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Now Playing - Beep Beep by The Playmates Life -  Today was my first day back at work after an abbreviated rotation, putting me on a better schedule for the holidays. Because it was only three days off, rather than my typical six, I was scrambling to do all of the things I don't do when I'm working, not to mention the additional drama that we've been dealing with. To that end, I slept very

It was a sloppy rainy day, and my diaper was less than fresh.  I was due for a change but I had my focus on my job.  Pretty little Lizzy Lightfoot had crawled onto my play mat with a problem, and a big reward.

Seems Lizzy was more than just cute red cheeks and adorable chubby arms… she was THE major candy supplier this side of Halloween, and her stash had gone missin’.

I wasn’t a candy fiend like some… Elsie Pike whose fingers and mouth we perpetually stained ruby red or Mikey the Mooch who would sidle up behind at the slightest hint of sweetness.  Sure, I had a lolly now and then to unwind after a long day’s play dates, but I knew when to say when.  In my book, candy was sweet but Peekaboos and This-Little-Piggies where sweeter.

So when Lizzy toddles in, snot dribbling from her nose alluringly, and tells me that I has to help I says “What for?”

She reached into her diaper and pulled out Miss Daisy, the bright orange playpen ball so shiny it could blind Lady Justice all over again.  Miss Daisy hadn’t been seen around “Lil’ Ones Daycare” for approximately 3 days and therefore, its existence had been completely forgotten.  “You!”  I manage to say after wiping a bubble of saliva from my mouth.

“Me,” she says coyly, batting those eyelashes with only one or two goobers still in them from the afternoon nap.  “And I’m willing to share Miss Daisy with you at play time if you help me retrieve my goods.”

“Where are they” I asked, sweating hard to suppress the urge to shove that Golden Orb all the way into my mouth.

“Mikey the Mooch swiped ‘em when I was gettin’ a change but he couldn’t keep a lid on it.  Word spread and that’s when Big George showed up.”

“I see,” I managed to say, eyes still on Miss Daisy.

Lizzy noticed my hungry gaze upon Miss Daisy and put it behind her.  Out of sight, out of mind.  “So you’ll help me?”

I nodded, wiped the dribble from the corner of my mouth and set off for The Corner.  Big George spent a lot of time in The Corner when the big people put him in time out.  He figured he’d save everyone time if he just set up camp there.  He popped into this world a brawny 11 pounds and 3 ounces, and he hadn’t stopped there.  He was a full head taller than me and I was no slouch.

“Hey, Big George,” I say, wastin’ no time.  “You got somethin’ that don’t belong to ya’, and Lizzy wants it back.”

George looked at me with an amused grin, “No can do, Sammy, you know I have a sweet tooth.”

“We all know you haven’t got any teeth,” I say, “and if you did, I’d knock ‘em right out.  Hand over the candy.”  It wasn’t the smartest plan, but I really hadn’t developed the capacity for strategy or consequence judgment yet.

Big George gathered himself up to his full 26 inches and put his huge mitts on the straps of my overalls.  I was a goner for sure, I closed my eyes and prepared to cry, but no blow came.  Big George released me and I was free.  When I opened my eyes, I saw Big George lumbering away lustily towards the beautiful Miss Daisy as she rolled slowly away.

Lil’ Lizzy clutched her bag of lollies to her chest and looked me and gave me a wink, “Too bad, Sammy.  Looks like George has your goods now.  And who’s left to help you?”  She giggled and toddled away with her hoard.

I saw George slobbering over Miss Daisy, Lil’ Lizzy sucking on a lolly, and felt the squishy wetness in my diaper… and cried my face off. 

…

Thanks Bill Waterson for ‘Tracer Bullet’!

…

Leonardo Padura. Translated by Peter Bush. Havana Fever. London (UK): Bitter Lemon Press, 2009.
ISBN: 978-1-904738-36-7

Michael Sedano

Havana Fever burns with resentment that Cuba’s ruined culture shows itself in every vestige of its modern form. Whole barrios given over to crime and desperation, a city whose collapsed and patchwork buildings reflect society’s structural failure that began with Batista’s overthrow. Decaying mansions are little different from outrageous underclass brothels, the one stripped of anything saleable, the other sold out by the revolution. There’s no love lost between Leonardo Padura and official Cuba. But these things have become commonplaces of Cuban exile writers.

What sets Havana Fever apart from other Cuban exile novels is Padura’s absence of malice. His lead character, Mario Conde, isn’t looking to clean up crime, corruption, morality. He’s been retired from the police for ten years now. Conde’s retirement, in his late 40s, has come about because his old boss was railroaded into retirement and Conde acted to protest the injustice. Padura shares this information in a small plot divagation. Conde doesn’t regret the history, he wastes no emotion in lamentation, not for the public, commodity shortages, blackmarketeering, nor police corruption.

Today, the Count sells books and leaves the world as he finds it, to its own devices. But out of the blue, a gut feeling burns through his chest when he stumbles upon a Cuban equivalent of the ancient Library of Alexandria.

The novel will delight bibliophiles with its description of the Montes de Oca library: the earliest book published in Cuba, nineteenth century treatises featuring hand colored engraved plates, first editions of laureates of Cuban poetry—autographed. Conde could defraud the clueless owners but instead gives them a fair price, and points out the rarest volumes that must not be sold.

Such nobility cannot go unpunished. Leafing through a cookbook filled with impossible recipes, Conde finds a folded rotogravure photo from the 1950s of a gorgeous nightclub singer wrapped in gold lamé, Violeta del Rio. Conde falls in love not solely owing to her allure but because the photo awakens a dim memory and that nagging gut feeling that something is not right.

The magazine page leads Conde on the trail of a cold case murder dating back to the heydey of Havana nightlife. Batista gets the boot, sending his gangster business partners, along with rich Cubanos, in headlong flight with whatever dollars remain of their riches, leaving behind their mansions to fall into rot. One such Cubano, Alcides Montes de Oca, scion of a respected family de nombre, had fallen head over heels with the alluring Lady of the Night, bolero singer Violeta del Rio. The rich man flees in 1960, without Violeta del Rio. Because police have their hands full investigating counterrevolutionary terrorist violence, the singer’s death by cyanide remains an open case.

Montes de Oca leaves behind the fabulous library, the devastated mansion, and three caretakers, his dedicated personal assistant and her two children—Montes de Oca’s children carrying the surname of a chauffeur to keep up appearances. The novel follows Conde from sympathy for the emaciated brother and sister to suspicion that one of them withholds secrets to unlock the mysterious death of the almost forgotten singer. On the trail, the detective tracks down a musiciologist who identifies the single recording of Violeta del Rio, the singer’s top rival--a once-ravishing beauty now a sadly vain old woman holding in bitterness at her fifty year old feud, and another wizened body formerly known as Lotus Flower--a sensational nude dancer and high-class madam, who gladly shows off a portrait of her young self in costume.

The mystified Conde calls upon all his resources to resolve events the reader already knows from letters interjected into the narrative. Mysterious love letters by Nena to her Love parallel Conde’s investigation. Love is definitely Montes de Oca. Nena is not a character in the story and there’s some fun to be had in guessing her name. The letters allude to the events Conde has not yet tracked, filling in some details, offering misinformation here and there, but eventually spelling out the killer’s identity, and Nena’s. It’s a fun bit of dramatic irony, with added irony, Conde will never read the letters, the poisoner having destroyed them.

Beyond weaving an engaging mystery, crafting vivid tours of battered barrios, sentimental interviews that evoke that earlier hustle and bustle, Havana Fever reminds a reader of the inevitability of getting old. And its consequences. Conde has lost a step, in fact gets his ass kicked viciously because he loses focus. Conde’s best friend, Skinny Carlos, is killing himself with food, alcohol, and as much excess as a paraplegic shot in Angola can muster. Carlos deserves a happy ending, Conde reasons, and spends lavishly to bring rich food and quality rum to regular late night bullsessions.

Cuba is aging too, but not as well. The old are starving to death and when they’re gone, memories of the old days will be gone with them. While the old order changes it yields place to ever more bullshit, corruption, drugs. The gaps grow between then and now. And what can one do about it? Make compromises, survive, hold to your principles. They are their own reward. Or, one can leave, disappear from involvement in whatever comes next. Or, one can give in.

A final thought on publishing emerges in the British English of the translation. Cars have boots and bonnets, an envelope contains a pair of black and white winkle-pickers, and several colloquialisms drive my curiosity what Padura’s Spanish actually read. These linguistic lacunae aside, Peter Bush offers a masterful completely readable text that flows with a beautiful vocabulary and a clean sense of authenticity. Readers who have enjoyed Conde’s earlier stories, notably the Havana color series, Black, Red, Blue, and Gold novels, will find this story of the aging Conde a capstone to the series. In an afterword, Padura reveals he’s been working on movie versions of his work, and that is fabulous news. Read the books, read Havana Fever, and you can join those discussions one day, “it didn’t happen like that in the book, but…”

And that's the penultimate Tuesday in July, 2009, a Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except You Are Here. Thank you for visiting La Bloga.

mvs

La Bloga welcomes your comments on this and all columns. Click the comments counter below to share your views. La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. If you have alternative views to this or another column, or a cultural/arts event to report, perhaps something from your writer's notebook, click here to discuss your invitation to be our guest.

Be sure to visit La Bloga this Sunday, July 26, when our Guest Columnists will be poets Olga Garcia, Tatiana de la Tierra, and making her writing debut, Liz Vega.

Review: San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics. Edited by Peter Maravelis. NY: Akashic Books, 2009.
ISBN-13: 978-1-933354-65-1

Michael Sedano

The City, as its devotees object, should never be called ‘Frisco. The term offends the sensibility of loyal San Franciscans, or something classic Chronicle columnist Ralph J. Gleason must have written long ago. Similarly, stuff that isn’t classic shouldn’t be called “classic,” as does the subtitle of Akashic’s San Francisco Noir 2, The Classics.

To me, “classic” suggest a pair of standards. First, age. Second unusually distinctive quality. It’s not enough that a piece have age, nor even mere quality. Memorability, distinctiveness, adaptation to a particular readership, any combination marks the boundary between merely good old stuff and something Classic with a capital “C”.

These values might not be readily apparent, as in Mark Twain’s “The Black Hole of San Francisco,” from 1865. It’s an uninteresting satire of a courthouse so devoid of justice it emits horrible smells. Editor Peter Maravelis wisely hides this third, following two other old pieces, Ambrose Bierce’s “A Watcher by the Dead,” from 1889’s North Beach, and Frank Norris’ “The Third Circle,” set in 1897 Chinatown. They are entertaining work, not necessarily each writer’s most notable, and charitably allowing a huge stretch to comprehend including the Twain piece at all.

These are, however, old. Hence, the oxymorons “unappreciated classic” or “classic-in-waiting” come readily to mind to account for such editorial decisions as skipping ahead from Dahiell Hammett’s 1925, “The Scorched Face” to 1953’s “The Collector Comes After Payday,” by Fletcher Flora.

Two thirds of the collection comes from a roster of noted late 20^th century writers. After the mid-century stop, Maravelis skips ahead 11 years to 1966’ “The Second Coming” from Joe Gores, then to Marcia Muller’s 1987 “Deceptions.”

Akashic and Maravelis have put together a worthwhile anthology, despite the less than felicitous subtitle. Two stories frame the quality well.

In his ’53 piece, Fletcher Flora reflects the machismo and incipient violence of his era. The male criminal enjoys slapping around his trophy wife. Frankie lives the 1950’s fantasy life. A 120-pound weakling and born loser, Frankie’s luck turns around completely. He gets rich, gets the girl, enjoys wealth on the seamy side until he falls for a younger woman. Frankie’s last gasp exits a .38 hole in his chest, his irony the abused wife finally finding her backbone.

By 1987, Marcia Muller has a woman investigator tracking down a missing woman, a possible suicide. But it appears a plan by a clever woman looking to continue her life under someplace else. A park ranger is the victim, lured and abandoned by the missing woman. Her irony is being found hacked to pieces in an old cistern, the betrayed paramour’s revenge. The murderer himself plunges to his last gasp after pursuing the female dick to a dead end, where her lucky desperation produces the killer’s fatal stumble.

One story merits special notice, Janet Dawson’s 1998 story of children in peril, “Invisible Time.” A tense nightmare of two homeless children surviving on the streets around Union Square. Greta, a ten-year old girl takes care of her 5-year old brother Hank. Homeless after their alcoholic mother abandons them after one hard knock after another, the children steal or eat leftovers from lunchtime trash barrels. It’s a no happy endings story, truly frightening. Dawson has one of the best lines in the book, when, after expressing Greta’s growing desperation, “She was doing the best she could, but she didn’t know how long she could keep it up.” Avoiding the skid row of the Tenderloin and South of Market region, remaining in Union Square, the nicer area north of Market. Then comes gem of pure beauty:

"Greta couldn’t remember when Mom left. A few weeks, a month, two months, it didn’t matter. After a few days, the hours all ran together, like a stream of dirty water chasing debris down the sewer grate. She only remembered that it didn’t used to be like this.”

A classic metaphor line like that more than enough compels reading more Dawson. And the other writers, too. The familiar ones. For instance, the Hammett. Although not noir per se, I would like more readers to laugh at Hammett’s hilarious bronco buster short story from The Continental Op II.

There is one jarring note that still bugs me. There’s a story with a Chicano character, John Shirley’s 1991 “Ash.” But the Chicano’s weird. Not just a street weird-o, a Santero, or a Santeria apparition of some strange sort.  I’ll be embarrassed to learn Shirley’s a nom de plume of a Mexicano a todo dar, but from the looks of this character, either I haven’t been to Frisco for too long, or Shirley needs to learn more about Chicanos before dropping one into the middle a story. Ash, a middle-class guy has been laid off due to the current recession. He meticulously plans to stick up an armored car. When the heist goes south, the Chicano appears, the crook gets tangled up with the street person, the crook plugs the guard. The murder sends the robber into a psychedelic episode that ends only when Ash, the character, ends, at the bottom of an elevator shaft. Strange ending to an odd story and a fitting final page in an excellent collection.

If only they hadn’t stretched matters and called it “Classic.”

Foto Plactica at UCR – Inauguration of UCR’s Tomás Rivera Flor Y Canto Archives.

The elevator ride to Special Collections leads to Tomás Rivera Library’s top floor, but opens onto an anonymous dark hallway. A few turns and I’m at the twin glass doors. The entry corridor is lined on both sides with matted photographs mounted on the wall. (Click images to enlarge.)

The dramatic Oscar Acosta images greet me on my left. The shot of Tomás Rivera with Ybarra-Frausto and Hinojosa-Smith holds the initial space of the right wall. The photos are hung with ample wall space between them so each can hold its own focus of attention. At 19” by 13”,  viewers can stand back and take in the full frame with easy comfort. Research Librarian Gwido Zlatkes has labeled each image. He smiles pointing to the photo of rrsalinas. Gwido, a research librarian to the bone, wanted to know more about these Chicana and Chicano writers. Somehow, the ex-Tecato poet has joined the family of a recent Mexican president, Salinas-Gortari. Gwido makes a quick trip to the word processor and in a moment rr rejoins his own clan.

Dr. Melissa Conway, Head of Special Collections & Archives does the introduction. I’m preceded to the lectern by Elihud Martinez, a wonderfully informative talk on Miguel Leon-Portillo’s work in Nahuatl philosophy, the term, “flor y canto” and its place in understanding chicano literature and the brief moment of the floricanto movimiento that began with the 1973 USC gathering.

After my time on the platform—the performance was videotaped—the audience adjourned to a side room for chocolate, café, pan and conversation. Doña Rivera was elegantly charming. Meeting her today, after photographing her late husband in a candid moment thirty-five years ago brought me an unexpected sense of completion.

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.

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.htm


La 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.

I recently posted an article about a piece of speculative fiction, Solstice. It's a novel that's sharp-edged, haunting and has some kick ass-heroines. The following is a conversation with
Ulises Silva, its author, and the founder of an independent press, Tragical Mirth Publishing.

(If you missed my piece, you can read it here.)


1. Tell me about the genesis of Tragical Mirth Publishing. Do you see yourself as a niche publisher? If so, what do you feel are the strengths of that? The downside?

Tragical Mirth Publishing is the independent publishing house I established in order to self-publish Solstice in 2007. I took the dreaded self-publishing route primarily for creative control.

After all, one of the earlier comments I got on an earlier draft of Solstice was that the characters’ names (i.e., Itztli, Jai Lin) were too difficult and different for most audiences, and that I should change them. I think that’s what I feared the most about going through a traditional publisher—that they’d want to change the characters’ ethnicities and names in order to make them more commercially appealing. That would have defeated the purpose of writing this story. So I took the chance and created Tragical Mirth to self-publish, and it’s a gamble that’s surprisingly paid off. Despite it being a self-published book, Solstice received positive reviews in Booklist, Library Journal, SciFiNow magazine, and now here at La Bloga. I see TMP as a niche publisher in the sense that I want to focus on giving authors of color an entry into the crowded literary marketplace. While I’mnot yet ready to publish other writers, I do hope to eventually start working with authors of color and let them tell the stories they want to tell.

I want them to see TMP as an alternative to the big publishers that seem naturally inclined toward labeling anything written by us as Urban Fiction or what have you. I think that focus on letting writers of colors tell the kinds of stories they want to tell is our greatest strength. Hopefully, down the line, TMP will be a very viable publisher with a full roster of good and promising writers of color. The downside, of course, is that TMP is an independent publisher, and not currently set up to publish anything. And, assuming I can ever get to the point where I can publish other people’s works, writers will still need to temper their expectations. I doubt we’ll ever be about giving someone a $10,000 advance and promise to get their book into every top review magazine and best-selling list. But if a writer is willing to work with us and be willing to take some of the risks with us, then hopefully we can accomplish something special. And considering the unexpected success of Solstice, I truly believe we can achieve anything.

2. Your novel is a piece of speculative fiction. How does that sync up with popular ideas of 'Latino/Chicano' fiction?

A lot of ‘Latino/Chicano’ fiction is based on telling stories from our historically marginalized point of view. We tell stories that, while familiar to Latinos, might seem alien to most everyone else. They’re stories about growing up as hyphenated Americans, about Latino/Chicano political activism, about all our experiences on the fringes of mainstream American consciousness.

They’re about telling the stories no one else can or cares to tell. Solstice, although grounded in speculative fiction, is deeply influenced by this aspect of Latino/Chicano writing. The notion that Scribes can use the English written word to literally manipulate reality is based on my belief that mainstream media has the power to invent our reality and historical awareness (or, in some cases, efface it altogether).

So it’s no coincidence that the Editors tasked with watching over these Scribes are all people of color, people who operate in the shadows and whose native languages serve as a defense against Scribes. Solstice’s protagonist, Io, is a Mexican-Japanese anti-heroine. She’s the best of The Editors, but she moonlights as a vigilante, and her mantra is that only cruelty can destroy cruelty.

But she’s haunted by the loss in her life, including the loss of her parents and her own normalcy. She carries a reminder of this loss with her—a copy of Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street given to her by her mother as a reminder of “where she came from.” Although her character is adrift at the start of the story—caught between two distinct ethnic identities, occupying the fringes of common law, trapped in the purgatory that is her own aimless vigilantism—it’s her mother’s book that keeps her oriented, even if she doesn’t know it.

And, of course, there’s Nadie, the novel’s antagonist. She’s the Scribe who decides that humanity is irreparably corrupt and destructive and must therefore be exterminated. But she wants the world to know why it’s being destroyed, which is why she sets out to tell a story—in her own unique way—that recounts history’s many unpunished crimes, including the horrors of colonialism. It’s one of the book’s ironies that this young girl whose name means "no one" is the one who brings these crimes to light and issues her final judgment.

3. In Solstice, you create a world similar to Dick's Blade Runner. Talk about that as a landscape for your characters, and the decision to pit Scribes and Editors against each other as the central theme.

The story is set in an alternate near future where the U.S.’ power and influence have eroded following three catastrophic military ventures (there are vague references throughout to Iraq, Iran, and Taiwan). I wanted the story’s landscape to present an uncanny glimpse into a foreseeable future, where government corruption has gone unchecked thanks to stolen elections, interest groups, and widespread apathy. Part of this landscape, of course, are Scribes, people with the power to make whatever story they write come true. Scribes are meant to reflect the notion that the written word, in the hands of certain people, can create reality. We see it in history books, of course. How many of us have heard that it was Mexico that provoked the war of 1846 -- a war Americans call the Mexican War and that Mexicans call La Invasion Norteamericana?

But consider this also: If we think on the ways mainstream media helped the current administration launch its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and how they invented for all of us the reality of Iraq’s nuclear stockpiles and willingness to use them against us, then we can see that the written word really does have power. It’s no coincidence that I make references throughout to a Scribe named Don Poinsettia, a Scribe Io takes down with the help of a Chinese Scribe, Xiu Mei Xiang. Poinsettia is a Murdoch/Rove figure who’s used his powers and his MIX media empire for personal gain.

The suggestion is that he single-handedly brought about the U.S.’ downfall. I actually plan a prequel to Solstice that will focus on him and Io’s attempt to hunt him down. She’s the top Editor, after all. Editors are, in essence, a representation of post-colonial theory. So much of what Latinos and other writers of color do is write the stories that colonial and mainstream texts have skipped or effaced. I wanted the Editors—all people of color whose native languages serve as a defense against a Scribe’s powers—to represent that ongoing struggle.

4. Solstice is populated by strong female characters, outside the 'norm.' Can you share what motivated you and what you hope you engender in the reader with that choice?

It really began with my mother, a strong Mexican woman who never backs down from any fight, and who always taught me to respect women’s rights and equalities.

From a very early age, she let me see the inherent ludicrousness of the machismo that was (and perhaps still is) rampant in Mexico and Latin America. I remember seeing Aliens for the first time, and seeing the Ripley and Vazquez characters in action, and being totally awestruck by them.

I think that was the first time that I saw a female character that kicked butt with the best male characters, and the first time I started to ask myself why we didn’t see more characters like them in movies. We’ve all seen male action heroes, but not nearly enough female ones, at least not many that weren’t just Barbies with guns (e.g., Lara Croft). I’ve always believed that, as a writer, you should embrace the control the written word offers you. As writers, we can tell whatever stories we want with whatever characters we want. That’s why, when it came time to start writing my stories, I always featured a strong female lead, because those were the kinds that I always appreciated the most.

With Solstice, I saw an opportunity to create Io, a heroine who’s very strong, very independent, and not just a sexualized, hot-blooded LatinAsian woman bowing down to stereotypes. I wanted her to have real layers, real depth, and real flaws. And despite her troubled beginning (she really is a monster at first), I wanted readers to sympathize with her plight, and appreciate her eventual redemption. Maybe more importantly, I wanted people to read her and the rest of the characters, and say to themselves, “why aren’t there more characters like these in books and film?” I wanted to give Latino/a and Asian audiences a set of strong central characters they could appreciate and even embrace. And I wanted to show other audiences that a Latina/Asian woman could have other roles than the ones people are used to seeing them in.

5. What are the themes you find yourself returning to? What's their significance personally and creatively.

Creatively, I’m fascinated with end-of-the-world scenarios, maybe too much for my own good. I guess, growing up in the 80s and thinking that the Emergency Broadcast Network was going to come on at any moment, I thought the end of the world could really happen. So I migrated to these kinds of stories. I was always fascinated with the human response to apocalypse, and especially how the media would react and spin stories if an end-of-the-world scenario began to unfold. That’s why there are many instances in Solstice where Io and her companions are listening to the radio or watching TV; they’re forced to watch the horrors of Nadie’s actions through the filters of network news and talk shows. Personally, I’m just as adamant about writing stories featuring people that look and act like us. Growing up, I didn’t see a whole lot of Latino/a protagonists that were strong or three-dimensional or even law-abiding.

So it’s important to me, as a Latino writer, to create characters we can relate to. Because I genuinely feel that our people, especially our younger audiences, still don’t have a whole lot of positive portrayals in mainstream media to inspire them. There aren’t enough characters like us out there that make us think we can be heroes or awe-inspiring or even strong. I’m just one person, but I make it a point to always feature strong, central Latino/a characters in all my fiction. With Solstice, it’s Io.

With my next novel, Inventing Vazquez, it’s a Chicana named Liliana Vazquez. With my next speculative fiction novel, The Mourning Syndrome, it’ll be a Chicana writer named Clara Solis. That will always be my goal: to have real characters that we, as Latino/as, can readily identify with, and maybe even be inspired by.

6. Share with Bloga readers where you hope to take them with Inventing Vazquez.

From the writer that brought you Solstice, a dark, apocalyptic novel, comes…a light-hearted comedic satire. That’s going to be a nightmare to try and market, but… In any event, Inventing Vazquez is my new novel (with a release date sometime late 2008 or early 2009) that takes
on an issue very important to me: the (mis)portrayal of Latino/as in American cinema. Like I said before, I don’t think our people have a lot of positive examples to look up to in film. Most of the time, we’re portrayed as gang members, or domestic servants, or crime victims. And even when films do cast Latino/as, half the time they play non-Latino roles. It’s like America Ferrerra said in Ugly Betty: "Mexicans don’t have action heroes. All we have is a fast little rodent."

So Inventing Vazquez is my little critique of the whole industry. (As an aside, even the title of the book is in reference to the Vazquez character from Aliens. Yes, the same one I mentioned earlier. I eventually learned that the actress wasn’t even Latina; it was a non-Latina actress with brown contact lenses, bronzed skin, and a fake accent. I was so discouraged, because for so long, I’d really liked that character and what I thought she represented.)

The story centers around Liliana Vazquez, a mousy Chicana who’s hired by a major film studio to serve as a “Hispanic Sensitivity Issues Consultant” following the widespread outrage among Latino/as over a recent film. She’s hired to read scripts and alert the studio if she thinks it’s going to offend Latino/a viewers, but she comes to realize that the position is a token one. She, like the Asian Sensitivity Issues Consultant and the Arab Sensitivity Issues Consultant (a Sikh man), is just a PR gimmick.

And although she starts off as soft-spoken and mousy (she’s ashamed of her voice because it’s so girly despite her being 29), she has to find her voice—literally and figuratively. The story is about her finding a way to make her voice heard among people who don’t want to hear it. It’s a comedic satire, so I hope to make audiences laugh. But I also hope to get people to think about the issues I raise. Because although the films mentioned in the book are loosely based on real-life films (e.g., “Empire of Blood” instead of “Apocalypto”), some of them should resonate with the audience (i.e., “yeah, I can see them making a movie like that”) despite being so off-the-wall silly (like one film, “Latin Lover,” about a guy that gets women to fall for him when he bites into a magical habañero pepper).

7. Where would you like to see Tragical Mirth in ten years? Where would you like to see yourself?

Ideally, I’d like Tragical Mirth Publishing to have a full roster of writers of color, and a full line of good books that tell good stories about us. And I’d like to be able to work with writers, and give them the kind of encouragement and feedback they’ll need to keep writing. Because I genuinely believe that people of color, especially Latino/as, need to write more, and we need to start creating the kinds of stories and characters that mainstream media won’t. So hopefully, with enough lucky bounces and maybe some more commercial success with Solstice and my future novels, I can work toward this.

As for myself, writing is what I love, so I plan to keep writing. I always said that to simply publish Solstice and present it to my family as mygift to them (because nothing says “I love you, mom, dad, and brother” like a novel about the end of the world) was my only goal; anything after that would be gravy. So I’m just enjoying the ride, and embracing the joy that is writing fiction. Hopefully, in 10 years, I will have published a few more: Inventing Vazquez, The Mourning Syndrome, a sequel to Solstice, and maybe one or two more. And I genuinely hope that, by then, the kinds of characters I like to feature won’t be ‘outside the norm’ anymore.

8. Tell us something not in the official bio.

Some things that may or may not be true about me:

• I stay up until 2 a.m. every night writing, drawing, or watching horror films. This despite the fact that I have to be at work at 8:30 a.m. I started my writing ‘career’ in earnest with an Anime fanfic entitled, Nightmares in the Apocalypse, which was so horrid and badly written but nonetheless made me somewhat popular among a small group of teenage readers.
• I can make a mean guacamole.
• I write music on the side, and play bass guitar, electric guitar, and drums. All at once. Really.
• I’ve been in a punk band, am currently in a blues band, and am now trying to form an indie rock band.
• I draw pictures of my main characters to get a sense of who they are and what they look like. And all these pictures are done in Anime style.
• I don’t do windows.
• Having grown up in NYC, I naturally root for the Detroit Tigers, the Arizona Cardinals, the Miami Dolphins, and the Buffalo Sabres.
• I hate powdered laundry detergent.
• Having grown up in NYC, the city I most want to live in is San Francisco, or Chicago, or Toronto. Which is why I’m in Michigan.
• Being Mexican-American, naturally, my favorite kind of music is indie rock and Japanese rock.
• I was actually a terrible grad student, probably because I spent all my time writing instead of studying.
• Being Mexican-American, my favorite film of all time, naturally, is Lost in Translation.

Murder, memory, loss, anguish--all the stuff of crime fiction and tragedy. It is the subject matter of novelist James Ellroy, whose literary career has garnered him praise from the national press, and whose novel, L.A. Confidential, became a critically acclaimed film. But in My Dark Places, Ellroy throws the reader an unexpected twist.

This book is about the killing of his own mother, whom Ellroy lost when he was 10. It was the single incident that propelled Ellroy through a life as an introverted child, a teen criminal, a con, a drug addict, and finally a writer. But even as Ellroy dredges his tortured life from the ashes, his mother's ghost is never far behind. He longs for her, dreams about her, and she insinuated herself into every waking moment of his life.

My Dark Places is memoir, crime story, love song and a cry in the dark. Jean Ellroy was very much like a character in a noir novel. A woman of duplicity, torn between two lives, she was subdued and distant with her son, and acted more as a disciplinarian., rather than loving mother. In her other life she was a secret alcoholic, habitually drawn to anonymous sex with violent men. One of those men killed her on June 22, 1958. It was the single experience that rent the fabric of James Ellroy's life. He spent the next 36 years both running from her ghost, and recreating her life.

As soon as he was able Ellroy disappeared into the underworld. He was his mother's son, after all. She drank, he grew up and did eight balls and speed. She hung with criminals, he became one. She picked up men in bars and had one-night stands, he met women, screwed them, dumped them and moved along. When the drugs and the sex and the crime failed, Ellroy even reconstituted himself as a sober, successful writer. Nothing healed that wound that was his mother. He desired her, despised her, finally decided to investigate the case himself, hoping in this way, to reclaim her. What happened was an odyssey of obsession, redemption, but not peace.

Despite a kind of resolution, James Ellroy will never be a peaceable being. He ends My Dark Places with these words: I can hear your voice. I can smell you and taste your breath. You're brushing against me. You're gone and I want more of you. Then he lists the name and number of the detective who is still looking for leads, still looking for the killer.

Why is this so compelling for me? I was drawn to read this book after hearing an interview with Ellroy, feeling shocked to hear him talk about the tragedy in words that were my own. My own writing about mother-loss echoes Ellroy's: I am looking for you mother, looking for you everywhere. In the corridors of dreams, windowless, empty. I look for the door that will lead me to you. I look, but I never find it.

I ran from my own childhood holocaust, escaped anyway I could. I, too, reworked, re-envisioned, and reshaped my life by writing. That wound has never completely healed. Maybe it never will, if my own intuition and Ellroy's cautionary words mean anything. But we write, we keep digging up the past, we keep afloat.

On a purely stylistic note: this is riveting writing. The book is crafted with a staccato rhythm, the use of simple, clean phrasing, and icy-hot imagery. I hope I can use it to shape a trilogy of performance I'm working on about personal and pop culture violence, Bury the Bones. Maybe Ellroy would enjoy the title.

ISBN-10: 0679762051

Lisa Alvarado

Dancing to Almendra

Author: Mayra Montero
Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
ISBN-10: 0374102775
ISBN-13: 978-0374102777

Dancing to Almendra takes place in Mafia-dominated 1950’s Cuba before Castro takes over. It begins with a bizarre killing of a hippopotamus at the local zoo and young journalist Joaquín Porrata is sent to write up the story. Joaquín usually covers fluff pieces but desperately wants to be a real reporter covering more important things. He stumbles onto something at the zoo where he learns that the killing of the hippo was a warning to mob boss Umberto "Albert" Anastasia, who really was murdered in 1957. Joaquín starts investigating and begins to uncover an incredible story. He is threatened, beaten, warned and scared the hell out of, but he keeps on investigating and uncovering more and more.

As the investigation deepens, Joaquín’s life starts to spin out of control. He travels to New York, meets both Meyer Lansky and George Raft and finds out much more than any person should know about the Mafia.

The characters are all intensely interesting and detailed. Joaquín’s father and brother Santos, his lesbian sister and his tragic martyr of a mother are all fascinating. Yolanda, the ex circus performer, one-armed mulatta lover of Joaquín as well as Santos Trafficante and mother of a trapeze artist is simply too wild and wonderful not to love.

The story is told in Joaquín’s hard-bitten, matter of fact voice with alternating chapters told in a mystical way by Joaquín’s lover Yolanda. The Cuba of the 50’s comes to life with Mayra Montero’s incredible writing. She paints a decadent picture of nightclubs, music and gaudy casinos where an underlying threat of revolution is bubbling to the surface.

Dancing to Almendra is a gorgeous book about a crazy time and Montero manages to paint both the garish, brightly lit surface as well as the darkness underneath it all with a deft hand.

X-Rated Bloodsuckers
Author: Mario Acevedo
Publisher: Rayo
ISBN-10: 0060833270
ISBN-13: 978-0060833275

Felix Gomez is just your normal Chicano vato. He’s an ex-soldier recently returned from Iraq now living in Denver. Felix is a private detective now and has just been hired to find out who killed porn star Roxie Bronze. Oh yeah, did I mention Felix is a vampire? He got bitten in Iraq. Now that’s coming home with some bad war baggage, que no?

Somehow Roxie’s murder is connected to the vampire world and the bosses (like mob bosses vampire style) want Felix to take the case and find out what’s really going on with the L.A. vampires. There’s this cool Mission Impossible you’re message will self destruct trick when the message from the vampire bosses goes up in flames when Felix holds it to the sun. The message was written on vampire skin.

Felix doesn’t really want to go to the L.A. of his childhood, but he’s got the higher ups wanting him to go and he also finds himself intrigued by the case and by the woman who hired him, Katz Meow who has disappeared. He packs his bag and heads off to L.A.

“Even with supernatural mojo, I still felt queasy coming here. Since I had left many years ago, vowing never to return, I had graduated from college, gone to war, become a vampire, and settled in Denver. And here I was, back in Pacoima anyway.”

Once in L.A. he meets one hell of a crazy vato named Coyote who also happens to be the ancient vampire son of the Malinche and Hernan Cortez, the original hijo de la chingada. Coyote loves his rat blood chorizo. Blech.

X-rated Bloodsuckers takes you on a colorful trip to L.A.’s underbelly and the porn industry in the Valley. It’s a wild ride with interesting characters and that unlike anything else L.A. flavor, “Seen from the freeway, the sprawl of the San Fernando Valley stretched in relentless monotony. A line of homes clung to the surrounding hills like the ring around a bathtub.” The story is gripping, the investigation crazy with unexpected twists and turns culminating in a surprising ending with the most unlikely of murderers.

It’s not just a detective story, it’s not just a vampire story, it’s not just a Chicano story – X-rated Bloodsuckers is just a damn good story that transcends all that genre pigeonholing. It’s innovative, exciting, different and keeps you wanting more. Mas, mas mas!