Category Archives: Uncategorized

I got this video from Thy Tran’s blog. As I mentioned in her comment section: It’s funny, cuz it’s true. It’s also sad, cuz it’s true. The exposition on the “bodega food pyramid” is hilarious all by itself, but Dallas and Rafi’s thanks to the gov’t forces that be for helping keep poverty alive and well in the Bx is political satire at its best.

It’s also not a Bronx thing, either. The place I call home, West Oakland, is infamous for having 53 liquor stores and no grocery stores in the area. Near as I can tell, it’s a real thin line between a New York bodega and an Oakland liquor store.

A Puerto Rican Poet’s Fight With Alzheimer’s
By David Gonzalez

At various points of his career, he has been a community activist, translator, poet and administrator. In Latin America, such people are celebrated for their versatility and value as public intellectuals and defenders of culture. In New York City, such people are often ignored, at least if they come from East Harlem. But those who know Jack treasure his hard-to-pigeonhole passions and accomplishments. More than 100 of his friends and fans gathered on Tuesday night at East Harlem’s Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center, not just to celebrate his work, but also to help him in a time of need.

More here

Debbie tagged, so I will pass it on.

Here are the rules:
1. Write your own six word memoir.
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
4. Tag five more blogs with links
5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

Mine:
Mi storia in my own voice.

Yours:
?

Tagging: Rich, Tara, Patricia, Guy, Maile, and Craig

from Rigoberto González’s blog at Poetry Foundation

Achiote Press & Palabra Magazine

I say this without the least bit of exaggeration: keep your eye on these two literary ventures because they’re going to impress you with the journeys they have embarked on and with the heights they’ll inevitably reach.

Co-founded in 2006 by poet and book reviewer Craig Santos Perez, a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam), Achiote Press publishes two chapbooks each season: a single-author chapbook and a chap-journal featuring poetry, prose, essay, or translation by authors from diverse cultural and aesthetic backgrounds. Co-founders Jennifer Reimer, Len Shneyder, and art director Jason Buchholz help select, edit and produce works that address “what it means to bear witness, to use adaptations as resistance, to cross borders, to map ourselves onto a dislocated world, to speak in exile, and to suffer diasporic hunger.”

Past projects include works by three of my favorite writers: Javier Huerta, Barbara Jane Reyes and Francisco X. Alarcón. Projects to look forward to: an all-Latina writer issue with Cristina García, Emmy Pérez, Brenda Cárdenas, Gabriela Erandi Rico, and Maria Tuttle; and an issue featuring several Native Pacific Island writers.

…

Palabra Magazine is a no apologies, no nonsense literary journal founded by Chicana dramatist and poet elena minor in Los Angeles. This magazine is a forum that showcases Chicano/ Latino writing that’s all about (warning: Chicano-speak ahead): “exploration, risk and ganas—the myriad intersections of thought, language, story and art—el más allá of letters, symbols and spaces into meaning. It’s about writing that cares as much about language and its structure as about content and storytelling—and that shows awareness of and attention to the possibilities of both. Mostly it’s about work with the emotional fiber that threads all honest art… Its intent is to present an eclectic and adventurous array of thought and construct, alma y corazón, and a few carcajadas woven in for good measure.”

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.

More here: La Bloga: Interview with Juan Felipe Herrera