Quiara Alegría Hudes: Playwright, Author

Quiara Alegría Hudes is an award-winning author of plays, musicals, screenplays and other literary works.

Though her works are varied in style, she combines an intellectual curiosity with a humanistic vision to tell new American stories.

Her work for musical theater includes Broadway’s Tony Award-winning Best Musical In the Heights (Tony Nomination for her book, Pulitzer Prize finalist, Lucille Lortel Award, Outer Critics Circle Award) and the children’s musical Barrio Grrrl! (book and lyrics, Helen Hayes nomination for Theater for Young Audiences).

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Quiara Alegría Hudes website
Worth listening - Courier-Post

Don Jose Pereira Torres of Vieques (and St Croix)

In my new book, Ruins of a Society and the Honorable, I speak of the foreign invasions and injustices that plagued the islands of Puerto Rico. I speak of the injustice of my uncle Jose Pereira Torres of Monte Santo Vieques, PR, who was forced out of Vieques during the US invasion of the 1940s; he was approximately 11 years old. He migrated to St Croix, Virgin Island and ran for the Senate November 07, 1978.

In May 1979, he was accused of conspiring to participate with a radical group in sabotaging US military vehicles, charges that were later proven false and eventually dismissed. The only violation committed by Jose Pereira was when he and 21 others were arrested for civil disobedience in a restricted US Navy bombing area, which was also the same year when The Crusade for the Rescue of Vieques was founded. But the injustice against Jose Pereira and others didn’t end there. Against his will and proclamation of innocence, my uncle was labeled a communist by US officials, but Jose Pereira saw himself as a freedom fighter and not an independentistas.

In his words, “independentistas concern themselves with too many issues beyond the problems of Vieques.” Unlike many others, I acknowledged the existence of the court and I make it clear this is not the problem. The bombardment, the injustices of our people and the forcible migration of Viequenses are my concerns. I’m here to prevent future generations from the humiliation we were all subjected to.”

Making it clear to his family; he accused the government of torture and experiment of others while incarcerated. Angel Rodriguez Cristobal, who was also arrested with Jose, was sent to a federal prison in Florida, two weeks later he was found dead in his cell. According to prison officials he committed suicide by hanging, but reports stated he had a large gash across his forehead and a pool of blood beneath his feet where he hung in his cell. (2 minute video of Angel Rodriguez Cristobal's funeral procession)

Jose Pereira returned to St Croix and later died of cancer. Although these inhumane practices no longer exist in Puerto Rico, the reminisce left behind by the constant years of US military exercises in bombing Vieques, still show signs of extremely high levels of radiation, lead contamination and cancer among many children throughout most of the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico.

Sugar Pathways brought to surface in my mind the many stories told to me por mi madre, Margarita Pereira Morales, mi tio, Diego Pereira y mi tia, Maria Pereira Martinez, who is still a resident of Vieques. Johanna Bermudez-Ruiz has done a wonderful job in her documentary. I’m not only proud to say we are of the same bloodline, but extremely proud to have known her during my lifetime.

Al Bermudez Pereira

Photo: Al Bermudez Pereira

Latino/a Authors

Author JoAnn Hernandez (White Bread Competition, The Throwaway Piece) is owner of BronzeWord, a website packed with helpful information, links and resources for Latino writers.

A resource for the rest of us is a list of published Latino/a writers, including links to authors websites. Now there's no excuse for not purchasing books by U.S. Latin@ authors.

The Authors
A.E. Roman
Aaron A. Abeyta
Aaron Michael Morales
Abelardo Lalo Delgado
Ada Limon
Adriana Lopez
Alberto Rios
Aldo Alvarez
Alex Espinoza
Alfredo Vea
Alicia Gaspar de Alba
Alisa Valdes Rodriguez
Alma Flor Ada
Alma Luz Villanueva
Americo Paredes
AmoxCalli
Ana Castillo
Andres Resendez
Angel Vigil
Anisa Onofre
Ann Hagman Cardinal
Aracelis Girmay
Barbara Renaud Gonzalez
Belinda Acosta
Benjamin Alire Saenz
Berta Platas
Blas Manuel De Luna
C.M. Mayo
California Poet
Caridad Pineiro
Caridad Ferrer
Carmen Agra Deedy
Carmen Lomas Garza
Carmen Tafolla
Carmen U. Bernier Grand
Cevile Pineda
Charley Trujillo
Cherrie Moraga
Christine Granados
Cindy Holby
Coe Booth
Cristina Garcia
Cristina Henriquez
Dagoberto Gilb
Dan Vera
Daniel A. Olivas
Daniel Alarcon
Daniel Chacón
Daniel Reveles
David A. Hernandez
David Rice
Demetria Martinez
Denise Chavez
Diana López
Dr. Ricardo Sanchez
Edgardo Vega Yungue
Eduardo C. Corral
Eduardo Santiago
Elaine Romero
Elena Nazzaro
Emma Perez
Emmy Perez
Esmeralda Santiago
Esteban Martinez
Estevan Vega
Evangelina Vigil-Piñón
F. Isabel Campoy
Felicia Luna Lemus
Felipe Davalos
Francisco Aragon
Francisco Jimenez
Francisco X. Stork
Gabriella Hewitt
Gary Soto
Gilbert Hernandez
Gina Franco
Gloria Vando
Gloria Velasquez
Gonzalo Barr
Graciela Limon
Guillermo Gómez-Peña – La Pocha Nostra
Guy Garcia
Gwendolyn Zepeda
Icess Fernandez
Ilan Stavans
Ink
Isaac Chavarria
Jaime Hernandez
James Canon
Jamie Martinez Wood
Jeff Rivera
Jennifer Prado
Jerry A. Rodriguez
Jimmy Santiago Baca
Joe Cepeda
Joe Loya
John Parra
John Rechy
Jorge Argueta
Jorge Ramos
Jose Antonio Burciaga
Jose Latour
Josefina Lopez
Joy Castro
Juan Felipe Herrera
Judith Oritz Cofer
Julia Alvarez
Julia Amante
Julie Larios
Juliette Dominguez
Junot Diaz
Kathleen Alcala
Kathleen DeAzevedo
Kathy Cano-Murillo
Kermit Lopez
L.M. Gonzalez
Lalo Delgado
Laura Gallego Garcia
laurasalas
Lauren Castillo
Lisa Alvarado
Liz Balmaseda
Lorena Siminovich
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Lorraine M. Lopez
Lucha Corpi
Lucia Gonzalez
Luis A. Lopez
Luis J. Rodriguez
Lulu Delacre
Lyna Sandoval
Magdalena Gomez
Malin Alegria
Manuel Munoz
Manuel Ramos
Margo Candela
Maria Amparo Escandon
Mario Acevedo
Marlene Perez
Marta Acosta
Martin Espada
Martin Limon
Mary Castillo
Mary Helen Lagasse
Matt de la Pena
Max Benavidez
Max Martinez
Mayra Calvani
Michael Jaime-Becerra
Michele Martinez
Michelle Serros
Micol Ostow
Miguel Algarin
Miriam Herrera
Mirta Ojito
Misa Ramirez
Mitali Perkins
Monica Brown
Nancy Castaldo
Nina Marie Martinez
Norma Elia Cantu
Ofelia Dumas Lachtman
Oscar “Zeta” Acosta
Paco Ignacio Taibo II
Pam Munoz Ryan
Pat Mora
Patrick Sanchez
Rafael Lopez
Rafaela Castro
Raul Colon
Raul Ramos y Sanchez
raulrsalinas
Rebecca Gomez
Rene Colato Lainez
Rene Saldana Jr.
Renee Fajardo
Reyes Cardenas
Reyna Grande
Ricardo Sanchez
Richard Blanco
Richard Vasquez
Rigoberto Gonzalez
Rolando Hinojosa
Rudolfo Anaya
Rudy Gutierrez
S. Ramos O’Briant
Salvador Plascencia
Sam Quinones
Sandra Cisneros
Sandra Maria Esteves
Sandra Rodriguez Barron
Sarah Cortez
Sarah Rafael Garcia
Sergio Troncoso
Severo Perez
Sherman Alexie
Sheryl Luna
Sofia Quintero
Sonia Nazario
Stella Pope Duarte
Steven Torres
Teresa Carbajal Ravet
Tino Villanueva
Tomas Rivera
Tracy Montoya
Victor Villasenor
William Nericcio
Yuyi Morales
Yxta Maya Murray

Luis Humberto Valadez - what i'm on

Luis Valadez is a performance poet and his poems shout to be read aloud. It’s then that their language dazzles most brightly. It’s then that the emotions bottled up on the page explode beyond words. And there is plenty of emotion in these poems.

Frankly autobiographical, they recount the experiences of a Mexican American boy growing up in a tough town near Chicago. Just as in life, the feelings in these poems are often jumbled, sometimes spilling out in a tumble, sometimes coolly recollected. Sometimes the words jump and twitch as if they’d been threatened or attacked. Sometimes they just sit there knowingly on the page, weighted down by the stark reality of it all.

José García
put a thirty-five to me
my mother was in the other room
He would have done us both
if not for the lust of my fear

This new Mexican American/Chicano voice is all at once arresting, bracing, shocking, and refreshing. This is not the poetry you learned in school. It owes as much to hip hop as it does to the canon. But Valadez has paid his academic dues, and he certainly knows how to craft a poem. It’s just that he does it his way.

i anagram and look and subject to deformation and reconfiguring . . .
it ain’t events or blocks that ahm jettisoning through this process
it be layers of meaning, identity, narrative, and ego that gets peeled off
i can only increase my own understanding

Read Excerpt

'I Am Joaquin' by Luis Valdez

I Am Joaquin marked the emergence of film as a distinct cultural and aesthetic practice within the Chicano Movement. In the film, Luis Valdez gives a dramatic interpretation of Rodolfo 'Corky' González's epic poem of the same name.

I Am Joaquin speaks of the struggles that the Chicano people have faced in trying to achieve economic justice and equal rights in the U.S.
Part 1

Part 2


Links:
I Am Joaquin/Yo soy Joaquín by Rodolfo 'Corky' Gonzales - Poem
Luis Valdez @ the Latino Indie Producers

Dakota Philosopher: Charles Eastman and American Indian Thought by David Martinez

Dakota Philosopher: Charles Eastman and American Indian Thought by David Martinez

Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa), 1858 - 1939, was a American Indian author, physician, philosopher and reformer. He straddled two worlds in his life and writing. The author of Indian Boyhood was raised in the traditional way after the 1862 U.S.–Dakota War. His father later persuaded him study Christianity, and attend medical school. But when Eastman served as a government doctor during the Wounded Knee massacre, he became disillusioned about Americans’ capacity to live up to their own ideals.

While Eastman’s contemporaries viewed him as “a great American and a true philosopher,” Indian scholars have long dismissed Eastman’s work as assimilationist. Now, for the first time, his philosophy as manifested in his writing is examined in detail. David Martínez explores Eastman’s views on the U.S.–Dakota War, Dakota and Ojibwe relations, Dakota sacred history, and citizenship in the Progressive Era, claiming for him a long overdue place in America’s intellectual pantheon.

“A compelling, innovative, and provocative reading of the work of Charles Eastman. Martínez has achieved a new and deepened understanding of the importance of Charles Eastman to his times, to Native intellectual history...”
Robert Allen Warrior, The People and the Word: Reading Native Nonfiction

“Martínez makes a unique contribution to the ongoing exploration of the early twentieth-century generation of Indian intellectuals, offering literary interpretations of historical texts and taking particular aim at the connections between intellectual history and philosophy.”
Philip Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places

David Martínez is of Pima descent and he is an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community.

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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Launch of www.librerialectorum.com with Mirta Ojita, Esmeralda Santiago & Victor Villaseñor Nov 19 in NYC

New York City's oldest Spanish bookstore, Librería Lectorum, closed last year. Many were saddened by the shuttering of the specialty bookstore -- a long time fixture on 14th Street and symbol of New York City's century plus Latino influence.

However, the good news though is that Librería Lectorum has been reincarnated as the nation's premier Spanish-language online bookstore. Continuing its decades-long commitment to the Latino community, this Fall Lectorum will launch a new Spanish-language website for consumers, offering tens of thousands of adult and children’s Spanish-language titles.

Bravo!

The founders and distinguished Latino authors are celebrating the launch of http://www.liberialectorum.com/ November 19th.

While the launch is an invitation-only, private event, members of the public are encouraged to log on to http://www.librerialectorum.com/ starting November 17th to see all that the site has to offer, including a recording of the Café Literario event.

Related: New York City's Oldest Spanish Bookstore to Close

Obama beats Clinton -- this time at the Grammys

Barack Obama beat out Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter for a Grammy Award in the category for best spoken word album. He won the award--his second--for his audio version of his book "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream." His first was in 2005 for "Dreams From My Father."

I love Obama but isn't it just a tad unworldly how well things are going for him at the moment? But here's hoping that this special man receives many more awards for his spectacular talents and achievements.

New York City's Oldest Spanish Bookstore to Close

Librería Lectorum, New York City's oldest and largest Spanish-language bookstore, will close its W. 14th St. storefront on September 30, 2007.

They say it's due to gentrification. Too bad.

How many times did I walk by Librería when I lived in the neighborhood at 15th and 6th? No doubt it was hundreds of times as I walked to the A Train, or to Hudson and my job in the West Village, or to countless other destinations.

I never tired of checking out the latest titles in the store's window displays--even if my book purchases were in English and at Barnes & Nobles on Fifth Avenue.

While certainly not the same experience, the good news is that fans can still visit Librería Lectorum online.

Related Last page for Hispanic bookstore on 14th St.

School Board Seeks Banning of Vamos a Cuba

Florida school board wants Cuba book banned (by Laura Wides-Munoz, AP - 6.5.07)

MIAMI - A children's book about life in Cuba has parents and school board members demanding its removal from district libraries even though it only features wholesome topics.

To many in this heavily Cuban-American community, "Vamos a Cuba" ("A Visit to Cuba") is extremely offensive because it lacks any criticism of the country's dictator Fidel Castro or his communist government.

[T]he American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and the Miami-Dade Student Government Association challenged the removal in court.

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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