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James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, has appointed Juan Felipe Herrera as the 21st Poet Laureate of the United States. Herrera’s term will take place from 2015 to 2016.
Billington gave this statement in the press release: “I see in Herrera’s poems the work of an American original—work that takes the sublimity and largesse of ‘Leaves of Grass’ and expands upon it. His poems engage in a serious sense of play—in language and in image—that I feel gives them enduring power. I see how they champion voices, traditions and histories, as well as a cultural perspective, which is a vital part of our larger American identity.”
Herrera (pictured, via) served as the Poet Laureate of California from 2012 to 2015. Throughout his writing career, he has published 28 poetry collections, young adult novels, and children’s books. To check out some of his poems, visit the Poetry Foundation website.
I am merely posing for a photograph.
Remember, when the Nomenclature
stops you, tell them that—“Sirs, he was posing
for my camera, that is all.” . . . yes, that may just work.
Poet. Artist. Teacher. Activist. Writer. Poet Laureate of California.
“Your friends, and your associates, and the people around you, and the environment that you live in, and the speakers around you – the speakers around you – and the communicators around you, are the poetry makers.
If your mother tells you stories, she is a poetry maker.
If your father says stories, he is a poetry maker.
If your grandma tells you stories, she is a poetry maker.
And that’s who forms our poetics.”
~Juan Felipe Herrara
Filed under:
male monday Tagged:
Juan Felipe Herrera,
latino,
Male Monday,
Mexican American 
Floricantos On-Line for the Fallen Souls of Newton
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| La Bloga Festival of Lights 1 |
Somber exhilaration is in the air this week, with La Bloga's continuing exploration of poetry as equipment for living. Christmas changed forever when twenty-six souls disappeared from earth. They were gone, we mystified. It happened in our name, our nation, under our laws. Again. Naturally, we should sing. What more?
Ho Logos stepped out on space, looked around, and said "poor earth, so far from Peace, so close to the United States."
La Bloga this week elegizes the murdered children and their teachers, in two observances. Sunday, Amelia ML Montes teamed with California's Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, and Guest Editor, Marisa Urrutia Gedney, to present
UNITY of Poets for the Children and Families of Newtown, Connecticut—End the Violence. 10 Poems: December 15-December 21, 2012Navigate to
La Bloga-Sunday via this link to read the ten thoughts in entirety, and learn about Herrera's UNITY poem:
When you hustled your baby onto the busthat morning, it was Friday, the last day-Nicole Stefanko-Fuentes
These 26 acts of kindness seem to spark the holiday season,I think there is a flicker back in my flame.“Oh, this little light of mine…”-Melissa Carvalho (Danbury, CT)
20 little snowflakesFell to a red-covered groundWaiting for a bell to ringThey fell without a sound.-Jocelynn Cortes. 10th grade. Age 15
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| La Bloga Festival of Lights 2 |
Christmas Mourning FloricantoToday, the Moderators of
Poets Responding to SB 1070 share poems, outpourings of grief and love, about the loss of these children. Moderator Elena Bjorkquist writes, "we feel that these poems honor the memory of the innocent children and will help all of us with healing."
Children Fallen: Rise On New Wings, by Frank De Jesus Acosta
The Rosebuds Of Winter by Hedy Garcia Treviño
In The Afetrmath by Kathy Goldenladyhawk Risingdove Robinson
Twenty Angels by Raul Sanchez
When Words Are Just Vibrations, by John Martinez |
| La Bloga Festival of Lights 3 |
CHILDREN FALLEN: RISE ON NEW WINGSby Frank de Jesus AcostaChildren fallen: to violence, depravity, & war
Newtown, old towns, the world over, far too often
We betray your innocent trust failing to protect
Brutally torn from the flesh by monsters in our midst
Denied the journey of pain & healing from love
Laughter & songs turned screams of terror & tears
I feel you hiding in that place between light & shadow
Afraid, confused, & wandering between worlds
Shrouded heart; words that commune escape us
As we too wander, in suffocating sadness & confusion
Forgive our failure & betrayal, we bare the thorns
Little ones hear our prayers of peace now
Follow the ancestor songs to a new paradise
An eternal circle of love will embrace you from here
There is no more pain & wholeness in the spirit
Walk in beauty; dwell in new joy in a place of peace
A home in the heart of the Creator awaits you
The Rosebuds of Winterby Hedy Garcia TreviñoThere is a special place in the gardens of winter
For young tender rosebuds that fall off the vine
In that empty space we call sorrow
We gather to nurture the rosebuds of time
With showers of tears
And hopeful prayers
We await the abundance of blooms
Returning in springtime
Kissed by the sun
The blossom returns to the ground
To bring life once again to the gardens of time
IN THE AFETRMATH by Kathy Goldenladyhawk RisingDove Robinsonit is late
and i can not sleep
as my head spins
on the axis
of all evils in
this world.
it is late
and i try to think,
how can i
help to fix
that, which is
so broken.
so, i do now declare,
that in love,
i will love deeper,
in faith,
i will pray harder,
in honor of,
i will seek out the light
and laugh out the dark.
i will sleep less,
and live more,
i will dance, wildly
as the rain
washes away
the sorrows,
of life's brief moments
and stolen memories
and l will listen
with my heart,
and not skip a beat.
oh evils of this world,
oh darkness,
on you i do descend.
i will erase you with kindness,
compassion
and love...
i will challenge
your place
in this world.
twenty new angels
born
to join in the fight
to shine their bright light
and expose all
that is bad
in this world...
as i open my
heart,
and close my eyes
to see.
twenty new angels
to join in the fight
light the spark
to ignite
all the love
that there is
in this world.
TWENTY ANGELSby Raul SanchezIn memory of the kids from Sandy Hook Elementary SchoolTwenty Angels swept away
removed from this earth
senseless violence directed
at children shot point blank
the parents grief unimaginable
what pain to lose a child to violence
Twenty Angels gone, vanished
Twenty future builders of America
Twenty souls gone
Twenty beautiful faces disappeared
Twenty empty beds
Twenty dreams evaporated
no laughter, no Christmas presents
we mourn their death across
the nation, the world
we feel their loss as if they were our own
WHEN WORDS ARE JUST VIBRATIONSby John MartinezNothing makes sense
When a molecule bends
To cough,
Shirking its duty
To life,
When a book falls
To the ground,
Folding into itself,
Leaving only
A blank sadness
Nothing suggests
That we will survive
This terror,
Opening its black
Mouth again
In the classrooms,
Where our children grow
With little root feet
But out of this,
Heroes shielded
Their young,
Gave their lives
To save the very seed-
That is our future,
But some of it
Was lost
When words
Are just vibrations,
Because the wound
Is too deep,
We close our eyes,
Push our hearts
Into the heavens
Today the clouds
Mother the 20 children,
Fixing eternity
In white and blue pajamas,
Their innocence,
Soft as their feet,
Their fear being
Plucked from their hair
Like ash
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| La Bloga Festival of Lights 4 |
BIOSChildren Fallen: Rise On New Wings, by Frank De Jesus Acosta
The Rosebuds Of Winter by Hedy Garcia Treviño
In The Afetrmath by Kathy Goldenladyhawk Risingdove Robinson
Twenty Angels by Raul Sanchez
When Words Are Just Vibrations, by John Martinez
Frank de Jesus Acosta is the principal of Acosta & Associates, a California-based consultant group that specializes in providing professional support related to public and private social change ventures in the areas of children, youth, and family services, violence prevention, community development, cultural fluency initiatives across the country. Acosta is a graduate of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Acosta’s professional experience includes serving as a Program Director with The California Wellness Foundation, as well as executive leadership tenures with the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), Downtown Immigrant Advocates (DIA), Center for Community Change, and the UCLA Community Programs Office. In 2007, Acosta was published by the Arte Publico Press, University of Houston, “The History of the Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos, Cultura Es Cura, Community Peace Movement.”
Hedy M. Treviño’s poetry has been published in numerous journals and other publications. She has performed her poetry at numerous cultural events. She continues to write poetry, and inspires others to use the written word as a form of self discovery and personal healing. She is one of the Moderators for the Facebook page, Poets Responding to SB 1070
Kathy GoldenLadyHawk RisingDove Robinson is half-Cherokee, from North Bridgton, Maine, a small rural town in the foothills of the White Mountains. She is an aspiring poet/writer...she lives quietly, in harmony with the natural world all around her; here she finds all the inspiration a soul could ask for. One day, she hopes to have a book of poems and writings published.
Raúl Sánchez, conducts workshops on The Day of the Dead. His most recent work is the translation of John Burgess’ Punk Poems in his book Graffito by Ravenna Press. His work appeared on-line in The Sylvan Echo, Flurry, Gazoobitales, Pirene’s Fountain many times in La Bloga and several journals. An avid collector of poetry books proclaimed himself a “thrift store junkie” who occasionally volunteers as a DJ for KBCS 91.3 FM, a community radio station. He has been a board member of the Washington Poets Association. His inaugural collection "All Our Brown-Skinned Angels" by MoonPath Press, is filled with poems of cultural identity, familial, a civil protest, personal celebration, completely impassioned and personal.
 |
| La Bloga Festival of Lights 5 |
by Rudy Garcia
Last week, Juan Felipe Herrera was appointed California poet laureate by Gov. Jerry Brown. If this is confirmed by the California Senate, Herrera will become the first Chicano to ever receive this recognition.
You can go here to read about it, here to read more about him, and you can send him felicidades via E-mail to juan.herreraATucr.edu.
La Bloga can only say: Era tiempo!
Last Call for Ice Cream?
Not as significant as Herrrera's achivement, this zany story of mine was accepted by Rudy Rucker (of cyberpunk fame) for his Ezine Flurb #13. You can access a copy for FREE to see what at least one Chicano is doing to widen our presence in the spec fiction world. You can get Flurb #13 as an ebook that can be read on any e-reading device---Kindles, iPhones, Androids, NOOKs, Windows laptops, iPads, whatever. Mobi (for Kindle) and Epub (for the others) available for download at http://www.flurb.net/ebook/
Please leave comments there.
Chicano summer arts camp
Denver's Museo de las Americas is proud to present the 2012 summer camp program, "Animales." Students will have the opportunity to discover the wild world of animals through this multidisciplinary summer arts camp.
For three consecutive weeks, participants will immerse themselves in visual arts, dance, music, and theater classes to better understand the bond between animals, humans, and the environment. Each class is conducted by a trained teacher who is committed to advancing the students' understanding of animals through arts integration techniques and cultural competencies.
Dates: June 25th -July 13, 2012
July 4th: No Camp
July 13th: Final Performance
Hours: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm, snack provided
Ages: K through 6th grade
Cost: Scholarships available to DPS students on a first-come, first serve basis
If interested, contact Christina Gese, our Education Director at [email protected], (303) 571-4401, ext. 28, or in person at 861 Santa Fe Dr., Denver.
Space limited; request registration form today. Deadline May 1st, 2012.
EVENTS
Mural Unveiling
Stevon Lucero has a new mural that will be unveiled on May 1 up in Laramie, Wyo. Stevon's mural is a "depiction of Latinos in Wyoming." He calls it
Paredes Hablando: Walls that Speak. Stevon's work is full of energy, color and spirit, so this mural should be something. Plus, there's also a film,
2501 Migrants by
Yolanda Cruz. An excellent trailer for the film
can be found here. All of this is in support of Laramie's
Radio Montañesa: Voz de la Gente, 93.5 FM.
VERSES OF PROTEST
A poetry reading by
Juan Manuel Patraca at 2:00 p.m., May 8, at the
Boulder Public Library at Broadway Street and Arapahoe Avenue in Boulder. At the free public event, Mr. Patraca will read in English and Spanish from his new book of poems titled
32 Biographies of Humble People. The Mexican-born Patraca mops and vacuums Denver area offices by night and jots down ideas for his poems while riding the bus to and from work. His poetry tells the stories of those who have contributed to the struggle for social and immigrant justice as well as his own reflections on his experiences with injustice.
NEW BOOK FROM TIM Z. HERNANDEZ
Tim Z. HernandezTexas Tech University Press
[publisher's text]Deep within California’s golden agricultural heartland lies a rotten core: the fictional farming community of Catela, where the desperate realities of poverty, drug abuse, violence, and bigotry play out in the lives of cucarachas and coyotes, tweekers and strippers, wetbacks and white trash. Seventeen-year-old Tlaloc, namesake of the Aztec god of fertility and destruction, has grown up among the migrant-worker communities that follo
Michael Sedano
Over the past year, I've related the fruition of a dream come true, the conversion of "lost" videotaped performances of important Chicana Chicano poets and writers into modern DVD and web-streaming media. Look for an official announcement from the University of Southern California in the next few weeks on its receipt of the finished product, 39 recordings of such poets as Omar Salinas, rrsalinas, Oscar Acosta, and Tomás Rivera.
Happily, Juan Felipe Herrera and the Tomás Rivera Archives at the University of California Riverside's Tomás Rivera Library acquired a number of photographs I shot back in 1973 at the first Festival de Flor Y Canto, held at USC. I'm happy to report UCR and the Tomás Rivera Archive will be showing these photos in conjunction with the upcoming Tomás Rivera Conference.
Here's news from the Conference website. Please click here for mayor info.
From the Fields to the Stars
22nd Annual Tomás Rivera Conference
April 24th, Friday – Free to the public
Featured Speaker: Ligiah Villalobos
LIGIAH VILLALOBOS is the Writer/Executive Producer of the feature film Under the Same Moon, (La Misma Luna). The film was an Official Selection at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and became the highest sale for a Spanish-language film in the history of Sundance. Since its release on March 19, 2008 by Fox Searchlight and The Weinstein Company, the film has become the 3rd highest grossing Mexican film and the 6th highest grossing Spanish-language film in the U.S., of all time. The workshops are open to all students and community members at large. Learn from one of the first Latinas to make it into the Hollywood film industry.
In addition to Villallobos' keynote, she leads a TV Workshop and a Screenplay Workshop, as part of the daytime program. See the Conference site for enrollment details.
Day Program 8am-4:15pm,
Evening Program 6:00-10:00pm
The conference is funded and coordinated by UCR Tomás Rivera Endowment/Department of Creative Writing and co-sponsored by UCR Chicano Student Programs, the Tomás Rivera Library – and Special Collections, CHASS First, Department of Theatre, Palm Desert Graduate Center, Riverside City College-Academic Support Program and the Inlandia Institute of Riverside.
Mural Dedication Mid-April
Join La Bloga friend
Carlos Callejo and the
City of Piru for the dedication of Callejo's just-completed mural, above.
"The Piru Mural -- A pictorial history of the town and its people." The dedication of the mural to the Piru community takes place on Saturday, April 18 at the mural site, at 10:00 a.m. The site is East of Piru Creek, north of Center Street, on the Piru Camulos Bike Path. From Highway 126, exit Center Street. Park by Piru Motocross.
Help Needed - A Book About the College Experience
I am striking out going through a mental annotated bibliography of Chicana Chicano novels to help fill this request from a bloguero's former student:
I am searching for a fiction book which depicts Latino/a trials and tribulations of young Latina/os trying to go to college.
Have a suggestion? Please click on the Comments counter below.
Bits and pieces for April's initial Tuesday, a day like any other day, except we are here, ¿que no?
La Bloga welcomes your comments on the above, especially a novel about the Chicana Chicano Latina Latino college experience. Click the Comments counter below. La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. When you have a review of a book, an arts or cultural event, or an extended comment or bone to pick with one of La Bloga's daily reviewers, email las blogueras los blogueras with your proposal.
NY: Akashic Books, 2009.
ISBN: 978-1-933354-68-2
Michael Sedano
What a delight, after reading a string of uninvolving novels, to come across Robert Arellano's engaging "Cuban noir novel",
Havana Lunar.
The Havana setting breathes life into this story of grisly murder and false accusation. The first person narrator is an idealistic medical doctor working in a neighborhood clinic. Lacking the most basic supplies like aspirin, the medico Rodriguez heals through bedside manner and decency.
Rodriguez' nobility is its own reward until a teenaged jinetera takes advantage of kindness to insinuate herself in his life. The novel opens with a detective surreptitiously searching the clinic for the sex worker's jacket. She's a suspect.
Arellano keeps a smile on his fingers as he takes readers through a lively, twisting story that brings in the doctor's large tight-knit familia from a rural compound, the break-up of his marriage, his ongoing affair with a childhood friend, the ugly mole on his cheek that is the title of the book, the beheading of a local pimp and the doctor’s involvement with the teenie jinetera suspect.
Sexual tourism, inept social services, corrupt public servants, the loving familia, a portrait of Che Guevara that talks, give the novel enough color that the potential horror of the crime never infects the fun of the telling.
Some of the fun is Arellano's, exercising his decided political slant against the revolution. The doctor regrets small privations like choosing between buying gas for the car or coffee for his cuppa, and he uses an old skeleton to evade enforced hitch hiker laws. But a children's clinic with no aspirin insults this deeply caring professional. The jineteras know he’s a doctor who does HIV tests on the QT, no government reports, and he takes no sex in return. Breaking his resistance is part of the whore's motive. The doc's a real sucker. The pimp's moves to get her back thrusts the doctor into captivity and torture, escape, a near-lethal confrontation with a crazed killer, and the corrupt policeman.
Contrast the city's constant struggle to the doctor's family compound out in the sticks on the local economy, liberated from the restraints of city bureaucrats. Granpa rules with iron fist, the women eat in the kitchen whether company comes or not. They laugh, eat well, all the kids are above average. This is the sentimental Cuba of shoulda woulda coulda land, but Arellano's point is well taken.
Arellano doesn't harp on the failures of Cuban socialism, not in a heavy-handed manner. Everyday ironies abound; a family learns that flour has come on sale. All gather excitedly around the table, real bread oven fresh! The food is ripped from their mouths. Rumors abound that saboteurs mixed glass into the flour. More irony, other rumors arise the government spread the rumors to suppress the black market for flour, they coulda eaten that bread.
As with so many other Cubano novels, the shortcomings of the revolution are well knit into the fabric of the story. Everyday details like enforced hitch hiking, or choosing between buying gas for the car or coffee for his cuppa, point up such novels like
Havana Lunar can be told only in Cuba. Arellano's noir masterpiece belongs alongside Daniel Chavarria's
Adiós Muchachos and
Tango for a Torturerer.
Applause must go to Akashic and or Arellano for their common sense approach to English and Spanish expression. The languages are not italicized nor does Arellano offer much appositional translation. When a character says something in Spanish the expression stands on its own.
For slightly under 200 pages,
Havana Lunar has lots to enjoy, everything a comic noir aficionado could hope for. Mejor,
Havana Lunar need not be enjoyed in private; the publisher plans a
coast-to-coast tour of readings, from March 24 at NYNY Bluestockings to May 8 at W. Hollywood's Book Soup. Many of the stops include
Achy Obejas, signing her latest,
Ruins.
Juan Felipe Herrera Poetry Collection Honored
The National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry, announced March 12, named Juan Felipe Herrera's
Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems, along with August Kleinzahler's
Sleeping It Off in Rapid City.
I note the
publisher's and Herrera's support for Oracy, making this collection, hopefully, a trailblazer setting a standard for all published poetry:
Beginning with early material from A Certain Man and moving through thirteen of his collections into new, previously unpublished work, this assemblage also includes an audio CD of the author reading twenty-four selected poems aloud. Felicidades, Juan Felipe. You had it coming, ese.
Read Lisa Alvarado's La Bloga interview with Mr. Herrera
here.
Poetry Collection Reviewed
La Bloga friend Rigoberto González expresses his joy at reading Kevin A. González' first poetry collection, Cultural Studies, noting the poet is "prodigal son, a creative writing degree in hand, come back to reconnect to the imagery of his youth".
You'll enjoy the full review at the
El Paso Times.
Nuyorican MTV Viewers Protest
Gente who partake of the plug-in drug have one more reason to abjure the device altogether. Consumers of what MTV has to offer find a recent episode so undigestible they've written a petition to have a program withdrawn and a new one produced to replace it. The group's petition links
here.We, the undersigned, call upon Viacom/MTV/MTV News to cease airing the episode entitled "True Life: I'm a Nuyorican" on the grounds that it is an unbalanced, negative stereotype affirming and unfair representation of who and what Nuyoricans are as a culture.
Furthermore, it is psychosocially damaging to youth and uncharacteristic of the values which MTV News claims to uphold.
Additionally, we call upon Viacom/MTV/MTV News to produce a new episode which represents the Nuyorican community accurately and references the Nuyorican Movement, this task is to be completed and aired by year's end.Sandhill Crane Migration - A Wonder of the Natural World
Please enjoy a few fotos from a recent visit to Nebraska's Rowe Sanctuary on the Platte River: http://www.readraza.com/cranes/index.htmLa Bloga welcomes your comments and guest columns. To leave a comment, please click the Comments counter below. To be our guest with a column-length review of your own, click here to learn more.
By:
Aline Pereira,
on 10/14/2008
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Since we are already in the middle of National Reading Group Month, our thoughts have turned to reading suggestions for book groups for young readers. At PaperTigers, we are deeply committed to books on multicultural subjects that bring differing cultures closer together. So of course the books on our little list are novels that we think will accomplish that, while they keep their readers enthralled and provide the nourishment for spirited book group discussions. Almost all of the suggested titles are in paperback editions and all should be available in libraries. Most of them have been reviewed by PaperTigers and one has been chosen by our own online bookclub, The Tiger’s Choice.
1. Beacon Hill Boys by Ken Mochizuki (Written for older readers, this novel explores teenage rebellion, parental expectations, and racial stereotypes with humor and perception. This is a perfect book for boys who are reluctant readers–by the end of the first page they’ll be hooked.)
2. On Thin Ice by Jamie Bastedo (Through entries in Ashley’s diary that she keeps while visiting family in an Inuit village, this book addresses the issue of climate change in Arctic Canada, where the polar bears are coming far too close for comfort.)
3. Woolvs in the Sitee by Margaret Wild (Who are the “woolvs” who terrify Ben and keep him sequestered in a place where he is safe from them? This is a title for older readers that falls into the realm of picture book/graphic novel, and one that will keep them reading.)
4. Kira Kira by Cynthia Kadohata (Winner of the 2005 Newbery Medal, this is a novel that takes a serious look at serious issues, through the lives of an extended Japanese-American family who are struggling in tough times.)
5. Cinnamon Girl: Letters Found Inside a Cereal Box by Juan Felipe Herrera (The tragedy of 9/11 as seen through the eyes and voice of thirteen-year-old Yolanda, whose uncle had “inhaled Twin Towers of dust,” while delivering flowers at the moment that the planes struck.)
6. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne (This is a book group selection for all ages, and when we chose it for our own book group, the discussion was thoughtful and lively–much to think about in this slender little volume.)
And there is our baker’s half-dozen–what suggested titles would you add to this little list? Let us know!
By:
Aline Pereira,
on 9/23/2008
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Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, our website currently features Juan Felipe Herrera’s personal essay, “Apartment Heritage”, in which he beautifully reminisces about his relatives’ one-bedroom apartment in San Diego, where he lived with his family in the 1960’s. The essay uses the apartment as a metaphor for his identity formation, contrasting the life inside it — an “invisible library of culture and family histories”— to the life outside— “that uncanny, whirling splish-splash of chaos, unfiltered, untold.”
Much of Herrera’s work is autobiographical, and two of his books, Downton Boy (Scholastic. Ages 12+), winner of the 2007 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award, and Upside Down Boy, illustrated by Elizabeth Gómez (Children’s Book Press. Ages 4-8), were inspired by his childhood as the son of migrant workers in the 1950’s. His family experienced what many thousands of others do who choose or are forced to leave their homeland to search for better, more secure lives.
For many years Herrera traveled with his parents through the small farming towns of California’s Central Valley, changing schools with the seasons, always the “new boy,” always yearning for stability. Stability, however, brought its own set of conflicts: between languages; between old and new; between tradition and change. In Downtown Boy, his mom worries about the lure of life in the city’s barrio, and urges him to stay “close to home.” But where is home when you have been moving around for so long?
With so many influences and so much to reconcile and draw from, it’s no surprise that Herrera not only became a poet, writer and performance artist but also founded bilingual theater, music and poetry troupes that travel the world, telling and singing stories of pride in heritage—and in newness.
Herrera’s recent poetry books for adults have been enthusiastically reviewed in The New York Times.
For more by other writers about Latino migrant workers, their struggles and accomplishments, see The Circuit, Harvesting Hope, Esperanza Rising and First Day in Grapes.
By:
Aline Pereira,
on 9/16/2008
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After our Jul/Aug special literacy focus, we now make way for Hispanic Heritage Month (Sep 15 - Oct 15), a celebration of the cultures and traditions of US residents who trace their roots back to Spain, Mexico and the Spanish-speaking nations of Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The theme this year is “Getting Involved: Our Families, Our Community, Our Nation.”
There will be all sorts of events happening throughout the country, and here’s what you’ll find on our website: interviews with author Pam Muñoz Ryan and youth services librarian Rose Zertuche-Treviño; gallery features showcasing the work of David Diaz and Susan Guevara; original heritage-related essays by Yuyi Morales and Juan Felipe Herrera, and plenty more. So dive in, and have fun – and check back here, too, as we continue the fiesta of Hispanic Heritage Month by blogging about it through Oct 15. There’s plenty of pride, information and fun to be gained from going deeper into this celebration!
By: Lisa Alvarado,
on 2/27/2008
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photo of raulsalinas by Bruce Dye
From Lisa, La Blogista: We hope this stirs and ignites you. Please leave a comment and more importantly take raulsalinas' example to heart....Gracias to Juan Felipe Herrera
hail raúlrsalinas :: 1934 – 2008 :: hail liberationlove raúlr was in red. he came in lower-case, strutting down thru the brown cadre in red, a red bandanna across his forehead & taut around his black tresses down to his shoulders, smilin, boppin’ slow & glowin’ hard, in blue tramos planchados & curled to show the calcos spit-shined black solid, bluish tattoos, turquoise rings & gold medallions, a slung-fine chain swingin’ down the black spaghetti-thin belt, under the amber light in the center of the waiting audience, this is where the street-royal carnal found his calling, throttled the mic & peered into the brown cadre huddled on the floors, some of us squeezed against the shadowy aisles, the rest of us in crescent shaped circles, in strange awe, smeared hot against each other’s shoulder bones, the dark jeweled man in red stood under that first-time sparkle-light, his veined muscled arms swayed at his sides, then, he spoke, his bold baritone sounds found a silky-river way into our head, then coursed through our blood as if we were one blood, what was he all about? what was happening to us? where were we headed, now that we had been set off in motion? raulr was riffin’, blowin’, boppin’, snappin’ spittin’, talkin’-singin’ for the new freedom-body, without the locks, fetters & guards of officialized history, policies, and summations of our multi-dimensional self. november 13th, 1973, raulr appeared in the morning, at the floricanto first national chicano literature conference at USC, thirty-eight years old, one year after he had finished doing his time at leavenworth penitentiary, i sat in the center row, dressed in a tzotzil tunic i had brought back from chiapas in ‘70, miguel mendez, tomás rivera, teresa palomo acosta, zeta acosta by the doorway, then raulr popped the mic again & flowed into “un trip thru the mind jail y otras excursions,” he was speakin’ black, caló, tex-mex, chicano & some kind of san francisco beat mantra chakra choppin’ language meant to pierce your awareness: who are you? who did you think you were? what is oppression? how is it constructed? how many of your rooms does it occupy? who else resides in these chambers? is there a way out? then, the baritone voice slid back into the crimson body under the lights – raúlrsalinas ambled away, into the fresh trembling borderless nation. raúlr’s nation was borderless, he had crossed it, on foot as on the page & the stage, speaking, riffin’ & teaching human verses & unity actions – from working class “barbed-wired existence” barrios, from the land of high school force-outs, from grave stones of bullet-riddled camaradas, from “narcotic driven nerviosidad,” from suicided “colonias” & familias, to “ex-convictos activistas doing good in cities of chavalos gone bad,” to “trenzas indigenas,” dedicated to a revitalized indi@ collectivity, to “cantor de cantinas, pasándole poems a perennial pachukos prendidos, hoping to ease their pain,” “cantando colores de flores in arco iris danza,” ”learning en la lucha,” honoring the oak tree at the margins of a desolate collective capitol, honoring “indias, comadres wearing ski-boots so essential para caminar.” raúlr too was a walker, a walker-writer of the chican@ inferno & finder-seer of "rainbow people spirit." raulrsalinas was a true liberator: a kind fire-word man of soul-jazzed languages, a writer within & without prison walls, a socio-political mind-jail wall-breaker-scribe-singer, a collector, reader & translator of stolen cultura-tablets, a speaker of & for tender homage & eulogy to the invisibilized, a fearless warrior seeking the paths to our indigenous selves, lands & pueblos, relentless in responding to the “animales transnacionales” & militarized hydra machines, a shaman in demin, re-conjuring herstories of unwritten pachuka murders & oppressions across the southwest & pacific northwest, undoing the anthropological & sociological tyrannies of el pachuko, that is, all of us, in lower-case motion – raulr sings in a mid-fifties bebop alto & baritone gold-gilded sax voice, from pine ridge to chiapas, from el barrio de la loma to the diné rez, from shoshone & arapaho tierras to la selva lacandona, healing-gathering, healing-working – “respeto, paz y dignidad,” raúlr offers his life-quest harvests to all of us. what else, raúlr? you were speaking of lower-case love – everything we all are, have been & will ever be. in liberation --juan felipe Herrera, 2/25/08 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
And from poet Oscar Bermeo:Just wanted to pass along that last week, there was a tribute to raulsalinas
Among the readers sharing their thoughts and presenting the work of Raul
Alejandro Murguía
Tomás Riley Francisco
J. Dominguez
Marc Pinate
Naomi Quiñones
Leticia Hernández-Linares
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Nina Serrano
Jack Hirschman
Darren de Leon
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More teatro news, Denver-style
The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare Thursday – Saturday, February 28 – March 1 Thursday – Saturday, March 6 – 8 7:30pm King Center Rawls Courtyard Theatre Auraria Campus, Denver Tickets: $12 General Admission $5 UC Denver students Sponsored by: Theatre, Film and Video Production Department.
José Mercado, new Assistant Professor of the Theatre, Film & Video Production Department, directs a contemporary telling of a classic comedy driven by mix-ups, coincidence and slapstick humor, with the events confined within the action of a single day. The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s earliest, shortest and most farcical play. It tells the story of two sets of identical twins and the wild mishaps that occur through mistaken identity. Before joining the faculty at UC Denver, Mercado was head of the theatre department at North High School where he directed "The Zoot Suit Riots", the first high school production to play at Denver Performing Arts Center’s Buell Theatre. Prior to teaching, he worked as an actor in Los Angeles after earning his Master of Fine Arts degree in Theatre from UCLA. He is a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild and Actor’s Equity Association. He is also a member of the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs.
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Women and Creativity Conference/Lisa Alvarado Shameless Self-Promotion Department Gente: I've been blessed enough to have been asked to perform
The Housekeeper's Diary at the conference --
Friday, March 7, at 8 PM at the
National Hispanic Cultural Center's Roy E. Disney Center for the Performing Arts, as well as a reading for high school students at the Center's Wells Fargo Auditorium, Monday, March 10th at 10 AM.
Conference Info:
Women and Creativity 2008 is organized and presented by the
National Hispanic Cultural Center in partnership with more than 25 local arts organizations, artists, writers and independently owned-business. This year, we have an inspiring offering of more than 50 exhibitions, performances, workshops, classes, and engaging discussions in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
Women and Creativity partners invite you to dedicate an afternoon, evening or entire weekend in March to attend events and workshops that awaken and nourish your own creativity and support the creativity of our communities. Although we shine a special light on women’s creativity during this festival, we invite and encourage the participation of men at all events.
The National Hispanic Cultural Center, along with our partners in
Women and Creativity 2008, believe that creativity, art and self-expression are central to sustaining healthy individuals, organizations, business and communities – so, join in and celebrate the creative women in your community and the creativity inside yourself.
There will also be a fabulous
PEÑA FEMENINA Sunday, March 9th at
NHCC's LA FONDA DEL BOSQUE;Other Artists:
Alma Jarocha,
Leticia Cuevas, Anabel Marín, Otilio Ruiz, Victor Padilla
Jessica López
Bailaora Xicana, Flamenco
marisol encinias, vicente griego, ricardo anglada
Lenore Armijo
Angélica
Cuevas
National Hispanic Cultural Center 1701 4th St, SW Albuquerque, New Mexico
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Teatro Luna Fabulousness!
Teatro Luna has a BRAND NEW SHOW opening on March 6th, but you can catch it now! This Saturday and Sunday see a sneak preview of Teatro Luna's most intimate show yet... SOLO TU, a collection of four interwoven solos all about different women's experiences with PREGNANCY.
One woman thinks she's finally built the perfect family - Mom, Dad, Cute Kid- until an invasion of mice makes her wonder what's really going on. Another woman finds herself caught up in the worst kind of Baby-Daddy-Single-Mama Drama. Meanwhile, a woman in her third year of trying to get pregnant decides her pregnant friends make her want to vomit, and her close friend wrestles with pro-life activists, hospital robes, and how she feels about having an abortion in her 30's.
Saturday @ 7:30 pm and Sunday @ 6pm
SHOW RUN: March 6-April 6 2008Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays @ 7:30 pmSundays @ 6pmChicago Dramatists 1105 W. Chicago Ave, at MilwaukeeTickets $15, Student and Senior Discount on Thursdays and Sundays only, $10$12 Group Sale price, parties of 8 or moreFor tickets, visit www.teatroluna.org
Lisa Alvarado
By: Lisa Alvarado,
on 2/20/2008
Blog:
La Bloga
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Gente: La Bloga is fortunate enough to have an interview with Juan Felipe Herrera, whose life's work has been the poetry of sinew and bone, of La Raza, of people's movements and people's poetry, and whose new book was profiled in La Bloga.
But before you drink in our conversation, take a look at some info about his latest work -- a remix/compilation of truly razor-sharp and brutally beautiful writing.
And if you haven't read my review, take a look here.
From City Lights Publishers:
187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border:
Undocuments 1971-2007
by Juan Felipe Herrera
February 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-87286-462-7 $16.95
1. This newest book, 187 Reasons Why Mexicans Can't Cross the Border is a collection of a life's work in many ways. Some reviewers have described you as a moviemento elder statesman. What's your thoughts on that description?Elder statesman...ha! Well, if the movimiento was still alive...Things have changed, the Chicano Movimiento probably started when Cesar Chavez went on strike in McFarland, Ca., with the rose workers in 1964 and it ended about ten years later when Luis Valdez's Teatro Campesino gave its last debut in Mexico City at the TENAZ International Teatro Festival, the same year Gary Soto inaugurated his first book, The Elements of San Joaquín, which signaled a new trajectory in our poetics.Rather than a movimiento, since '74, we have streams, fugues, variations, implosions, counter-currents all at the same time.
The upside/downside?There's no up or downside to it.
Given that, what's the importance for you in mentoring younger voices?Mentoring is most important aspect for me. teaching and learning at the same time, expanding our thinking, and our action, our sense of community and self.
2. What do you think is the poet's responsibility to make social commentary, particularly in the current anti-immigrant (read Mexican) climate?As a Chicano and person of color, it is part of my poetics to respond to and transform and transcend the negative, narrow and easy explanations, summations and projections of who we are. Oddly, we are perhaps the most misunderstood ethnic group in the U.S. To begin with, we are not immigrants. To end with, a Mexican is always connected to the indigenous history of the Americas.
And given your perspective, do you have a particular spin on what constitutes 'Mejicano/Chicano (a) themes?There are no themes...they are all in flux... perhaps a most pertinent theme today is that of going beyond ethnicity and history without foregoing an activist perspective. Something is askew if only the military, corporate trade systems and the internet are global and the rest of us, in particular ethnic enclaves operate in closed communities and political segments.
3. There's been a critique swirling around concerning spoken word for a while -- that many times it ends up limiting and ghettoizing poets, particularly younger poets, who do not develop a critical grasp on other genres. Can you comment?Spoken word has its own cultural systems, canons, genres, institutions, actors and audiences which generate its values. Academic poetry, although related, is another cultural arena and another class sector. The less borders between these is best.
Another way to put is that Spoken Word by its very nature is public, oral, interactive, spontaneous, experimental and subversive. Because of these transgressive and explosive qualities, Spoken Word thrives at the margins. Otherwise, it would be more like its fair-haired cousin, text-centered academic poetry, which lives closer to the center of the literary capitalist paradigm, more or less. The problem arises when poets begin to quote themselves and cease to speak and also, as you say, loose touch with the larger world of conversations and silences.
4. What are your ongoing sources of inspiration?I don’t rely on specific inspiration sources. All is inspiration – twigs, people, clouds, shapes, names, words, sounds, colors and forms. Nature and culture are just two of thousands of possible channels of and for inspiration. Deep inspiration probably comes from the unnamable. That is why we want to write it, even though it is impossible.
Something like love.
5. How does your relationship to family feed your creative and personal life?My familia provides contrast, balance and a natural and organic play of feedback to my life as a whole. This is more significant and meaningful than providing thinking-talk-feedback to my writing. Deep and sincere relationships are at the core of creative life. Without these, we are just fooling ourselves and others.
6. Where would you like to see your work evolve over the next ten years?I just finished a writing a musical for young audiences,
Salsalandia, for the La Jolla Playhouse.It is touring – with a beautiful cast and production crew – throughout the schools and communities of my hometown, San Diego. I am thrilled by this.
The play is about a White & Mexicano “blended” family and it is about loss and painful border realities. Yet, it is funny, serious -- there are songs and dances and deep journeys all in the mix. Cristian Amigo composed the music – we had worked together in
Upside Down Boy, the first Latino musical for children in New York. I want to write more theatre, and also, for dance and possibly opera. Pavarotti is one of my heroes. So is Lanza – whom my mother loved. Imagine, my campesina mamá? And all the great Italian composers.
Musicals, children’s animation and opera – here I come!
7. Who are some of your favorite poets and why does their work resonate for you?The Post War Poets of Poland and Middle Eastern Europe move me – Rózevicz, Szymborska, Herbert, Celan, Rodnoti, to name a few. Because they speak of brutality with clear boldness, wet hearts, and razor-sharp precision. We are in such a time. Our words must not get over-excited or too under-stated. We must navigate between archipelagoes of world kaos, natural beauty, suffering lives and global military order. To do this, we must be daring, tender, unyielding and precise as rain.
8. Tell us something not in the official bio.I have always been a clown. I love solitude. The most simple things in the world move me to tears -- like clouds, mountains, an elder woman crossing the street, the voice of sincerity.
I have been a cartoonist since 8th grade. Water is my favorite drink with fresh-squeezed lime juice. I have five Sharpei dogs – Rocko, Tai, Pei-Pei, Lotus and Duddy Li.
Lisa Alvarado
two wonderful honors. juan felipe's guggenheim and luis' edgar. some parts of our world are as they should be. then there's arizona.