"Chicano writers from El Paso are the most progressive, open-minded, far-reaching, and inclusive writers of them all."

Octavio Romano

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Institutional Change and the Chicano Movement: Some Not Too Objective Observations






Institutional Change and the Chicano Movement
Some Not Too Objective Observations
by Abelardo B. Delgado
Somewhat less romantic or idealistic, is the dedication of life-times to education and institutional change. 

Basing the concept on the old-fashioned notion that natural change is more lasting, more effective, and more meaningful. 

Some Chicanos within the movement have pledged themselves to institutional change. Examining any life you wish, from the lowest socially and economically speaking, to the most affluent and aristocratic, we see life responding to old-established institutions, but tend to do some steering and setting up of the rules, leaving poor individuals no “agraviando mas de nosotros Chicanos” to move according to these institutions which mercilessly slash our destinies.

These institutions, not necessarily in that order of the importance with which they shape or destroy our lives, are the educational, political, economical, and the church and business institutions: the family, the welfare system, the prison, the law enforcement agencies, the employment agencies, and other octopus-like state, local, and federal agencies. 

Examine yourself any day, and see if during one single day you do not respond to these institutions more than a dozen times. For the sake of corralling them, we refer to them as “The System.” 

A reason for believing such well-founded bodies can be altered, is that it was we humans who originally got them in motion, and we are capable of either destroying them or changing them. Changing them is not necessarily the easier of the two, but I guess because some are lazy in nature and do not wish the burden of starting from scratch and creating others in their place, they settle for changing the wrong or putrid parts of these systems by healthier parts.

Most Chicanos in the Movement have a better answer, and that is the one of setting up counter-institutions of their own making and of their own control. Examples are the Colegio Chicano Jacinto Trevino and the Escuela de las Tres Culturas, Tlatelolco, to mention two challenges into educational systems. They are saying, “Look, you have not done so hot with us Chicanos; let us give it a try ourselves.” Aztlán, in itself, is a replacement of the whole nation which was deaf and dumb to our needs. 

What, I ask, can we do to substitute our beloved Catholic Church which is so rooted in us and yet has done us so much harm?

I must interrupt here to inject a report and an insight. Again, I'm on a plane headed back to Denver from the Midwest Chicano Conference where we have learned that our number one institutional reformer had been placed in jail. Cesar Chavez is in jail until he calls off the lettuce boycott. 

The national reaction which will follow in the next day is of historical significance as we proceed to change the institution of historians by not only writing our own history, but making it.

At the conference, ten “Becas Scholarships” for Chicano law students were received. What we must interpret that to mean is that we are finally getting to the mightiest institution of them all, the economic one, for steering our own destinies means exactly steering our own economic destiny, since the other one has at best, kept us at the fringe. 

When you interpret the Movement in getting our fair share of the pie in our own country, you can bet those used to dispersing but crumbs are going to react and try to anticipate our direction and advance ahead to stop our every move.

Institutions are willing to use flexibility and even allow us to lick their walls, but when we talk seriously of making them responsible to us, we threaten their matrix, and the fight pursuing is more viscous and bloody than a bloody revolution.

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Other parts of this series:

 
from The Chicano Movement: Some Not Too Objective Observations by Abelardo B. Delgado, (Denver: Colorado Migrant Council, 1971), prepared by the Colorado Migrant Council. Published with permission from the Delgado Family. Special thanks for Dolores Delgado. (c) Abelardo Delgado 1971, all right reserved. This may not be republished with out the permission of the Delgado estate

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Sunday, March 20, 2011

New Titles for March 2011: Puerto Rico and Cuba Topics



New Titles for March 2011: Puerto Rico and Cuba Topics
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Puerto Rico/ans

The Bather
[Kindle Edition]
Format: Kindle Edition File Size: 587 KB Publisher: Intervale Press (March 1, 2011)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services ASIN: B004RIGWEY
Miguel Antonio Ortiz

How many of us, on looking back realize that we have arrived at a destination other than the one we intended, as if a force other than our will has the ultimate say, while all along we feel in control? So is the story of Eduardo Rincon and Carmen Gutierez, the protagonists of King of Swords, a love story that reminds us of all the incidents in our lives we wish had turned out differently.

The tryst between Eduardo and Carmen results in a daughter, Juana, who grows-up to be as unfortunate in love as her parents had been. Her marriage and its consequences force her father, Eduardo, to relive a moment in his life that he had spent years attempting to repress.

This novel by Miguel Antonio Ortiz explores the concept of free will using the Spanish American War in Puerto Rico as the background. The war and its results are graphically depicted as the personal lives of the protagonists unfold and the attempt of two lovers to be merely observers is shattered by impulses beyond their control.


The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York
[Hardcover] Oxford University Press, USA; 1 edition (March 9, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780195387315
ISBN-13: 978-0195387315
Suleiman Osman

The gentrification of Brooklyn has been one of the most striking developments in recent urban history.

Considered one of the city's most notorious industrial slums in the 1940s and 1950s, Brownstone Brooklyn by the 1980s had become a post-industrial landscape of hip bars, yoga studios, and beautifully renovated, wildly expensive townhouses.

In The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn, Suleiman Osman offers a groundbreaking history of this unexpected transformation. Challenging the conventional wisdom that New York City's renaissance started in the 1990s, Osman locates the origins of gentrification in Brooklyn in the cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s.

Gentrification began as a grassroots movement led by young and idealistic white college graduates searching for "authenticity" and life outside the burgeoning suburbs. Where postwar city leaders championed slum clearance and modern architecture, "brownstoners" (as they called themselves) fought for a new romantic urban ideal that celebrated historic buildings, industrial lofts and traditional ethnic neighborhoods as a refuge from an increasingly technocratic society.

Osman examines the emergence of a "slow-growth" progressive coalition as brownstoners joined with poorer residents to battle city planners and local machine politicians. But as brownstoners migrated into poorer areas, race and class tensions emerged, and by the 1980s, as newspapers parodied yuppies and anti-gentrification activists marched through increasingly expensive neighborhoods, brownstoners debated whether their search for authenticity had been a success or failure.
The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn deftly mixes architectural, cultural and political history in this eye-opening perspective on the post-industrial city.

Cuba/n


The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano
[Paperback] Young Adult
Square Fish; Reprint edition (March 15, 2011) 
ISBN-10: 0312659288 ISBN-13: 978-0312659288 
Margarita Engle , Sean Qualls (Illustrator)

Born into the household of a wealthy slave owner in Cuba in 1797, Juan Francisco Manzano spent his early years by the side of a woman who made him call her Mama, even though he had a mama of his own.

Denied an education, young Juan still showed an exceptional talent for poetry. His verses reflect the beauty of his world, but they also expose its hideous cruelty.

Powerful, haunting poems and breathtaking illustrations create a portrait of a life in which even the pain of slavery could not extinguish the capacity for hope.



Brooklyn Dodgers in Cuba
(Images of Baseball) [Paperback]
Arcadia Publishing (March 28, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0738574279 ISBN-13: 978-0738574271
Jim Vitti (Author)

The Brooklyn Dodgers held spring training in Havana in 1947 so Jackie Robinson could practice safely. Yet that was hardly the beginning: the Bums played in Cuba over 60 seasons, from 1900 to 1959.

Ballplayers drank hard with Hemingway. Some found themselves in Cuban jails. Pitcher Van Lingle Mungo, barricaded in the Hotel Nacional with two women, fended off an angry husband (and his machete). Leo Durocher got into a brawl with an umpire, after Lippy's translator correctly cursed him in Spanish. Vin Scully watched machine gun-toting barbudas enter the room. An outfielder leaped into the stands, with a loaded gun, to chase a fan. Several players encountered Castro, who once walked onto the field in his fatigues, patted his pistol, and said to Lefty Locklin, "Tonight, we win."


Agricultura de los indígenas de Cuba y Haití (Spanish Edition) 
[Paperback]
Read Books (March 3, 2011) Language: Spanish
ISBN-10: 1446539172 ISBN-13: 978-1446539170
Alvaro Raynoso

Gran parte de los primeros libros, en particular los que datan de antes de 1920, son muy raros y cada vez más costosos de nuestros días. Ofrecemos reediciones modernas de alta calidad a precios asequibles que contienen el texto y el arte originales de estas obras clásicas.


Recuerdos de las Guerras de Cuba (Spanish Edition)
[Paperback] Read Books (March 3, 2011)
Language: Spanish
ISBN-10: 1446539237 ISBN-13: 978-1446539231
A. Serra Orts

Gran parte de los primeros libros, en particular los que datan de antes de 1920, son muy raros y cada vez más costosos de nuestros días. Ofrecemos reediciones modernas de alta calidad a precios asequibles que contienen el texto y el arte originales de estas obras clásicas.

Afro-Cuba: Mystery and Magic of Afro-Cuban Spirituality
[Hardcover] Benteli Verlags; Bilingual edition (March 16, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 3716516619 ISBN-13: 978-3716516614
Anthony Caronia

A black-and-white photographic documentary into the mysterious world of Afro-Cuban religion.


Hidden Cuba: A Photojournalist's Unauthorized Journey to Cuba to Capture Daily Life: 50 Years After Castro's Revolution
[Paperback] Atlantic Publishing Group Inc. (March 16, 2011)
ISBN-10: 1601385692 ISBN-13: 978-1601385697
Jack Watson
Renowned American photographer Jack Watson travelled to Cuba on a legal humanitarian visa. He chronicled his journey with breath-taking, and often heart breaking images of he Cuba people, cites, and countryside.

Watson describes his visit: I had stepped back in time 50 years this was my first impression of Cuba. My journey, which began in Havana, consisted of traveling by bus, pedicab, coco cab, 1957 Chevy, and foot. I was here primarily to help the Cuban people, but giving away medicine, vitamins, and money felt like using aspirin to treat the plague.

I covered hundreds of miles, traveling in an oval-shaped route with stops at Cienfuegos, the Bay of Pigs, Trinidad, and Varadero Beach in the province of Matanzas and then back to Havana.

As the title of this book indicates, this is an unauthorized journal of photographs taken during my visit. While I certainly share similar and compassionate thoughts about humanitarian aid toward people in need, I felt a greater calling in compiling the images for this book.

If one picture is indeed worth thousands of words, then this is an encyclopedic portrayal of the real hidden Cuba.

This is not a travel guide; I ll leave that for the tourism industry. It is, however, a behind-the-scenes look at the Cuba that tourist never see. I have tried to present a wide portrayal of images that will allow the viewer to see all aspects of Castro s Cuba.

You cannot look at the glitz alone and make logical conclusions about this country; while there is some beauty, there is more decay. While the country is admittedly a communist enclave, when looking at these images one has to ask if this form of government was the right choice for the Cuban people. You be the judge the story is in your hands.

Cuba: desplazados y pueblos cautivos (Spanish Edition)
[Perfect Paperback] Ediciones Universal (March 2, 2011)
Language: Spanish
ISBN-10: 1593882130 ISBN-13: 978-1593882136
Pedro Corzo, Idolidia Darias, Amado Rodriguez (Authors) 

Publishers Description:
Told for the first time, this is the story (along with first person testimonies) of those who suffered displacement in and around the Escambray area in Cuba in 1971.


This was an inhumane operation ordered by the Castro brothers, very similar to the one undertaken by the Spanish colonial regime during the 1895 War of Independence. The book is a telling account of the struggle for freedom by Cubans who suffered displacements in their own country.


Carnival and National Identity in the Poetry of Afrocubanismo
[Hardcover] University Press of Florida; First edition (March 6, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0813035589 ISBN-13: 978-0813035581
Thomas F. Anderson 


Cuba primitiva - Origen, lenguas, tradiciones e historia de los indios de las antillas mayores y las lucayas (Spanish Edition)
[Paperback] Read Books (March 3, 2011)
Language: Spanish
ISBN-10: 1446538656 ISBN-13: 978-1446538654
Antonia Bachiller y-Morales

El objeto de este libro, es la conservación de todos los recuerdos, antigüedades y las voces de los indios tainos que poblaron la grande Antilla.

Bachiller y Morales fue el primero en abordar la historia de la cultura cubana y aquí presenta un documento completa y detallista que será de interés tanto al académico como al aficionado de Cuba. Gran parte de los primeros libros, en particular los que datan de antes de 1920, son muy raros y cada vez más costosos de nuestros días.

Ofrecemos reediciones modernas de alta calidad a precios asequibles que contienen el texto y el arte originales de estas obras clásicas.


De La Esclavitud en Cuba (Spanish Edition) 
[Paperback] Read Books (March 3, 2011)
Language: Spanish
ISBN-10: 1446538680 ISBN-13: 978-1446538685
Francisco de-Armas y-Céspedes

Gran parte de los primeros libros, en particular los que datan de antes de 1920, son muy raros y cada vez más costosos de nuestros días. Ofrecemos reediciones modernas de alta calidad a precios asequibles que contienen el texto y el arte originales de estas obras clásicas.


Versos de Cuba y Malecon (Spanish Edition) 
[Paperback] Juan Eladio Palmis Sánchez (March 4, 2011)
Language: Spanish
ISBN-10: 8461459512 ISBN-13: 978-8461459513


Espanoles en Cuba (Spanish Edition)
[Paperback] 
Juan Eladio Palmis Sánchez
(March 4, 2011)
Language: Spanish
ISBN-10: 8496379396
ISBN-13: 978-8496379398 


Pulso de serpiente (Spanish Edition)
[Paperback] CreateSpace (March 7, 2011)
Language: Spanish
ISBN-10: 146097042X ISBN-13: 978-1460970423
Roberto Rodríguez Menéndez

El Período Especial marca política, social y económicamente una época compleja, contradictoria y difícil en la historia de Cuba de finales del siglo XX.

Los trece cuentos que conforman este libro se ven signados por este evento telúrico que aún, en estos años del nuevo siglo, golpea al cubano de a pie.

El amor, entendido como desgarramiento y ficción, la muerte, la corrupción política, la hecatombe que dinamita a la vida cotidiana involucrando su más mínimos detalles de supervivencia, la memoria de la desmemoria, lo que fue y se borrará, lo que no existió y quedará como una agrupación de años que cambió el modo de vida el cubano, son temas que cobran vida en esta narrativa donde imaginación y poesía soportan el vendaval de los tiempos.

Este libro fue publicado parcialmente con éxito y gran aceptación de la crítica en Budapest, Hungría, en el año 2005 (Editorial Z)


La Habana de mis recuerdos (Spanish Edition) 
[Paperback] Pedro F.\Mendoza (March 7, 2011)
Language: Spanish
ISBN-10: 0615453031
ISBN-13: 978-0615453033
Pedro F Mendoza

La Habana de mis recuerdos, es una obra narrativa sobre mis propias experiencias y la de algunos amigos, con relación a lugares de aquella época (muchos ya desaparecidos) y con personajes famosos por su grandeza o por su especial popularidad.

Recordaremos juntos, viejos programas de la radio y televisión, jingles y comerciales, los muñequitos de El País y La Marina de nuestra infancia, centros nocturnos y tantos lugares de esparcimiento que solíamos frecuentar, refranes y dicharachos populares, y muchos recuerdos más.

El propósito de este libro es avivar las cenizas del recuerdo en la memoria de mis contemporáneos, para hacer vivir de nuevo sus propias experiencias, escuchando aquellos pregones mañaneros, percibiendo el olor y el sabor de las comidas degustadas en sus restaurantes favoritos, compartiendo con sus amigos, jugando a las muñecas o al pon, a las bolas, al trompo, o empinando papalotes. Se dice que “recordar es volver a vivir” y si con esto, acuden a tu mente recuerdos olvidados, si tus ojos se humedecen por el llanto, si a tus labios se asoma una sonrisa, o tu pecho se llena de nuevo, orgulloso de ser cubano, entonces, habré conseguido mi objetivo.

Pero si acaso eres de una generación que por nueva, no alcanzó a disfrutar de esas vivencias, aquí encontrarás aquellas que vivieron tus abuelos, tus padres o tal vez tus amigos.

Al menos, podrás asomarte a un pasado que significó tanto en la vida de tantos y comprender por que la nostalgia nos asalta y nos hace reír, sufrir y soñar por lo que un día fuera una hermosa realidad, pero hoy es solo un recuerdo que se nos va borrando lentamente con el pasar del tiempo, y que como nosotros, va desapareciendo a través de interminables años de exilio. Por eso hoy, solo nos queda, sembrar nuestro ayer en las mentes del mañana.


Vilma Espin: La flor mas universal de la Revolucion Cubana (Spanish Edition) 
[Paperback] Ocean Sur (March 29, 2011)
Language: Spanish
ISBN-10: 9781921438837 ISBN-13: 978-1921438837
Ligia Trujillo Aldama

A brief biography of underground activist, guerrilla fighter, leader of the Cuban revolution, and founder of the Cuban women's movement, written by a close friend and confidant. Vilma Espín was the wife of President Raúl Castro and was a consistent advocate for women's rights. She died of cancer in 2007.


La Tumba Milagrosa (Spanish Edition)
[Kindle Edition]Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 556 KB Publisher: Image & Words; 1 edition (March 15, 2011)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
Language: Spanish
ASIN: B004SC2QEE
Ramon Rodriguez (Author) 

Es un libro compuesto por cinco narraciones costumbristas que relatan historias, situaciones y leyendas cubanas acontecidas a lo largo de un siglo:

La Tumba Milagrosa: Relata un macabro incidente ocurrido durante la exhumación de un cadáver a principios del siglo XX en el más famoso cementerio de La Habana, Cuba. Estos hechos dieron lugar a una fuerte leyenda que alcanza incluso hasta nuestros días. La tumba es aún venerada por decenas de creyentes que afirman que sus peticiones son concedidas. Este sitio es visitado a diario tanto por nacionales como por turistas.

El Ladron de Bicicletas: Basada en hechos reales, muestra cómo el deseo desmedido del lucro cobra vida en el crimen y un alto precio a quienes deciden ir por el camino más tortuoso.

Y... ¿dónde está la concretera?: Es un simpático incidente que ha dado la vuelta a Cuba durante años, el cual ha sido adjudicado a una de las provincias cubanas más sui géneris. Los habitantes de la provincia en cuestión niegan rotundamente haber sido los protragonistas de tamaña barbaridad.

Cabello de Fuego: Una apasionada historia de amor, matizada con un desenlace inesperado. Es la típica historia del joven acaudalado que seduce a la pobre chica, solo que en esta ocasión...

Las Dos Hermanas: Se dice que esta anécdota dio origen a un famoso y popular refrán cubano. Es también una historia de amor llena de picardías, chismes, enredos y otros detalles costumbristas.


Veda Perpetua (Spanish Edition)
[Kindle Edition]Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 81 KB
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
Language: Spanish
ASIN: B004SHJH28
Nardo Dominguez

Cruzar el mar entre Cuba y los Estados Unidos parace muy fácil en un mapa. La realidad es muy diferente. Es un gran riesgo que puede costar la vida.

Nardo Domínguez logró su travesía en 1994 a bordo de una balsa rústica. Su único equipaje era una mochila llena de sueños y fantasías, junto con otras cosas que describe en este libro.

La foto de la portada muestra su punto real de partida. En Fuego y Bendiciones nos ofrece pinceladas de su vida en Cuba y los Estados Unidos. Prosa, poesía y testimonios son la fuente que aquí convergen con un único propósito: revelar dónde se encuentra la verdadera libertad que tanto buscó tras los barrotes del mar y el verde olivo.

Actualmente el autor es maestro de enseñanza primaria en Houston, Texas y vive para la Gloria de Cristo, su Señor y Salvador.


MY CUBAN STORY: Funny Memories from Serious Times...
[Kindle Edition] File Size: 217 KB
Publisher: Cabrera Productions Llc (March 9, 2011)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
Language: English ASIN: B004RIKUDI
Vic Cabrera (Author), Enid H. Williams (Editor), Erin Foster (Editor), Peg Cabrera (Illustrator), Carly Cabrera (Illustrator)

If leaving Cuba was dramatic, assimilating in Hoboken, New Jersey, was challenging and often comical. Situations that seemed insurmountable as a child are funny in retrospect... now that I know the outcome!



Recuerdos de viaje (Spanish Edition)
[Paperback] Read Books (March 3, 2011)
Language: Spanish
ISBN-10: 1446539253 ISBN-13: 978-1446539255
Nicolas Rivero

Gran parte de los primeros libros, en particular los que datan de antes de 1920, son muy raros y cada vez más costosos de nuestros días. Ofrecemos reediciones modernas de alta calidad a precios asequibles que contienen el texto y el arte originales de estas obras clásicas.


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Tomorrow: Lunes con Lalo

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Chicano(a) Writer and Book News





Chicano Writing and Book News
(EGPnews.com photo by Valerie Mia Juarez)
East LA Student Write Plays

Check out this article "Students Learn Chicano History By Writing Plays" about high school students writing plays at a East Los Angeles High School: "Students at Monterey High School, a continuation school in East Los Angeles, wrote the plays during a semester-long playwriting class. Seven students, handpicked by their principal, wrote “2011 Meets 1968,” a series of one-act plays based on interviews with participants in the 1968 Walk Outs. For many of them, the experience was eye-opening if not cathartic." READ MORE.

Brando Skyhorse

Brando Skyhorse win Hemingway/PEN Award for The Madonnas of Echo Park

The LA Times reported that writer Brando Skyhorse's The Madonnas of Echo Park won the Hemingway/PEN Award for first fiction. This is a big award folks. I haven't kept up, but this is the award Dagoberto Gilb won for The Magic of Blood (UNM Press) (I think). "The book is a short-story collection with intersecting tales of Echo Park, a neighborhood northwest of downtown Los Angeles." READ MORE. The Hemingway/PEN Award for first fiction will be presented at a free event at the JFK Library in Boston, with author Marilynne Robinson as keynote speaker, on March 27.

Victor Martinez
Remembering Victor Martinez
 
The Mission Blog has posted a post Remembering Victor Martinez: "
In 1996, Victor Martinez, a local poet, reached a personal low when he read his poetry at Intersection for the Arts and exactly six people showed up. Three were friends. A week later, he discovered that he was nominated for the National Book Award."
(Tucson Weekly)
Oedipus Raza
 
We mentioned a few weeks ago that Luis Alfaro had won an award for his new rendition of Oedipus Rex.
Check out this article in the Tucson Weekly, "Chicano 'Oedipus':Borderlands Theater transports ancient Greek tragedy to the barrio": "The play begins in a jail, with a chorus of orange-jumpsuit-wearing convicts...The Greek play explored what happens when man fights against the will of the gods. Alfaro's jailbirds consider whether it's fate or choice that sends an ex-con back to his cell.Speaking in interwoven, chanted phrases, the four-man chorus (Bardo Padilla, Jason Chavez, Julian Martinez and Guillermo Francisco Raphael Jones) evokes Sophocles' poetry while sounding contemporary and colloquial...After the choral opening, Alfaro depicts background events that are only talked about in the ancient play. A seer tells King Laius (Jones) that he will be killed by his own son. To avoid this fate, as soon as his wife, Jocasta (Alida Holguin Gunn), has given birth, Laius gives the child to Tiresias, a composite character that merges the servant and blind prophet in Sophocles' play. Tiresias (Robert Ybanez) disobeys the king's orders to kill the child, and instead raises Oedipus with no knowledge of his past."
Adrian Arrancibia (Voice of San Diego Photo by Sam Hodgson)
Arandcibia and the Taco Shop

Check out this story/interview ("Poems, Aging and the Search for the Best Carne Asada") on Adrián Arancibia and the Taco Shop Poets on Voice of San Diego: "So they began reading poems they'd written at taco shops, incorporating music, drawing crowds. Born in Chile, Aranciba's life from age 5 in San Diego put him in contact with friends of many different backgrounds. The group, Taco Shop Poets, formed officially in 1994. They traveled the country, were featured in a few documentaries about Latino life in the United States and put out books and recordings." READ MORE
Maria Elenna Fernandez (Pasadena Weekly)
Maria Elena Fernandez Connects Communities

Pasadena Weekly has an article by Maria Elena Fernandez called "Connecting communities with the times of our lives." Maria Elena Fernandez is a writer and performer and teaches in the Chicana/o Studies Department at Cal State Northridge: "Perhaps less dramatic, but always gratifying, is when my students who sometimes describe themselves as “just white” are reconnected with their European heritage. Three or more generations removed from their immigrant ancestors, their families have also experienced the flipside of the US’s brutal history of racism. The category “white” was created to give Europeans social and economic privileges but also served to whittle away pride and connection to their ancestral roots." READ MORE.



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Wednesday, March 16, 2011

New Latino(a) Topic Fiction and Nonfiction for March 2011




New Latino(a) Topic Fiction and Nonfiction for March 2011
New Books by Ilan Stavans,  Nicholasa Mohr, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and more

What is la hispanidad?: A conversation 
(Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture) University of Texas Press (March 1, 2011) 
ISBN-10: 0292725612 ISBN-13: 978-029272561
 [Paperback]
Ilan Stavans (Author), Iván Jaksi (Author) 

Natives of the Iberian Peninsula and the twenty countries of Latin America, as well as their kinsfolk who've immigrated to the United States and around the world, share a common quality or identity characterized as la hispanidad. Or do they?

In this lively, provocative book, two distinguished intellectuals, a cultural critic and a historian, engage in a series of probing conversations in which they try to discern the nature of la hispanidad and debate whether any such shared identity binds the world's nearly half billion people who are "Hispanic." 

Their conversations range from La Reconquista and Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, who united the Spanish nation while expelling its remaining Moors and Jews, to the fervor for el fútbol (soccer) that has swept much of Latin America today. 

Along the way, they discuss a series of intriguing topics, including the complicated relationship between Latin America and the United States, Spanish language and the uses of Spanglish, complexities of race and ethnicity, nineteenth-century struggles for nationhood and twentieth-century identity politics, and popular culture from literary novels to telenovelas. 

Woven throughout are the authors' own enlightening experiences of crossing borders and cultures in Mexico and Chile and the United States.

Sure to provoke animated conversations among its readers, What is la hispanidad? makes a convincing case that "our hispanidad is rooted in a changing tradition, flexible enough to persist beyond boundaries and circumstances. Let us not fix it with a definition, but allow it instead to travel, always."


The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature 
(College Edition) 
Paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; College Edition edition (March 1, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0393975320 ISBN-13: 978-0393975321
Ilan Stavans (Editor), Edna Acosta-Belén (Editor), Harold Augenbraum (Editor), María Herrera-Sobek (Editor), Rolando Hinojosa (Editor), Gustavo Pérez Firmat (Editor) 

This anthology includes the work of 201 Latino writers from Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban-American, and Dominican-American traditions, as well as writing from other Spanish-speaking countries. 

Under the general editorship of award-winning cultural critic Ilan Stavans, The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature traces four centuries of writing, from letters to the Spanish crown by sixteenth-century conquistadors to the cutting-edge expressions of twenty-first-century cartoonistas and artists of reggaetón. 

In six chronological sections — Colonization, Annexation, Acculturation, Upheaval, Into the Mainstream, and Popular Traditions — the anthology encompasses diverse genres, and it features writers such as José Martí, William Carlos Williams, Julia Alvarez, Oscar Hijuelos, Cristina García, Piri Thomas, Esmeralda Santiago, and Junot Díaz. 

Thirteen years in the making, The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature sheds new light on "nuestra América" through a gathering of writing unprecedented in scope and vitality.


Nilda
Paperback Reading level: Ages 4-8
Pinata Books (March 31, 2011)
ISBN-10: 155885696X ISBN-13: 978-1558856967
Nicholasa Mohr (Author, Illustrator) 

"Damn you bastards, coming here making trouble. Bunch of animals." The two police offers responding to a call about an open fire hydrant lash out furiously at the Puerto Rican residents of New York City's El Barrio neighborhood. 

It's the summer of 1941, and all ten-year-old Nilda wants to do is enjoy the cool water with her friends. But the policemen's curses end their fun, and their animosity is played out over and over again in Nilda's life. She is repeatedly treated with contempt and even disgust by adults in positions of authority: teachers, nurses and social workers.

At home, though, she is surrounded by a large and loving--if somewhat eccentric--family that supports and encourages her artistic abilities. 

She experiences the onset of World War II and watches anxiously as several brothers go off to war; her stepfather s poor health means he can t work, causing serious financial difficulties for the family; one brother slinks off to the underworld, leaving behind a pregnant girlfriend, adding two more mouths to feed to the family s already dire situation.

Named an "Outstanding Book of the Year" by The New York Times and one of the "Best Books of the Year" by the American Library Association in 1973 when it was first published, Nicholasa Mohr's classic novel about life as an immigrant in New York City offers a poignant look at one young girl's experiences. 

Issues of race, religion and machismo are realistically and movingly depicted in this groundbreaking coming-of-age novel that was one of the first by a Latina author to be hailed by the mainstream media


Sports and the Racial Divide: African American and Latino Experience in an Era of Change  
Paperback University Press of Mississippi (March 4, 2011)
ISBN-10: 1617030457 ISBN-13: 978-1617030451
Michael E. Lomax (Editor), Kenneth L. Shropshire (Foreword) 

Essays exploring the complex and evolving status of athletes of color with essays by Ron Briley, Michael Ezra, Sarah K. Fields, Billy Hawkins, Jorge Iber, Kurt Kemper, Michael E. Lomax, Samuel O. Regalado, Richard Santillan, and Maureen Smith.

This anthology explores the intersection of race, ethnicity, and sports and analyzes the forces that shaped the African American and Latino sports experience in post-World War II America. 
Contributors reveal that sports often reinforced dominant ideas about race and racial supremacy but that at other times sports became a platform for addressing racial and social injustices. 

The African American sports experience represented the continuation of the ideas of Black Nationalism -- racial solidarity, black empowerment, and a determination to fight against white racism. 

Three of the essayists discuss the protest at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. In football, baseball, basketball, boxing, and track and field, African American athletes moved toward a position of group strength, establishing their own values and simultaneously rejecting the cultural norms of whites. 

Among Latinos, athletic achievement inspired community celebrations and became a way to express pride in ethnic and religious heritages as well as a diversion from the work week. Sports was a means by which leadership and survival tactics were developed and used in the political arena and in the fight for justice. 

Michael E. Lomax is associate professor of health and sport studies at the University of Iowa and the author of Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1860-1901: Operating by Any Means Necessary. Kenneth L. Shropshire is David W. Hauck Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and director of the school's Sports Business initiative.


Mama and Me
Hardcover
Reading level: Ages 4-8
Rayo (March 15, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0060581603 ISBN-13: 978-0060581602
Arthur Dorros (Author), Rudy Gutierrez (Illustrator)

"VÁmanos," MamÁ says.
"Let's go!"
Together we garden and bake.
We bike and paint a mural,
colorful and bright.
I do some things sola,
all by myself.
MamÁ says, "¡Perfecto!"—
just perfect!
With MamÁ, I feel like a girasol,
a sunflower, tall and proud.

For a bilingual girl and her mamÁ, a loving bond is about being together . . . and independent. Arthur Dorros's skillful and subtle blend of English and Spanish narrative, illustrated with bold, striking paintings by award-winning artist Rudy Gutierrez, offers readers a poignant reminder that every day with MamÁ is dulce — sweet! 



Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game 
Hardcover Beacon Press (March 1, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0807048054 ISBN-13: 978-0807048054
Rob Ruck

The colliding histories of black and Latino ballplayers in the major leagues have traditionally been told as a story of their shameful segregation and redemptive integration. 

Jackie Robinson jumped baseball’s color line to much fanfare, but integration was painful as well as triumphal. It gutted the once-vibrant Negro Leagues and often subjected Latin players to Jim Crow racism. 

Today, Major League Baseball tightens its grasp around the Caribbean’s burgeoning baseball academies, while at home it embraces, and exploits, the legacy of the Negro Leagues.

After peaking at 27 percent of all major leaguers in 1975, African Americans now make up less than one-tenth — a decline unimaginable in other men’s pro sports. The number of Latin Americans, by contrast, has exploded to over a quarter of all major leaguers and roughly half of those playing in the minors. 

Award-winning historian Rob Ruck not only explains the catalyst for this sea change; he also breaks down the consequences that cut across society. Integration cost black and Caribbean societies control over their own sporting lives, changing the meaning of the sport, but not always for the better. 

While it channeled black and Latino athletes into major league baseball, integration did little for the communities they left behind.

By looking at this history from the vantage point of black America and the Caribbean, a more complex story comes into focus, one largely missing from traditional narratives of baseball’s history. Raceball unveils a fresh and stunning truth: baseball has never been stronger as a business, never weaker as a game.


Listening to Latina/o Youth: Television Consumption Within Families
(Mediated Youth)
Paperback Peter Lang Publishing; First printing edition (March 31, 2011)
ISBN-10: 1433107279 ISBN-13: 978-1433107276
Kristin C. Moran

In light of current and projected demographic changes in the U.S., this book examines the attention paid to Latina/o youth from mainstream media conglomerates and the subsequent impact of this attention. 

In-depth interviews conducted within a family setting provide a rare glimpse into respondents media consumption patterns and process of reception, and explain the ways in which the media are woven into their daily lives. 

The book critiques the tendency of mainstream media to reify and contain a Latina/o identity that is then sold back to youth in ways that limit Latino/a agency. Throughout the interviews, young people articulate a hybrid identity highlighting their bicultural experiences. Listening to Latina/o Youth ultimately recommends opening up the possibilities of representation to encourage the acceptance of new voices that challenge the current modes of media production.


South American Independence: Gender, Politics, Text
(Liverpool Latin American Studies)
[Paperback] Liverpool University Press (March 2011)
ISBN-10: 1846316847 ISBN-13: 978-1846316845
Catherine Davies

The struggles for independence in Latin America during the first half of the nineteenth century were accompanied by a wide-ranging debate about political rights, nationality and citizenship. In "South American Independence", Catherine Davies, Claire Brewster and Hilary Owen investigate the neglected role of gender in that discussion.

Examining women writers from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Colombia, the book traces the contradictions inherent in revolutionary movements that, while arguing for the rights of all, remained ambivalent, at best, about the place of women. Through studies of both published and unpublished writings, South American Independence reveals the complex role of women in shaping the vexed ideologies of independence.


When Boys Become Parents: Adolescent Fatherhood in America
Paperback Rutgers University Press (February 11, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0813550009 ISBN-13: 978-0813550008
Mark S Kiselica

"...adolescent fatherhood rates are higher among African-American and Latino youth than among teenagers from other racial and ethnic groups."

After school specials about teenage pregnancy abound. Whether in television or in society, the focus tends toward young girls coping with all of the emotional and physical burdens of pregnancy but rarely is the perspective of the teenage fathers portrayed. 

In this informative book, Mark S. Kiselica draws on his many years of counseling teenage fathers to offer a compassionate look at the difficult life circumstances and the complicated hardships these young men experience. He dispels many of the myths surrounding teenage fatherhood and shows that, contrary to popular belief, these young men are often emotionally and physically involved in relationships with their partner and their child. 

But without support and guidance from adults, these relationships often deteriorate in the first year of the child's life. Kiselica offers advice for how professionals and policy makers can assist these young men and improve services for them. 

When Boys Become Parents provides a moving portrait of teenage fathers to any reader who wants to understand and help these young men to become more competent and loving parents during their journey to adulthood.


Urban Literacies: Critical Perspectives on Language, Learning, and Community 
(Language & Literacy) (Language and Literacy Series)
[Paperback] Teachers College Press (March 11, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0807751820 ISBN-13: 978-0807751824
Valerie Kinloc


In this collection of research on issues in urban education, new and emerging scholars of color in the field have authored theoretically rich and practically sound chapters that extend current conversations on the literate lives, academic achievements, and social networking systems of students of color in urban environments during and after school time. 

The primary focus of this book is to closely and carefully investigate--through rigorous research, various theoretical orientations, and diverse methodologies--meanings of and current concerns with urban education in the lives of children, youth, and adults of color across three intersecting spectrums.


Handbook of Hispanic Sociolinguistics 
(Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics)
Hardcover Wiley-Blackwell (March 15, 2011)
ISBN-10: 1405195002 ISBN-13: 978-1405195003
Manuel Diaz-Campos (Editor) 

This Handbook provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of theoretical and descriptive research in contemporary Hispanic sociolinguistics.
  • Offers the first authoritative collection exploring research strands in the emerging and fast-moving field of Spanish sociolinguistics
  • Highlights the contributions that Spanish Sociolinguistics has offered to general linguistic theory
  • Brings together a team of the top researchers in the field to present the very latest perspectives and discussions of key issues
  • Covers a wealth of topics including: variationist approaches, Spanish and its importance in the U.S., language planning, and other topics focused on the social aspects of Spanish
  • Includes several varieties of Spanish, reflecting the rich diversity of dialects spoken in the Americas and Spain


Black in Latin America
[Hardcover] NYU Press (March 4, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0814732984 ISBN-13: 978-0814732984
Henry Louis Gates Jr. 

12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World during the Middle Passage. 

While just over 11.0 million survived the arduous journey, only about 450,000 of them arrived in the United States. The rest — over ten and a half million — were taken to the Caribbean and Latin America. 

This astonishing fact changes our entire picture of the history of slavery in the Western hemisphere, and of its lasting cultural impact. These millions of Africans created new and vibrant cultures, magnificently compelling syntheses of various African, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish influences.

Despite their great numbers, the cultural and social worlds that they created remain largely unknown to most Americans, except for certain popular, cross-over musical forms. 

So Henry Louis Gates, Jr. set out on a quest to discover how Latin Americans of African descent live now, and how the countries of their acknowledge — or deny — their African past; how the fact of race and African ancestry play themselves out in the multicultural worlds of the Caribbean and Latin America. 

Starting with the slave experience and extending to the present, Gates unveils the history of the African presence in six Latin American countries — Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and Peru — through art, music, cuisine, dance, politics, and religion, but also the very palpable presence of anti-black racism that has sometimes sought to keep the black cultural presence from view. 

In Brazil, he delves behind the façade of Carnaval to discover how this ‘rainbow nation’ is waking up to its legacy as the world's largest slave economy.

In Cuba, he finds out how the culture, religion, politics and music of this island is inextricably linked to the huge amount of slave labor imported to produce its enormously profitable 19th century sugar industry, and how race and racism have fared since Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959.

In Haiti, he tells the story of the birth of the first-ever black republic, and finds out how the slaves's hard fought liberation over Napoleon Bonaparte's French Empire became a double-edged sword.

In Mexico and Peru, he explores the almost unknown history of the significant numbers of black people — far greater than the number brought to the United States — brought to these countries as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the worlds of culture that their descendants have created in Vera Cruz on the Gulf of Mexico, the Costa Chica region on the Pacific, and in and around Lima, Peru.

Professor Gates' journey becomes ours as we are introduced to the faces and voices of the descendants of the Africans who created these worlds. He shows both the similarities and distinctions between these cultures, and how the New World manifestations are rooted in, but distinct from, their African antecedents. 

“Black in Latin America” is the third installment of Gates's documentary trilogy on the Black Experience in Africa, the United States, and in Latin America. In America Behind the Color Line, Professor Gates examined the fortunes of the black population of modern-day America. 

In Wonders of the African World, he embarked upon a series of journeys to reveal the history of African culture. Now, he brings that quest full-circle in an effort to discover how Africa and Europe combined to create the vibrant cultures of Latin America, with a rich legacy of thoughtful, articulate subjects whose stories are astonishingly moving and irresistibly compelling.


Vulnerable Populations and Transformative Law Teaching: A Critical Reader
Paperback Carolina Academic Press (March 15, 2011)
ISBN-10: 1594609497 ISBN-13: 978-1594609497
Society of American Law Teachers (Author, Editor), Golden Gate University School of Law (Author, Editor)

The essays included in this volume began as presentations at the March 19-20, 2010 ''Vulnerable Populations and Economic Realities'' teaching conference organized and hosted by Golden Gate University School of Law and co-sponsored by the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT). 

That conference, generously funded by a grant from The Elfenworks Foundation, brought together law faculty, practitioners, and students to reexamine how issues of race, gender, sexual identity, nationality, disability, and generally outsider status are linked to poverty. 

Contributors have transformed their presentations into essays, offering a variety of roadmaps for incorporating these issues into the law school curriculum, both inside the classroom as well as in clinical and externship settings, study abroad, and social activism. 

These essays provide glimpses into ''teaching moments,'' both intentional and organic, to help trigger opportunities for students and faculty to question their own perceptions and experiences about who creates and interprets law, and who has access to power and the force of law. 

This book expands the parameters of law teaching so that this next generation of attorneys will be dedicated to their roles as public citizens, broadening the availability of justice. 

Contributors include: John Payton; Richard Delgado; Steven W. Bender; Sarah Valentine; Deborah Post and Deborah Zalesne; Gilbert Paul Carrasco; Michael L. Perlin and Deborah Dorfman; Robin R. Runge; Cynthia D. Bond; Florence Roisman Wagman; Doug Simpson; Anne Marie Harkins and Robin Clark; Douglas Colbert; Raquel Aldana and Leticia Saucedo, Marci Seville; Deirdre Bowen, Daniel Bonilla Maldonado, Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Colin Crawford, and James Forman, Jr.; Susan Rutberg; Mary B. Culbert and Sara Campos; MaryBeth Musumeci, Elizabeth Weeks Leonard, and Brutrinia D. Arellano; Libby Adler; and Paulette J. Williams. The editorial board includes Raquel Aldana, Steven Bender, Olympia Duhart, Michele Benedetto Neitz, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Hari Osofsky, and Hazel Weiser.


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