Pati Jinich on Nepantla Familias: "Super recommended!!"

At the end of May, I traveled to Ysleta (my east side neighborhood in El Paso, Texas) to visit my mother on her 86th birthday and to eat tamales and tacos with Pati Jinich (Pati's Mexican Table) at La Tapatia in Ysleta. Pati was shooting a PBS series called "La Frontera," and she invited me to talk about the border, its people, and La Tapatia, which I had suggested as our restaurant. She is such a remarkable human being, and my impression is that she cares deeply about the people and culture of the borderlands. I gave her a copy of Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature on Families in between Worlds (Texas A&M Press and The Wittliff Collections), which I edited.

I returned to New York City, because I have deadlines and a host of responsibilities particularly with the Texas Institute of Letters. I'm the current president. So on June 12th, Pati tweets on Twitter and posts on Instagram, "Currently reading Nepantla [Familias]: a phenomenal anthology of Mexican American literature on families in between worlds by@SergioTroncoso. Super recommended!!"

I'm grateful for her support. She didn't have to do that, but she did. I find that these gestures of kindness are what I remember many years later. Thank you, Pati, for the excellent conversation and for reading Nepantla Familias. I wish you safe travels. (Apparently "La Frontera will air sometime this summer, in late July or August.)

Sergio Troncoso and Pati Jinich at La Tapatia in Ysleta, Texas.

The Lost Border: Request for Submissions

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Request for Submissions

The Lost Border: Essays on how life and culture have been changed by the violence along the U.S.-Mexico border

Extended Deadline: October 15, 2011

This new anthology will focus on the unique life and culture along the U.S.-Mexico border that has been changed and even lost because of the recent drug violence. This book will feature writers from both sides of the border who explore the culture that has been changed or lost, the lives that have been split in two, and the way of life that has been interrupted, or even eradicated, by the violence along the border.

Some of the questions that might be explored are: What way of life has been lost due to the recent violence? What are the ramifications of this change for culture, politics, families, institutions, the arts, and even individual psyches? Will it be possible to regain what has been truncated? What might the border’s future be? Are there any positive side-effects?

We hope that writers will conjure the past in telling moments and reflect on the forces that have spun out of control to destroy the unique bi-national, bicultural existence of la frontera. Location is a vitally important and intrinsic element of the essays we seek, and each essay should show substantial ties to the border through the essayist’s lived experience. We anticipate that the writing will draw scholars as well as those in the general public who wish to thoughtfully negotiate the border’s current complexities.

The publisher of this project will be Arte Público Press and the anticipated publication date is in 2013.

Please read the submission guidelines and follow them. We look forward to reading your submission. We will contact you by email about acceptance or rejection of your essay.

Sarah Cortez (Cortez.Sarah@gmail.com)

Sergio Troncoso (SergioTroncoso(AT)gmail(DOT)com)

Editors

Submission Guidelines:

The extended deadline is October 15, 2011 postmark. The length of the essay should be 3,000 to 6,000 words; please title your essay. The essay should be unpublished and written in English. All contributors shall be Latino/a.

Each essay should be typed in Times Roman 12-point type with standard manuscript formatting for margins and spacing.

Include your name, snail-mail address, two contact phone numbers, two email addresses, and exact word count in the top left margin of the first page of your manuscript.

We do accept electronic submissions. Send them to: SergioTroncoso@gmail.com.

If you are sending hard copies, mail two copies of the essay and your bio to Sergio Troncoso, 2373 Broadway, Suite 1808, New York, NY 10024. No submission will be returned; please keep a copy for your records.

Please include a one-paragraph biography summarizing your publishing credits. Include a sentence or two that defines your relationship with the border (e.g. cities or towns lived in, length of residence/familiarity).

If your essay is accepted, we will need an electronic file as a Word document. We will contact you about suggested revisions.

Guadalajara: Feria Internacional del Libro

It has been an astonishing trip to Guadalajara, Mexico to be part of the gigantic book fair, one of the largest (I am told) for the Spanish-speaking world. I have to thank Director Franz Josef Kunz of the Goethe-Institut of Guadalajara for inviting me to be part of the panel on “Literatura y Migración.”

I knew it was a good start when I was wending my way into the American Airlines plane in Dallas to Guadalajara, and seated in first class (!) I find none other than Dagoberto Gilb, a good friend and a great writer. Of course, once the flight left rainy Dallas, I squeezed my way to first class to chat with Dago. I gave him a hard time for the white wine and warm nuts the ‘elite’ of first class enjoyed, while the plebes of coach went hungry. But it was great to see Dago up and about.

The next day I was waiting to have lunch at the Hilton across the street from the book fair, with Mr. Kunz, Carlos López de Alba, and Yuri Herrera, both on our panel, and who did I spot with her Blogger file open, and typing away, just as I’m doing now? Catherine Mayo. Seeing Catherine in Guadalajara was just literary nirvana. She is one of those writers you learn from and whose standards are nothing but excellent. Catherine is here to discuss her book, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, recently selected by Library Journal as one of the top thirty books for 2009.

The highlight of Guadalajara for me has been “Literatura y Migracion.” Carlos, editor of the literary magazine Reverso, moderated the panel, and it included Yuri who wrote the novel Trabajos del Reino, María Cecilia Barbetta, an Argentine who writes in German, and Léda Forgó, who was born in Hungary but also writes in German.

What the free-wheeling discussion focused on was this literature of writers who are writing in languages not necessarily their mother tongues. But the discussion quickly turned philosophical (I brought up Heidegger and the influence of German philosophers on my own writing), or how adopting a new language forced ‘immigrant writers’ to choose words purposely, to take on the roles of outsiders in their adopted cultures, to find their place in words rather than in a ‘home country.’ For us, I believe, language has become our country.

It a funny and often disquieting existence to be neither here nor there, to have your existence, particularly your literary existence, in play, a question rather than a settled home. It certainly forces you to think about what you want to say, to take a step away to consider what and how you write, because that is how you start when you don’t quiet belong as an immigrant. Sometimes this perspective turns political, sometimes reflexive, and at other times it is simply an advantage to write about Hungary or Argentina or the Mexican-American community in a language that already is a step removed from that home. In some, this perspective is a way to work through self-alienation, or even to become a bridge between two worlds.

I came away from this panel with only deep admiration for Carlos, María Cecilia, Yuri, and Léda. Writers from across the globe struggling with similar questions I struggle with everyday. Writers who are intelligent and should be read enthusiastically. Writers who embody why seeking international alliances, when your literary endeavor is unique, will allow you to understand exactly how a community can be formed from the most disparate of individuals.

Diario de Oaxaca

This morning I was walking south on Broadway after leaving my son Isaac at school, and two familiar faces stopped me in my tracks. Peter Kuper and his daughter Emily. Peter, a friend, is the famed political cartoonist for Mad Magazine’s Spy vs. Spy. He gave me a copy of his new book, Diario de Oaxaca.

As I continued strolling down Broadway, I felt as if I had just won La Loteria. Right now, after you finish this blog, buy this book. It’s the best book I’ve read all year. Beautifully crafted. Well-written. Irreverent. Bilingual. The work of an artistic duende. ‘Reading’ is not quite the right word here: this book is an experience, into Oaxaca, political protests, bugs, Monarch butterflies, perros, and searching for the truth around and in front of you.

Diario de Oaxaca is Kuper’s sketchbook journal of his two-year stay in Oaxaca, Mexico to get away from George W. Bush, to seek peace of mind, to work. He and his family arrived when a teachers’ strike, for better pay and more funding for schools, was unfolding in the zocalo: sit-ins, barricades, marches, and eventually the response from the governor of the state of Oaxaca, which was to kill. October 27, 2006: three teachers and an American journalist dead.

The artwork of protest and death, buses aflame, bored soldiers occupying the zocalo, a woman carrying fruits on her head in front of a giant battering ram twice her size, the Day of the Dead ofrendas in Oaxaca commemorating those killed during the teachers’ strike. It’s breathtaking. It takes you to Oaxaca. It creates atmosphere in a way that prose cannot. Peter Kuper has created a remarkable eyewitness account of those turbulent times, which repeat themselves in Latin America’s version of Nietzsche’s Eternal Return.

Diario de Oaxaca is visual micro-history: what Kuper experienced in Oaxaca, from the teachers’ strike to an earthquake, both of which he complains were wildly misreported in the media. How do you make sense of a world in which the ‘news’ is often not true, but mostly spin? How does your immediate world fit into the major currents of history, particularly when you have experienced what people are writing about, and the 'official reports' hardly resemble what you have seen with your own eyes? These are questions Kuper is asking about Mexico as well as the United States.

After the teachers’ strike was crushed by the government, Kuper turned his curious eye to entomology. Bugs and butterflies. His family traveled twelve hours to Michoacan, to the remote forests where millions of Monarch butterflies return to have sex and die, presumably a glorious death. Every night bugs invaded their home in Oaxaca. Scorpions. Black widow spiders. Unfathomable creepy crawlies. If only we could stomp on some of our politicians too!

Diario de Oaxaca is a remarkable book. On display is a mind that experiences the world in an astonished play that questions this world at the same time that it communicates its fractures, absurdities, and terrors. ‘Political cartoonist’ as a term to describe Peter Kuper, even though he uses it himself, does not do justice to the work. This is a book I will never give up. It’s curiosity in action. In words. In stunning, thoughtful artwork. It creates an unforgettable new world.

P.S. Take a look at Peter Kuper's show of original art from Diario de Oaxaca at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, and read a recent interview at Design Arts Daily.