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Off to AWP!

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Along with 8,999 other writers from around the country and around the world, I'm heading to Chicago soon for our big annual professional conference.  If you're at any of these events, I'll see you there!

Thursday

Women in Jeopardy: Crime Fiction
10:30-11:45
Wilford B, Hilton Chicago, 3rd floor
I'm very excited about this one, especially since I'm now writing crime novels in which women are very much in jeopardy, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the panelists have to say about it all.  I'm also looking forward to meeting Julie Hyzy in person.

A Pat Mora panel
12:00-1:15
Wilford B, Hilton Chicago, 3rd floor
Yes, it's in the same room as the one above, but no, that's not the reason I'm staying put.  I'm a huge Pat Mora fan and have taught her work for years.  This panel will be great.

OUR PANEL!  Prepare to swoon.
1:30-2:45
Wabash Room, Palmer House Hilton, 3rd floor
This one is all about female modernist creative nonfiction writers:  Virginia Woolf, Alice Meynell, Louise Bogan, Margery Latimer, and Meridel Le Sueur.  Woolf, as you can see, is the only canonical one; the rest expand our concept of modernism and of the history of female-authored creative nonfiction.  The panelists are creative nonfiction writers themselves:  Tracy Seeley (who did a great Q&A about writing memoir here on the blog a while back); Marcia Aldrich, the long-time editor of Fourth Genre; and Jocelyn Bartkevicius, who edits The Florida Review and directs the MFA program at the University of Central Florida.  I'm super-excited about this panel (which I think, with a few tweaks, could work equally well at MSA...).

Now, the panelists are supposed to go have coffee (read: cocktails) afterwards, so I probably won't make it to the 3:00 p.m. panel that I'm interested in, but I'll put it here anyway:

The Geometry of the Novel
3:00-4:15
Grand Ballroom, Palmer House Hilton, 4th floor
This panel will explore alternatives to Freytag's stalwart, sturdy pyramid, and how we can choose/develop structures that work with our material in more organic, exciting ways.  I'm all for that, and I hope I can catch a bit of this.  Moreover, I believe Debra Di Blasi is one of the presenters, and I'm a fan ever since she did the (downtown) omaha lit fest.

The Whole Truth
4:30-5:45
Waldorf,  Hilton Chicago, 3rd floor
To tell you the truth, I'm sensing my own incipient burnout on the whole D'Agata controversy (though I love Dinty Moore's recent entry into the fray:  " But I reserve the right to complain, and to call something a self-promotional manipulation, when I see it that way.")  But anyway, this looks like a great panel.  It stakes a claim (yes, art can be rooted in fact), and the panelists are all great people.  So it's a maybe.  Depends on how good those coffees are.

Pachanga for Pat Mora
5:30-???
Zapatista restaurant, 1307 Wabash Ave.
What could be wrong with celebrating Pat Mora a little bit more?  Especially with tapas and friends.

And then of course you know all about Margaret Atwood at 8:30, so I won't belabor the point.  I haven't seen her in person since I was an undergraduate, when she came into our workshop and eviscerated the short story of one of my peers, and I was at once admiring and horrified and so very, very grateful that it hadn't been my story on the docket that day.  Presumably she will be just as terrifying from the stage.  I look forward.

Then I'll be toddling home to crash in my dear cousin's luxurious guest room.  His condo overlooks Lake Michigan.  He's obviously the member of our family who made the shrewd financial decisions. 

Friday

Oh, yeah!

The Cuban American panel (I forget the whole real name of it, but it's a good topic)
10:30-11:45
Private Dining Room 2, Hilton Chicago, 3rd floor
Ruth Behar and Achy Obejas will be on this one, so it's a can't-miss.

[Now follow several hours in which I'll wander aimlessly around the Bookfair, have coffee with friends that I will randomly bump into, and try to eat something vaguely nourishing--all the while chiding myself for not sitting quietly somewhere prepping for class next week--after which I'll head off to the next can't-miss event, which is (drum roll):]

Luis Rodriguez & Dagoberto Gilb
3:00
Grand Ballroom, Hilton Chicago, 2nd floor
Oh, I cannot freakin' wait to meet Luis, who is of course an amazing writer, an amazing community organizer, and an amazing human being, but who also has been so incredibly nice ever since last year when he gave a paper on an AWP Latina/o memoir panel I organized and then (due to the horrible blizzard) could not attend.  Oh, the wailing and the gnashing of teeth!  (Long-time readers of the blog will remember the sad little photo of my packed suitcase against a yellow wall.)  And, uh, Dagoberto Gilb's pretty talented, too.

Flash Mob at the VIDA table, booth #308 at the Bookfair!
4:00-5:00

If you care about women's creative nonfiction, and especially if you write it, be there!  (There will be candy.)

Then I'm going to the Prairie Schooner reception (thank you, Marianne) and dashing over for a quick bite with my lovely former colleagues from Pine Manor MFA program--again at Zapatista.

Esmeralda Santiago & Jesmyn Ward
8:30-9:30
Grand Ballroom, Hilton Chicago, 2nd floor

After which I'll presumably head straight home, without stopping off for drinks with any festivity-seeking writers.  Because that's what a good cousin does.

By Saturday, I'll be overstimulated and exhausted and whining like a tired child, which should make me tons of fun when I attend the following:

A panel about writing YA lit for Latina/o readers (primarily because Sergio Troncoso will be presenting, and you know the severe writer-crush on him I've been nurturing for years now)
12:00-1:15
Astoria, Hilton Chicago, 3rd floor

A panel about teaching writing to migrant workers' kids (primarily because it will be fascinating but also because Linda Rodriguez will be presenting & I'm dying to meet her)
3:00-4:15
Lake Huron, Hilton Chicago, 8th floor

Then I will stagger back to the condo and fall weakly into the arms of my cousin and his partner, who'll be scheming up something lively for dinner and will forgive me for babbling incoherently about everything I've just quasi-absorbed. 

They are nice, nice people.  Their niceness cannot be overemphasized.

It occurs to me that there are a great number of events on offer this year for people with an interest in Latin@ writers.  That's kind of a nice transformation.  I don't remember there being nearly so many when I first started going to AWP.  It's been a gradual ramping-up.  There are tons that I'm not going to get to, too.  So hey:  good job, everybody. 

All right.  Off to pack.  How will I shove all my jewels and silks into a carry-on?




 
 

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HELL OR HIGH WATER Named a Latino Book of the Month

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Mil gracias, Las Comadres and Friends National Latino Book Club, for naming HELL OR HIGH WATER a 2012 Book of the Month!

Thumbnail image for Hell or High Water cover.pngA literary thriller, HELL OR HIGH WATER takes place in New Orleans three years after Katrina.  The protagonist, a young Cuban American journalist at the Times-Picayune, juggles her friends, her mother, and the teenaged girl she's mentoring with her hunt for sex criminals and a missing woman.  (Oh, and a little romance--if you can call it that.) 

PEN/Faulkner nominee Lorraine M. López, author of Soy la Avon Lady, calls it "[a]n irresistible and compelling novel," and Dennis Lehane writes, "Hell or High Water is more than just a mystery; it's a heartfelt examination of a second America--poor but undaunted--that was swept under the rug but refuses to stay there."

I'm thrilled that the national Latina/o reading community is embracing this book.  September 2012 will be the month when members of the National Latino Book Club across the country (special shout-outs to Miami, Austin, & San Antonio!) will be reading HELL OR HIGH WATER and when I'll be doing teleconferences for Las Comadres. 

But you don't have to wait until September.  If you pre-order it now, you'll get your copy by July.



 
 

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Feeling Grateful

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Judith Ortiz Cofer is a writer's writer and a friend to writers, as anyone who's been fortunate enough to have been befriended or mentored by her can enthusiastically attest.  She's as kind as she is talented, as funny as she is smart, and as generous to writers as she is prolific.  There's no one I'd rather have endorse my new collection of essays, ISLAND OF BONES, than the author of the gorgeous breakthrough books Silent Dancing and The Latin Deli and so many more wonderful works since then.

So I'm thrilled to share her comments with you, and I am so moved and honored by them.  (At some point in the book production process, a shorter version will appear on ISLAND OF BONES itself as a blurb, but here's the whole lovely shebang.)

Replete with a quiet wisdom, Joy Castro’s essays are powerfully focused revelations, as in the lyrical examination of a creosote bush, word by word; she trains our eyes to see beauty in pain, “Yet observe for a moment the grace of the creosote bush, hollowing as it grows, stretching and bending under an empty sky.”  And along with the writer “you cry here it is!” In the author’s journey from abused runaway child to a fulfilling life as a wife, mother, writer, and professor, we see the flowering in an arid desert landscape, the miraculous flowering of the creosote. The power of these personal narratives resides in Joy Castro’s ability to invest every telling detail of every sorrow and every joy with her piercing attention, until each scene reaches a transcendental clarity. We are moved out of our complacence quietly but steadily by a voice that must witness and will testify.  We come to a new awareness of what it means to triumph over unimaginable obstacles, and to the empowerment that comes of forgiveness. Joy Castro has achieved in these essays what Emily Dickinson called “the Truth that must dazzle gradually.”





 
 

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The Idea of Order at Key West

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Traveller's palms (a few blocks from Casa Marina)


Seven stunning, sun-bleached days with my aunt in Key West--visiting graves, memorial sites, and locations that were important for my Dad particularly and for the family generally--were more rewarding, more beautiful, more humorous, more informative, and more emotionally exhausting than I'd reckoned on. 

The pier my father leaped from as a boy, which has now been partly washed away by hurricanes, is also the pier where my aunt scattered his ashes one evening, alone, after he committed suicide in 2002.  The pier stretches into the water directly next to Casa Marina, the grand resort where Wallace Stevens (on whose difficult, gorgeous poetry I wrote a masters thesis) spent his winters from 1922 until the military commandeered it in World War II. 

I floated there in the warm waves in the Straits of Florida where long ago my father took my brother and me to swim when we were children.  My gaze and thoughts pinged back and forth:  pier, resort.  Childhood, death.  Poetry, privilege.

There were other things I did.  Lovely things.  Fried sweet platanos at El Siboney, delicious bollitos at 5 Brothers, sandals for Emily and Alexis from Kino, a guayabera for the Handsome Husband from a tiny little shop on Fleming (apparently the only place on the island that carries them; tourists want t-shirts), banana body lotion and white ginger perfume from Key West Aloe, which has been there since I was a kid:  the fragrances brought back all kinds of crazy memories of my mother and stepmother.  Cool galleries like the Blue Turtle, Cuba! Cuba!, and the Haitian Art Co.  Touring all the sites where my father, as a local, never thought to take us:  the Hemingway House (wow!), the lighthouse, Truman's Little White House, and so on.  Touristy things that were interesting and fun. 

We drove to the salt ponds, where my aunt herself had never been, after decades living on the island:  two huge green iguanas scuttling fast into the mangroves, a rusting old Cubana airlines prop jet behind a high fence, and nary a tourist in sight.  At night, my aunt and I'd watch mysteries that she'd Netflixed, and then I'd go to bed and read a history of the Keys and a book on Santeria I'd purchased at Key West Island Books.

I saw the big pink building where my father was born on the second floor and where my grandfather ran the print shop down below, the Red Barn Theatre where my father acted in plays, my grandparents' house/print shop (now a little inn) where I'd visited each year as a child.  My aunt patiently guided me around and answered all my questions, and we called my other aunt for a conference call on speakerphone when she didn't know the answers.  The week was rich, full, hectic. 

But on the plane ride home, I felt uneasy and depressed.  I'd come seeking something.  

But closure, resolution, peace with the past?  All still felt elusive.  There'd been no crescendo, no epiphany, no sense of relief.

It's not that I was expecting instant gratification.  I'd waited nine years since my father's death.  I'd put in the walking miles, the research, the effort.  But I expected something.  

As we jolted through turbulence, I began to work on a little essay.  I think it will be about the futility and yet necessity and inevitability (if we're lucky enough to have the means) of "roots trips," those hopeful, fraught journeys back to places of origin.  Line by line, it started to take shape on the page.
 
And as I wrote, gentle reader--as I began to craft vignettes that rhymed with one another, to quote things my aunt had said, to weave in lines from Wallace Stevens, to make it all shapely and true--everything slowly began to coalesce.  To mean

The order of things--such as it is and can be--comes, for me, not with the raw experience, but with writing it down. 



 
 

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Key West Bound!

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Thanks for sticking with me, gentle readers!  I've been on the road a lot this summer and working hard on Nola Novel #2--which I'm happy to say I've now drafted!  Hurray!  A complete first draft, finished before the back-to-school flurry begins.  Whew!

I've also been working on editing the great essays in FAMILY TROUBLE, which is just such a terrific project.  I love it.  I've learned so much from the contributors.  Their insights about writing memoir about family members are dynamite.  So wise.  I think this book of essays is going to be really useful to writers, CW teachers, and aspiring writers.   

I head out soon to visit my aunt in Key West, my last remaining relative on the island.  (I've written about her in the forthcoming ISLAND OF BONES.)  We get to spend a week together, and my cousin, who's four days older than I am, is taking some time off to come down from Miami, too!  Castro family party!

In addition to mojitos, the Kino Sandal Factory (a family tradition), and the beach, my aunt is going to take me to see family graves and other sites of importance, because she's leaving Key West this fall for retirement, and she wants to make sure as many of the grandkids as possible know our history before she leaves.  Since it's become such a resort destination, Cayo Hueso (island of bones) is just too damn expensive for ordinary working people to afford to live there.  My family, which has been there since the nineteenth century, will be there no more.  Qué lastima.

I'm looking forward to seeing my sweet aunt, a long-time librarian at Key West High School, and my cousin, who works to ensure that female horticultural laborers in Latin America have decent workers' rights and protections.  They both rock.  Cool single Castro women.  We're going to say coño and make flan and laugh a lot.

I haven't been to Key West since I was seventeen and spent a week with my grandmother, who's gone now, so it's kind of emotional for me.  I remember taking the Greyhound there from San Antonio.  It wasn't exactly the most fun spring break for a college freshman--Nanny wouldn't let me go to the beach; she was sure I'd get "corrupted by the hippies"--but it was love, you know?  Family.  And this will be, too. 
 
 

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Mujeres, Start Your Engines

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VIDA: Women in Literary Arts recently released the results of its count.  If you haven't seen these handy pie graphs of the ratios of men to women published in major publications, check them out.  As Amy King writes, "We know women write. We know women read. It’s time to begin asking why the 2010 numbers don’t reflect those facts with any equity."  Always suffer a mild bout of gender depression after reading Harper's or The New Yorker, no matter how good the issue is?  VIDA offers you the stats to support your queasy feeling.  Peruse.  

Got theories?  VIDA offers a forum where you can send in your own thoughts about the gender disparity in publishing and reviewing. 

Of course, the editors of these featured journals haven't accepted this critique of their gender politics lying down.  Carolyn Zaikowski deftly takes on the rebuttals

In local news, the big immigration symposium, Diverse Faces, Shared Histories, is all set for this Friday at the Great Plains Art Museum.  Major folks like Nicole Guidotti-Hernández and Mary Pipher will be speaking.  The evening reading at the Sheldon will feature readings by yours truly, together with Amelia Montes, Ricardo García, and Fran Kaye.  Fun to read with a group!  More like a party. 

Another cool campus event will be on Wednesday, March 16, when my friend Jeannette Jones will be reading and signing her terrific scholarly book In Search of Brightest Africa.  The reading's at 7:00 p.m. at the UNL Bookstore in the student union.  Jeannette's great, and so is the book.

In other very local news, I'm super-happy to have won this year's UNL Sorensen Award for outstanding teaching in the humanities.  They only give out one a year (and it's kinda ka-ching, when most teaching awards are little more than a handshake and a certificate), so I'm popping the champagne.  Many, many, many thanks to Gerry Shapiro, who nominated me, and all the faculty and students who wrote letters on my behalf. 
 
If you're interested in poetry and latinidad--or just questions of ethnicity, identity, and writing--then check out this amazing new project by Francisco Aragón, the Latino/a Poets Roundtable, featuring Maria Melendez, Blas Falconer, and nine other great poets.  I'm looking forward to reading it slowly.  There's a lot to take in.

Lastly, faithful readers, my contract for THE DESIRE PROJECTS is being negotiated as I type.  (Love you, Mitchell the miraculous agent!) 

Does this excitement make me nervous, scatterbrained, unable to focus, unable to eat?  It does. 

Am I dying to tell you?  I am. 

Am I prudent enough to wait until the ink is dry? 

Just barely, lovely people.  Just barely.




 


 
 

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Shout Outs!

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Many happy returns of the day!  I'm so happy to say that the Memoir and Latinidad panel forged ahead at AWP--sans Gustavo, Stephanie, and me, but ahead nonetheless, and all reports say it was fantastic!  Chisme travels fast, and I heard that Luis Rodriguez, Rigoberto González, and AWP vice president Francisco Aragón--who was kind enough to step in and read my intro (mil gracias, Francisco!), and who blogs here--did a knockout job.  ¡Órale! 

Thanks to all the great folks who showed up, including Lorraine López, John Phillip Santos, and Magda Montiel Davis, who took these beautiful photos of the panelists:

Luis J. Rodriguez


Francisco Aragón, left, and Rigoberto González

One kind thing Luis did was to pass out photocopies of the little 3-page bibliography of resources that Stephanie and I--and my great grad assistant Sindu--worked on so hard in advance:  lists of memoirs by Latinas y Latinos, lightly fictionalized memoirs, edited collections of short memoir pieces (Muy Macho:  Latino Men Confront Their Manhood; Telling to Live:  Latina Feminist Testimonios; Growing Up Chicana/o, etc.), criticism, and great online resources, too.  I hope it will be a help to anyone who wants to teach, research, or just read for pleasure some Latin@ memoirs.

If anybody out there wants a copy, shoot me an email and I'll send it to you.

Lastly, and on a totally different topic, a giant shout-out to Dr. Sara Puotinen and her students at the University of Minnesota, who just finished reading and discussing my essay "On Becoming Educated" in their Contemporary Feminist Debates class.  Too cool!  Thank you for reading!  I hope you had a great discussion.

Here's something wild.  In that essay, I talk about how I tried (and failed) to get a piece by bell hooks included in the seminar on feminist theory that I took in graduate school.  I wanted so badly to read and discuss something that felt like home, that felt real and urgent and needful.   

Now my writing is being taught in a women's studies class?  I cannot tell you how truly weird and cool and disorienting that feels. 

Gratitude.  Wonder.  Wow.   


 
 

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Psyched!!!

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AWP is almost here!  It's like a non-stop party for writers, and I'm completely geeked out with excitement, like I get every time.  Parties and cocktails and old friends and fascinating panels--and a big fresh fluffy hotel bed to crash into every night.  (Aaahhh.  I'm just old enough to love that moment for itself.)   

This year, I'm really proud to be chairing a panel that's been forever in the making:  "Memoir and Latinidad," about the intersections between the genre of memoir and Latin@ issues.  If you'll be there, please come!  If you know a memoirist, or a Latin@, or a Latin@ memoirist who'll be there--or someone who teaches memoir and wants to amp up his or her knowledge about how ethnicity inflects it--please send them to

Thurgood Marshall East
10:30-11:45 a.m. on Thursday, February 3.


Here are my crazily major panelists (it's going to take me  my whole 12 minutes just to read out their awards):

Thumbnail image for r_gonzalez.jpgRigoberto González, lookin' mighty fine . . .


















                                  Gustavo Pérez Firmat, also lookin' fine--and also shockingly friendly and approachable for someone who's todo brilliant and prolific . . .
Thumbnail image for Firmat.jpg












Thumbnail image for Luis Rodriguez.jpgLuis J. Rodriguez, lookin' all rugged and thoughtful . . .















. . . and Stephanie Elizondo Griest, lookin' all smart and beautiful.












These are all awesome, awesome people, and--since I've gotten sneak previews of their papers--I'm dead serious when I tell you that they have some really fascinating and surprising things to say.  Seriously.  If you teach and/or write memoir, you're gonna wanna know this stuff. 

I'm also happy to be reading a brand-new essay on a panel hosted by Lorraine López called Reverent Irreverence:  Women Writing Spirituality.  One of my favorite writers--and one of the funniest I know, too--will be on the panel, too:  Heather Sellers.  I can't wait to hear everyone read.

As a teaser, here's the first line of mine:

Mired in the culty weirdness of my upbringing, I imagined strange things as a child.

Believe me:  strange things.  And I ain't just a-kiddin', as we used to say in West Virginia.

So that panel is in Thurgood Marshall West, on Friday the 4th at noon. 

About both of these panels, I'm ridiculously excited.  I have to confide, though:  I'm also excited about getting to debut my pretty new coat.  (If you happen to see me with it on--and that will be easily accomplished, since I may not take it off, at all, ever--please do spare a moment to drink it in.)

Hope to see you there!  If you're a reader of the blog but we haven't met yet, do come up and introduce yourself!



 
 

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Nebraska = The New Arizona?

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Seriously?  Really?  Were some Nebraskans not awake during the shootings?

Not only has anti-immigrant legislation comparable to Arizona's been introduced this session (Governor Dave Heineman ran on that promise), but so has legislation eliminating multicultural education in the schools--again, similar to Arizona's, but tucked inconspicuously in among a bunch of educational budget issues (clever:  using the budget woes to fight the culture wars).  My rockin' boss Amelia Montes, the Director of the Institute for Ethnic Studies, will be testifying on Monday down at the Capitol against LB333.

Banning such education makes a sinister kind of sense, though.  Education has always gone hand in hand with power.  Strip away people's chance to gain knowledge of their history, struggles, and the hands-on specifics of how change got accomplished, and they'll be rendered conveniently mute, subservient.  They won't know the successful strategies of their predecessors or have the chance to be inspired by their courage and perseverance.  They'll internalize the racism that's thrown at them every day, and they'll feel shame.  They'll work hard, keep their heads down, feel fearful.

But only for a while.  Oppression never lasts.  Truth always wins out in the end, and people always, always rise up, driven by a deep sense of worth, justice, and equality. 

But it takes work and struggle.  If you're in Nebraska and want to protest the imposition of Arizona-style laws onto our lives, you can attend the Rally for the Good Life on January 27th.  Meet on the west side of the Capitol, by the statue of Lincoln, at noon.  If you want to learn more about immigration, my favorite local bookstore is hosting a film & discussion series this spring.  Indigo Bridge is one of the coziest places in downtown Lincoln, so come drink coffee, bring a friend, and talk with strangers about a situation that affects us all.  The series is called Beyond Rhetoric:  An Open Discussion on Immigration, and four documentaries will be screened, starting next Thursday, the 27th, and ending in March.

As I teach Chicana & Chicano Literature to my lovely, bright undergraduate students this semester, I feel weirdly aware of being in the middle of history:  history being made, contested, hammered out.  We're reading the speeches of César Chávez right now, and his words from the 1960s (!) couldn't be more timely and pertinent. 

These are strange days, people.  Interesting times (as in the classic curse).  In way too many ways.

It's curious.  I teach with the awareness that some of my fellow Nebraskans feel hostile toward what I do every day in the classroom.  Sometimes this awareness of teaching at the center of a storm energizes and invigorates me, giving my work a strengthened sense of urgency and purpose.  Sometimes it's just an ordinary day.  Sometimes I feel sad, or weary, or vulnerable. 

But no matter how vulnerable I feel, I will not--despite the new legislation State Senator Mark Christensen has introduced, LB516--be toting a gun.  Híjole.  Sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying.

I'll end with some words from César Chávez himself:  "When people are involved in something constructive, trying to bring about change, they tend to be less violent than those who are not engaged in rebuilding or in anything creative."  Published in 1969; still ringing true. 

Chávez called violence "the shortcut."  In contrast, positive change-makers are patient.  We're in it for the long haul.

 
 
 

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Would You Boycott Nebraska?

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Here's hoping you don't have to.  But incumbent governor Dave Heineman wants to push for immigration legislation resembling Arizona's.  In fact, he's running for reelection on that promise.  (Moreover, although his official stance, according to his website, "is pro-life," and he supposedly "strongly believes in the culture of life," he's already cut prenatal care to undocumented mothers.  If he moves forward on this, that's the kind of compassion we can expect.)

Many writers, artists, and intellectuals--not to mention just plain folks--have already boycotted Arizona. 

I know that many of you are writers.  Would you boycott Nebraska if Governor Heineman (if reelected--and there's a good chance he will be) pushes for Arizona-like legislation? 

If you would, here's where you can drop him a short note.  Use your voice to let Heineman know that the rest of the country is watching, and that if Nebraska follows Arizona's lead, the state will lose.  Nebraska will lose not only the labor and cultural contributions of the Latinas & Latinos who will leave, but also the cultural and intellectual opportunities provided by distinguished visitors.  (The Avaaz model--people from around the world, letting political leaders know they're watching--has been incredibly successful.  Help implement it here in the U.S.)

~

On the bright side, here's another reason I hope you don't end up having to boycott Nebraska.  The lovely Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts has great residencies.  The deadline for summer 2011 residencies is March 1, so you still have plenty of time, and I've been told explicitly that "diverse participation is encouraged."  Plus, it's only an hour from here, so if you get a residency, we can hang out!
 
 

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