By Xánath Caraza
Los Norteños Writers, El Centro de la Raza, Seattle University (Department of Women and Gender Studies and Department of Modern Languages and Cultures), Hugo House, la Sala, José Carrillo, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Catalina Cantú, Robert Francis Flor, Denise Perez, Alex Bautista, Jim Cantú y todos, mil gracias for planning and sponsoring such a meaningful visit to incredible Seattle from December 10 to December 14, 2014.
Oh, yes, we had two wonderful poetry presentations, three poetry workshops, one writers workshop and one teacher training workshop. Seattle kept me happy busy, just as I love my visits.
Today, I have several guest writers. First is Kriten Millares from Seattle, who was kind enough to moderate our reading at Hugo House on December 12, and then I also have several poems from some adultos y some niños y niñas who were part of my workshops in Seattle.
Here is a piece from Kristen Millares, a few photos of the marvelous different events and poetry, la poesía written by all these norteños y norteñas y con esto me despido. Happy 2015 y viva la poesía!
LAS PALABRAS DE KRISTEN MILLARES
Few poets claim the stage like Xánath Caraza. Forget the modulated singsong of poetry voice. Caraza resounds. She sings. She breathes new life into her work with every performance. In short, she delivers.
I was honored to introduce Caraza’s reading at Seattle’s Richard Hugo House on December 12th along with Los Norteños poets Jose Carrillo and Catalina Cantú, who organized a series of readings and workshops to celebrate Caraza’s new book, Sílabas de Viento/Syllables of Wind, just released by Mammoth Publications, which also published her collection Conjuro in 2012.
But what does it mean to deliver a poem? Consider her poem “Yanga,” reproduced in part here with permission of the author.
Yanga, Yanga, Yanga,
Yanga, Yanga, Yanga,
Hoy, tu espíritu invoco
Aquí, en este lugar.
Yanga, Yanga, Yanga,
Hoy, tu espíritu invoco
Aquí, en este lugar.
Este, este es mi poema para Yanga,
Mandinga, malanga, bamba.
Rumba, mambo, samba,
Palabras llegadas de África.
Mandinga, malanga, bamba.
Rumba, mambo, samba,
Palabras llegadas de África.
In a linguistic tradition practiced by poets like Nicolás Guillén, Caraza summons the contributions of African culture to her motherland with onomatopoetic repetitions that recall percussive chants. Sounds academic, right? It wasn’t.
While Caraza is a professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, her stage presence is bold and anchored the deep reverberations of her voice and created an atmosphere in which anything might happen – in which the fugitive slave leader Yanga might appear, if only in the imaginations of the audience.
The recordings from that powerful night are not yet online, but you can sample Caraza’s style by listening to her read “Ante el río,”selected by the Smithsonian to promote Day of the Dead in 2013. Published in Conjuro, I’ve reproduced “Ante el río” below with permission from Caraza. Learn more about her at http://xanathcaraza.webs.com.
Ante el río
Como llorona estoy ante el río
Lamentándome por ti
Niño perdido
¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! ¡Llorona!
Como lagarto estoy sobre las piedras
Esperándote
En el río
Ave negra que nace del agua
Que abre sus alas
Y deja su historia salpicada
En el cauce del río
Dejando surcos en su vuelo bajo
Con su vientre pegado al río
Trinar sobre mis oídos
Rumor del agua
Bugambilias anaranjadas, fucsias, rosadas y blancas
Que están en mis sueños y
Me llenan la garganta
¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! ¡Llorona!
Eres tú el brujo y hechicero
Que se mete en mis sueños
Con el agua te lavo
Y te canto ante al río
¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! Niño perdido
Como Llorona estoy
Ante el río
Llévate mi tristeza niño hermoso
Lava mis penas en el río
Before the River
As Llorona I am before the river
Moaning for you
Niño perdido
¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! ¡Llorona!
As an alligator I am on the river stones
Waiting for you
In the river
Black bird born of the water
Opens its wings
And leaves its history sprinkled
By the flow of the river
Leaves tracks in its low flight
With its underside close to the river
Singing above my ears
Murmuring of water
Orange, fuchsia, pink and white buganvilias
Are in my dreams and
Fill my throat
¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! ¡Llorona!
You are the wizard and sorcerer
Who enters into my dreams
With water I wash you
And I sing to you before the river
¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! Niño perdido
As Llorona I am
Before the river
Take my sadness with you beautiful niño
Wash my sorrows in the river
Kristen Millares Young is a writer and journalist whose work has been featured by the Guardian, the New York Times, KUOW 94.9-FM, City Arts Magazine, Pacifica Literary Review, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Miami Herald and TIME Magazine. Kristen was the researcher for the NYT 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning story “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek,” which also won a Peabody. Hailed by The Stranger as one of the “fresh new faces in Seattle fiction,” she was a 2014 Jack Straw Writing Fellow. She has been researching and writing her first novel for seven years. Kristen graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and from the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Washington, where she studied and taught creative writing. She is a co-founder and board member of InvestigateWest, a nonprofit journalism center in the northwest.
LA POESÍA DE LOS ADULTOS
Daisy Chain
By José Carrillo
I had a dream
the sky was filled with blue stems
showers of them on the ground
they turned to daisies.
My hair, as if ready to welcome them,
stretched all the way down
to greet them
I loved the rising flowers on me
I looked at them, smelled them
for a long time
soon they began to grow out of my body
until I became one with them.
To my surprise
I heard someone in the distance
shout my name: Margarita!
Also by José Carrillo here is his interpretation of my poem “Yanga”.
El Juego
By Denise Pérez Lally
Red Rover, Red Rover
The Queen asks, “Please come over.”
This dimond crown, so loved, so cherished, and worn with honor
…should not deceive you.
I ask myself, would you recognize me, sweating from waiting tables,
Or crawling on my hands
And knees cleaning their floors,
Or caring desperately for their children.
How did I get her? And to think those
Closest to me were left behind…
Red Rover, Red Rover.
My Primavera
By Denise Pérez Lally
Dolor, esperanza y sol
My country this’ of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
My primavera,
Where is she?
Dear Mirella
By Xilen Ramírez
Too often,
mujeres Latinas,
mujeres de color,
are painted into de background.
I’m here to tell you that
we don’t have to stay there.
We can come out,
and we can paint
our own vision
of the world.
Movimiento
by Catalina M. Cantú
Day two of First Grade, I was shoved and called a nigger.
It was the first time; I heard the “n word”.
I felt their venom in my pores.
Teachers were mute.
Northwest postage stamp town of chalk people.
Where ever my family walked, they stopped us.
What are you?
Where are you from?
Papa, his wavy, ebony hair slicked back,
elegant in his suit, tie, and shinned shoes.
Met his ill dressed inquisitors with a stony gaze,
We are Americans, born in the U.S. of A.
Chalk people chortled and shook their pointed heads.
Their rancid racism reeked.
We escaped that time
And the next.
As a boy, Papa saw men lynched in Texas.
His pluck moved us further north
Not to a global city melting pot.
But, Surburbia with Barbie, Ken and their schools.
The Civil Rights movement tugged at my heart.
Where did I fit in the world?
Who were my people?
MECHA meeting brewed the tempest in my soul.
Doe-eyed whisper
Ravenous desire
Flor y canto.
Pungent rage
fueled by injustice howls
Justicia y libertad.
Sirens crush
Pavement kissed
Pinche vida.
Venceremos roar
Pomegranate gritos
Viva La Raza!
LA POESÍA DE LOS NIÑOS Y NIÑAS
¿Qué eres?
By Fernando B.
Yo hombre
Hombre soldado
Hombre fuerte
Hombre bueno
Hombre grande
Hombre de luz
Hombre de paz
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By: Xánath Caraza,
on 10/5/2014
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Silabas de viento/Syllables of Wind, Cobalt Review, Codex Journal, Luna Luna Magazine, Mechanics of Men, Ruben Quesada, The Cossack Review, Dark Matter, Add a tag
Por Xánath Caraza
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| Ruben Quesada (Photo by Sam Logan) |
Poetry matters! Today on La Bloga, we celebrate la poesía del lunes with Ruben Quesada. His work includes video poems as well as conventionally written poetry. His themes are multifaceted, postmodern and artistic, involving life-issues such as death and race. Themes of the Midwest and LGBT empowerment have been importantly part of his work. Continuing with the theme of celebrating poetry, for today’s La Bloga article, in addition, I’ll share some upcoming presentaciones en el mes de octubre para Sílabas de viento/Syllables of Wind.
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| Ruben Quesada, Con Tinta Advisor |
Ruben Quesada is the author of Next Extinct Mammal and Luis Cernuda: Exiled from the Throne of Night. His writing has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, The Rumpus, Superstition Review, Guernica, Ostrich Review, The California Journal of Poetics, Miramar, Boat, Third Coast, Rattle, Palabra Magazine, Packing House Review, Pilgrimage, THEthepoetry, Poetryseen, Quiddity, and Solo Nova. Quesada, Con Tinta Advisor, writes about postmodern poetry that, "within each poetic tradition there comes a time when the reliability of the speaker comes into question and someone new arrives to present their authority on the matter of the human experience." His work is here to do just that. Through his poems he explores art, death, love, race, and sexuality in a way that elevates the everyday to the mythic. However, the work never loses sight of the here and now and how the way we interact with the world, with each other shapes our lives. It is important to him that poetry, the composition and the evolution of diction, syntax, and content be arranged with purpose in order for each component of craft (line, sentence, stanza, text) to be worthy of recognition. Chaos is not a sign of beauty and chaos, which lacks organization is not beautiful. For him, a poem's content must reflect the human experience to produce feelings of exaltation that affect the mind and the senses.
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| Ruben Quesada in Palabra Pura, Chicago, IL |
As a writer and reader, Quesada has struggled to find visionary ideas, values, and models that reflect who he is as a gay Latino in the Midwest. He wonders who is urging readers to resist or question social conventions? He discovered after speaking to numerous gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered writers and editors that their experience is not much different. Whether an LGBTQ person was in a metropolis or a college town, their experience in public never felt welcomed. As he points out, many social and political revolutions have been born through art because it has the power to make us question right and wrong. He does this in his poems and in the poetry he chooses to publish as an editor. He is Poetry Editor for Luna Luna Magazine, Cobalt Review, Codex Journal and The Cossack Review. Through these magazines he is helping to bring the voices of a new generation of poets to readers. He wants to be sure to give space to voices that might be otherwise underrepresented. Too often the voices of people of color or queer voices who are not able to be heard. Quesada is working to give them their space, so their experiences can be shared, discussed, and understood. He achieves this by also being the co-founder and creative consultant for the reading series, Stories and Queer, which creates performance space in local communities for queer and POC with simultaneous live broadcast and digital archive. Too often, underrepresented individuals in small communities are expected to move to the “big city” to feel safe or to find community, but this may not be a feasible option, especially in an economically depressed society. The social, political, and economic marginality of people of queer people and people of color and what sustains them is essential in understanding and redefining what it means to be a queer person or a person of color in America.
Storytelling is a central component to all of Quesada’s literary and academic pursuits. He is extending the opportunities for storytelling beyond the page and live performance through the creation of video poems. This can be seen in his video poems for “Dark Matter” and “Mechanics of Men.” “Dark Matter” is a video translation of his own poem, while “Mechanics of Men” is a translation of a David Tomas Martinez poem. These video poems show the dynamic nature of poetry that it can extend beyond the page into a filmic medium. These translations allow the poet to shape the poem with image and sound to highlight aspects of the work that might be the main focus of the poem on the page. This challenges both the poet and the reader to engage with the poem in new and unexpected ways.
Challenging expected lines of thought is something he also brings to his teaching at Eastern Illinois University where he teaches English and creative writing for the performing arts at Eastern Illinois University, including courses on composition, queer theory, graduate and undergraduate poetry, dramatic writing, including playwriting and screenwriting with a focus on horror, as well as a graduate course on digital storytelling.
In his teaching, he stresses the importance of knowing where a poet or thinker sits in the larger tradition of their field. Quesada mentions how Wallace Stevens described the poet’s role as on which to attempts to reconcile the “pressure of reality,” in other words, the sense of being in the world; the purpose is to understand one’s own place in relation to history. Postmodern poetry as a tradition requires an examination of what came before it in order to evolve. If a poet or student does not do this, the work will not be able to push in new directions because they will be unaware of what is innovative and what is not. Being innovative is key. It is through innovation that change can occur. Quesada asks his students to think in terms of the bigger picture and beyond their own community to have a greater understanding of the world around them. This is true of his poetry students as well as students in the other genres he teaches. In all his classes he is equipping them to not only craft their writing well in terms of technique, but to tell their story as well as examine their relation to the world around them. The poet/student must turn toward Eliot’s “impersonality of poetry” and present the world through a personal, direct, and often fragmented experience resounding of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. He wants his students to be active members of their community.
He incorporates technology components into each of his classes, so that students are best prepared for an increasingly digital world. This is accomplished by making assignments and text available online and through incorporating the creation of digital stories whenever possible. Digital stories, similar to the video poems he creates, allow students a new way of approaching and constructing a persuasive argument, a poem or even an informative project. He asks them to consider how to convey their points only through image and sound. A digital story, a video, may also broaden the reach of a poem or an argument for those you may have access to YouTube, but not necessarily to books or written material.
Through his queer theory classes, he is able to educate students about LGBTQ history and have them consider how LGBTQ people are represented in the media and entertainment. By increasing this awareness it allows students to see the historical and current societal factors that leads to prejudice and oppression of LGBTQ people. Film is an important and accessible storytelling medium, which is why he has taught screenwriting classes. It has also led him to pioneer the study of Queer Horror, which examines films that may not be traditionally thought of as horror films. It looks at films that construct a primarily heteronormative filmic world can create a horrific world for a queer character, a character that is seen as unnatural in the presented world. Examining these films in a different way, students can examine the world in a different way, which expands their critical skills and tasks the student to be daring and unexpected.
La Poesía de Ruben Quesada
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| Ruben Quesada |
(from Next Extinct Mammal)
STORE
City of Bell
Every morning, I discovered the artichoke colored walls
that had been painted and repainted, again and again,
to conceal the names of Tortilla Flats or Grape Street
gangs. Inside, a toothsome smell—dust and incense—
as if ashes of locos and homies had been put to rest
on countertops and floors. As if nobody dared pass
through the glass double doors, not for a gallon of milk,
nor a suitcase of Coors. All year round above the register
hung a Kung Hei Fat Choy sign and at the end of every aisle
sat a golden Buddha, an altar with incense haunting us
through the night. And for twenty years or more
it stood like a waning Godzilla with a sign on the door
in creamy vanilla that read: Yes, we cash checks!
(Previously appeared at THEthepoetry)
HEAR THE REVOLUTION
After Jacques-Louis David’s Oath of the Horatii
And there once was a time on earth when giants and gods prevailed. But here
decisions about life are made by men who die for the sake of valor.
O, mortals, you women who hold back your gleaming hearts from cliffs’ imminent with grief
curb your cries and instead boldly speak; take the oath and follow into war!
Guard your men against death’s wretched spell; unravel a shadow of black silk—
your body, a shadow fixed to sky, against him forged to die, arms outstretched
like curtains of thick lead to protect against blades. Atomic love, embrace
and conquer death’s sharp edge with your voice; lay your curved silken skin onto his.
Beloved, filled with light and twisted with torment, your spinning body cries
like a god out of time: Be brief, love! Jagged fiend, cut yourself out of me!
(Previously appeared at The Rumpus)
AUBADE
Antelucent, we lie—your body moons against mine. Earlier,
I stoked sweat on your neck in the humming of this light.
In the dark I listen, now resigned you mumble
about the arms of a pinyon pine, say it points to a falling star
against the bruised pool of sky. We hear the grackles crackle
above a church lot. Then headlights shine on your face
splitting your face, listless lips, half-open eyes—staring out
you wait for the occult wreckage of night to vanish from this world
holding out until its final moment, until you fall asleep
and get lost. Your body light like tulle carried off
by a strong current—taken from me—as I helix in the light.
(Previously appeared at Cimarron Review)
DARK MATTER
In this blood that haunts my skin,
in the folds of my brain are burrowed
the harrowed words to describe you.
And when the universe was young,
smooth and featureless, it possessed
the means to give you breath, to deliver
your body to me: an exchange of quantum
particles whose covalent bonds
were broken one cloudy afternoon
in your darkened room where the laughter
of the neighbor’s dog forced you awake,
back to life from the ghost of heroin.
What more could the periodic table offer?
Already you were Nitrogen, Sulfur, even Gold.
(Previously appear in Pilgrimage Magazine)
RENAISSANCE
Lord, you who
have never left me
like the fading shadows
that ascend at days
end. You settle
like a silent stone
in the sweet arteries
of my hand: golden
crocus forming
your forgotten body.
How it must feel
to let go of the light,
to submit to the fright
of being set free.
In praise of you
let me sing this once,
a glimmer
of your dying light,
a crown of fire
in the night.
In Other News
Here is my reading schedule for the month of October in addition to a book review by Héctor Luis Álamo of Sílabas de viento/Syllables of Wind (Mammoth Publications, 2014). Viva la poesía!
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| Poem on amate paper, "Luz de octubre/October Light" by Xanath Caraza |
University of North Georgia: “Exploring Linguistic Diversity among Latinas”, October 7 – 8
Festival del Libro y la Palabra, Acapulco en su Tinta, October 9 – 11
Emporia State University, Keynote Speaker for Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration Banquet 2014, October 15
Homegrown Reads at South Branch Library, Local Author Fair, Kansas City, Kansas, October 25
0 Comments on “Dark Matter”: Video Poems, la Poesía de Ruben Quesada y más as of 1/1/1900
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By: Xánath Caraza,
on 9/21/2014
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: juanita salazar lamb, Silabas de viento/Syllables of Wind, Dr. Theresa Torres, Latina/Latino Studies Program UMKC, NACCS, Add a tag
Por Xánath Caraza
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| Dr. Theresa Torres |
Kansas City Chican@s are celebrating el otoño with a bang. Firstly, this year’s Community Outreach Award granted by Guadalupe Centers, Inc. went to Dr. Theresa Torres, who has a long trajectory in Kansas City. Next, NACCS will have its Midwest Focus Conference at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) and Sílabas de viento/Syllables of Wind has its debut in Kansas City as well.
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| Dr. Theresa Torres |
Associate Professor Theresa Torres, Ph.D., of UMKC, has recently received the Dr. Thomas E. Purcell Award for her outstanding contributions to the Guadalupe Centers,Inc. at the Blanco y Negro Annual Awards Gala in Kansas City, MO.
The award is given in recognition of the man {or woman} who impacted the growth of the Westside community in the early 1900s. Purcell was concerned about the plight of the growing Mexican immigrant community and dedicated much of his life to improving the quality of life of Kansas City’s new arrivals.
Torres has served on the Guadalupe Center Board for ten years including three years as the Board secretary and Program Committee Chair. She currently serves on the Guadalupe Educational System (Charter School) Board and is chair of the Curriculum Committee. The fund raised each year at the gala benefit the Guadalupe Center and to honor outstanding individuals who have contributed to the growth and development of the center and the Latino Community of Kansas City, MO.
She has been a professor at the University of Missouri for nine years and has taught a variety of courses since she is an interdisciplinarian, which means she has diverse research and scholarship from a number of fields: Race and Ethnicity, Latina Latino Studies, Women and Gender Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, and Religious Studies. Currently she is teaching two classes on Latina/o Studies with a focus on immigration. She also engages students in community service learning projects and internships. She places students in projects that serve the inner city by having them working with non-profit agencies or participate in research projects studying the community. She serves on several boards for non-profit groups and previously worked with non-profit agencies, particularly the Guadalupe Center Inc. and Guadalupe Education System School Board that serve the Latina/o community of Kansas City. As a scholar, she has direct contact on a regular basis with the urban populations of Latina/os in the Midwest.
Muchas felicidades Theresa!
In Other News
NACCS Midwest Focus: Latin@s in the Midwest: Past, Present, and Future in Kansas City
Keynote Presenters:
Dr. Alberto Pulido: "Everything Comes From the Streets" Documentary on Lowrider Culture
Dr. Rogelio Saenz: "Demographics: Latinos in the Midwest"
Dr. Rusty Barceló: "Navigating Our Midwest Latina/o Journey in Higher Education: Challenges and Opportunities for the Future"
Latina/Latino Studies Program at UMKC
The mission of Latina/Latino Studies (LLS), a program based in the College of Arts and Sciences, is to function as a vehicle for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary teaching, research and outreach focusing on Latinas/os-Chicanas/os in the U.S. The LLS program will provide an awareness and understanding of the wide diversity of Latino communities, cultures and backgrounds. The development and expansion of our curricula will serve to empower our students with the concepts and skills to better understand a rapidly growing Latina/o population. The LLS program will engage students, scholars and the greater Kansas City community in collaborative projects, programs and service learning efforts. These efforts will foster new curricula and advance research and outreach scholarship to create new knowledge to better understand the cultural, economic, and historical experiences and contributions of U.S. Latinas/os-Chicanas/os and their diasporic origins.
With a full house on September 12, 2014 at The Writers Place Juanita Salazar Lamb and I had a poetry and narrative presentation. What a delightful evening and gracias a nuestra Arkansan Chicana for being part or the Riverfront Reading Series. Here are a couple of photos of the event.
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| Juanita Salazar Lamb at The Writers Place in Kansas City, MO |
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| Xanath Caraza at The Writers Place in Kansas City, MO |
Finally, on September 15 Sílabas de viento/Syllables of Wind (Mammoth Publications, 2014) was released. Thank you to Park University’s Ethnic Vocies Poetry Series, Woodneath Library and New Letters on the Air, hosted by Angela Elam for hosting this event. Great evening and audience. Lastly, my upcoming appearances in September will be starting today at Carver Dual Language Elementary School, where I will share some poesía y cuento as part of their month long celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. Next, I will participate in the reading at the Raven Bookstore on September 26 as part of the Big Tent Reading Series. Then on September 30 at the University of Kansas I will have another poetry reading as part of Hispanic Heritage Month. The Raven Bookstore and KU events will be in Lawrence, KS. Viva la poesía!
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| Xanath Caraza and Angela Elam, Ethinic Voices Poetry Series and New Letters on the Air |
0 Comments on Dr. Theresa Torres Receives Community Outreach Award in Kansas City y más. as of 9/22/2014 3:44:00 AM
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By: Xánath Caraza,
on 9/7/2014
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Kansas City Latino Writers Collective, juanita salazar lamb, Silabas de viento/Syllables of Wind, The Writers Place, Add a tag
By Xánath Caraza
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| Juanita Salazar Lamb at The Writers Place, Festival of Faiths |
A Chicana con ganas, Arkansas is where Juanita Salazar Lamb lives, a runner and writer.
This week, Juanita will be in Kansas City for a race on September 11. She will be part of the Riverfront Reading Series at the Writers Place on September 12. However, Juanita is no stranger to Kansas City; she has been featured here before as part of the Festival of Faiths also at The Writers Place a few years ago.
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| Participants and Organizers of Festival of Faiths, The Writers Place, Kansas City, MO |
I actually met her at our Latino Writers Collective meetings, she is an out-of-town member and last summer I had the opportunity to spend some time with her in Arkansas.
Of a runner, writer, and friend, an Arkansan Chicana, here is a short interview of Juanita Salazar Lamb. ¡Conozcámosla!
Xánath Caraza: ¿Desde cuándo escribes? ¿Qué género literario escribes?
Juanita Salazar Lamb: I’ve always written—maybe not always on paper or a computer—but in my head ever since I can remember. I would make up stories about people I would see around town: The man carrying a bouquet of flowers wrapped in green florist’s paper: were they part of an apology or a celebration? The little boy with his arm in a cast: was it the result of a playground accident that couldn’t be helped or was it a result of his travesura? The woman wearing dark glasses that obscured the upper part of her face: was she hiding something or did she want to observe closely without been noticed?
I mainly write short stories, have been working on a series of murder mysteries for more than 10 years. And, for better or worse, I sometimes produce the occasional verse.
XC:¿Puedes compartir algún reto para ti cuando escribes?
JSL: Some stories will not let go of me until I put them down on paper. “The Night the Devil Rode the Wind” is one example. That story came to me after a very unusual weather phenomenon in Oklahoma. It filled my mind and I brought it to conclusion in my head, but it kept churning inside of me until I wrote it down. It was my first short story to be published in a literary magazine, Border Senses, Spring 2006, Vol. XI. When I experience such an overwhelming feeling, I need to the emotions, turmoil, joy, etc., release from me. Once it’s down on paper, I can rest. Will other’s read it and feel what I felt? I would like to think so, but for the most part writing is something I must do…for me.
XC:¿Qué recomendaciones pudieras dar a las nuevas generaciones que quieren escribir?
JSL:WRITE! We all have a little voice in our head that tells us “nobody cares what you think.” “You, write? You’re too ___________________(fill in the blank) and not enough ____________(fill in the blank).” Ignore that voice and write.
READ!! Read everything—in the genre you’re writing. Read beyond your genre. Increase your vocabulary, especially adjectives. Not all things are “amazing”.
LISTEN!! If your writing includes dialogue, then listen closely to the way people speak. Do people speak in full sentences or do they speak in phrases, or verbal shorthand? Do some persons have trademark phrases or words?
XC:Yo sé que también eres corredora y que de hecho vienes a una carrera a Kansas City, ¿a cuál carrera vienes y puedes compartir un poco de cómo te iniciaste?
JSL: I’m going to Kansas City to do the Patriots’ Run half marathon on 9/11. I’ve been running since 2010 when I ran out of excuses as to why I couldn’t do an endurance race. It’s something I had wanted to do for many years, and suddenly I was looking at turning 60 and still only wishing. In October of that year I signed up to train for a half marathon with Team in Training, and finished my first half marathon in April of 2011, then turned 60 in May of 2011. The Patriots’ Run will be my 9thhalf marathon; I’ve also completed numerous other races ranging in distance from 5k to 20 miles.
XC:¿Qué has aprendido de esta disciplina, correr?
JSL:I can apply 2 lessons from running to writing, and viceversa:
There’s a voice in my head that tells me I can’t do it: I’m too old, I’m tired, I don’t feel like it, it’s too hot, it’s too cold, etc., etc., etc., It’s just like the voice in the writer’s head I mentioned earlier. But like writing, I run for me. Just like I don’t run the fastest race or have the best form, I run because I need to challenge myself. I may not write a story as compelling as some other authors, or poems that flow as beautifully as others, but I write because I need to get the words down on paper.
The second lesson is that no matter how well I’ve prepared myself for a race: training, nutrition, hydration, sometimes my body just says “no”. So I may quit for that day, but I’ll keep trying. Sometimes I have a story brewing for months, or years—I know the characters, the beginning, the ending, but even so my story just isn’t flowing. But I just keep going back to it, because it just might come together perfectly the next time.
XC: ¿Puedes dar algún consejo a otr@s Chican@s/Latin@s que quieran correr y competir?
JSL:If you’ve never run before, train with a group if possible like Team in Training and Marathon Makeover to name two that I’ve trained with. If no training groups are available then read and follow the advice knowledgeable coaches who have published books and articles on their preferred method like Danny Dreyer on Chi running, and Galloway on the run/walk method. Como dicen los de Nike: Hazlo!
Juanita Salazar Lamb grew up in a bilingual, bicultural family and her heart belongs to La Cultura Latina. Her stories are grounded in the realities of growing up along the border of two countries and two cultures. Her writings have appeared in Zopilote, Latina Magazine, Border Senses, Azahares: UA Fort Smith's premier Spanish-language creative literary journal, and Cuentos del Centro: Stories from the Latino Heartland. She served on the judging panel for 2010 Conversations Essay Contest sponsored by the Rogers Public Library Foundation.
In Other News
Thrilled to announce that my new book of poetry is finally here, Sílabas de viento/Syllables of Wind(Mammoth Publications, 2014) by Xanath Caraza, translated by Sandra Kingery and cover art by Adriana Manuela. I’ll have my book release on Monday, September 15 at 7 p.m., where I’ll discuss my work on the radio program, New Letters on the Air,hosted by Angela Elam, as part of Park University’s Ethnic Voices Poetry Series, held at Woodneath Library Center, 8900 N. Flintlock Road, Kansas City, MO. Then Sílabas de viento/Syllables of Wind will have its next debut at the Big Tent Reading Series at Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas on September 25 at 7 p.m. Finalmente, here is a link to Revista Contratiempo, page 4, of a book review of Sílabas de viento/Syllables of Wind. Viva la poesía!
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| Sílabas de viento/Syllables of Wind |
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