Tag: Latinx Literature

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Spilling the Beans on Macondo Magic

by Natalia Treviño

I wake up each day and begin assessing. Did I get enough sleep? I do math, guessing at total hours without waking up fully. It is the first thing that comes to mind. I want to live. Sleep, I have learned, will help me do that. I tell myself a lot of things in order to calm down the monsters that are always at me, always wanting me to give up, stop trying hard, and hide under a rock for the rest of my life. I reason away the monsters as best I can by way of dreams, concoctions, stories, alternate realities, television, statistics, oppositional thinking, lectures, readings, creativity. Community. Comunidad is the one brain, heart, and soul medicine that sticks, that works, that helps create something out of all the muck and beauty that I see. I grew up with a lot of fear, as a Mexican girl told by her father not to make waves, to always stay under the radar, and eke out a living if possible. He also trained me to understand that death was around every corner, that predators surround every public space, and the goal is not to get fired or divorced again. I had to make this work for me, make my fear be the catalyst for living despite it. Writing is my act of hope against fear, and hope is what my writing mentors have given me over the years, but the unstoppable hope I have now I can only attribute to Macondo Magic. Continue reading “Spilling the Beans on Macondo Magic”

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Santa Ana’s LibroMobile: More Than Just Books

A brunette woman leans against a mobile bookseller's cart. The sign above the cart states #libormobile.

By Sarah Rafael Garcia

When I first received the rusty, planter cart from my friend and local business owner Delilah Snell, she was explaining how to garden herbs and organic veggies. Meanwhile, I was envisioning a bookmobile and planting books in gente’s hands alongside the fruteros on La Calle Cuatro.

LibroMobile is a literary project I initiated in Santa Ana, California with support from Red Salmon Arts and Community Engagement. It integrates literature, free visual exhibits, year-round creative workshops and live readings. The actual LibroMobile (a repurposed gardening cart holding an inventory of diverse books) is not only mobile but also builds community and promotes literacy. As of January 2018, after a 9-month stint in a stairway, the retrofitted bookmobile resides in a warehouse on Calle Cuatro (off 4th & Spurgeon, back alley area), travels throughout Santa Ana visiting a variety of community-based events, and on Saturdays we provide free café de olla donated by Café Calacas. The design of the LibroMobile is a tribute to the iconic paletero carts or fruit vendors that are part of downtown Santa Ana. To hear or see a paletero or frutero cart builds cultural interests (from locals and visitors) to know that something authentic and familiar is being offered, and LibroMobile has achieved the same connections through relevant literature. Continue reading “Santa Ana’s LibroMobile: More Than Just Books”

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My 12-Year Love Affair

Brunette woman sitting at a white table signing a book. Vase with oranges and orange flowers.

It began 12 years ago, the concept for my poetry collection Orange Lady. It was 2006, that summer I had gone to VONA (Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation) in San Francisco, where I had taken a writing workshop with Chris Abani. At VONA, I connected with writers who also lived in Los Angeles, and upon my return, through them, I learned about Ruth Forman’s poetry workshops. It was in these workshops held at Ruth’s home in Los Angeles surrounded by willow trees and included Tai Chi lessons taught by her that the poetry collection came to me. Ruth always showed immense compassion toward our writing process and lovingly gave us permission to just write. That permission to just write sparked this emotional surge in me, and I wrote without care or judgment, with pure reckless abandonment. It was in these workshops that I began compiling the poems that would ultimately become part of my first poetry collection Orange Lady. Continue reading “My 12-Year Love Affair”