Margarita Espada: the art of social change

"Like the yerba bruja plant freckling the hillsides of Puerto Rico, withstanding intense heat and almost unlivable conditions, adapting to whatever challenges threaten to harm it, Margarita Espada, too, has learned to adapt, to survive, to thrive." 

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Raquel Rivera's San Isidro

Raquel Z. Rivera is a singer-songwriter (Las 7 Salves de La Magdalena/7 Songs of Praise for The Magdalene), author (New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), editor of the anthology Reggaeton (Duke University Press, 2009), scholar at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Hunter College), freelance journalist, essay and fiction writer, and member of Afro-Boricua music group Alma Moyo.

Raquel's latest work of art is her life in San Isidro of the South Valley, Nuevo Mexico. Here's an excerpt from her blog Cascabel de Cobre:

My brother introduced me to San Isidro Labrador (Saint Isidore the Farmer) some years ago. Jorge Homar carries around a small estampita of the saint in his wallet. A cook and farming enthusiast, my brother is passionate about everything related to growing and preparing food. From the moment I realized the saint was working his magic from inside my little brother's wallet, San Isidro has had a piece of my heart.

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Latin music impresario Ralph Mercado has lost his battle with cancer at the age of 67

Latin music impresario Ralph Mercado has lost his battle with cancer at the age of 67.

Mercado, who managed Latin singers including Tito Puente and Celia Cruz, died on Tuesday, March 10, 2009, in Hackensack, New Jersey.

He was widely acknowledged as the most prominent promoter of salsa music, known for organizing salsa concerts in large arenas including New York's famed Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall.

Mercado's RMM label, founded in 1987, represented more than 130 Latin artists. He sold it to the Universal and Music and Video Distribution Corporation in 2001 after losing a copyright infringement suit.

Mercado is survived by his wife, Cynthia; daughters Debbie, Damaris, Melissa and Chanel; a son, Ralph III; and six grandchildren.

Related:
Ralph Mercado, Impresario, Dies at 67 NYTimes Obit
Ralph Mercado Presents' Photo Gallery
Ralph Mercado Presents website
Ralph Mercado 's Biography

Lenina Nadal: A Suburican Writer Searches for Home

Being a woman of color writer is a process of self-definition and a constant search for community. Though still searching, it seems to me that nothing touches my soul more than the lyrics of those who challenge the political and cultural boundaries of American society.

"Suburican" is a Boricua raised in the suburbs, in other words, me. I was socialized in a racially segregated, relatively conservative city in Long Island, Long Beach, NY. While there was always a shallow acceptance or "tolerance" of others, the school's tracking system, housing patterns, and areas of employment revealed a town that was narrowly divided around race and class.

While progressive English teachers incorporated " The House on Mango Street" and "Down These Mean Streets" into the curriculum, I only knew of Latino literature as reflecting the immigrant experience and talking about "growing up." So instead of relating to author Piri Thomas as a validator of my existence, I was mostly intrigued by the lives of Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, George Elliot, James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Like these authors, I felt alienated from my community because I saw past the "we are all the same" agenda pushed and crammed into our brains by every teacher that uttered the word diversity. Even after a 100 person race riot in our high school's cafeteria, we were still not allowed to have our own clubs based on ethnicity or talk about blatant divisions. It seemed that any time we spoke of race as an issue, we were encouraged to believe it was an illusion.

This frustration led to me to adopting the style and demeanor of the non-conformist, I was a woman poet, Puerto Rican Beatnik, my religion, transcendentalism, my music, alternative and classic rock. Reading Nuyorican poetry opened my eyes to a type of Latino literature where the poet was symbiotic with a social movement, living in another dimension, testing boundaries.

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Christina Aguilera "Beautiful"

Really, really beautiful.

Jose Conde: Respondele a Obama - Respond to Obama

This is a great latin music video for Obama, written and performed by Jose Conde, with video by Nicole Betancourt. I love it when he sings that even his Republican Mama is going to cast a vote for Obama. Cuban cool.

Rafael Angel Acosta Diaz: An emerging Puerto Rican sculptor

Before he was even ten years old, Rafael Angel Acosta Díaz knew that someday he would be an artist. Now, Acosta Díaz, 22, is in his third year of college, at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico or the Fine Arts School of Puerto Rico, majoring in Sculpture, and creating innovative pieces that have impressed his teachers and peers.

Acosta Díaz' influences? His grandfather...

“I’ve always enjoyed creating with my hands, my grandfather has a mechanic garage and I always felt a sort of influence towards creating with my hands.”

...and renowned Puerto Rican sculptor Adelino González.

“I create mixed mediums, and I believe I got that influence from Adelino, the influence to work with different materials and mediums to create an elegant piece with an experimental concept.”

Mutants of Hiroshima

During his second year at the university, Acosta Díaz exhibited a series of 20 miniature soldiers, highlighting the effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The soldiers were made with plastic pieces, which the artist burnt with fire to be able to achieve the deformed faces poisonous radiation.

The Spiders

Acosta Díaz is currently working on an installation consisting of 50 pieces. The pieces showcase spiders made with different kinds of wood and steel. Each spider is different, they vary in their size and style, and some are 2 inches while others are up to two feet.

“The purpose is to create a tense environment because spiders are the number one phobia, most people are afraid of them. But I’m also adapting to what spiders symbolize as they undergo continued sacrifices to be able to survive, because you can destroy the spider’s web ten times, and the spider will create it again ten more times.”

Acosta Diaz is not sure where he will be in ten years, but he is sure of where he wants to be.

“I want what every artist wants, to be recognized, for people to know my work and appreciate my work. I want to make a living from my passion, my art, my sculptures.”

For more information or to contact Rafael Angel Acosta Diaz you can send him an email at rafaelngl@yahoo.com.

Link

Akon's Ghetto & New Year Resolutions

Think about the haunting lyrics and images of Akon's "Ghetto" when making your New Year resolutions. We know in our hearts as Americans and as human beings that we can--and must--do better. Peace.

Ahhh, Ahh, Ahhh, Ahh

Ghetto, Ghetto, Ghetto, Ghetto livin’

[verse one]

These streets remind me of quicksand (quicksand)
When you`re on it, you`ll keep goin’ down (goin’ down)
And there`s no one to hold on to
And there`s no one to pull you out
You keep on fallin’ (fallin’)
And no one can here you callin’
So you end up self destructin’
On the corner with the tuli on the waist line
just got outta the bing doin’ state time
Teeth marks on my back from the K-9
Dark Memories of when there was no sunshine
Cause they said that I wouldn`t make it
I remember like yesterday (day)
Holdin’ on to what God gave me

[Chorus]

Cause that’s the life when your
Living in the (ghetto)
And eating in the (ghetto)
Or sleeping in the (ghetto) (ghetto, ghetto)
Cause that’s the life when your
Living in the (ghetto)
And eating in the (ghetto)
Or sleeping in the (ghetto, ghetto, ghetto)

[Verse Two]

No need to cherish luxuries (cause everythin` come and go)
Even the life that you have is borrowed
(Cause your not promised tomorrow)
So live your life as if everyday gon’ be your last (be your last)
Once you move forward can`t go back
Best prepare to remove your past

Cause ya gotta be willin to pray
Yea, There gotta be (there gotta be) a better way oh
Yea, Ya gotta be willing to pray
Cause there gotta be (there gotta be) a better day (ay)

Whoever said that the struggle would stop today
A lot of niggas dead or locked away
Teenage Women growing up with aids

[chorus]

Cause thats the life when your
Living in the (ghetto) oh
Eating in the (ghetto) or
Sleeping in the (ghetto, ghetto)
Thats the life when you`re
Living in the (ghetto)oh
Eating in the (ghetto) or
Sleeping in the (ghetto, ghetto, ghetto)

[bridge]

Gun shots every night in the (ghetto)
Crooked cops on sight in the (ghetto)
Every day is a fight in the (ghetto)
(oh oh oh oh oh) (ghetto)
Got kids to feed in the (ghetto)
Selling coke and weed in the (ghetto)
Every day somebody bleed in the (ghetto)
(oh oh oh oh oh) (ghetto)

[chorus]

Thats the life when your
Living in the (ghetto)oh
Living by the (ghetto)oh
Eating in the (ghetto, ghetto)
Thats the life when your
Living in the (ghetto)oh
Sleeping in the (ghetto)
Living in the (ghetto, ghetto, ghetto)

(wooohhoohh)

Mairéad Byrne: Poet, Migrant, Immigrant-- Inbetweener

Here's an excerpt from Rob Mclennan's 12 or 20 questions: with Mairéad Byrne:

I’m an immigrant and a migrant. Providence is quite close to my own home environment of Dublin, at least Dublin before it became prosperous. South County Rhode Island is uncannily like South County Dublin. When I look out over the bay at Narragansett I expect to find Howth and am disoriented not to.

I’m very aware of place but move on easily, or at least have so far. But I still think about the places I have lived; and the places members of my family have lived: all their smells & atmospheres. I have very acute memories of my older sister’s first flat in Dublin, in the late 1960’s. That was the first place I ever smelled curry. The first place I ever saw an eggplant, or tamarind. I remember the smell of America when I first came to New York. That was an apartment, not a flat.

I value mobility. When I was a young journalist, I had nothing, materially, but I had access to those who had less than nothing, and to those who had a lot more. I came to America with $400 and a 7-year old child, knowing no-one, not even being able to drive. I kind of believe in the American dream, and I still believe in America. I teach at Rhode Island School of Design, a private school, and that 7-year old child, a daughter, is now a Junior at Brown, studying Applied Math & Economics.

I’m still an inbetweener. I work in a situation of privilege. My colleagues and students are predominantly White or Asian. I live in a situation much closer to poverty, and there is much poverty in Providence. My neighborhood is predominantly Hispanic, and Black, as is my younger daughter’s school. Black America has had an enormous influence on me, ethically. Also Black music and poetry. The America I emigrated for was Black rather than White. These terms seem harsh when I write them; the reality is harsh too but not quite so stark. The fabric of my work is quite similar to the fabric of my life. The relationships are visible.

Gloria Vando Hickok: Missouri Poet, Latina, Nuyorican

From THE AD ASTRA BLOG OF DENISE LOW, POET LAUREATE OF KANSAS (11.14.07 entry):

Gloria Vando Hickok has enriched the Kansas City area literary community since moving to Johnson County in 1980. She founded Helicon Nine, a nationally recognized women’s arts magazine, which then became a press, Helicon Nine Editions. In addition, she and her husband Bill Hickok co-founded The Writers Place, a literary arts center in Kansas City, Missouri. This poet combines such service with writing award-winning books.

Vando is a Nuyorican: a person of Puerto Rican heritage born in New York City. She layers this cultural perspective through her verses. Most of her poems begin with autobiographical moments, which then expand into global perspectives.

Narrative is a strong element in all of Vando’s works, and also history. She regales her readers with dramatic stories set in Sarajevo, Vietnam, Korea, San Juan, New York, and Kansas City. She personalizes political comment by adding emotional reactions to factual events. She also tells her own larger-than-life stories in well wrought verse.

“Orphans” is one of these stories. The fourteen-line poem follows an unrhymed sonnet pattern. The first eight lines set up the situation—death of a loveless parent—and then the poem shifts to the mother’s advice about grief. Acorns and wind are familiar images to Midwestern readers, and here these natural forces suggest wholeness. The last two lines are the sonnet’s couplet, with the surprising final chord—acceptance of “luck.” The mother empowers her orphaned (or fatherless) daughter by framing her within a larger cosmos.

ORPHANS

When my father died, leaving me
distraught for never having known
him as father, as friend,
for never having known myself

as child of one whose eyes and mouth
and temperament were mine, my mother
cautioned me, told me not to mourn
what I perceived as loss: you and I

are daughters of the wind, she said,
you and I are fathers of our souls,
sprouting intact like seedlings
from two wind-borne acorns.

We thrive on luck, she said,
there is no father’s love in that.

Education: Vando was born in New York City and lived in Amsterdam and Paris. She received a BA from Texas A and I College and pursued graduate studies at Southampton College, Long Island.

Career: Vando’s Promesas: Geography of the Impossible (1993) was a Walt Whitman finalist and won the Thorpe Menn Book Award. Shadows and Supposes (2002) won the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award and was named Best Poetry Book of 2003 by the Latino Hall of Fame.

The Kingdom’s Old Man

The Kingdom’s Old Man ©

Old man, your eyes twinkle
As you turn slowly towards the twilight.
Your deep sigh hangs in the temple of the
Mind as does the darkness of the bay.

Old man with deeply furrowed face,
you walk softly through my days; loudly
Through my nights. Your voice echoes in my
Words; your silence is imprinted in my gaze.

Old man, you were captured in your youth;
conscripted as a servant for the kingdom’s
Exclusive use. With blinders and a yoke, you
Elevated its gold-gilded shrines.

You slaved in choking seas of cane,
Dark grimy factories, and sterilized passage-
Ways--as a member of the peon race; but your
Eyes turned to the sun whenever you had a chance.

Old man, you dared a humble dream of living
With the earth, living life, enjoying the
Breeze; but it held you ‘til your spirit was
Dragged in mud and life was nearly done.

Old man, you’re back to your beginning—gained
Little, lost much. But you’re back to your
Conuco—reclaiming life, sowing the earth,
Preparing your spirit to be freed.

Old man, your eyes twinkle
As you turn slowly towards the twilight.
Your deep sigh hangs in the temple of the
Mind as does the darkness of the bay.

American Taíno

Premier of Poet in the Bronx (by Rei Vázquez)

Monday, May 7th at 7pm

Join us for a reading of

Poet in the Bronx

Club Midway

25 Avenue B btw 2nd and 3rd

Playwright: Reinaldo Vázquez

Director: Katie Courtien

Dramaturg: Rhett Martines

Featuring: Rosa Fernandez Mack Exilus Jose Rivera Ugo Anyanwu Miguel Angel SierraKatie Courtien
Paper Beats Rock is curated by: Matthew Korahais, Daniel Manley, Andrea Stover, and Valerie Work

Drink $pecials

FREE POPCORN