¡Win a Free Copy of “Meditations: Bronx/Salsa”!

Who doesn’t like something for free?

Although I won’t be doing public presentations for my new book “Meditations/Meditaciones – Bronx/Salsa” until October (at the earliest), I’ll be giving away a signed copy of it tomorrow afternoon, Friday September 23^rd, at around 5PM EST.

How do I win it, you ask?

Very easily…but you’ll need to access the “Meditations” Facebook page through your account at the link below. (If you cannot post it to this page, then post below as a comment.)

And what is “Meditations”? It is a bilingual collection of poetry I just published under Fireking Press that is the result of listening to the records of my 1970s Bronx Puerto Rican childhood after over thirty years. Heavy stuff, indeed. *Plus artsy stuff, too…and edited with the help of five poets, writers, translators, and professors in the US and Puerto Rico.

Here’s what you’ll need to do. Find your favorite [salsa/guaracha/charanga/rumba/bomba/plena/guaguancó/son montuno/bolero, etc] online video clip via YouTube or any other free and public video channel (one submission each, please) and post it to the “Meditations/Meditaciones – Bronx/Salsa” wall by clicking right here.

Whoever posts the video that makes my day wins the book. That’s it! ¡Buena suerte!

More soon…

Love, Charlie

¡Meditations is Now on Amazon!

It took a few days more than we had hoped, but Meditations/Meditaciones – Bronx/Salsa is now on Amazon.com. Click here if you would like to pick one up there.

In case you’re not sure what it is, see the previous post! It’s my first-ever bilingual poetry collection based on writings I did after listening to many of the classic salsa records of my childhood, some of which I hadn’t heard in almost thirty years. A very personal work for me.

I hope you enjoy it should you decide to. Back to work for me…

xo Charlie

¡My Bilingual Poetry Book is Out!

Friends and family…amigos y familia…

Upon returning to my native New York City in early 2006, I began putting the foggy pieces of my earliest years together by buying, on CD, much of the wonderful music my father used to play at home (at full blast) during my childhood in the 1970s. It was a very haunting experience at times, as songs I hadn’t heard in over thirty years, were as familiar to me in 2007 and they had been in 1977. Very haunting, but such is the power of music.

I began writing down the memories that the music pulled out from my subconscious, in various abstract and bilingual pieces/pedazos, and kept them in a secret file that eventually grew to over sixty poems–from simple haikus to dense English/Spanish free verse. Before I knew it, a baby book came into focus.

I was fortunate to have help when it came closer to publishing it–a millions gracias to Larry La Fountain, David Caleb Acevedo, Armando Rendón, Bronco Castro and the almighty Alfredo Villanueva, who all lent a hand at helping with the editing, and at times even rewriting, of my Spanish text. They are all writers and poets of the highest order and I am honored that they even considered helping me! Investigate them.

*If you would like to securely purchase the $11.99 paperback directly from the Create Space publishing service I used to create the book, click here:

To buy an Amazon.com, click here:

And now I will bestow upon you one of my favorite poems from the collection (*only about five of the 60+ poems have been previously published or posted publicly), “Puerto Rican Earthling/Puertorriqueño terrícola”:

        

Puerto Rican Earthling

(in response to Bartolomé de Las Casas’s

A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies)

Puerto Rican alien

Mighty horses, cruel men

Hungry and without women

Taíno brother

Taína sister

No thirst for power

Gold for wearing

On this pure body

This body born of

Sand, water, jungle

And what we are now

Kings and savages both

Puerto Rican alien

Men of inhuman gods

Crazy and proud demons

Ghosts that dance and kill

And kiss and fuck

In volcanic blood

Slithering like serpents

That celebrate the sanctuary

Of this heart

Puerto Rican alien

The ecstasy of this body

Of this skin prison

(This soul demands release!)

Of flesh and eyes disgraced

This mystery, this miracle

Lost monster amongst these barbaric

Tribes of the world, tribes of

Puerto Rican alien

Race of all races

That sucks on

Blood that burns

Blood that drowns

Sickening ogres

(And without you

What in hell am I?)

Puerto Rican alien

Assassin and murdered am I

Devil and saint am I

Night and day am I

Thief and hero am I

Death and life am I

Mind, womb and graveyard

(And you are both dead and alive

In it with me)

Puerto Rican alien

This desecrated altar

This devastated village

This pillaged, empty heart

Knows not how to sing

Neither the coquí song abundant

Nor the hymns of saints brought

By righteous murderers

This burning mountainside

This holy and hybrid soul, this

Beauty without equal

We give welcome to you

Galician, Roman, Moor, Taíno

Irishman, Frenchman, Scotsman

Dominican, Cuban, Dutchman, Mexican

American, Englishman, Chinaman, Venezuelan

Portuguese, German, Lebanese, Italian

Igbo, Bantu, Yoruba

Canary Island pirate

Puerto Rican Earthling

     Puertorriqueño terrícola

(en respuesta a la Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias,

por Bartolomé de Las Casas)

Puertorriqueño ajeno

Fuertes caballos, hombres crueles

Con hambre y sin mujeres

Hermano taíno

Hermana taína

Sin sed de poder

Oro solamente para llevar

En este cuerpo puro

Este cuerpo que nació de

Arena, río, selva

Y lo que somos ahora son

Reyes y salvajes por igual

Puertorriqueño ajeno

Hombres de dioses inhumanos

Demonios locos, orgullosos

Espectros que bailan y matan

Y besan y chichan

En sangre volcánica

Arratrándose como culebras

Que celebran el santuario

De este corazón

Puertorriqueño ajeno

El éxtasis de este cuerpo

De este cárcel de piel

(¡Este alma demanda liberación!)

De carne y ojos desgraciados

Este misterio, este milagro

Monstruo perdido entre

Estas bárbaras tribus del mundo

Puertorriqueño ajeno

Raza de todas las razas

Que chupa

Sangre que quema

Sangre que ahoga

Ogros asquerosos

(¿Y sin tí

quién carajo soy yo?)

Puertorriqueño ajeno

Asesino y asesinado soy yo

Diablo y santo soy yo

Noche y día soy yo

Ladrón y héroe soy yo

Muerte y vida soy yo

Mi mente es útero y cementerio

(Y tú eres muerto y vivo

a mi lado)

Puertorriqueño ajeno

Este altar profanado

Esta aldea devastada

Este saqueado y desprovisto corazón

No sabe como cantar

Ni las canciones de abundantes coquís

Ni los himnos de los santos que trajeron

Virtuosos asesinos

Esta ladera quemándose en la montaña

Esta alma sagrada e híbrida, esta

Belleza sin igual

Te damos la bienvenida a tí

Gallego, romano, moro, taíno

Irlandés, francés, escocés

Dominicano, cubano, holandés, mexicano

Americano, inglés, chino, venezolano

Portugués, alemán, libanés, italiano

Igbo, bantu, yoruba

Pirata de las islas Canarias

Puertorriqueño terrícola

 

         (traducción por David Caleb Acevedo)

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¡Coming Soon!

 

Hello Meditationers!

I am happy to annouce that my new book, Meditations/Meditaciones: Bronx/Salsa will be releasing sometime later this month. Here is a sneak peak of the cover, though. I started composing these two collections of bilingual poems upon my return to NYC in 2006, as I one by one, sought on CD the many wonderful records my father used to play for us when we were children in the Bronx in the 1970s.

A special reading will also take place, and all details will surface soon. It’s a busy summer for me, how are all of you?

 

xo Charlie

 

On Sisterhood and Revolution – Dr. Luzma Umpierre Speaks

An Open Letter to Frances Aparicio:

First of all, I want to thank you for something you did for me years ago but that still remains with me. When I published my collection: En el país de las maravillas and started reading it in public, I had many requests for English versions of my Spanish poems. One of the poems that received the most requests was “Dios se muda.” At that time, I did not feel confident at all in translating my own poetry or anyone else’s. So I remember writing to you in Michigan and asking if you could do so for me. You were so kind as to send me your translation and I went over it making some small changes to have it sound like my voice was not “lost in translation.” I always read the poem after that in public forums stating that the translation was yours.

Recently, I have finally had time to re-read articles that I had left behind some time ago but that I wanted to answer to. It has taken me years to build a “room of my own” in life to be able to care for my personal writing without the need to continue divulging the works of other women to the academic world as a professed duty. At one point in my poetic career, when I was invited to read my own work at public forums, I refused to and only accepted if I could devote half of my reading to the works of other women who at the time were unknown, like Julia Alvarez, Marjorie Agosin, Sandra Esteves, Lorraine Sutton, and many others.

As I said, I recently I came upon, once again, your article/chapter: “From Ethnicity to Multiculturalism.” I read it with glee and even posted the PDF, now available, on my page on Facebook. Your work has always had a depth that many others lack and a human touch that I appreciated. In that article, several things caught my attention. I will only give you my opinions on what you wrote about my own poetry because others can speak for themselves and I do not need to use my voice any longer to come to anyone’s defense.

Yes, you are right. My early poems had anger in them. Recently, I revisited the subject of anger by making more formal readings on the subject. Anger is an important tool. It was particularly important to those of us who, as Gilbert and Gubart explain, “walked straight out of the attic into the classroom.” We were labeled as “mad women” for many reasons, but one of them being that we dared to teach the “mad literature “of the marginalized. My poetic anger/mad-ness was my way of coping with the world that surrounded me in academia and which wanted to doblegarme.

I have recommended, in many forums and workshops, that we all objectify our anger in writing as a tool. Without any psychotherapy back then when I started to write, I went along with the most productive way of using my anger: writing poetry. Many people have written to me over the years telling me that some of those poems put into words the same feelings they had. Others felt threatened by what they saw of themselves in the poems and, in a usual paranoid moment taken from the psyche of academia, they have thought that a poem was modeled after them specifically. I remember a man at an academic conference telling me openly: “I have a fear of being the object of one of your poems.” I laughed profoundly at his comment. My anger was used for other purposes. I had an “addiction” to seeking justice. My need was to procure, for the generation of students that I taught, the privileges that I never had. I use the word “addiction” purposely because there was no injustice that I perceived that I did not confront/take on. Now, in old age, I know that I left a mark in the academic world for the young to have benefits which were procured by our battles. I say “our” because I was not alone. Many of us in this group of early/mad-women warriors were Women of Color. Many of us were ultimately marginalized in academia and we no longer have the professions in which we made our legacy. Frances, I am not bitter about that because ultimately I know that the only mark that I need to make in this world is to make a difference in my own life. And my struggles have indeed bore fruit these days in a very personal quietude of the soul. So much on my poetic and legal anger.

I go on to the second subject that I wanted to address you about: the notion that my work falls under the category of Nuyorican Poets. The honor is too immense. I say it is too immense because the poets in that generation were/are true trailblazers in the concept that one could write literature in exile but still be part of our island heritage. Unfortunately, as you well know, this group of poets suffered the shunning of the academic world both in Puerto Rico and the USA and my battle to include them in my own classes was met by academicians with fierce opposition.

Frances, I was born in Puerto Rico. I only traveled to NYC at the age of 14 for a short summer visit with my mother to see her family there. She also wanted to show me her second favorite city; her first and foremost being Old San Juan where she was born. I attended elementary, high school, college and some graduate school courses on the island. I also worked in Puerto Rico at many places. I was a legal secretary; I was in charge of a blood bank at the Hospital de Santurce where the Museo de Puerto Rico now stands. I was a clerk at Plaza Las Américas. And I was also a teacher at Academia María Reina where I had the honor to impart both Spanish and World History classes to some of the most notable women architects, CEOs, doctors, mothers and daughters living on the island today. In fact, my most recent trip to Puerto Rico, to visit the only aunt that I have left at her sick bed, was totally financed by my former students from Academia María Reina. In a moving email sent to me, they explained their reasons: I had been their role model, a source of laughter, joy and knowledge.

Paradoxically enough, my very first incursion as an advocate for Human and Civil Rights in life was before la Comisión de Derechos Civiles in Puerto Rico while I was still a student at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón. I was deposed on an investigation that the Comisión did on the existence, or lack thereof, academic freedom at private colleges on the island. My deposition was one of the very few ones quoted in the printed published decision. I was a student at that moment so I think I understand what is it to fight for academic freedoms on the island from a very personal perspective.

In 1974, I left Puerto Rico for reasons that I have written about elsewhere (see my blog Luzma Speaks). From 1974 to 1978, I spent around 7 months a year in Pennsylvania and 5 or more in Puerto Rico. So, I was never an “absentee citizen.” I voted in Puerto Rican elections. I lived at the home of my parents. My home was not in Pennsylvania but in Santurce, Puerto Rico. When I was introduced to receive my doctoral degree at Bryn Mawr, I insisted on not being introduced as a student “From the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico,” but from the “nation of Puerto Rico.”

From 1978 to 1987, although I was teaching in the USA, I continued to spend around 7 months of the year in New Jersey and 5 months or more in Puerto Rico. I had an apartment on the island. Most of my poems, be them in English or Spanish from that time, except for The Margarita Poems, were written at my mother’s home which was also mine, or at the home of my aunts on the island. My mother died in 1987 and that is when my status as living partly in the USA and partly on the island ended. At least half of the poems in my book Y otras desgracias… were based on my experiences living in Puerto Rico.

Once my mother died, I could not afford living there for half of the year. So I started traveling less to the island, only about 3 or 4 times a year. The Margarita Poems was my first book totally written in the USA and it was not even written in NYC but in my travels between New Jersey and Kansas. Why explain all of this to you? Because very few people realize that all of my formation was in Puerto Rico, that I had a career in Puerto Rico, that I studied in Puerto Rico and, therefore, I am a Puerto Rican. Yes, my mother was a Nuyorican but she lived her adult life from 23 to her death at 73 in Puerto Rico. The fact that she was raised in NYC helped me embrace her fellow Nuyoricans with joy and pride and inclusion. It gave me a broader vision of “who belongs.” I have written two highly ignored books on Puerto Rican Literature, one of which was published by Editorial Cultural. Many of my academic articles were published on the island: at the Revista de estudios hispánicos, Mairena, la Revista del Instituto de Cultura, among others. I chaired the very first panels at the MLA on Rosario Ferré, Luis Rafael Sánchez, Nilita Vientós. My most recent articles are on the work of Daniel Torres and Nemir Matos Cintrón. Still to this day, I send articles to La acera and Diálogo. I have kept in contact with the newer generation of critics and writers there.

Since there are less and less Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico, I guess that some people from my literary generation on the island are close to having their dream come true: be alone by themselves as the only ones included in Puerto Rican Literature. And they have tried hard to exclude me and others because we were/are too Gay or Lesbian, or too bilingual, or too much of a woman, or we did not write about flowers, or we were not nationalists in the “correct way.” That is fine, Frances, because I do not need to prove to anyone what I have been all along: an islander, a woman from Puerto Rico, a woman whose ashes will be spread there to be reborn, again and again, as a sediment of my nation.

My regards to your daughter, who I remember from when she was a child, and to you a warm embrace in sisterhood and revolution. Thank you for your essay that opened the door for me to ponder, and clarify.

Luz Maria Umpierre (Luzma)

See Luzma’s blog here: http://luzma-umpierre.blogspot.com/

Meditations

Photo by Richard Weaver  http://rweaver.dphoto.com/ 

So friends and family everywhere: Those of you who know me know how swamped I’ve been ever since I took on numerous book projects last year (my Contraband novel, the PANIC! anthology, and co-editing Macho to Mariposa with Lord Charles Rice-González), though I won’t complain as it’s been a lot of fun and a major learning experience. Another book project is wrapping up—but we’ll get to that a little later…

Other fantastic developments have come about that I’d like to share with you…

Mayra Santos-Febres, the creator of San Juan, Puerto Rico’s wonderful Festival de la Palabra was in New York recently and we had the chance to meet in person. We spoke at length on a variety of subjects and I agreed to get on board and help coordinate the festival’s debut in New York this year, in May. So when those details surface I will share them…I’m really excited about this since this festival engages writers from around the world and is conducted in different languages (you can subscribe to this blog at the very bottom of this post for news on this).

Festival de la Palabra website: http://www.festivaldelapalabra.net/

(More on that soon, when the entire program is confirmed.)

As for the blog’s name change again: I cannot keep the same format running when my schedule fills in and warps; I know that many of you like to read the book reviews I post and there’s good news for you. I will still post book reviews. But blasting you once/twice a month with my feelings on random bits of literature feels a bit impersonal, so I’m going to strive to make this experience more intimate (don’t get any weird ideas) as well as informative.

So welcome aboard if you’re one in the latest surge of subscribers, and thank you for hanging in there if you’ve been following me for the last two years. It’s been fun for me, too! More news to come very soon…do you smell spring in the air yet where you are?

xo Charlie

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OUTLAW: The Collected Works of Miguel Piñero

Arte Público Press couldn’t have put this collection out at a better time, as the seeds that Miguel Piñero and the other founders of the Nuyorican movement planted back in the 1970s have flourished and wrapped themselves around the world. I had already read, in a few different books, about 80% of the thirty-eight poems and eleven plays included in this rather handsome book, but the added attraction for me was the “previously unpublished poems” that show different sides of Piñero, who won the New York Drama Critics’ Award for Best American Play (1973-1974) for Short Eyes and a Guggenheim fellowship—for writing brutally honest plays and poetry about prison life and the streets of The Lower East Side, his home in New York City, until his death in 1988.

“To-get-her” shows a playful side of Piñero; a wizardry of syllable de/reconstruction based on the title word and the employment of dead-end labyrinthine word play. “The Lower East Side is Taking” is more regretful and melancholy, while “Rerun of ‘The Ballad of the Freaks’” shows off his pop culture fascinations, even mixing fairy tales and drug culture where…

All that glitters isn’t gold,

no surprise to know, Snow White

was no virgin.

She took a knock-out speedball tardy

and pretended to be drunk,

offered to take on the whole lot.

Everyone declined on the spot.

Paul Bunyan, John Henry and Goliath

had fucked, now walked to frail egos…

 

It’s no secret that Miguel Piñero lived on the fringes of societal acceptability and used this platform to fire back at the society that oppressed him and Puerto Ricans (and others) in general. The tones in his work are ever-shifting; political, comical, dangerous, tender—a universe of emotions come to life in his words. Much has been written about his limited output, due to his early death and habit of losing the notebooks in which he drafted much of his work—but I will say this: Few writers depict 1970s New York, the decade in which I became self-conscious of the world around me as a New York Puerto Rican, as crisply as Piñero does.

Taboos, such as homoeroticism, which is a recurring theme and topic in much of his work, aren’t swept under the rug, but more closely examined. Piñero’s characters have their faults and vices and problems, but they are often forgivable because they’re so truly human and prone to tragedy as marginalized underdogs. These dramas unfold in rough urban landscapes where innocent victims are forever changed by predatory impulses of crafty survivors, where fathers plot the deaths of men who wish to turn their daughters into prostitutes, where queer characters vehemently confront the suffocating strictures of homophobia. And from all of these struggles is achieved a kind of dazzling brilliance…

This makes a great gift!

To buy from Powell’s online go here:  http://www.powells.com/s?kw=outlaw+pinero&class

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Xo Charlie

Hispanic Caribbean Literature of Migration

This fantastic collection of twelve stellar essays (edited by Vanessa Pérez Rosario) is an academic reader more than casual reading material–but for those of you who enjoy literary criticism, and for writers and students studying this genre, you’ll find this lean and mean volume invaluable. I absolutely loved it and recommend it highly (a few of you are already on my mental lend-to list).

These essays dissect the lives and works of José Martí, Juan Bosch, Julia de Burgos, Julia Alvarez, Junot Díaz, Achy Obejas, Manuel Ramos Otero, Zoé Valdés, Chrisopher John Farley, Jesús Colón and a few others, discussing nostalgia for island origins, interracial tensions, the roots of Nuyorico, crypto-Judaism, queer desire, intergenerational issues, American intervention in the Caribbean, dictatorships, revolutions, and so much more.

By studying the diverse lives of the writers, the roots of their artistic output are traced to their islands of birth (Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba–even Jamaica) and are followed to their stateside destinations and all the inherent marginalization, politics and culture found there/here. Alternating between two homes, a sense of “not fitting in anywhere” is ever-present throughout, and the complex political landscapes, both in the United States and on the islands, made it possible for these talented artists to understand and know things your average American did/does not.

And to write about them.

For more info, go here: http://www.amazon.com/Hispanic-Caribbean-Literature-Migration-Displacement/dp/0230620655

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Xo Charlie

In the Time of the Butterflies and #latinolit

I’m sure many of you have already read this book by now. I hate admitting that I got to it as late as I did, but what’s the use in claiming otherwise? This book is brilliant. Julia Alvarez is a bruja de palabras, a sorceress stirring history, feminism, culture, politics and emotions in a textual cauldron that is simply without peer. I was repeatedly interrupted while reading this, but was enthralled every time I picked it up again.

For those not in the know, In the Time of the Butterflies is the complex tale, told from different points of view, of the legendary Mirabal sisters, who sacrificed their relatively comfortable lives to challenge the Trujillo dictatorship in mid-twentieth century Dominican Republic. From their innocent origins, to falling in love, to conspiring to bring about change in the paranoid era of this vicious dictator–Alvarez braids their complex and riveting stories into a masterpiece of Latino letters. That’s all I will say for now. ¡Brrrrravísimo!

The writer Julio Varela and I are trying to galvanize the online Latino writing community (writers/poets/bloggers) on the Twittersphere through the hashgtag #latinolit. So I encourage you Tweeters out there to check in on the lively convo and networking; and writers–you will find rich literary resources and connections there. If you don’t know how to use a hashtag, simply type #latinolit in the search bar and hit Enter. The stream will come up for you to peruse. Great work, Julio!

I encourage you all to follow him and his online novel at http://juliorvarela.com/

That’s all for now, but more to come, as the writer and professor Vanessa Pérez Rosario sent me her excellent new book, Hispanic Caribbean Literature of Migration and I’m eating it up. Will report to you all on this very soon. Have a happy and safe holiday season in the mean time.

Love,

Charlie

http://www.firekingpress.com

The Keith Roach Interview

The poet, author, activist and Nuyorican Poets Cafe curator Keith Roach and I sat down recently to talk about the PANIC! reading series and the new Best of PANIC! anthology I recently edited. It was nice to sit with Keith one on one as we usually run into each other at the various reading series we attend; Capicu, events at the Nuyorican, and when he comes to PANIC! I videotaped the interview, which he did an audio recording for, for his Podcast radio show Conversations with Keith.

You can learn more about Keith here: http://www.keithroach.net/keithroach/Bio.html

You can learn more about the Best of PANIC! anthology/or to purchase one, here: http://www.firekingpress.com