This past week I had the opportunity to talk with Luis Becerra about his current exhibit at Trópico de Nopal, Remembering Conscience. The show, curated by Domingo Rodriguez, is a unique and gripping collection of iron and steel masks that evoke historical and political themes. I highly recommend it.
It's 5:30 PM on a Friday evening and while many Angelenos are unwinding and getting ready for the weekend, a small group of female artists/activists are rolling up their sleeves…
Ya llego! Nearly five years and $898 million dollars later, the Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension is finally here. There are eight new Gold Line stops that connect the Eastside…
This past week, I was smitten by The Woman in the Zoot Suit. I carried her around in my plastic book bag like a secret treasure. She rode shotgun in my car, spoke to me in Calo. We shared Vietnamese coffee and sandwiches over lunch. And of course, she was my bed buddy in the early mornings, late nights, or whenever time allowed.
What is memory? Is it made of smoke, water, fire, or flesh? Can it be broken or fractured like a bone? In Allyson Jeffredo's debut poetry chapbook, Songs After Memory Fractures, there is a father's ghost that both lingers and fades. The realm is Loss. Longing. Love. The daughter/speaker in this collection grasps repeatedly at the elusive, at the No Longer Here, and there seems to be an urgency to weave.
One of my favorite names in the world is currently Yaccaira Salvatierra. It's a name I imagine we could torture some white supremacists with. It's fierce, poetic, and unapologetically muy Latino Américano.
I was stuck on a personal essay and looking for inspiration in my Must-Read-Memoir pile. I had gotten to a section in my own writing that made me feel frustrated, vulnerable. How long had I been writing the same story?
I've been carrying around a small zine in my bag for weeks, Zoraida & Marisol. What's there not to love about small books? They're light and portable. They're easy to read or re-read in one sitting. If one wishes to share, they're easy to pass on mano a mano. Carrying around books long after I've read them is a habit.
"Let me gather the river with my hands," writes Rossy Evelin Lima in her latest poetry collection, Aguacamino/Waterpath. Published by Mouthfeel Press in 2015, Lima's collection contains 20 bilingual poems that delve into womanhood, memory, migration, and roots. There is a lot of humo, the floating ghost of nostalgia, roaming through Lima's pages.
If you haven't yet read Benjamin Alire Sáenz' YA novel, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, I highly recommend it. It's been one of my favorite reads of 2015.