July 2010 Archives
Good News, Good Reads
Gentle readers, it doesn't have the sparkle or brevity of "Paris," but I have been spackling, sanding, taping, priming, and painting since we parted.
Little Office, as I have unimaginatively dubbed her, needed to be ready for the phone date my agent and I are having this week about the last (please, the last) changes to THE DESIRE PROJECTS. Nutshell: he loves it--yey! he almost never loves anything: he's a tough, approval-withholding agent--but the manuscript is still not, if I'm understanding correctly, sufficiently foregrounding the suspenseful parts. I'm not sure; I'll know more after we talk. And then it will be time to make final revisions. He thinks I can finish by the end of my summer break and we can have it out at publishing houses by early fall.
Moreover, we are this close to signing the contract for ISLAND OF BONES, the collection of essays, and then I'll have some time to make revisions to that manuscript as well. As soon as the ink is dry, I'll divulge all the details, including the two phenomenal writers who served as outside readers for the manuscript. Their imprimatur is as exciting to me as the contract itself!
Anyway, that's a lot of revising coming up, and I needed smooth, clean--and turquoise, as it turns out; turquoise won the swatch contest--walls within which to write.
Readers, I'm now intimately aware of why my smarter, better off friends hire professionals to do their house-painting. (Have I been in here too long, or does spackling compound smell like chocolate?)
Well, the walls are smooth turquoise now, and it looks great. I'm enrobed in turquoise. Please forgive my absence from the blog. The job had to be done. Thank goodness for Little Office's littleness, and for the HH's help today.
In other news, alas, the inimitable Sonam has abandoned Lincoln, leaving us bereft, but before he departed he kindly gave me modernist Rebecca West's essay "Pounce," and all of you who find cats intriguing creatures should find it. (I generally don't, frankly, yet I still liked the essay, which is quite a testament to something.) It's included in The Essential Rebecca West: Uncollected Prose, which is just out from Pearhouse Press. West's prose is effervescent, surprising, delicious. I've always liked her work; this collection offers a chance to read things that never made it onto the beaten path.
And here are a couple of other recommendations, books I've been chomping down since the semester ended:
• the American Book Award winner When Living Was a Labor Camp, about California's San Joaquin Valley, by Diana García, who was born in a migrant labor camp there. If you've read or taught with the terrific anthology Latino Boom, you've come across the title poem, but the whole collection is well worth it. Here's an excerpt from "Valley Fever":
It was also good for me. Since my own sympathies and views are postnationalist, I'm not naturally driven, as a reader or scholar, by imperatives of cultural nationalism, though that's how the field of literature remains chopped up, so I don't have quite the grasp of Cuban-American literature that I should for someone who teaches in the field of Latin@ lit. This collection filled gaps for me and offered discoveries, like Dolores Prida, who now fascinates me.
• Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability. The title basically says it all. This book explains, smartly, the rationale for most of the decisions the HH and I've been (fairly inarticulately) making for the past three years. The book is persuasive without being at all preachy, and New Yorker writer David Owen's clever prose is a joy: clean, fluid, crisp.
I'd been longing to read since it came out in 2009. It was worth the wait. I highly recommend it. Unswayed? You can read the opening here.
• Lastly, I am loving the stylistic and ethical clarity of Nadine Gordimer's new collection of essays, Telling Times: Writing and Living, 1954-2008, which just hit the shelves this summer. PW calls the collection "comprehensive--sometimes too comprehensive," and I can see their point. It's hefty. Nonetheless, in the best of these pieces, Gordimer models for me what a writer is supposed to be. Awake. Alert. Speaking.
Little Office, as I have unimaginatively dubbed her, needed to be ready for the phone date my agent and I are having this week about the last (please, the last) changes to THE DESIRE PROJECTS. Nutshell: he loves it--yey! he almost never loves anything: he's a tough, approval-withholding agent--but the manuscript is still not, if I'm understanding correctly, sufficiently foregrounding the suspenseful parts. I'm not sure; I'll know more after we talk. And then it will be time to make final revisions. He thinks I can finish by the end of my summer break and we can have it out at publishing houses by early fall.
Moreover, we are this close to signing the contract for ISLAND OF BONES, the collection of essays, and then I'll have some time to make revisions to that manuscript as well. As soon as the ink is dry, I'll divulge all the details, including the two phenomenal writers who served as outside readers for the manuscript. Their imprimatur is as exciting to me as the contract itself!
Anyway, that's a lot of revising coming up, and I needed smooth, clean--and turquoise, as it turns out; turquoise won the swatch contest--walls within which to write.
Readers, I'm now intimately aware of why my smarter, better off friends hire professionals to do their house-painting. (Have I been in here too long, or does spackling compound smell like chocolate?)
Well, the walls are smooth turquoise now, and it looks great. I'm enrobed in turquoise. Please forgive my absence from the blog. The job had to be done. Thank goodness for Little Office's littleness, and for the HH's help today.
In other news, alas, the inimitable Sonam has abandoned Lincoln, leaving us bereft, but before he departed he kindly gave me modernist Rebecca West's essay "Pounce," and all of you who find cats intriguing creatures should find it. (I generally don't, frankly, yet I still liked the essay, which is quite a testament to something.) It's included in The Essential Rebecca West: Uncollected Prose, which is just out from Pearhouse Press. West's prose is effervescent, surprising, delicious. I've always liked her work; this collection offers a chance to read things that never made it onto the beaten path.
And here are a couple of other recommendations, books I've been chomping down since the semester ended:
• the American Book Award winner When Living Was a Labor Camp, about California's San Joaquin Valley, by Diana García, who was born in a migrant labor camp there. If you've read or taught with the terrific anthology Latino Boom, you've come across the title poem, but the whole collection is well worth it. Here's an excerpt from "Valley Fever":
• One Island, Many Voices: Conversations with Cuban-American Writers, which includes interviews with, among others, Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Carolina Hospital, and Achy Obejas. Most writers love reading interviews with other writers; I know I'm always fascinated, always panning for gold. This collection rewarded my eagerness.I was a favorite niece, the only daughter
and no virgin: the valley grew too small.
So I pawned my first flute and typewriter
and headed for a place that had it all--
classy subtitled films, canyon-laced coast,
flamed leaves to the east and desert beyond. . . .
It was also good for me. Since my own sympathies and views are postnationalist, I'm not naturally driven, as a reader or scholar, by imperatives of cultural nationalism, though that's how the field of literature remains chopped up, so I don't have quite the grasp of Cuban-American literature that I should for someone who teaches in the field of Latin@ lit. This collection filled gaps for me and offered discoveries, like Dolores Prida, who now fascinates me.
• Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability. The title basically says it all. This book explains, smartly, the rationale for most of the decisions the HH and I've been (fairly inarticulately) making for the past three years. The book is persuasive without being at all preachy, and New Yorker writer David Owen's clever prose is a joy: clean, fluid, crisp.
I'd been longing to read since it came out in 2009. It was worth the wait. I highly recommend it. Unswayed? You can read the opening here.
• Lastly, I am loving the stylistic and ethical clarity of Nadine Gordimer's new collection of essays, Telling Times: Writing and Living, 1954-2008, which just hit the shelves this summer. PW calls the collection "comprehensive--sometimes too comprehensive," and I can see their point. It's hefty. Nonetheless, in the best of these pieces, Gordimer models for me what a writer is supposed to be. Awake. Alert. Speaking.
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Todo Excited
Fair and tender readers, I am todo excited about the proposal I submitted for a panel at the 2011 AWP conference in Washington, D.C. (No thing's a sure thing, but I'm hopeful that it'll be accepted.)
The panel is called, "Memoir and Latinidad," and here are the rock-star panelists:
Esmeralda Santiago
Rigoberto González
Luis Rodriguez
Gustavo Pérez Firmat.
In the literary world? Seriously: these folks are rock stars. I am a crazy fan of all of them, so I'm very happy that they all agreed to be on the panel.
As you may know, U.S. Latina/o memoir has developed a rich contemporary tradition that spans the political and stylistic spectrum from Richard Rodriguez to Gloria Anzaldúa. But what, if anything, makes a memoir "Latina/o"? Does latinidad influence aesthetics and craft as well as content? Do contemporary Latina/o memoirists see themselves as inheriting the life-writing techniques and traditions of the U.S., or Latin America, or both? And--perhaps the most vexing question for working writers--how do Latina/o memoirists navigate expectations by the mainstream, broader U.S. culture that their memoirs will represent whole cultures and nations?
These are the questions these amazing writers will be discussing. I can't wait to hear their conversation. (I will just be moderating.)
A panel addressing this specific conjunction of genre and ethnicity will be new for AWP, too. The conference has never showcased anything like this before, and it's very relevant. As the role of Latinos in the U.S. continues to spark national controversy (ay, Arizona), a discussion of the literary construction of self will contribute to the articulation and understanding of Latina/o identity, politics, & aesthetics.
Since all four of the panelists are established senior writers, they'll bring the maturity of long reflection, as well as a diversity of cultural and political backgrounds--Chicano (Rodriguez y González), Cuban-American (Pérez Firmat), and Puerto Rican (Santiago)--to this important public conversation.
These panelists have been serious community activists, too. Por ejemplo, L.A.'s Tia Chucha Centro Cultural was co-founded by Luis J. Rodriguez, who has worked against gang violence and the socioeconomic injustices that foster it for many years. Tia Chucha's annual benefit, featuring Perla Batalla, Ceci Bastida, Kristina Wong, and National Book Award finalist Wanda Coleman, is coming up on August 1st. If you'll be in the L.A. area, check out a good thing!
And if you'll be at AWP in D.C. next February, come to our panel "Memoir and Latinidad"! (If it gets accepted. Fingers crossed.) Maybe we'll see each other there!
The panel is called, "Memoir and Latinidad," and here are the rock-star panelists:
Esmeralda Santiago
Rigoberto González
Luis Rodriguez
Gustavo Pérez Firmat.In the literary world? Seriously: these folks are rock stars. I am a crazy fan of all of them, so I'm very happy that they all agreed to be on the panel.
As you may know, U.S. Latina/o memoir has developed a rich contemporary tradition that spans the political and stylistic spectrum from Richard Rodriguez to Gloria Anzaldúa. But what, if anything, makes a memoir "Latina/o"? Does latinidad influence aesthetics and craft as well as content? Do contemporary Latina/o memoirists see themselves as inheriting the life-writing techniques and traditions of the U.S., or Latin America, or both? And--perhaps the most vexing question for working writers--how do Latina/o memoirists navigate expectations by the mainstream, broader U.S. culture that their memoirs will represent whole cultures and nations?
These are the questions these amazing writers will be discussing. I can't wait to hear their conversation. (I will just be moderating.)
A panel addressing this specific conjunction of genre and ethnicity will be new for AWP, too. The conference has never showcased anything like this before, and it's very relevant. As the role of Latinos in the U.S. continues to spark national controversy (ay, Arizona), a discussion of the literary construction of self will contribute to the articulation and understanding of Latina/o identity, politics, & aesthetics.
Since all four of the panelists are established senior writers, they'll bring the maturity of long reflection, as well as a diversity of cultural and political backgrounds--Chicano (Rodriguez y González), Cuban-American (Pérez Firmat), and Puerto Rican (Santiago)--to this important public conversation.
These panelists have been serious community activists, too. Por ejemplo, L.A.'s Tia Chucha Centro Cultural was co-founded by Luis J. Rodriguez, who has worked against gang violence and the socioeconomic injustices that foster it for many years. Tia Chucha's annual benefit, featuring Perla Batalla, Ceci Bastida, Kristina Wong, and National Book Award finalist Wanda Coleman, is coming up on August 1st. If you'll be in the L.A. area, check out a good thing!
And if you'll be at AWP in D.C. next February, come to our panel "Memoir and Latinidad"! (If it gets accepted. Fingers crossed.) Maybe we'll see each other there!
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Happy to Be Back
Thank you for checking back! And my apologies are in order: though I carefully composed 8 blog-posts to be published automatically while I was gone, I learned upon my return that the automatic-publishing function had failed. I'm sorry! Thank you for your persistence.
Readers, to quote a favorite poet: I have been to Paris since we parted. And Amsterdam, and the Cinque Terre, and Venice, Umbria, New Orleans, Austin--all spiced with heavy helpings of family, family, family. This month of incredible, dazzling traveling (and interpersonal family dynamics in full, illuminating bloom) will keep me ruminating and writing for weeks and months to come.
But for now, I just wanted to share this happy news from David Brooks's column in today's NYTimes:
David Brooks, of course (with whom I'd say I have a love-hate relationship, except it's more tepid than that) manages to use this good news about the efficacy of reading in the service of a larger argument that privileges hierarchies, elitism, and prestige, using the language of all the Great-Books proponents who've ever made you yawn.
But still, good news is good news. This summer, consider treating the disadvantaged teen of your choice to a dozen books of his or hers. Let books make a difference. Let the beauty you love be what you do.
Readers, to quote a favorite poet: I have been to Paris since we parted. And Amsterdam, and the Cinque Terre, and Venice, Umbria, New Orleans, Austin--all spiced with heavy helpings of family, family, family. This month of incredible, dazzling traveling (and interpersonal family dynamics in full, illuminating bloom) will keep me ruminating and writing for weeks and months to come.
But for now, I just wanted to share this happy news from David Brooks's column in today's NYTimes:
Recently, book publishers got some good news. Researchers gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school year. They did this for three successive years.I was excited, because I'd returned from Austin, where my sister-in-law Cool Julie manages a bookstore, with a totebag full of books for my "Little Sister" Amara. Julie hand-picked several novels that her female teen customers are finding hot right now, so here's hoping Amara likes some of them. Usually, we book-shop together. Amara picks the novels, and then we both read and discuss them. (Readers, it has taken me outside my usual zones of taste. Yeah. But it has been pretty cool, too.)
Then the researchers, led by Richard Allington of the University of Tennessee, looked at those students’ test scores. They found that the students who brought the books home had significantly higher reading scores than other students. These students were less affected by the “summer slide” — the decline that especially afflicts lower-income students during the vacation months. In fact, just having those 12 books seemed to have as much positive effect as attending summer school.
David Brooks, of course (with whom I'd say I have a love-hate relationship, except it's more tepid than that) manages to use this good news about the efficacy of reading in the service of a larger argument that privileges hierarchies, elitism, and prestige, using the language of all the Great-Books proponents who've ever made you yawn.
But still, good news is good news. This summer, consider treating the disadvantaged teen of your choice to a dozen books of his or hers. Let books make a difference. Let the beauty you love be what you do.
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