Latino Book Tour – ¡Cibolero!

Kermit Lopez’s Cibolero is the story of Antonio Baca, a retired cibolero (buffalo hunter) born and raised in 19^th-century New Mexico via several generations of what were, at the time, Mexican citizens. But once the American Civil War is over, American expansion takes a turbulent turn, and what had once been New Spain and indigenous lands before that are violently incorporated into the United States of America. Antonio’s family is ambushed by Texas Rangers while he’s away. They try to kill his son and kidnap his daughter Elena. Determined to return her to his family, he sets out on a “hunt,” tracking her vicious captors through the dramatic landscapes of the southwest territories, before it’s too late.

While reading this compelling page-turner, I recalled the first time I read Howard Zinn’s eye-opening A People’s History of the United States, where the common timeline of our nation’s formation is dissected to expose much uglier, predatory truths. Reading Cibolero (which combines actual history with original fiction) inspires an expansion of one’s awareness—in regards to the roots of today’s ongoing USA-Mexico border issues and Mexican-American tensions in general. Cibolero clearly illustrates that many, if not most, of the native peoples of our hemisphere were murdered in the process of being robbed of everything they had. Murdered by the Spanish, English—even by “Americans.”

I had the opportunity to ask Mr. Lopez a few questions about his book and his writing process and he answered each of them with professionalism and intelligent skepticism. And please be sure to leave a comment here to be entered in a drawing for a free copy of the book!  

CV: Your book Cibolero is packed with lots of historical trivia. You mentioned that you researched your family history back to the days of New Spain (Mexico) in what is now the southwest USA, New Mexico specifically. Did this research alone inspire you to write Cibolero, or were there, as a writer, other themes you had a desire to chart out?

KL: Although I was inspired to write Cibolero as a result of my research into my family history, there was also a desire to set the record straight about U.S. history, and in particular, the Hispanic experience in the U.S. People tend to forget that Santa Fe, New Mexico, for example, is the oldest state capital in the U.S. and that New Mexico had been settled for hundreds of years before the arrival of the Anglo-Americans in the 19th century. I was also driven to write Cibolero as result of the anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican attitudes prevalent in the U.S. in recent years. I wanted to demonstrate that what is now the western U.S. was settled by Mexicans long before the Anglo-American immigrants made their way west. So there were a number of reasons for writing Cibolero, in addition to wanting to write an entertaining adventure story.

CV: Antonio, the protagonist, is on a mission to recover his kidnapped daughter from a group of Texan outlaws who’ve abducted her. What are the parallels (if any) between Antonio’s journey and yours, in relation to him finding Elena and you completing this book?

KL: Antonio’s journey is symbolic of the struggles that our grandfathers faced and which we still face today. My great-grandfather, for example, was born in a little village in northern New Mexico, but left the state in the early 1900s to work in the sugar-beet fields of Colorado, where he faced intense discrimination and poverty. Fast forward to modern times. In my years as an attorney I have encountered highly educated people who are bigots and racists. The lesson of Antonio is not to give up, in whatever endeavor we face, and to go forward and do what must be done to overcome.  

CV: Your novel touches on many poignant aspects of humanity: race, gender, justice, corruption. What do you want people to walk away with most after reading Cibolero? And can you name three of your favorite writers and why?

KL: First and foremost, I would like people to walk away entertained. If I’ve accomplished that, then the primary goal of writing the novel is accomplished. Second, I would like the reader to take away an interest in U.S. and Mexican history that they will follow up with on other readings and research. I can’t say that I have a “favorite” writer, but a few would include Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove), Ken Follett (Pillars of the Earth), and Leon Uris (Trinity). Each of these writers captures a sense of time and place and also crafts good stories, page turners.  

About the author:

Kermit Lopez wrote “Cibolero” after researching his family ancestry, which spans four hundred years of New Mexico history.  He received electrical engineering and law degrees from the University of New Mexico and lives with his wife and son in Albuquerque.   Mr. Lopez is also the author of the novel The Prodigy.

 

To purchase Cibolero, click here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Cibolero+Lopez

Well, that wraps up this installment of Kermit Lopez’s Latino Book Tour and be sure to check out these other blogs that will be hosting him. For more info on these tours, and to help in enriching latinidad through literature, go to: http://latinobooktours.com

Mon Jan 25th: Sandra’s Book Club

Tues Jan 26th: Regular Rumination

Wed Jan 27th: Latino Book Examiner

Thurs Jan 28th: Mama XXI

Mon Feb 1st: Heidenkind’s Hideaway

Tues Feb 2nd: Efrain’s Corner

Wed Feb 3rd: BronzeWord Latino Authors

Thurs Feb 4th: Musings

More to come on February 1^st!

To receive my bimonthly posts straight to your email, register here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

Sexy Socialism and HISPANIC PANIC!

Before we roll into the featured book part of this posting, a quick reminder about the upcoming HISPANIC PANIC! reading coming up on Wednesday, January 27^th. For those of you in Gotham, I cordially invite you to join me, Rob “Simply Rob” Vassilarakis, Claudia Narvaez-Meza, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Roberto Santiago, Yazmin Peña, and Carlos Manuel Rivera for an evening of enchanting poetry and prose that celebrates the joys and travails of queer Latino New York life and more. Free, 21+, 8PM sharp, at Nowhere NYC, 322 E 14^th St (1^st/2^nd).

So I’ve been blessed with an exorbitant amount of reading material lately (poor me, I know) and as expected, some of it makes a deeper impression than its company. One such book many of you will enjoy is the very excellent Sexuality and Socialism (Haymarket Books, 2009), by activist and writer Sherry Wolf. This comprehensive and compact volume left me wanting more, quite honestly. Wolf traces back to the roots of LGBT oppression, as we countered gender-specific roles of what men and women should be like and do, in order to feed the capitalist-industrial machine of an expanding global economy. The more we embraced our orientations and forged our identities, the stronger the punishment.

Wolf challenges the notion of Marxist homophobia and clearly resurrects the beginning of the gay power movement that sought visibility and equality for LGBT-identified people the nation over. Putting the gender and identity politics of our histories under the microscope, she paints a fascinating and empathetic picture of our history in ways that are often overlooked or ignored…making it clear, for example, that the Stonewall Riots were largely incited by gay street kids and black, Latino, and transgendered misfits—not the middle-class white men who stormed in after the fact to claim the movement and lead the chant.

What struck me most was Wolf’s discussion covering sexuality’s relationship to government and economics—(hey, some of us learn later than others!).  As a lesbian socialist she explains that because of the Industrial Revolution and movement away from agrarian family structure, people were able to establish themselves outside of the nuclear family model, embracing new identities and lifestyles, such as with LGBT people. Add steep class divisions to the mix, which are intrinsic to capitalism, and the picture becomes murky and exploitative. As she states in the very last chapter:

“As this book has tried to flesh out, even the most intimate and seemingly individual aspects of our lives—the ways we express our gender and sexuality—are molded by the physical realities of our world. This central fact points to the need to revolutionize our material circumstances in order to truly liberate our sexual lives. The condition of the one is the pre-condition of the other. It is for this reason that sexual liberation appears impossible without the political, economic, and social liberation that lies at the heart of socialism.”

Lots of food for thought.

My buddy and scribe extraordinaire Lee Houck has a new poetry collection out called Warnings. For more info on that go here: http://leehouck.com/page2/page2.html

It’s only 8.00 and that includes shipping! For real poetry…

Here is the list of PANIC! themes for the first half of 2010. I need readers, so tell your friends! I can be contacted at: firekingpress@yahoo.com for any reading inquiries/pitches. Send new blood my way if you can…PANIC! has cultivated a revolving roster of great writers from all over New York City’s LGBT writing scene, but this vampire needs new blood…okay enough of that…but speaking of blood, February’s BLOOD PANIC! reading is shaping up to be a total creep-fest. Can’t wait.

January            HISPANIC PANIC!  (Latino writers/poets featured)

February          BLOOD PANIC! (murder stories/horror)

March              LOVE PANIC! (stories of love/dreams come true, etc.)

April                SPRING FEVER (erotica/sexual themes)

May                 HISPANIC PANIC!

June                 PANIC PRIDE READING (mixed themes/writers of color)

So as I reported on New Year’s Day, the news is official! Rebel Satori Press is publishing my second novel Contraband in spring of 2010! I’ll feed you more info on this as it develops, but just to give you an idea of the book – it details the escape/flight of a paranoid government worker during a bloody revolution in America, during a tense time when “certain people” are executed upon the discovery of “certain genes” in their DNA. I’ll leave it at that for now… but my short story “An Old Man in Paris,” (originally titled “The Crazy Man”) has been published in the latest edition of Ganymede. Check it out:  

http://www.ganymedenyc.com/

All for now. Stay warm, kittens. My website: http://www.firekingpress.com/

xoxo Charlie

 

To receive my bimonthly posts straight to your email, register here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

¡Químbara!

Happy New Jeer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creole Religions of the Caribbean

By Margarite Fernández Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert (NYU, 2003)

As a child I was surrounded by lots of Cuban and Puerto Rican mysticism—my mother was a santería enthusiast (though not a fully-indoctrinated member) and my sometimes kindergarten babysitter was an iyalocha (priestess) in the santería religion. My mother kept an active altar in her bedroom bureau throughout my entire childhood, and it was there that I went to meditate on internal and spiritual matters—a born witch I am, I suppose. The history of santería and other Caribbean “religions” is indeed a complex and fascinating one.

Creole Religions of the Caribbean is a revealing study of a variety of syncretic practices and cultures that were born and conceived by the merging and combining of, at times, very alien elements—as in the case of santería with Yoruba religion (Regla de Ocha) and Catholicism. And that’s just the beginning! The Caribbean’s diverse islands and archipelagos are also home to Vodou, Regla de Palo, the Abakú Secret Society, Obeah, Quimbois, Rastafarianism, Myal, and Espiritismo. Indigenous, African, European, and (in the case of Quimbois) Indian/South Asian spiritualities collide to form new ones.

Forming under the glare of Christian dominance, each of these religions traces a different historical course, from inception to full realization. Creole Religions of the Caribbean is a textural and culturally-sensitive study on each of these unique systems—systems of magic and sorcery that more commonly garner venom from Christians and others, reactions born out of superstition, racism, xenophobia, and ignorance. Anyone who enjoys reading about esoteric history and/or sorcery will enjoy this book fondly—it opens too many doors to discuss here.

Muy sexy.

Speaking of sexy spirits, my friend Emanuel Xavier’s newest spoken-word venture with El David (Legendary) is doing rather well and making all kinds of bestseller lists for spoken word CD and music-file sales. I have a copy (thanks Manny)! Emanuel is the first poet I ever heard of and read who wove the mythology of the santerian canon into his über-queer and fearless work. Go papi! (More info at the links below.)

CD Baby: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/EmanuelXavier2

I-tunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/legendary-spoken-word-poetry-emanuel/id345270498

HISPANIC PANIC! is coming…

We reconvene on Wednesday, January 27^th, with Carlos Manuel Rivera, Rob Vassilarakis, Rigoberto González, Claudia Narvaez-Meza (still crossing my fingers), and Roberto Santiago. More details to follow on the January 15^th post.

Here is the list of PANIC! themes for the first half of 2010. I need readers, y’all!

January            HISPANIC PANIC!  (Latino writers/poets featured)

February          BLOOD PANIC! (murder stories/horror)

March              LOVE PANIC! (stories of love/dreams come true, etc.)

April                SPRING FEVER (erotica/sexual themes)

May                 HISPANIC PANIC!

June                 PANIC PRIDE READING (mixed themes/writers of color)

Already a year? To read my interview with Professor Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé regarding his book Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza on Advocate.com, click below:

http://www.advocate.com/Arts_and_Entertainment/Art/Art__39;s_Forgotten_Widow/

So the news is official! Rebel Satori Press is publishing my second novel Contraband in spring of 2010! Yippee! I’ll feed you more info on this as it develops, but just to give you an idea of the book – it details the escape/flight of a paranoid government worker during a bloody revolution in America, during a tense time when “certain people” are executed upon the discovery of “certain genes” in their DNA. I’ll leave it at that for now… but my short story “An Old Man in Paris,” (originally titled “The Crazy Man”) has been published in the latest edition of Ganymede. Check it out:  

http://www.ganymedenyc.com/

I’ve been asked to be a judge for the 2010 Publishing Triangle Awards and am reading between thirty and forty books for that alone. So bear with me for a couple more months and I’ll be back on track, bringing you the latest in hot Latino literature and renegade LGBT culture. In the mean time have a safe and happy 2010.

My website: http://www.firekingpress.com/

xoxo Charlie

To receive my bimonthly posts straight to your email, register here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

HOMOPHOBIA à la Sarah Schulman’s “Ties that Bind”

Activist, author, and playwright Sarah Schulman’s new book Ties that Bind shines some revealing light on the pathology of homophobia: its roots in early family life and its devastating impact on people who are simply trying to live their lives. Schulman points out that the family, as an entity, is a microcosm of society-at-large and homophobia’s springboard, where rival family members learn to intimidate and be intimidated, in addition to other fracturing behaviors that lead to social divisions that dramatically grow nastier in force—as their effects leave the “nest” and arrive at our great and complex “world.”

She is quick to point out that this pattern of inequality is often seen as normal by non-queers: the queer person is less and deserves all the hurtful actions thrust upon him/her—such as not being invited to weddings, being denied the human right to form a loving relationship with nieces and nephews, and other catastrophic punishments that hurt not only the person being singled out, but the rest of the family, by the simple act of keeping someone of cultural value to children at a cruel distance.

She admits that a primary need for writing this book was so that her younger relatives (children) might someday read it and get to hear her side of this tragic—and unfortunately common—story. This broke my heart as a gay man who is the only male mentor to his youngest brother, a brother with whom I’m building a strong and educating bond with. I know that my love and cultural leanings are having a positive influence on him (his grades have since improved) and my soul sinks knowing that children everywhere are being deprived of this magical bond, as my own father shunned me for who I am, all the way to his grave.

Schulman explores various arenas of contemporary life where homophobia (especially against lesbians—and often by other queers!) rears its spiteful head. The worlds of theater, entertainment media, and publishing hardly came as a surprise, communities with which she has a prolonged history of engagement and interaction with. But when she points out that relevant lesbian fiction and plays are shamelessly not published and produced in America I seethed. How can this be? In theater in New York City? In the vast reach of contemporary publishing? This divide in the world of literature and the arts is preposterous.

But Schulman’s primary thrust for making long-term changes is that third-party intervention is crucially needed. The civil rights movement got a significant boost from whites who opposed their black neighbors’ oppression. They stood up for them and marched. If you have two cousins (one gay, one not) and the straight cousin harasses the gay cousin for being who he/she is, you ought to call out this injustice—no matter who you are. Not saying anything allows this to continue and be perceived as acceptable. It’s time now, to squash unnecessary miseries for tomorrow’s gays, who just may be your own nieces and brothers—your own children. Three thumbs up, Sarah!

To receive my bimonthly posts straight to your email, register here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

Backtrack: Drown and The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue

So as I did a few postings ago, I’m going to backtrack a bit, to books that I completed before revamping this blog’s format last spring. I perused my newly organized “Latino Studies and Latino fiction” bookshelves and found two jewels—although very different jewels—that deserve some blog “airtime.”

Junot Diaz’s Drown (Riverhead Books, 1996) is a hectic short story collection whose locations switch with the twist of a page, moving from the tropical dramas of the Dominican Republic’s countryside to the urban ruin of New Jersey. And it’s also an honest and (at times) gut-wrenching assemblage of powerful tales achieved with zero pretense—this is street-smart storytelling at its finest. Spinning in an estranged headspace of fatherless abandon, sexual curiosity, country-boy simplicity, and suburban frustration, the voices behind these ten short stories command your full attention and speak in so visual a manner that you smell the Presidente beers, taste the guanábana fruit, and hear the arguing couple down the hall. This is great stuff. I promise to get to Oscar Wao soon. Terrible of me—even I can’t believe it.

I read The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue (Algonquin, 2007) last year when a writer friend recommended it to me. Revisiting it as I wrote this posting, the stories flew back to me as soon as I flipped through the pages. Manuel Muñoz is an extremely gifted storyteller whose characters (and their troubles) come to life in precious seconds. The interconnected stories in this collection take place in and around Fresno, California, and its surrounding region—a bleak interior landscape where people’s lives intertwine perversely. Tragic deaths, Mexican-American race relations, intergenerational dramas, crime—these are all covered in these enchanted pages and there were even a couple of cruel surprises, but what good would it do to tell you? I’m curious to see what comes next from Señor Muñoz.

In news: I’m submitting my novel Contraband: A Revolution of the Soul to Rebel Satori Press in just a few short days. We’re hoping to see it come out this coming spring, so I’ll update you as we go. Needless to say I’m very excited!

To receive my bimonthly posts straight to your email, register here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

Gomorrah, Ganymede, and the “Legendary E-mix”

Stumbling into the middle of the month here…sorry I’m a day late. I spent most of yesterday in beautiful Philadelphia, where we spent a day with good friends at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the historic district, and a few other places in between—nice town. Can’t wait to go back. And DREAM PANIC! lands on Wednesday, November 25th, 8PM, at Nowhere…featuring stories and poetry about dreams, by writers John Williams, Chadwick Moore, Vince Bernard, Patricia Gardner, and Tom Cardamone…should be great.

Next post should be “back to my rhythm” –so to speak. We have different rhythm this time!

Speaking of off-rhythm…I picked up a copy of Roberto Saviano’s terrifying GOMORRAH: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System (Picador, 2007). I remember hearing about this book in spring 2008, when I was helping a friend with PR work for the PEN WORLD VOICES literary festival. I was intrigued by a press release we were sending out that spoke of a young Italian writer put under police protection for publishing an exposé on the Neapolitan criminal underworld that he grew up surrounded by.

Roberto Saviano studied philosophy at the University of Naples and this comes through hauntingly in his, at times, longwinded and poetic dissections of the lascivious Neapolitan crime underworld (Virgina Jewiss’s translation is riveting as well). Identity and privilege in this subculture are dictated by gender, region and dialect, and most notoriously, family name. The feuds here are eternal and vicious. I could only compare what I read to the inherent violence that exists between African lions and hyenas—any damage is good. Despite the bloodbath politics, Saviano leads the reader on many fascinating sideline tangents involving the Chinese in Italy, Angelina Jolie, and the advent and exaltation of the world’s most-used weapon for genocide and murder—the AK-47.

Some time ago I announced that the Ganymede literary journal published an essay of mine about coming out as a gay Latino man, as I was following the punk avant-garde and electronica movements. Well, Ganymede is at it again! Editor John Stahle has just informed me that they’re announcing the release for Ganymede Stories One, a 6×9 paperback book featuring the stories of Erik Karl Anderson, Marc Andreottola, Cyrus Cassells, Wayne Hoffman, B.R. Lyon, Ryan Doyle May, Sam J. Miller, Andrew J. Peters, Boris Pintar, Adam Jeffries Schwartz, Ennis Smith, John Stahle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charlie Vázquez, Oscar Wilde. More info on that here:

http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1308479

And last and certainly not least…

New York City’s very own Emanuel Xavier, former hustler, pill pusher, and pier queen-turned-author-and-poet talked with me about “Legendary (The E-Mix)”, his latest House music collaboration with producer/DJ El David and the story behind the words. This is an exciting new project from the author of the breakthrough novel Christ Like and the editor of gay/Latino powerhouse poetry and erotica anthologies…

CV: So why “Legendary (The E-Mix)” as the title of your first dance single?

 

EX: I’m not a dance artist per se. I’m a spoken word artist who happens to have been involved in the House culture and club scene of the late 80s and early 90s and this is my tribute to that. It’s a remix from a forthcoming spoken word/music collaboration CD celebrating my contributions to the spoken word poetry movement. It’s based on one of my signature poems titled, “Legendary,” from an anthology I edited, Bullets & Butterflies: queer spoken word poetry, published in 2005.

CV: Any challenges in making this project happen?

 

EX: Before meeting El David, I had discussed the possibility of collaborating on this with several other deejays and producers, but I don’t think they took me seriously and nothing ever happened. I once staged this (and a few other poems) with a classical composer and string quartet—so my first music collaboration was quite different from this experience!

CV: So why “E-Mix” instead of remix? (laughs) 

 

EX: Both Emanuel and El David start with the letter “e” so it was simply our way of acknowledging our mutual collaboration in making this project happen. Of course, because it’s a House record and I am an openly gay artist, people mistakenly associate the “e” with Ecstasy. I stopped doing drugs back in the mid-90s, but I’m not judgmental, so people can take from it what they want.  It’s all about feeling good and celebrating life.

Info: http://www.emanuelxavier.com/

More on December 1^st!

To receive my bimonthly posts straight to your email, register here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

¡El día de los muertos!

Happy El día de los muertos!

 

Isn’t my little brother cute? This was taken at the St. Marks-in-the-Bowery Church last night/Halloween. And is that a full moon I see out there (at 5PM) over a quickly darkening Gotham? Hmm, mischief indeed. So, before I honor Mexican and Mexican-American/Chicano literature for this post, some quick news. A month full of readings (readings galore) has come to an end. And although I enjoyed every single one of them, they took me away from my main joy—which is hiding and working on my next “thing.” So that’s what I’ll be doing for the rest of the year, in addition to reading lots of books for the Publishing Triangle—who have asked me to be a judge for the 2010 awards, in the gay and lesbian non-fiction categories. What an honor!

PANIC! at the library (la segunda parte) will take place at the Mott Haven Public Library on Saturday, November 7^th, 2:15PM, and will feature Cristina Izaguirre, Charles Rice-González, Karen Jaime, and me, your host. This reading will wrap up the blitz! November 25^th will be the year’s finale for PANIC!, which takes December off. November readers for DREAM PANIC! will include the (my) lovely John Williams, Chadwick Moore, Vincent Bernard, Tom Cardamone and perhaps one more reader (confirmed list will post on the 15^th). The readers have been asked to read stories and poetry that feature dream sequences or similar aspects of the subconscious…

Okay…los libros…

 

 

 

Esperanza’s Box of Saints (Simon and Schuster, 1999)

by María Amparo Escandón

One of the fun things about reviewing books isn’t always getting your claws on the latest hot title, but finding something you somehow missed and playing a nice game of catch-up with it. My gym has a lender’s library and it’s a habit of mine to peruse it for random treasures. Esperanza’s Box of Saints is one such find. By page twenty or so I wondered why I was even reading it, but by the time I got to the middle I could not put it down.

So, small town in Mexico…

Esperanza is a woman plagued by tragedy and loss. Her father drowned when the local river flooded, her husband died in a nasty bus crash, and her daughter was taken to a hospital for a simple procedure and did not make it out alive. Esperanza becomes convinced that the doctor lied about her daughter’s death when she’s not permitted to view the body—but is presented with a coffin nailed shut. After she sneaks into the cemetery at night and digs down to the coffin (which she taps on and is convinced it is empty), she insists that her daughter Blanca is alive and has been kidnapped and enslaved in a brothel.

Esperanza leaves her small town of Tlacotalpan with her box of saint statues (which divine knowledge to her) and arrives at the whorehouses of Tijuana, where she begins her determined investigation and search—which takes her illegally across the border (in the trunk of a car owned by a lawyer who falls in love with her). Once in Los Angeles, however, Esperanza’s quest for Blanca nets her an unexpected prize—one which I cannot tell you, but something that helps to heal all of the wounds that make her such an adorable character. Think love.  

 

 

Memory Fever (University of Arizona Press, 1999)

by Ray Gonzalez

Ray Gonzalez is a sorcerer with words and imagery—and to the highest degree. He is an organic force of literary nature whose work sucks you in like quicksand that cannot be denied, defeated, or conquered. His very excellent Memory Fever is an essay collection that reads as a broken-up memoir, one decorated with compelling excursions into family history, the subcultures of youth, religion, poetry, and the absolute and endlessly inspiring reverence of the complex desert ecosystems and environments in which he’s chosen to call home. Most of the book takes place in and around El Paso, Texas—an epicenter of border politics, racism, and middle-class Americana aspirations.

Gonzalez begins with an ode to the deserts that once claimed the lives of conquistadors and weaves his personal history into that of the colonizing of the New World—he places himself (through his words) at the very beginning—before New Spain, Texas, and New Mexico even existed. Throughout these poetic time-capsules he is made to slaughter rattlesnakes, resides in a haunted house by the Rio Grande, buries hundreds of sparrow killed in an unusually powerful rainstorm, buys his first Beatles record, works at his father’s billiards hall, ponders the politics of celebrating Columbus Day, and makes his mystical forays into the worlds of psychedelic drugs and literature.

This collection will shine for anyone interested in the Chicano perspective that dominates the Latino experience in America (two-thirds, I believe). Not only does Gonzalez seduce with his words—you learn things in his spells. He knows much about desert creatures for instance, and the myriad trivia tidbits he releases make his work that more fascinating. His introduction to popular culture, via the Beatles, rang with a degree of innocence I simply do not observe anymore. His connection to our planet and all of the magic inherent to it breathes life into his words and hurls them over the line, from mere observation and identification (seeing/reading), to empowering them to open doors to your own memories and emotions (perceiving/feeling).

 

This was taken after the Halloween/Day of the Dead festival at El Museo Del Barrio, NYC. If you didn’t make it this year I recommend you try next year…fun for everyone…

See you sooooooon!

Charlie

To receive my bimonthly posts straight to your email, register here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

Ghosts, Gangs, Readings, and Cigars!

 

I’ve been so busy this month that I haven’t had time to cover new material, so I’m posting three short reviews of books I did not cover since changing the format of this blog this past spring. Also, there are still readings galore happening this month in New York City, so if you feel the need to catch some literary talent in real-time, consult the News page on my website for those listings. http://www.firekingpress.com

 

This month’s PANIC! reading theme is SPIRITS and we have a great evening planned for you at Nowhere on Wednesday, October 28^th, 8PM. Please come out and join me, Mia Roman Hernández, Sean Meriwether, Rosalind Lloyd, Robert Vázquez-Pacheco, and Mure Vyn for spooky stories relating to the spirit world—all in time for Halloween and El Día de los Muertos! Put on something warm and bring a friend…

 

  

 

The Cigar Roller (Grove Press, 2005)

By Pablo Medina

 

 

You should never judge a book by its size either, as my undersized edition packs a mean and hearty story into its postcard-sized binding. Amadeo Terra, the main character and master cigar-roller, reflects on his hard life on a hospital bed after surviving a devastating stroke. The taste of mango baby-food unleashes a series of flashbacks that open doors to others, as his health deteriorates and the ghosts of his past come back to haunt him. This story’s arrangement is akin to the common belief that one’s life passes before one’s eyes as death encroaches closer. Medina’s writing style is revealing and visual and sweeps the entire storyline—from Amadeo’s family’s journey to Tampa from Havana, to the remembrance of his most soul-crushing memory—with the finesse of a calligrapher’s pen and brush. The Cigar Roller is a shocking and brutally honest look at the complex inner-life of a wounded man who passes that pain on to others however possible. Amadeo is the machismo-charged father, brother, uncle, grandfather, whose hand was always too heavy, whose heart seemed not quite right—and whose secrets you would never know. File this little book under “heavy reading”—a major triumph of heartbreaking Latino fiction.

 

 

Legends of the City of Mexico (Lethe Press, 2002)

By Thomas Janvier

 

 

Legends of the City of Mexico is a collection compiled by Thomas A. Janvier with the help of his wife. The Janviers were members of the London Folklore Society and lived in Monterey for many years, where these stories were divulged to them by villagers at the turn of the 20^th century.  Skeletons avenging their murders with daggers still lodged in their skulls; tales of forbidden love, torture, and vengeance; the eerie tricks played by witches and ghosts—these themes fill these pages with the same hair-raising terror invoked by genre masters such as Edgar Allan Poe (think Poe meets Cervantes meets El Día de los Muertos). I was reminded that this brand of storytelling is nearly gone in our times—harsh realism and sugary fantasy seem to be the poles marking today’s literary spectrum. These stories all begin in the realm of possibility and snake their way to the supernatural without getting corny. It makes you wonder how and where they began, and how they changed through the centuries, as each teller’s version detoured away from the previous. Great Halloween gift!

 

 

This is for the Mara Salvatrucha: Inside the MS-13, America’s Most Violent Gang (Hyperion 2009)

By Samuel Logan

 

My parents used to consort with violent South Bronx street gangs in the 1970s and I have never once considered aligning myself with any organization as such, but the temptation and need exists for many and these gangs are as active as ever. I suppose I’m easy to shock in certain aspects and learning of random, fatal shootings and running people over repeatedly with cars made me stop to think about this strange and violent reality. The MS-13 is a Central American gang that formed in Los Angeles during the 1980s and has spread throughout the country, with heavy concentrations in Texas and throughout the South and Atlantic Seaboard. This book follows the story of “Brenda”, an intelligent gangster that becomes a snitch, hoping she can turn her life around after witnessing the cold-blooded murder of an innocent youth and deciding she’s had her fill of “the life.” The story intensifies when she gets pregnant and fellow gang members catch wind of her double-agent maneuvering, forcing them to put a price (green light) on her head. This book is for lovers of real crime stories and gang culture—very revealing.

Barrios, Board Rooms, Murder, Panic!, and more…

 

Wednesday, September 30^th sees the return of HISPANIC PANIC! to Nowhere, 8PM. This lineup of readers will include me, Erasmo Guerra, Maegan La Mala Ortiz, Brandon Lacy Campos, Robert Vázquez-Pacheco and cubana punk extraordinaire Cristy Road. This will be the sucker-punch to kick off Hispanic/Latino Heritage month. As for info on my other October readings, you can go to my website: http://www.firekingpress.com/ These will all be fun and FREE! 

 

 

 

 

From the Barrio to the Board Room, (Writers of the Round Table Press, 2008)

 

by Robert Renteria, as told to Corey Blake

 

 

Everyone’s heard the stale saying “don’t judge a book by its cover,” and I must admit that when I first picked up this book (on loan from Being Latino’s Lance Rios) I wasn’t sure I would like it as much as I did—I in fact came to love it. This is not a critique on the stylish book design, as it is a commentary on the type of books I generally read and often review—cultural non-fiction and original fiction. From the Barrio to the Board Room is a tightly-wound and edited memoir, told by a man with praiseworthy compassion and ambition. As a Latino man who lost his own father to chronic drug addiction and was raised by an encouraging and strong mother, Renteria’s story was haunting for me to take in—I often closed my eyes and shook my head at my own remembrances. Kudos for a story filled with moving tragedy and triumph!

 

At a time when Latinos are breaking through so many cultural barriers, this book could not have surfaced at a better time. Latinos, and working-class men in this book’s context, are commonly disabled through a lack of strong male mentors and positive, goal-oriented thinking and this is often compensated with “jailbird” bravado. Renteria’s story begins with his childhood in the impoverished East Los Angeles barrios, where at an early age he connects with other young men in his demographic through wild living, drugs, alcohol, and gangster culture. Like many of us who are more fortunate than others, Renteria had at least one forward-thinking male mentor, his grandfather Rogerio, who encouraged him to leave the slums of LA to find himself and make himself a better man—to dodge the fate the ghetto was waiting to dole out to him.

 

Following time spent in the US Army, Renteria focused on impeccable work ethic and honesty and won his first big break that saw him climb the corporate ladder. But he also witnessed the racism inherent to white, privileged male corporate culture—he was refused growth opportunity because of his Latino identity (though it was never said directly). Using this as inspiration, he set out to found his own empire. From the Barrio to the Board Room is a rags-to-riches story and beyond. It’s also about injecting compassion into corruption, to forge a new corporate culture of honesty and integrity, as any hardworking Latino would set out to do. This is a must-read for any young person who needs to read firsthand the wisdom of the book’s umbrella statement, “Don’t let where you came from dictate who you are, but let it be part of who you become.”

 

 

 

 

Alone in the Crowd (Henry Holt, 2009)

 

By Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

 

 

Alone in the Crowd caught my eye for two reasons: one, I rarely read mysteries anymore, and two, it’s written by the acclaimed Brazilian academic behind the Inspector Espinosa series of which I occasionally hear about.  I wanted to find out if writers are breaking molds in this most predictable of fiction genres.  I was impressed! Garcia-Roza succeeds almost effortlessly in involving the inspector’s (narrator’s) past with that of the killer in the most unusual of ways—I won’t spoil it for you of course, but I’ll admit that I was caught off-guard and that I probably read the last ten pages in under a minute, so bad did I want to know what would happen. Inspector Espinosa  gets hot on the trail of a suspected homicide—in which an elderly woman is run over by a city bus in Copacabana, Rio, and is suspected of being pushed in front of it.

 

A suspect, an antisocial bank clerk, Hugo Breno , is quickly singled out and investigated. The problem is, is that he knows this too and is super-elusive and as disciplined as a Navy Seal. Inspector Espinosa is simultaneously undergoing adjustments in his open-relationship with a bisexual woman, Irene. A love-triangle of sorts develops when her beautiful friend Vânia tries to seduce him—yet fails (can’t say why). When Espinosa realizes that Hugo Breno is part of his own dark and uncertain past, the mystery begins to unravel. Although Espinosa knows that Breno is the killer—he has no evidence. That is, until the inspector’s own trauma-induced blacking-out of childhood memories undoes itself and the past rushes back to meet the present, where the inspector almost loses his life.

 

 

So quickly, before you leave me…

 

I was nominated by the Latinos in Social Media  for Best NY Latino blogger! Isn’t that great…as I love what I do regardless. The winners will be announced this Thursday, so if you could be a star and go to this link and vote for me I will love you forever, even though we’re mortal. They’re giving away a new Toshiba laptop as the prize and I could use it…like REALLY use it! Please vote for me here: http://latism.org/latism-ny/ny-awards/

 

 

xoxo Charlie

 

To receive my bimonthly posts straight to your email, register here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

Cuentos Del Centro, Spic Chic, and Ganymede!

Hello friends everywhere, old and new…

 

Wednesday, September 30^th sees the return of HISPANIC PANIC! to Nowhere, 8PM. This lineup of readers will include me, Erasmo Guerra, Maegan La Mala Ortiz, Brandon Lacy Campos, Robert Vázquez-Pacheco and cubana punk extraordinaire Cristy Road. This will be the sucker-punch to kick off Hispanic/Latino Heritage month and boy will I be busy for that, but details to follow. This post includes reviews of three books, two of which I’ve read (Cuentos Del Centro and Spic Chic) and one that published an essay I wrote called “Teenage Transformer” (Ganymede), on how I grew into an underground culture identity, and a queer Latino one, at the same time—how they’re the same thing to me. And to be published alongside David Sedaris, Edmund White, and Oscar Wilde is nothing short of—um, psychedelic!

 

 

 

 

Cuentos Del Centro: Stories from the Latino Heartland (Scapegoat Press, 2009)

 

 

As Carlos Cumpián points out in the introduction—the writers assembled in this anthology hail from diverse places and bring their regional spices to add to the literary salsa that is Cuentos Del Centro —California, Colombia, Texas, Peru. This was a revealing volume for me to read, since I’ve only experienced Latino culture on the American coasts: Puerto Rican, Colombian, and Cuban culture on the East Coast and Mexican and Central-American in the west—with sprinklings of others. The stories in this book were composed by writers in the Latino Writers Collective in Kansas City, Missouri.

 

Chato Villalobos’s opening story “Barrio Angels” begins, “Barrio Angels. That’s how we referred to our sistas from the barrio that were on the honor roll but liked kicking it with us bad boys when their papis weren’t watching.” The tales begin here and weave through myriad experiences and perspectives, from Xánath’s Caraza’s mystical and erotic fiction account “At the Café on Huanjue Xiang Street” (It traversed her; it lightly brushed her nipples and sex until it made her lose consciousness), to the very serious and enraging “Hijo con Filo” by Miguel M. Morales, which studies the inner-world of a young field worker, whose family gets sprayed with pesticide, thanks to a cruel crop duster’s pilot.

 

Some of the stories discuss intergenerational themes (Whitney Boyd’s “No Tengas Vergùenza” and Linda Rodriguez’s “Why I Can’t Draw”); others recall toxic youth and folly (Maria Vasquez Boyd’s “Lucy in the Sky”). José Faus’s “El Regreso” is a haunting an introspective look at the longing felt for fathers who travel afar to work for too long, and Nathalie Olmsted’s “The Farmhouse” illustrates the terrifying crossroads where humanity and racism intersect, as witnessed by a Mexican family seeking refuge in a white family’s farmhouse, as tornados threaten to wreak destruction and terror on the open plains of Kansas.

 

Cuentos Del Centro features many other works I wish I could elaborate on here and is a must-read for any collector of original Latino fiction, as it’s written by very different writers in varying phases of their craft and career. I’m looking forward to more, guys!  

 

 

To purchase this book, click here: http://www.amazon.com/Cuentos-del-Centro-Stories-Heartland/dp/0979129125

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Luis Chaluisan’s Spic Chic (Fly by Night Press, 2009)

 

 

The rules of poetry are created by its author, much as a criminal operates both within and away from society, as he or she sees fit. Thus, it’s no wonder that so many poets past and present have dabbled in crime and write about these adventures of subculture. Luis Chaluisan’s poems are odes—both celebratory and regretful—to his experiences as a New York-born Puerto Rican surviving on the streets of New York. And I’m not talking about the well-heeled New York of today, but of the smoldering 1970s and 1980s. (I remember living in the East Tremont neighborhood of the Bronx during the late 1970s, and anyone involved in crime who survived to write about it gets instant applause for that alone.)

 

Luis “El Extreme” Chaluisan—a musician, writer, and former news reporter—is in no denial of his controversy, as spelled out in the book’s opening disclaimer statement. Although I thought I knew what I was walking into when I read this book at the Section 13 jetty of the “Bronx Riviera” recently (Orchard Beach), I was thrown for some surprises. These twenty-plus pieces range from serious (“Johnny Boy”) to whimsical (“Surfing in the South Bronx”), and Chaluisan’s greatest effectiveness is achieved when he releases his honest emotions for public viewing—which you almost don’t expect him to do (“I slide precariously alongside her path, at once tender, then off-center”, from “Carmen Baby”).

 

In “Wilfredo the Anointed Apostle”, about a gay santero barber, Chaluisan explains, “So before we crucify him with whispered nails…homo, queer, fazzy hole…stop and think…perhaps a person’s lifestyle is really a blessing, for who are we to know God’s ways and plans…when we’re walking together, people just stop and stare…but if you could see him through my eyes, he wouldn’t be a faggot but a man.” Spic Chic is an exciting tour of jazz and salsa clubs, women of pleasure, of the island, of desperate people struggling to survive—of joy and pain—but it’s also about transformation. It’s really about becoming greater and wiser than what doom had planned for your soul.

 

 

To purchase Spic Chic, click here: http://www.amazon.com/Spic-Chic-Adventures-Last-Nuyorican/dp/1930083173/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252714904&sr=8-1

 

 

 

Ganymede: Issue #5, Oct. 2009

 

 

I have an essay published in this issue (“Teenage Transformer”) on coming of age in inner-city Latino New York and then underground/queer culture. Ganymede is a literary/art print journal by and for gay men published quarterly in New York as a paperback book.

 

This issue:

 

–EDMUND WHITE on writing gay

–OSCAR WILDE’s delicious 1889 dialogue on art, “The Decay of Lying”

–GLENWAY WESCOTT’s rare 1928 story of a little boy going to a ball in drag

–BERGDORF BOYS by Scott Hess: first of four parts serializing a complete novel, both witty and dark, about gay party boys in New York

–TEN gay poets and EIGHT gay visual artists from around the world

–SUSAN GLASPELL’s 1917 story “A Jury of Her Peers,” now a discovered text in feminist lit

–INDIE EYE returns with tips on obscure movies to rent, including the first gay Bollywood flick!

–The Paris of Our Dreams: the 19th-century transformation of Paris coincided with the birth of photography, and the rise of archival photographers who snapped parts of the city either rising or falling. Our portfolio shows these precious images.

ESSAYS: Writing Gay by Edmund White…Indie Eye (2) by Kush Varia…The Decay of Lying by Oscar Wilde…Teenage Transformer by Charlie Vázquez

POETRY by R.J. Gibson, Brian Brown, Matthew Hittinger, Michael Montlack, Ron Curlee, P. Viktor, David Bergman, Sean Patrick Conlon, Robert K. Müller, John Stahle

FICTION: A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell…Lots by Marc Andreottola…Adolescence by Glenway Wescott…Slavic Thickets: Two Stories by Boris Pintar…Bergdorf Boys (1) by Scott Hess

ART PORTFOLIO: Swan Princes: Paintings of Hernan Bas

PHOTO PORTFOLIOS: Bastien Bucquet…Luis Alvarez…Andre Bernardo…Iain Clacher…Andrea Pedretti…Charles Marville and early photographers of Paris…Josiah Shelton…Niro Taub

 

 

Ganymede #5 issue (Oct. 2009): to purchase click go to: http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1308479

 

 

6×9” perfect-bound paperback, 344 pages
Black and white inside pages, full-color laminated covers (click each below for larger view). Design: John Stahle Graphic Design

 

 

 

Watch this short clip of me reading in NYC, courtesy of WepaTV:   http://blip.tv/file/2478867/

 

¡Besos y abrazos! 

 

To receive my bimonthly posts straight to your email, register here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez