Negritude poets, Toni Morrison, Fanon and Cheikh Anta Diop.

Although I felt like these were eye-opening experiences, I felt like I was always challenged by the more conservative influences on a highly Republican, very Catholic Jesuit university that somehow managed to talk about social justice issues.

By the time I was in my second year at Loyola, I had started organizing poetry readings on campus. This was before poetry became trendy again, so I shared some of my favorite poets and collaborated with other student organizations to make the readings happen. I remember inviting Malik Yusef to campus and bringing Ramona Africa from MOVE Organization with help from Tyehimba Jess. Tyehimba and Malik were the first two poets I met on the Chicago scene. Shortly before I graduated from Loyola in 1997, Malik Yusef gave me my first poetry feature at The Cotton Club on Michigan Avenue. I started reading at Lit X, this jazz club called Rituals, Afrika West bookstore, Guild Complex and eventually Mad Bar, which is where I started slamming. I slammed once or twice at Green Mill, but it didn’t feel like an audience of my peers, even though I enjoyed the work from poets like Sheila Donahue, Cin Salach, Regie Gibson, Dan Ferri, Maria McCray, Marc Smith and most vividly Patricia Smith.

At this time, I was also exploring the feminist possibilities in my poetry. I performed with Sharon Powell, Marta Collazo and other women in a show about menstruation called “The Empress Wears Red Clothes.” I had sort of exited the hip hop heavy part of my life, even though I was still writing pieces here and there, going to shows, hosting a hip hop radio show called “The Hip Hop Project” with my good friend Lional Freeman (AKA Brotha El), meeting graf writers and admiring dj skills.

After leaving “The Hip Hop Project” and doing readings for about a year and a half, I started to slam at Mad Bar. I was on the first two Mental Graffiti teams in 1999 and 2000 with poets like Mars Gamba-Adisa Caulton, Marlon Esguerra, Dennis Kim, Shappy and Lucy Anderton. Although slam became a very stressful thing for me, I got to spend time with a wide range of aesthetics and personalities that I really loved and admired for different reasons. I also had the opportunity to co-host, curate and promote an all-women’s open mic and performance space called Women OutLoud with women like Mars, Lucy, Anida Esguerra and Krystal Ashe.

While I was slamming, I started getting more into a range of poets like Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Julia de Burgos, Sonia Sanchez, Jayne Cortez, Carl Sandburg, Lucille Clifton, Gwendolyn Brooks, Stanley Kunitz and others. I also started workshopping with various poets through the Guild Complex. My first workshop leader was Sterling Plumpp. He pushed me to keep writing, read more sisters and just be persistent. He’s a master of the poetic line and very much a blues man. More people should be reading his work. I also went on to do workshops with Afaa Michael Weaver who pushed me to be honest, vulnerable and study a diverse range of writers. I really wanted to just read writers of color at one point, and he still reminds me of how there is so much to learn from everyone. Lucille Clifton and Quincy Troupe were also poets that I participated in workshops with and these experiences led to my real urgency to be a part of Cave Canem, a workshop/retreat for writers of African descent started by Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady. There are too many poets to name that I have met through this retreat that have fed, taught and inspired me.

The students at Young Chicago Authors were also a big influence on my writing. Through YCA, I began teaching writing classes. Since I had to teach what I was doing, I was more conscious of what I did or explaining why a certain work moved me. I also got to develop my own classes, like an author study on Neruda, Hip Hop Poetics, Poetic Forms by Communities of Color and Women Writers as Essayists. By the time I left Chicago, I had firmly rooted my voice that I think is always expanding and refining itself. I had started the MFA Program in Poetry at New England College (graduated in January 2007) and moved to New York. Now, I think I’m trying to read as much as I can in fiction, new poets, history and the classics that I need to catch up on. Wanda Coleman, Martin Espada, Marilyn Nelson are just a few of the poets who really move me these days.

You've written extensively about African American labor leader, Ida B. Wells. Describe her significance as subject matter.

It’s funny you would ask about the Ida B. Wells’ poems. I started writing about her years ago, and I’ve never quite finished the series that I set out to do. I read about her and her own books like A Crusade for Justice, Southern Horrors and The Memphis Diary edited by Miriam Decosta-Willis, and I started researching lynchings. This was around the time that Without Sanctuary, a book of photographs taken at lynchings, was released.

In 1892, one of Wells’ close friends Thomas Moss and the co-owners of the Black-owned People’s Grocery Store were basically lynched for offering better products and better prices to Black customers than the white storeowners. Wells had already initiated a public transportation boycott and filed a successful lawsuit that was eventually repealed when she had been thrown off the train for refusing to go to a smoking car. She refused so adamantly that she dug in her heels, and it took two men to remove her after she bit the conductor on the hand. In fact, she started her paper The Free Press in response to this ousting, and convinced record numbers to leave Memphis and stop taking public transit.

As a result, at a time when women were not even considered able to handle the strong material of journalism, Wells convinced people to do things with the facts that she gleaned. She also started the first suffrage organization for Black women in Illinois, helped start the NAACP, ran an organization for Black men that was similar to the then-segregated YMCA who would not house or notify Black men of employment opportunities, and initiated the anti-lynching crusade in the U.S. and the U.K. So, her radical scope really drew me to her, but also some of the things she did that were just hilarious. For example, her daughter Alfreda Duster describes how she went into a department store in Chicago and was waiting to be served. Of course, they acted like this Black woman was not even standing there, so out of exasperation, she drapes a pair of men’s boxers over one shoulder and starts to walk toward the exit. Then someone finally asked her what she was doing, and she told them “trying to buy these.” So, her ties to Chicago, her sense of humor and strength, and her need to document her place in history when so many women were forgotten, omitted and erased, has brought me back to her example again and again.

You made a strong connection to Latino poets, Latino poetry and culture. Can you talk more about that?

In my youth, I studied Spanish in high school, and I hardly knew any people from Spanish-speaking cultures, but when I went to college, I finally met more than Black and white people en masse. I really tried to support all people of color, so I learned a lot and tried to understand how our experiences overlapped and differed. I also took a class with Dr. Susannah Cavallo called Afro-Hispanic Literature where we read writers like Carolina Maria de Jesus, Jose Lima and Nascimiento’s Brazil: Mixture or Massacre.

I would have to say that Pablo Neruda brought the metaphor to life for me in a way that no other poet has. After him, I was drawn to so many others like Xavier Villarrutia, Gabriela Mistral, Cesar Vallejo, Daisy Zamora and anthologies like Martin Espada’s Poetry Like Bread and Stephen Tapscott’s Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry. I also read Chicago-based writers like Luis Rodriguez, Ana Castillo and Sandra Cisneros.

While I was living in Chicago, I got to read with so many Latina women who just wrote things that moved me. Some of them included Brenda Cardenas, the late Sulima Q. Moya, Susana Sandoval, Johanny Vazquez, Beatriz Badikian-Gartler, Katherinne Bardales, and of course, Lisa Alvarado.

In 2001, I had an opportunity to exchange with writers in Cuba at the now defunct Writers of the Americas Conference where my workshop leader was Jack Agueros, and we got to talk to writers like Junot Diaz, Maria Irene Fornes, Achy Obejas and Danny Hoch. While we were there, we met many local writers. One of them, Leo Navaro Guevara moved to the U.S., and his son Anton is my first and only godson.

Now, that I’m on the East Coast, it’s such an amazing experience to see the range of writers like Willie Perdomo, Magdalena Gomez, Tato Laviera, Sandra Maria Esteves, Jesus Papoleto among others. The Acentos series in the Bronx also gave me the chance to see a lot of these poets up close and to hear more of the type of work that I had only read.

What would you describe as your major themes?

History, family, politics, and love (mostly because we need to remember why we struggle in the first place).

You've had a lot of interface with spoken word, slam poetry, etc. How would you describe those genres v. 'literary' poetics and form?

Spoken word is an untapped wellspring of possibilities. Unfortunately, since people are catering to the lowest common denominator and writing pieces that will garner a shock, laughter or a tour through the spoken word circuit, there is not the same kind of interest in the work that I had before. Now, do I think that the slam offers young writers a chance to build their confidence and articulate themselves clearly in front of an audience? Yes. Do I think that it can lead people to read their work with feeling and internalize the meaning of what they’ve written? Yes. Do I think it can lead to people producing one-person shows, records, verse plays, books, creative collaborations and radical, through-provoking performance? Yes. And lastly, are there too many people competing for little-to-no-paying gigs for the big payoff of three-five minutes on television? Yes.

What most people don’t realize is that performance becomes a job. Even if you love it, you must maintain what will keep you working, and there are contradictions that compel people to ask hard questions about the growth and integrity of their work. Not enough people are asking themselves about that. I also think that if spoken word is continually pigeonholed as slam poetry and watered-down hip hop by wannabe emcees, then it will be relegated to the ghettos of forgotten poetry. There are too many good poets of color coming out of such performative experiences to be limited by this kind of categorization. Spoken Word is a category promoted by NARAS. Oral traditions across centuries and cultures have always existed, so we have to remind people that internalizing what we write and sharing it orally is not new. So, I don’t necessarily think there is a difference in the text, unless you’re a lazy writer who overcompensates through performance. Anything written can be performed, published or exhibited. It’s just about how it’s done.

What would you describe as your core strengths as a writer....where would you like to see yourself grow?

My core strengths. Now this is a difficult question. I think it’s been my willingness to always do what I feel like I need to do to grow. I haven’t always made many friends that way, but inevitably I wrote what I wanted and earned most people’s respect. I want to spend more time reading, trying to grow as a critical writer and write more prose. In terms of poetry, I’m intrigued with poetic form and how can we subvert with Eurocentric canonical notions that we have about it. I would like to collaborate with more visual artists and musicians since I’ve often been a solo writer sharing my work.

How would you describe your connection to young writers as it relates to your creative life?

My connection to young writers has kept me from being hyper-cynical/critical. They look at the world with new eyes, and when they have the breakthrough moments where they articulate something so honest and challenging for the first time. I live for those moments. Young writers make me always consider what it takes to keep writing new, how does writing work as an art and a disciplined practice. Sometimes, I think it’s only me who keeps me writing, which is true to some degree, but they are the ones who keep me writing.

Where do you see yourself in ten years, personally and creatively?

Ten years from now, I’m hoping to have published at least two or three books, not necessarily all poetry, maybe one of them is an anthology. I’ve thought I might have a Ph.D. in African American/Africana/Black Studies (whichever term people think they need to apply), American Studies or Women’s Studies by then. Teaching, traveling and balancing that with a family would be nice. Hopefully, I will be practicing yoga on a regular basis. I remember one time a student at Wright College asked me in a Q & A, what I wanted to do with my life, and I proceeded to tell her about all my professional goals and writerly aspirations when she cut in and asked, “other than that?” I felt like some inner voice had been plucked from my head and embodied in this girl. So, I thought about it, and yoga, having a garden, developing a spiritual life, staying politically responsible and critical and having good friends who could give a damn whether I write or not were my response to her question. All of that is still a work in progress.

What's something not in the official bio?

I always liked the fast, gravity-defying rides at carnivals and amusement parks. I recently freestyled on the mic with an all-female Afrobeat band in New York called Femm Nameless.



Not On the Menu

If Portugal was edible, could it be swallowed
like some country fruit, goosebumped as unripe
avocado, heavy with sweet guava wet
that lingers inside the cheeks?

Would Africa taste bitter and glitter
on the tongue from its ripe diamond seeds?
Would the silt of India be the truest curry
bursting a heat against the mouth’s roof?’

Every day an international hors'douvres platter
crosses so many tourist imaginations like
a hectic maitre’de.
There are Indian families in steamy kitchens,
Taiwanese men’s bicycles crisscrossing
Manhattan’s traffic-glutted streets,
Puerto Rican girls smiling for bigger tips
when offering mofongo,
and Cubans proffer mojitos
and freshly killed chicken
for that one night at El Hueco.

America, though, would distance itself
from its bitter Billie Holiday image in stalls
of worldly produce. America would be slick
with campaigns on its nutritional benefits.
America would be so shiny the shellac needs
cracking and peeling. Imagine.
America’s fruit, so sweet it eats the teeth
with its ache.

While movies ripen into
culinary pornography
Eat, Drink, Man, Woman,
Soul Food
Tortilla Soup
Like Water for Chocolate
The cinematic menu sounds
like a veil pulled across the face,
the sweaty thump of samba,
a pinprick protruding
from a map of exotica
where spare grain
of days remains unsampled
since the trees of America
require so much tending.


There Goes the Neighborhood
for Maxine Kumin

Aerial shot omniscient view bent above
asphalt playground. Sidewalks become
concrete football fields where Brooklyn
accents weigh down boys’ tongues
that count like girls circle one another.

They bend clothesline, extension cords,
double helix style rotations beneath
spinning jumping sneakers.
Speakers turned walls claim
the street as official block
party bidness. Metal drums split
open with orang charcoal guts plead
for red meat, then sizzle relief.

Brownstone stoops fill with girls
clinging to gossip like the new neighbor
holding his golf club bag as if announcing
shift change for baggy pants & oversized
shirt-wearing boys who stand too long on
the corner. Count each baby
in mad math that’s called living.
Take a breath when change claims
one more before you blink.

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By Rebecca OUP-US

To get you all excited about June’s Book Club pick, Tess of The D’Urbervilles, I decided to excerpt the first page. An important revelation is made that affects Tess throughout the whole book. So stop procrastinating and go read!

On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor. The pair of legs that carried him were rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which inclined him somewhat to the left of a straight line.

(more…)

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Here is the announcement from Oregon Writers Colony:

Fiction Writing Workshop
"27 Mystery Writing Techniques That Will Make Any Story Better" workshop in Portland with author April Henry: February 24-25.

April Henry, author of six mysteries and thrillers, will share her secrets about how to improve any story. The techniques that make mysteries and thrillers so compelling – both to readers and to agents and editors – can be applied to nearly every story. Learn more about plotting with purpose, finding the "voice" of your characters, taking your writing from good to great, evaluating and revising your manuscript, and the facts of the writing life - including getting an agent Her two-day workshop takes place at the Appliance Conference Room, 3600 S.W. Hall Blvd., Beaverton, Oregon. Cost is $150, members, $185, nonmembers. For an additional $15 fee, April will review and critique the first ten pages of your novel. Space is limited.

To register or find out more, click here.






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