Poetry of Resistance and Posada Readings

CSUF Grand Central Art Center

125 N Broadway, Santa Ana, California 92701

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27TH (6:30-8:30pm)

WORKSHOP & READING

with local poets, Javier Pinzón & Odilia Galván Rodríguez

Event Description:

The reading will start with an open mic session featuring six local poets paying tribute to the late Francisco X. Alarcón. Odilia Galván Rodríguez will read her writing along with a selection of the works in the "Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice" anthology published by The University of Arizona Press in 2016. Alarcón's life partner Javier Pinzón will close with his own work.

The reading will address a wide variety of themes, including racial profiling, xenophobia, cultural misunderstanding, violence against refugees, shared identity, and much more. "Poetry of Resistance" is a political call for tolerance, reflection, reconciliation, and healing.

Flor y Canto poets:

Iuri M. Lara

Jesus Cortez

Marilynn Montaño

Jose Morales

Natalie Sánchez Valle

David Lopez

Before the reading (6:30-7:30pm), a special poetry workshop with maestra Odilia Galván Rodríguez! Email libromobile@gmail.com to reserve a spot. All ages over 16 years-old are welcomed.

The reading (7:30-8:30pm) will be followed by a book sale and signing. GCAC Artist in Residence, Sarah Rafael García will host the reading.

This literary reading is supported by Grand Central Art Center and in part by Poets & Writers through grants it has received from The James Irvine Foundation and the Hearst Foundations.

About the featured poets:

Javier Pinzón came to the United States from Mexico in the eighties. He has had his poetry published in Bay Area community newspapers of San Francisco, and various literary magazines among them, Revista Mujeres, of the University of California at Santa Cruz, and La Palabra, at the University of California, Davis.

Odilia Galván Rodríguez, poet, writer, editor, and social justice activist, is the author of six volumes of poetry, her latest, The Nature of Things, along with photographer Richard Loya. She is co-editor, along with the late Francisco X. Alarcón, of Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, from The University of Arizona Press. Odilia has worked as an editor for various magazines, most recently as the English edition editor of Tricontinental Magazine in Havana, Cuba. Her activist work stems several decades with organizations such as the United Farm Workers of America AFL-CIO. Currently she facilitates creative writing workshops nationally, and is a moderator of Poets Responding to SB 1070 and Love and Prayers for Fukushima, both Facebook pages dedicated to bringing attention to social justice issues that affect the lives and well-being of many people. Her poetry and short fiction has been anthologized in many anthologies and literary journals in print and on-line media.

*

POSADA

Saturday, October 29th  at 7 PM - 10 PM

Avenue 50 Studio

131 N Avenue 50, Los Angeles, California 90042

Message from Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo:

Hi everyone! I'm excited to share that my book, POSADA: OFFERINGS OF WITNESS AND REFUGE, will be released from Sundress Publications October 15th, and I will be holding a release party on Saturday, October 29th at Avenue 50 Studios in Highland Park.

POSADA: OFFERINGS OF WITNESS AND REFUGE celebrates my family's immigration story from Jalisco, Mexico to Los Angeles, CA in the 1950s while also giving visibility to those currently crossing into the country from Central America and the human atrocities occurring at the Arizona-Mexico border.

The night will include readings from badass writers Ashaki M. Jackson, Kenji Liu and Melissa Chadburn, a collective building of a Día de los Muertos altar for those who have passed along the border, music from Angela Spiñorita Blanca, food, and of course a book signing. A collection will be taken to support the work of No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes.

Chicanonautica: Weird Mexican Art: The Dead and Kid Stuff

by Ernest Hogan

Still too warm, but El Niño and the remnants of Hurricane Patricia are kicking enough moisture over Arizona to cause some impressive thunderstorms that have soaked the desert that gets streamy as the sun blazes. Not exactly what Americano cultural expects for fall, but we're hurtling toward the end of October. The big weekend is coming: Halloween/Días de los Muertos/Dead Daze as I called it in my controversial novel Smoking Mirror Blues (to be republished as Tezcatlipoca Blues in the near future).

Luckily, thanks to my wife, who works at the bookstore of the Heard Museum, I got ahold of a couple of fantastic art books that are just the thing for getting the visual cortex in that Dead Daze mood.

And they're both bilingual, too.

First, there's Posada & Manilla: Illustrations Of Mexican Fairy Tales/Artistas Del Cuento Mexicana By Mercurio López Casillas that takes us into the world of cheap “penny press” books – well, actually pamphlets – that children enjoyed before comic books. Manuel Manilla illustrated them before José Guadalupe Posada. Manilla wasn't as much of a stylist or master of the woodcut as Posada, but he definitely laid the groundwork for this style that is both modern and primitve, and suggests an alternative, fantastic Mexican universe where European fairy tales blend with Mexican folklore and history.

It comes with a spectacular two-sided dust jacket and a facsimile of one of these books, El Rey y Sus Tres Hijos.

Frightening, disturbing -- but that was children's entertainment before Walt Disney.

Mercurio López Casillas is back with help from Gregory Dechant and other scholars of Mexican art in Images of Death in Mexican Prints/La Muerte: Espejo Que No Te Engaña. This is an oversized, lavishly illustrated look at the calavera/calaca Mexican living skeleton and other morbid symbols from preColumbian times, through the Spanish invasion, to popular broadsheets where they were often accompanied by satirical poems  (presented in their original format), to modern illustration. It's an unholy feast for the eye, better than an all-night horror movie marathon. The ancient, popular, and avant garde meld, as is the Mexican way.

Both these books are great inspiration for artists young and old, and sources of important cultural history.

Ernest Hogan says “My roots embrace the planet and reach out of the universe – the Intergalactic Barrio.”in his “Chicanonautica Manifesto” in Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Volume 40, Number Two, Fall 2015.

Iguala's Own, Author Reyna Grande, Brings Some Christmas Cheer to a Town Missing 43

Guest Post by Reyna Grande

Iguala, Birthplace of the Mexican Flag

On September 26^th, my hometown of Iguala, Guerrero was the site of one of the most horrific crimes in recent Mexican history. Forty-three students from a rural teachers college in Ayotzinapa were abducted by Iguala police and handed over to the local drug gang, Guerreros Unidos. No one has seen the students since, and they are feared killed in a mass incineration. It was later discovered that the Iguala mayor and his wife were involved, and it is believed that the police was acting on the mayor’s orders. The failures of the Mexican government, and the incompetent way it has handled the situation has led the people of Mexico to say they’ve had enough; they are tired of corruption, impunity, and the continued violation of human rights. National protests have been held for the past two months across the country as the Mexican people fight for reform, justice, and change.

Before the tragic events that took place in Iguala on September 26^th, hardly anyone in the U.S. had even heard of my hometown. Iguala is a mid-size city surrounded by mountains located between Mexico City and Acapulco. Seventy percent of the people in Guerrero live in poverty. I experienced that poverty first-hand when I lived there. That poverty, and the lack of opportunities, was what drove my father, and later my mother, to leave Iguala and head to the U.S. Then one day I also left Iguala, and at nine years old I found myself running across the U.S.-Mexico border in search of a better life.  I made it across the border on my third attempt, and I vowed that I would never forget where I had come from.

A little girl who will benefit from Reyna's efforts.

This summer, I returned to Iguala to visit my family. I hadn’t been there in four years, and I was shocked to see that my old neighborhood had gone from bad to worse. More and more people are living in extreme poverty. Shacks have sprouted where there weren’t shacks before. As I watched the children playing in the dirt, I decided I was going to do something special for them. I decided that I would come back in December and make their Christmas unforgettable.

On September 6^th, I launched a fundraiser campaign for a Christmas Toy Giveaway. In sixty days I raised over $5,000 dollars with the support of friends and strangers who believed in my project. On December 17^th, I will go to Iguala with my son and host a Posada in my old neighborhood, where, in addition to a goody bag, all children will receive toys and every family will receive a special Christmas dinner.

The Grande Familia in Iguala, December 12, 1979.

I know this isn’t enough, and in the future I would like to do much more for the people in Iguala. But for now, I think that what I am doing is more important than ever. After what happened in Iguala in September—the disappearance of the students, the numerous mass graves found in the area, the fear and horror that the community has endured—I think that my Christmas Toy Giveaway will provide a little joy to what otherwise has been a bleak and sad time in the city, and in the country as a whole.   

I urge you to stand in solidarity with the Mexican people as they fight for a better Mexico. Together, we can all make a difference. 

Join Reyna's Email Newsletter!

Donate to Reyna's Toy Giveaway by contacting Reyna directly at: reynagrande@gmail.com

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times interviewed Reyna Grande for a story on how the missing 43 has affected L.A. immigrants. Read the article here.

Reyna Grande's Upcoming Toy Giveaway in Iguala, Guerrero

Watch the YouTube Video.