NewsTaco

By Tia Tenopia

Mario Picayo is the editor and publisher of the Editorial Campana literary publishing company based in New York.  He is also the author of children’s books published through Campanita Books.

His children’s alphabet book  “A Caribbean Journey from A to Y (Read and discover what happened to the Z)” has received wide acclaim and was given as a gift to Michelle Obama for her daughters to read by the First Lady of the Virgin Islands, Cecile deJongh.

Mario Picayo reads from his book the letters “S” and “J.”

By Tia Tenopia

Pat Mora is a poet, novelist and author of children’s books. Her writings often reflect the conflictive nature of being bilingual and bi-cultural. Here she reads the poem “Legal Alien,” which explores the unease of being viewed as neither fully American nor fully Mexican.

[Photo And Video By Latinopia]

When I taught a love literature class a few years ago, to a class comprised entirely of young college girls, I assigned stories and essays about various forms of love. Complaints emerged that texts I was assigning were not about love at all, when in reality the texts I had chosen were not about heterosexual romantic relationships.  I tried to explain to them that love was manifested in all forms, but they were not having it. They wanted to read sexy tales between men and women and I had let them down. Personally, I have a really hard time being romantic in the clichéd sense: diamond commercials make me shudder, romantic comedies make me want to light something on fire. I have asked my boyfriend to please promise he wouldn’t get on one knee if he proposed, because it I think it’d make me puke on the inside.

I don’t know why I’m like this. There are also parts of my personality that aren’t at all conventionally feminine. There is not a dainty bone in my body. I had to be resilient growing up, so I guess became a pretty tough broad, so I can’t get past prescribed romance and faux chivalry. That is not to say that I don’t appreciate romance that is not pukey; one of the nicest moments of my life was when my boyfriend and I were stuck at home during a blizzard and we sat in the dark listening to the thunder snow. See, I don’t hate love! But when I see saccharine tomfooleries taken straight from romantic comedies that star the vapid Jennifer Aniston, I can’t help but grimace.

The problem is our society’s obsession with heteronormative relationships, seen on shows like “The Bachelor” in which catty women compete for the affection of a prized unctuous prig:

• Women, you are worthless if you are not paired up with a man.
• Your sole purpose in life is to marry some dude and crank out his babies.
• You should also expect expensive blood diamonds because DeBeers says so.
• You should be treated like a frail, hemophiliac princess.
• If you’re single on Valentine’s Day, you will eventually die alone in your home with your cats who might begin eating your face because no one notices that you are dead.

Though I love my boyfriend very much, our relationship is not enough to sustain me spiritually — there is so much more to love than romance. Like most normal people, I deeply value my relationships with friends and family. I am often so filled with love that I feel like I’m bursting at the seams like a tightly encased sausage. I love writing more than I can even explain. I love literature. I love art. I love music. I love this taco I’m eating. I love nature. I love humanity. I love beauty so much that sometimes I get so overwhelmed by a freaking a tree branch that my chest literally aches (see, I am romantic). Hell, I even love Kermit the frog and entire cast of Muppets, for that matter. And lastly, I love myself, despite our culture’s insistence that I don’t.

The overall message I was trying to communicate to that class is: romantic relationships don’t have to occupy the center of our world. There is more to life than stories with sexy results. Love is not always necessarily about boinking. The literature I was teaching was about love. Because really, what the hell isn’t?

[Photo By Sister72]

All this recent Latino nerd talk — shout out to all of my brothers and sisters — got me thinking about the origins of my nerdom.

How exactly did this happen? How did I become the kind of woman who listens to podcasts about earthworms and economics? Why am I the kind of person whose heart goes aflutter when she hears Elizabethan English? Why have I memorized entire “Simpsons” episodes? I know began to read voraciously because I was a misbehaved child who was punished often. My dad’s punishments were usually very harsh — two-to-three weeks long, during which I was not allowed to go outside or watch TV. The only form of entertainment was reading, drawing, and looking out the window.

I would consume stacks and stacks of books during this time. Since the amount of Latino literature available to kids was (and still is) paltry, I escaped my reality by reading books, such as the entire collection of “The Babysitter’s Club” and all of Judy Blume. (I thought of starting my own babysitter’s club until I realized what a terrible idea that would be in the barrio.) I was also weird and moody child.  I was the kind of poindexter that would read Stephen King novels during recess. My solitude allowed my imagination to grow fecund.

At the age of 12 I decided that I was a poet. While little girls supposedly fantasized about their wedding day, I fantasized about publishing books and traveling the world. In high school I was very troubled, so I immersed myself in more literature. I thought I was Huckleberry Finn. I thought I was Holden Caulfield. I wore white dresses like Emily Dickinson. (There are pictures to prove this.) I would talk to my teachers about music because no one else I knew liked Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan. In my more ascetic phase, I also shaved my head as a rejection of materialism and  feminist refusal to be objectified. I would often shock my therapists with my knowledge of existentialist philosophy. Because I had no money and our library was pitiful, I would steal books on a weekly basis. When I was 15, instead of a quinceañera, I chose to attend a summer poetry  workshop at a nearby college.

In sum, I was a whole lot of weird and I never cared to hide it.

Now I am an adult nerd, better adjusted, but dweeby nonetheless. I am full of bizarre knowledge (ask me about the history of merkins). I am constantly cramming my brain with any information I can get ahold of because it’s as insatiable as that scary plant from “Little Shop of Horrors.” Sometimes I still dress funny and probably embarrass my boyfriend. I frequently watch documentaries about topics such as honey bees, food science, and genocide. I also just started recording a podcast with a friend because I thought the podcast scene really needed to be penetrated by more nerds of color.

Please understand that Latino nerds are doubly ostracized. We don’t fit in mainstream white culture and our Latino communities often shun us because of our bizarre ways, interests, and beliefs. Many times we’re accused of “acting white,” whatever the hell that means. We are misunderstood on several levels. So I ask that if your loved ones are Latino Urkels, please nourish them. We know we’re weird but we just can’t help it.

[Photo By freakapotomus]

On a recent Sunday, an intimate gaggle of fans, friends, and family gathered at the Stadium Club in Dodger Stadium to hear Héctor Tobar read excerpts from his new novel, “The Barbarian Nurseries” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), and answer some questions about his writing process and generative protocols.

In many ways, Tobar’s novel is a love letter to Los Angeles, and the several crusts of strata that constitute LA. There’s Araceli, a live-in maid from Mexico, who according to Tobar is an “intellectual trapped in the body of a servant.” Araceli works for the Torres-Thompsons, an uppity Latino family of seemingly affluent means, but is the last-maid-standing after the Torres-Thompsons have to adjust their lifestyle to their means.

According to Tobar, the novel is a “love story to family, and to people of color” who grind it out on the daily in Southern California. The novel is a far cry from the glitz and noir of Hollywood and L.A.’s polluted tabloid architecture; instead, “The Barbarian Nurseries” delves into the private lives and private thoughts of Angelinos from different social, lingual, and political realities.

If Tobar’s name sound familiar it is because he is also a professional journalist that has served as Latin America Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times. In 1992, Tobar won a Pulitzer for his work as part of a team that covered the LA Riots in The Los Angeles Times. Currently, Tobar is the sole writer the Chilean miners have agreed to work with as they tell, and eventually sell, their amazing story.

During the question-and-answer period, Tobar discussed how the epigraphs used at the beginning of each section of Barbarian Nurseries form an infrastructure of influence. Indeed, the literary triumvirate of Don DeLilo’s “White Noise,” Richard Wright’s “Native Son,” and Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” serve as aesthetic touchstones from which Tobar addresses lingual, racial, and economic narrative extrapolations.

To hear novelists read excerpts from their books is almost a thing of the past, like Victorian Lantern Talks. Tobar read excerpts from his new novel, and peppered the readings with asides and anecdotes, flourishes and foibles. For example, Tobar talked about how the genesis of “Barbarian Nurseries” was a novel he had been writing for fifteen years but failed to publish. At one point, Tobar looked out over the audience and said that “one can not be successful” unless one has a “really big failure.”

[Screenshot By HectorTobar.com]

By Eres Nerd

The approach of St. Valentine’s signifies the annual season where Latino nerds across los Estados Unidos discover Pablo Neruda. Like Christian using Cyrano De Bergerac, Neruda becomes a proxy for many Latino nerds in expressing their love for another.

In the years without a novia, St. Valentine’s Day was not a big holiday for me, since I focused being a nerd and doing nerdy things. Despite being a nerd, it was soon my turn to face the Latino the rite of passage in discovering Neruda, the Chilean poet-turned-prominent diplomat. He was primarily famous for writing love poetry — he wrote about love, but not simply the love between people. He wrote of the love of culture, of nations, and the love of simple things. Neruda shows this contrast in the poems “The Heights of Machu Picchu” that celebrates the Incan culture and my personal favorite, “Oda a Mi Traje,” which as I grow older, makes me appreciate under-appreciated things in my life.

My memory fails me now the exact reasons and the place where Neruda entered my life. I do remember the book. It was “20 Poemas de Amor y Una Canción Desperada/20 love poems and A Song of Despair.” It was an epiphany. The Spanish was flawlessly beautiful and devastatingly expressive. Poema 15 from that collection has the verse, “Me gustas cuando callas y estás como distante,” which is just brilliant. I wondered who inspired such adoration and affection. Would I ever feel that way about someone? Could I ever write that well?

With Neruda as a starting point, I read other great Latin American poets, such as Mario Benedetti, Jaime Sabines, and Efraín Huerta. All have expanded and deepened my appreciation of my native language, español. Of course, life is not always great, so I thank my English literature classes for exposing me to Sylvia Plath and Charles Bukowski. I have not kept up with modern poets, apart from my fellow NewsTaco columnist Oh Hells Nah and Jay-Z.

For all the uncomfortable nerds standing before the poetry shelves, below is a quick primer on Pablo Neruda’s works. Most of his poetry books have the poems both in English and Spanish versions on opposite pages.

1. “20 Poemas de Amor y Una Canción Desperada/20 love poems and A Song of Despair” was Neruda’s first prominent work and an easy introduction to his style.
2. “Los versos del Capitán/The Captain’s Verses” is my personal favorite. The downside to this book was Neruda’s Newt Gingrich-like behavior when writing it; dating a woman, he later married, while still married to another woman.
3. “Cien Sonetos de Amor/100 Love Sonnets” is his most well known book, and there are 100 love poems, which become overwhelming after sixty-fifth one. In addition, it has a very pink cover which matches any St. Valentine’s day décor.
4. “Odas a Cosa Comunes/Odes to Common Things” is Neruda’s effort to state that an common thing still deserves love.
5. “Il Postino/The Postman” is a 1994 Italian movie about a postman, who delivers Neruda’s mail while he was living off the coast of Italy, and like many Latino nerds, using it to attempt the object of his affection. And the movie has a very good soundtrack where famous celebrities, including Madonna, recite Neruda’s poetry.

Colorín Colorado, read poetry, love, and be happy.

Eres Nerd lives a nerdy life in the borderlands of Estados Unidos and Mexico. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter @ElEresNerd.

[Video By carotatiana; Photo By Freddy Agurto Parra]

The video shows a man hanging out in front of the trunk of a car filled with books you may recognize, books about Latinos, books written by Latinos. He says his name is Tony and he has a few things to say about Arizona’s ban on Mexican American studies.

The man’s name is Tony Diaz, novelist and writer originally from Chicago but now living in Houston. His organization is called Nuestra Palabra, which promotes Latino literature, literacy and culture. His mission is simple: to smuggle Latino books back into Arizona.

“In my delusion, it’s good to be thousands of us,” he told NewsTaco about his plan to organize a banned book caravan to Tucson, Arizona this March. “We’re taking all the ‘wet books’ that are illegal in Arizona back across the border.”

Of course, Diaz’s plan is accompanied by plenty of theater, but the Librotraficante Banned Book Caravan he is organizing to kick off on Sunday, March 11 — which will see the caravan of at least one bus drive from Houston to San Antonio to El Paso to New Mexico and finally to Tucson — is the real deal. Thus far, he told us there about 70 people in Houston planning to make the week-long trek, but organizers and authors in other cities in Texas, as well as New Mexico and Arizona, are piling on their own plans.

What happens when Diaz and his cohorts get to Arizona is still up in the air, he told us, but it’s likely that upon arriving in Tucson the group will celebrate literature currently banned in the state. A workshop on Mexican American studies, talking to politicians and community members, and perhaps even writing around in an ice cream truck giving out Mexican American studies books is on the agenda, he told us.

If you would like to help, donate, participate, send books, or spread the word, this is what you can do. Visit his website, watch his video, donate money, or donate your books (send to P.O. Box) check them out on Facebook or Twitter. Check out his video below, and we will update you on the group’s progress.

[Screenshot And Video By hightechaztec; ]

When I was living or traveling in different countries, I would tell everyone I met that I was a poet. Almost every time, the person inquiring about me seemed genuinely delighted or impressed. This is because other countries revere their poets, which may sound unusual to many Americans. Poetry has contributed to social movements and even revolutions throughout history. Renowned Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, for example, once read to a crowd of 25,000 people in a soccer stadium in Beirut. When my boyfriend (who is also a poet) and I were in Nicaragua, everyone respected our vocation because poetry played such a pivotal role in the Sandinista revolution.

Here, however, when people ask me what I do, the reaction is totally different. Most look at me with pity and/or disapproval in their eyes: “Oh this poor, naïve idiot. What does she think she’s going to accomplish by foolishly scribbling poems in her journal?” Our culture’s obsession with profit, status, and material wealth makes so many people believe that nothing is worthwhile unless it has monetary value. Why would you be wasting time with words when there is so much money to be had by selling your soul? Who needs a soul when you have lots and lots of stuff?

Art is necessary because it helps us makes sense of our human experience. Without it, our world would be completely drab and devoid of spirit. I imagine it might look like a gigantic McDonald’s. We’d likely speak with monosyllabic words. “Me want food. Put you car money. Me like burger good.” We’d probably eat nothing but different kinds of gruel and Big Macs for sustenance. Instead of museums, there would only be giant malls in which we’d admire the latest products while we obesely sat in hovering chairs like those poor souls in “Wall-E.”

I’m tired of having to explain the importance of art and defend my craft. What do people read at weddings and funerals? NASDAQ rates? Football scores and statistics? Dialogue from “The Real Housewives of Atlanta?” People turn to poetry in times of need and celebration. Please don’t think I’m some sort of simpleton for writing poetry, and then have someone read a poem at your wedding. Please don’t disparage this ancient art form, and then request that someone read a poem at your funeral. You can’t criticize the people who create the literature that brings you comfort.

I am not saying that I am some martyr or revolutionary because I write poetry. Far from it. I write because it feels like a bodily need, because I want to bring attention to certain issues and ideas through words, because I want to create more beauty in the world. If for some reason I couldn’t write, you’d probably find me in my apartment shaking in my Snuggie, drinking bourbon, and overdosing on fancy cheeses. Poetry makes life worth living for me. It keeps me sane. It is my existential life project.

A friend once told me she saw a sign that read, “There is no money in poetry, but there is no poetry in money.” What makes poetry so amazing is that it lives outside of the economy. The poet Reginald Sheperd wrote that “…its loss of ‘relevance’ is also a freedom to keep alive certain human possibilities.” Of course I plan to eventually live off of my writing somehow, but if I were really concerned with material wealth, I never would have chosen this vocation. I can’t expect everyone to love poetry as much as I do. I can’t convince everyone that art is crucial to our existence, but I do ask you to imagine what our world would look like without it.

[Photo By eflon]

Rudolfo Anaya’s celebrated work and seminal novel “Bless Me Última” just turned 40 this year. The book was first published  in 1972, and was groundbreaking in its portrayal of Latinos, and contribution to Chicano literature.

Not only that, it’s the best selling Chicano novel of all time. The story follows a boy named Antonio as he grows up, and his political in the sense that it describes Latino culture and struggles in New Mexico in the mid-20th century.

Aztlán Reads noted about the book:

The basic story is narrated by Antonio Márez, who is only six years old at the novel’s beginning.  He is a child torn between ways — between the Lunas –his mother’s Catholic farmer family and his father’s wild vaquero background; between Spanish, the language of home and English, the language of education; between the Catholic religion and the traditional earth religions of the curandera and his native ancestors.  Though Ultima, the curandera who comes to live with the family at the story’s beginning, Tony becomes entangled in a series of battles between good and evil, personified in the struggle between Ultima and three evil witches and their father.  He is also witness to three deaths which change him and cause him to question all he has faith in (except for Ultima) and realize he must define his own faith.

Perhaps what makes this anniversary even more notable is the struggle Anaya experienced in trying to publish it.  because the book incorporates English and Spanish words and basically created its own genre, Anaya spent years trying to find a publisher. He finally found his publisher in 1972, seven years after he started writing the book.

Anaya Basically created an entirely new genre when he wrote this book. He has said that he struggled in doing so, because he had no one to mentor him, or any other bodies of work to help guide his own. I first read this book when I was a young girl, and it was the most engaging and personal piece of literature I had read up to that point. I had never experienced literature about people like me. And while I didn’t really understand Antonio’s world — since I didn’t know any curanderas, nor did I grow up in a rural area — that being a Latino could be so normal blew my mind.

So congratulations to Anaya, if you haven’t read this book, I recommend it to you. Here’s a video of Anaya from Latinopia.

LATINOPIA WORD RUDOLFO ANAYA “BLESS ME ÚLTIMA” from Latinopia.com on Vimeo.

[Video By Latinopia]

By Eres Nerd

Mi ‘apa is a nerd. Specifically, a history nerd, por eso, the chances that I would turn out a nerd when I was born were very high. Our discussions frequently revolved around civilizations and their mythology; our favorite discussions focused on the Hellenic world. I knew the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts, the tasks of Heracles, and the fickleness of the Greek Gods. However, I knew the difference between the mythology and concrete historic event where people lost life and liberty despite prayers to their Gods.

I became a fantasy nerd because I was predisposed, as both a history and gaming nerd. I graduated from playing the “Oregon Trail” to playing the “Legend of Zelda” on Nintendo, featuring an elf-like hero seeking adventure against strange creatures. It appealed to my gaming nerd tendencies; the detailed back-story of that world appealed to my history nerd tendencies. It was my introduction into a created mythology and preparation for the next big thing in my young Latino nerd life.

One day at school I picked out a free book with a picture of a chubby boy with a dagger on its cover; the boy was glancing backwards at danger, which was a fierce looking creature with evil eyes. The book’s cover proclaimed that it was “The Enchanting Prelude to the Lord of the Rings.” I was dubious about the statement and judged it by association being among the other books, but I decided to give it a chance.

The book was “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien. For those unfamiliar with the book, it involves 13 dwarves seeking to retake their Aztlán from a greedy Dragon. Since 13 dwarves were not enough for the job, Gandalf the Grey drafts Bilbo Baggins for comic relief. Along the path to Aztlán they battle trolls, orcs, and finally battle the Dragon. In addition, Bilbo meets Gollum and they play board games. A small man becomes a hero and a wizard becomes suspicious about a particular ring. I needed to learn what happened before and after “The Hobbit;” from that day forth, this Latino nerd was hooked reading about these strange creatures.

I finished the book quickly and re-read. My dad took me to the public library to check out the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. For the next couple of months the world of hobbits was an obsession. I read, cross-referenced, and learned the history of Middle Earth; the book’s appendix has a timeline of all the events and I made sure to know how everything fit in. I did the interlibrary loan to get mis manos on the rare Tolkien books, such as “The Silmarillion.” It was a world where magic filled the air. Great deeds were done and tragedy was lamented — my imagination expanded. No wonder many nerds are lost in that world and become basement dwellers, fantasy literature is very appealing and easier to interact that the real world.

However, in my case, the leaves fell all around and it was time for me to leave that that world. It was not because I tired of world of Tolkien, but because there was an entire world of books that needed reading. I would not again pre-judge a book. I read the icky Jude Blume books; the guilty and trashy pleasures of Jackie Collins; and insights of the great Arturo Islas. My reading of books became very eclectic and non-elitist.

“The Hobbit” taught me that a book was good was because it was good — not because of its category or where it was reviewed. A world filled with dragons and orcs was equally valid that a book set in the “real word” written by a “serious author.”  My sense was correct since the “Lord of the Rings” became part of popular culture through the films. The film version of “The Hobbit” will be released this December and I look forward to it, even though the book is always better than the film.

Eres Nerd lives a nerdy life in the borderlands of Estados Unidos and Mexico.

[Photo By Mac m 13]

An open letter to the Shakespeare Theater Company, Washington D.C. from Tlaloc Rivas:

Michael Kahn
Artistic Director
Shakespeare Theatre Company
Washington DC, USA

Dear Mr. Kahn,

I hope this letter finds you well. My name is Tlaloc Rivas and I am a professional director currently based in St. Louis, MO. I’m originally from Baja California, Mexico, and I was raised in California. I identify myself culturally as a Chicano (an American of Mexican descent).

My introduction is important because of the concerns that I and many Latino theater artists across the country share regarding your theater’s production of “Mucho Ado About Nothing.” Many of us fear that the concept and casting of Ethan McSweeney’s production as described in “Playbill” and other press venues, the comments he has made in the press and marketing for the show and, most importantly, the casting of Don John and renaming of two clown characters may express derogatory ethnic stereotypes of Latinos.

My colleagues and I are concerned that Mr. McSweeney’s concept uses the setting of a 1930′s sugar plantation in Cuba, which was (and is) a majority Latino region. Yet in his production, Latino performers seem to be drastically absent. The only major character apparently played by a Latino actor is Don John, the primary villain. Given the setting, using that dichotomy of Caucasian leads vs. Latino secondary roles reiterates American colonial exploitation of Cuba.

Also, based in the marketing, Mr. McSweeney’s production seems to play up the comedy using a romanticized view of Cuba as a tropical destination for cultural excess and entertainment.  It was this very exploitation that led to resentment of American influence which would eventually lead to the expulsion of those interests in the Cuban Revolution.  It is a history not to be taken lightly.

Most of the production’s press releases play up that this concept was used to make the show “hot and sexy”.  This is typical of a stereotype that emerged from Hollywood and continues to pervade the perception of Latinos today – of fiery temperament and outward sexual display.  I’m surprised that the director and your theatre thought this was appropriate.  The overall marketing strategy appears culturally insensitive and unlikely to draw Latino audiences to the theatre. I specifically refer to the “Cha-cha-cha down to the Shakespeare Theatre” video promotion.

Our strongest reaction is to the re-conception of two of the roles in the production, highlighted on your website. There are two characters in “Mucho Ado About Nothing” renamed, “Juan Arroz” and “Jose Frijoles.”  It is insulting to categorize Latinos with such derogatory names.  I am disappointed that Shakespeare Theatre Company has allowed this to take place. Many other Latino theater artists across the country are also shocked and offended by this choice.

As Peter Marks of the Washington Post remarks in his review of the show:

But even though two of the other characters in the retinue were originally given the indisputably English names of Hugh Oatcake and George Seacoal, did the director really have to rename them, cringingly, Juan Huevos (Phil Hosford) and Jose Frijoles (Carlos J. Gonzalez)? The joke is coarser than this “Much Ado” deserves, and the glib cultural referencing in general comes across as a little patronizing.

I would argue that is more than a just a “little patronizing.” As we come to the end of 2011, the Latino community saw a continued level of extreme vitriol targeted through political rhetoric, through discriminatory practices in hiring, the rise in hate crimes and harassment and five additional states enacting anti-immigrant statutes following Arizona’s ignominious example in 2010. For a national theater to take up this rhetoric through sloppy dramaturgy and for the sake of a joke is disappointment unworthy of the stature of such a revered company.

While I’m ready to believe that no one at the Shakespeare Theatre Company intended harm, the point I’m trying to make is that thoughtlessness frequently leads to troubling choices. If the smallest prop on the set has meaning, then isn’t it true that the message we send through casting and use of caricature in names matters even more? The honest truth is that ethnic enmity is inherent in our cultural fabric. It takes thought to rip it apart and re-weave our cultural fabric so that we are fair, representative, and honest about who we are…and who we want to be.

Since there is already an active conversation in progress online amongst a national community of theatre artists, many of whom (including me) will not get to see the production in person, on behalf of my colleagues I am writing to invite you to address these issues. I would rather see our conversation include you and provide an opportunity for you to dismantle any misunderstandings about what is actually going on at your theatre, than see the conversation spiral into overt antipathy based on incomplete or inaccurate information.

I want to help usher you into the conversation in progress, in the hope that we can build better mutual understanding and a stronger connection among U.S. theatre artists of all ethnicities. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.  I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Tlaloc Rivas, Stage Director, St. Louis, MO

[Photo By Shakespeare Theater Company]

By Wuicho Vargas

If you haven’t read any of Dagoberto Gilb’s work, this could be your opportunity to get a glimpse of his style. “Gritos” for me was very pleasant and culturally appealing; his essays are impregnated with his cultural roots and a human perspective that is very universal and appealing to those with a heart. Not only are we presented with a very detailed, insightful style — one of Gilb’s acclaimed attributes — but also detailed chapters of Gilb’s life. They both come a very well organized, four-sectioned structure. Each section is focused on his own personal perspective about different border life issues and personal lived experiences that become interlaced by an everyday feeling experience. 

For example section one, “Culture Crossing,” focuses on the mixture of cultures that the border is subject to due to its geographical location and politically drawn division. Gilb illustrates the spillage of culturally accepted traditions and behaviors people along the border have. The essay about cockfights, “Los Gallos,” in this section explains some of the reasons this tabooed sport is still practiced, appreciated and accepted amongst Mexicans, Mexican Americans and anglos in the United States. You will be surprised at the historical weight this “sport” has, and also some of the humble characteristics that accompany its practice — this isn’t a high class sophisticated city-like sport.

Section two focuses on the brown/white collision and the prejudices that are involved. This section is titled “Cortes and Malinche.” In this section and in the essay titled “L.A. Navidad,” Gilb shares a racial insult his wife was a victim of: “stupid Mexican.” And even though the essay is pretty brief and quick — just as every racial insult is — its content explains a very vast and overtly lived conflict amongst ethnicities: racism. Gilb’s style applied on this essay makes this very complicated issue seem simple by the brief amount of material given to the reader. Making the reader create his or her own opinion, and not imposing his own personal view about the issue.

Section three, “The Writing Life,” is dedicated to his professional life as a writer and teacher. On his essay “This Writer’s Life” Gilb explains his writing style. He also explains the reason the not so rich and fancy characters of his stories. Gilb justifies his style of writing and characters with his way of life, the people he lives with, and also his experiences as a living human. This is one of the reasons Gilb’s writing attributes appealed to my attention — because we do not write about things we do not live.

On section four titled “Working Life and La Familia,” Gilb shows chapters of his life related to the title itself. On the essay, “Poverty Is Starting Over,” he talks about his son’s baseball team (which by the way is awesomely great with a .500 average). He gives a brief glimpse of how bad their team coaching is, and how deficient their equipment is. These deficiency issues become magnified by the reality the parents of the baseball players live in — precarious to say the least. Gilb worries about his raza and expresses it by writing about their lifestyle — which by the way it is also his lifestyle. His straight-up honest perspective leaves no room for doubt and questioning about the way things are around him.

“Gritos” is not only a book that illustrates the well-lived continuing life of Dagoberto Gilb, but it also expresses the sentiments and feelings about realities Mexicans and Mexicans Americans live in the United States and along the border. Gilb is, in my most humble opinion, one of our greatest exponents of Mexican American literature. This book is recommended to any of you who would like to learn and get some of the most beautifully written insight of our Mexican American culture. Also to those who like me live here at the border and like me love it. Hopefully, you all can get to read Gritos and if given the chance, meet Dagoberto Gilb in person. I know I will, someday.

Who said, “Road trip to Victoria, Texas?”

Wuicho Vargas is a writer who lives in McAllen, Texas.

Beyond Baroque is a literary center in Los Angeles that’s housed in the old Venice City Hall. Originally a magazine, Beyond Baroque got its start as a storefront phenomenon and hub for Angelino Poetics, and ended up offering one of the longest running poetry workshops in the country. As such, it attracts all types of poets and miscreants, writers and eccentrics, and doesn’t shy away from being a place where the average writing mope can hone their craft of delivery into a trove of wholesale enunciations. It is one of the few spots in the city where writers still come to read their work out loud.

On Saturday, December 2, Annette Cruz, Dennis Cruz, A. Razor, and Iris Berry gathered in Beyond Baroque’s black box theater to induct Danny Baker into the Angelino Poetry Canon. In a way, the reading on Saturday was a celebration of the publication of “Fractured,” a chapbook Danny Baker put together with the help of Rafael Alvarado, co-founder of the Hollywood Institute of Poetics and emcee for Saturday afternoon’s reading. The five poets read their work to a crowd of fans, friends, and family. The mood was so familial that the five poets sat off to the side of the podium, ribbing each other, and bubbling boisterously.

The introduction, by S. A. Griffin, honored poet Scott Wannberg, a long-time liege of the Los Angeles poetry scene that had recently passed; Wannberg was a beat poet with an encyclopedic knowledge of books. The emcee, Rafael Alvarado, kicked off the night by proclaiming that a can of green beans had recently died for Poetry, a quixotic remark that eased the audience into chuckling. He introduced Danny Baker, who hunkered over the podium. Even though it was technically Baker’s first time on stage, he took swimmingly to being there, and seemed to feed off the attention. Baker’s poetry reminded me of Cormac McCarthy’s fiction, and Jim Caroll’s poetry.

After Baker, Annette Cruz came on; her performance served to cleanse the palette like a sliver of ginger. She read a minor mythos on the Arroyo Seco that bifurcates Los Angeles. Even though her piece was full of personal lore, Annette’s delivery was like that of a docent of the heart. She’s got an 80’s poem that will make you cringe in your haircut. A. Razor followed Cruz’s reading, and the style of the night veered once more into a new mood. Razor read a series of profane haikus, and a longer piece, “A Good Signal Man Will Get You Through the Pass,” that served as a tribute to his friend, Mike Taylor. Razor’s poetry exudes outlaw pedigree, but it’s also sonorous and ionized with kindnesses.

Iris Berry and Dennis Cruz rounded out the night. Even though their styles are disparate, both poets straddle the spectrum between madness and anonymity. Dennis Cruz’s poems are graphic proclamations of sobriety and redemption vis-à-vis the clamor of death metal and hardcore music styles. Iris Berry read a poem about “silent” types of “violence” that was literally ripped from one of her ventricles. Before reading it, Berry gave the disclaimer that she would never publish the poem because it is too personal for her.

Sitting in the audience, I couldn’t help but feel I was privy to poems that were about singularly painful experience, and yet worked to alleviate pain. Sitting there in the back, I was struck with how immediate and personal this reading had been, how nostalgic and yet forward-looking.

[Photo By MinimalistPhotography101.com]

By Roberto Ontiveros

Celebrated author and benefactor of Latino/Latina writers, Sandra Cisneros plans to leave Texas. Cisneros, who lives in San Antonio, says she wants to spend more time pursuing her writing and will move next year—possibly to Spain or New Mexico.

“I have been taking care of San Antonio for years now and it is time to take care of myself,” said Cisneros, who founded the Macondo Foundation, which supports an annual literary festival and writers’ workshop, among other things.

The future of the festival and workshop are uncertain. Macondo inspired new writers, but Cisneros said it kept her from her writing. “People are always asking for me to give and give, which I have tried to do. But I can’t afford to do it anymore. The publishing industry is a wreck and the money has simply dwindled,” said Cisneros, 57. “I supported Macondo for years like a child, but my child is now 15 and she can start to support herself.”

The expectations often wore on her, she said last week, as she prepared for a trip to Mexico to make the Macondo Foundation an international organization. Macondo began primarily as a Latino workshop, but now attracts poets and writers from all backgrounds.

“Sandra has been very generous with her time and money, supporting artists and writers,” said Christine Granados of Centro Victoria, the Center of Mexican American Literature and Culture at the University of Houston-Victoria. Granados, author of Brides and Sinners in El Chuco, is a recipient of the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, a grant that is named after Sandra Cisneros’ father.

Cisneros is easily the most recognizable Latina writer in America and an icon in Chicana literature. She has written, books of poetry, a short story collection, a children’s book and novels. Her novel The House on Mango Street, published in 1984, is required reading in middle schools, high schools and universities. In 1995, she received a MacArthur Fellowship, which came with an award of $250,000. For her 2002 novel Caramelo, Cisneros received an advance of almost $750,000 from Alfred A. Knopf, and then took 10 years to deliver the book.

In discussing her decision to leave Texas, Cisneros also said she was concerned about the future of Chicana literature. “I live in a community that does not know its own history,” she said. “Things are defiantly worse than when when I first got to San Antonio. The only dark-haired woman dark-haired girls look up to now is Kim Kardashian.”

Writers she has worked with said her voice and contributions in the city and state will be missed.

“Because of [The House on Mango Street], Sandra broke literary ground,” said Barbara Renaud Gonzalez, an early participant at Macondo and author of Golondrina, Why did you Leave Me? “I think Latinos all over the country applaud her for that. She’s given us all permission to reclaim our heritage, and that is a good thing.”

Diana López, author of Sophia’s Saints and The Confetti Girl, received an Alfredo Cisneros del Moran Award. “At the time, I was struggling. My first book had been published, but I couldn’t work out that second book,” she said. “So winning the award gave me a real jolt.”

It gave her permission to call herself a writer. Lopez said, “I used the money to buy a reading chair and to attend the National Latino Writers Conference in Albuquerque where I met my agent.”

Lopez, who teaches Cisneros’ writings in her freshman composition courses, particularly likes teaching “Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories,” which reminds her of Cisneros’ influence in the literary community.

“You can use archetypal or feminist criticism to take it apart, but my appreciation is much simpler. At the beginning, Cleofilas (the woman at the center of the story) is silent. At the end, she hollers,” said Lopez. “You can holler with joy; you can holler with sorrow. Thing is, you’re making noise. And if you want to connect this to Sandra, you can say that as a writer or a cultural icon, she makes noise. But she doesn’t do it alone. She gets everyone else to holler, too.”

Roberto Ontiveros is an artist, writer and contributing editor to Latino Magazine. His fiction has appeared in The Threepenny Review and the anthology Hecho en Tejas.