It's not a Drug War, it's another Dirty War.
A little background: over the last fifteen years, I've been going back and forth to Mexico, first in 1997 on a trip to Chiapas to do human rights observation work and then in 1998 to lead a student delegation of fifteen to the same state. In 2001, I went back again but this time to visit a guy I'd been seeing in Monterrey. That time, for Thanksgiving, I took the bus down and spent 10 days tooling around industrial Monterrey, a very different Mexico then I'd ever seen before. It wasn't exotic, it wasn't totally foreign, it felt as much like home as Houston did at the time. Even thought things with the guy didn't work out, I did love the North, especially because it was so close by and so easy to get to on the bus from Houston.
And the love grew. In 2004, I lived for a year in Tampico, the city where my partner was born. In 2006, I lived for a summer in Tijuana doing a writing workshop. In 2008, I went for six months to work at the International Book Fair in Monterrey. From 2009-2011, I lived in Tijuana, crossing several days a week into San Diego to work and study at the University of California. For all of these last eleven years, I've been going back and forth pretty constantly⎯to Monterrey, Tijuana, Tampico, Juárez, Chihuahua, Hermosillo, Mexico City, Querétaro, Reynosa, Matamoros and more. Usually I'm on the bus or driving so I'm passing through a lot of towns and ranchos along the way. And of course, Houston or San Diego is not so far from the border⎯Aztlán is alive and kicking in all kinds of new 2012 ways.
So how to talk about this violence in a place I love so much? A place⎯the North⎯that I think of as part of a larger region on both sides of the border. A region that, more than any place in the world, feels like home to me.
I don't want to be silent about the violence, but it can be hard to speak clearly about what's going on. In a recent book called To Die in Mexico, John Gibler points to the existence of a particular brand of silence, what he calls narco-silence: "For drug war silence is not the mere absence of talking, but rather the practice of not saying anything. You may talk as much as you like, as long as you avoid the facts. Newspaper headlines announce the daily death toll, but the articles will not tell you anything about who the dead were, who might have killed them or why. Not detailed descriptions based on witness testimony. No investigation."
This silence means that it is inordinately hard for anyone, Mexican or foreign, to fully explain what is going on, to get clarity or to provide a larger context. And many accounts from the U.S. (even in leading newspapers like the NY Times) are just horrible⎯written by journalists who parachute in and then attempt to sum up the situation while getting most everything wrong, oversimplifying, generalizing or writing scandal-based work that doesn't go deep.
Well, today I stumbled on an article in Harper's by Cecilia Balli about the violence in Mexico and specifically about the corruption, torture and human rights abuses being committed by the Mexican federal government and the Army under the cover of the "War on Drugs."
Over the years, I've talked to a lot of people in Mexico from all backgrounds about how they see the violence. This much is clear: the way many of my friends (and the ones whose instincts I trust the most) talk about this violence is totally different from most portrayals found in U.S. or Mexican or international media. There is a clear sense, a certainty, that Calderón is behind the spiraling numbers of dead. There is a lot of anger against him personally and a complete distrust of any governmental institutions. Some insist that the army and the government itself is behind much of the abuse. For them, the era of drug dealers killing drug dealers seems to have morphed into a different kind of war - one with a lot more complications and more guilty parties.
Balli's article does an amazing job breaking down the way the Mexican Army and the federal government have tortured and killed their own citizens under the cover of this campaign against drugs. Through diligent, long-term research into the issue, she's been able to piece together a very different story. A story about disappearances, torture and impunity. As she makes clear: Just one case of military abuse should be enough to submit Calderón to judgement, or even imprisonment. But it will take a lot of journalism like this and strong activism to change the story in the media from one about a "Drug War" to one about the state-orchestrated violence and impunity in Mexico. (There's been some amazing work on impunity in the last year as well. If you haven't seen Presunto Culpable, watch it soon please.)
To be clear: this is not just a war between cartels; it is also a campaign of fear and torture being waged by the Mexican government against its own citizens (with US government support and complicity, of course). But Balli points out a critical difference between this dirty war and previous dirty wars in Mexico or in other countries in Latin America (Chile and Argentina come to mind): its victims are largely not political activists or student protestors. While there is also intense violence directed against activists and journalists along the Northern border, the tens of thousands of dead are mainly working-class and lower-middle class Mexican citizens. As Balli writes:
Questioned about the violence during the campaign's first days, one general told the press: "I would like to see the journalists change their stories, and when they write that there's been 'one more death,' they'd instead say there's one less criminal."
This is the logic behind this state-orchestrated violence. Everyone is guilty until proven innocent (which is in fact the law in Mexico) and therefore any tactic (including extra-official murder, torture and disappearances) is acceptable. The violence has its roots in poverty and lack of opportunity and also in the lack of effective legal mechanisms or accountability in Mexico. As Balli writes about the tens of thousands of people tortured, killed and disappeared:
Because they were nameless citizens on the margins of the country and its conscience, few will rise to defend them or reconstruct their stories.
I'd like to thank Cecilia Balli for doing this hard work to reconstruct the stories of Jaime Alejandro Irigoyen, Benjamín Medina Sanchez and others. She's long been involved in and writing about this borderless & border-filled region between Mexico and the U.S. I have so much respect for her work, because I know personally how hard it is to sift through all the information. It's been fifteen years since I first started going to Mexico, and a lot of the issues of repression, violence and impunity remain the same. And the U.S. government and U.S. citizens are complicit in so many ways.
I hope you will take a few minutes to read the article. Let me know what you think.
I love how anywhere can be boring.
+
How Rihanna and Kreayshawn travel. Making my way through the Top 40 from 2011 right now. Thanks, Lana Turner.
+
Yes, I'm on the other side of the world. Hot summer afternoon, the sun bashing against the glass and the curtains drawn against it. Hot hot hot. I say later: I'm going to the roof of this highrise to draw the cityscape.
+
Bolaño cita a Pascal para decir: Cuando considero la corta duración de mi vida, ... el pequeño espacio que ocupo y incluso que veo, abismado en la infinita inmensidad de los espacios que ignoro y que me ignoran, me espanto y me asombro de verme aquí y no allí.
+
This tiny block of cement risen up in the sky like a platform to look out at the city and the Andes beyond. And the Andes higher than that beyond that.
+
The hydrangeas are huge and pink or blue and it looks like New England.
The houses are low and wooden and perched on well-trimmed grassy hillsides; almost all of them are advertising the sale of something with road signs and it looks like Route 1 in Maine.
The cacti tower high above the dusty earth and it looks like Arizona.
The buildings are grey and dirty, dripping with something resembling water and innumerable and it looks like NYC.
The vineyards stretch off in the distance and it looks like North San Diego County.
The mountains are tan and hazy in the distance with tall spindly trees in the foreground and it looks like El Paso.
The small towns appear around a corner and the houses are bunched together in a little cluster and it looks like the Valle de Guadalupe.
The insides of the houses and bus terminals are made of varnished wood and it looks like ski chalets in the Alps.
The bathroom on the bus stinks and it smells like the one between Houston and Tampico.
There is laughing, talking, drinks clinking, the hum of people from the bar next door and it sounds like Calle Sexta in Tijuana.
The sidewalks around the downtown plazas are clean and marbled; the subterranean entrances to marble-walled museums have marbled steps and it looks like Washington, DC.
The rundown wholesale market is full of herbs, beans, toys and candy and it looks like Mexico City.
The thin dry leaves of the acacia trees resist the brutal heat and it looks like Tucson.
The Metro is full of seventies modernist details and typefaces and it looks like Monterrey.
The pine trees are tall and bushy and full and it looks like Colorado.
The tunnels are open except for beams that cross them and mesh wires to cover the gaps and it looks like Barcelona.
The eucalyptus trees grow like gangly teenagers and it looks like La Jolla.
+
A girl asks me if the U.S is going to invade Chile. If there will be war between our countries. I say no.
+
Un niño listening to reggaetón - while his sister sleeps - drinking apricot juice from a straw: I scribble this down on a sheet of paper quickly so as not to be seen. Now I type it out on the screen for you to read wherever you happen to be.
Book Sprint!
We tackled Maker Culture, Hacking, Artistic Research, Citizen Science, and Computational Art, wrote about over 60 artists, and created a gigantic timeline that includes everything from the establishment of Radio Shack to Creative Commons and Kickstarter. WE DID THIS IN SEVEN DAYS, with little sleep and lots of instant feedback from faculty and students at CMU, as well as artists who generously skyped into the conversation at a moment’s notice. The product of the sprint, New Art/Science Affinities is now out in the world and available as a free download or you can purchase a hard copy.
- An amazing "book sprint" explained by Andrea Grover on Glasstire.
- An amazing "book sprint" explained by Andrea Grover on Glasstire.
Upcoming Events in Houston
Wednesday, November 30
More info on the Words & Art Facebook page.
+++
Tuesday, December 6
Slinging Ink at Big Star Bar
December 6, 2011
7:30
Big Star Bar, 1005 West 19th St., Houston, TX, 77008
Join DiverseWorks as we gather at Big Star Bar for the first night of a new series called Slinging Ink. Four readers have been selected to read their own short-form writing on a single theme. This round’s theme is:
I WAS LOOKING FOR A JOB, AND THEN I FOUND A JOB, AND HEAVEN KNOWS I’M MISERABLE NOW.
Slinging Ink promotes not just creative writing, but also short forms like memories, reports, notes, letters, recommendations, lesson plans, proposals, complaints and confessions.
Submissions included fiction and real-life stories about quitting, getting fired, or holding on for dear life to an awful job just to pay the bills. Writers focused on first days, workplace injuries, questionable judgments, and ordinary tedium. A blind panel selected four readers for the competition. We are please to have John Wayne Comunale, Wanda Harding, Dean Liscum, and John Pluecker to read their works.
The audience at Slinging Ink will decide who wins a $100 cash prize by the volume and enthusiasm of applause at the end of the night.
More info on Diversworks event page.
+++
Sunday, December 11
POLITIQUEER
6:30 pm
Houston Institute for Culture, 708-C Telephone Road, Houston, TX 77023
$ Free
Featured artists and performers include: Philomena Bradford, William R. Duell, Loriana Espinel, Amanda Ford, Jonatan Lopez, Koomah, Eli'jah Carroll + Robin Mack + Jay Mays, John Pluecker, Stephanie Saint Sanchez, Rowdy Tidwell and Alyx Trouble
VBB is excited to kick off our 2011-12 East End Live Art series with POLITIQUEER, a continuation of art and conversations from VBB's June 2011 production that presented art from the perspective of GLBT / queer artists. The December 2011 show is curated by Sima Shakhsari and Jennifer Tyburczy who announced an open call for artists leading to a rich variety of submissions from the community. The fourteen cutting-edge artists ultimately chosen for POLITIQUEER will present multidisciplinary art - video, performance, poetry, visual art and more. As always, there will be food, drink, open mic and community!
Well in general there are two forms of listening: focused listening and open, global, and receptive listening. This is also true of eyesight, you can focus on something for detail and you can have a peripheral vision of the field. Then, you can also defocus your eyes so that you take in more of the 180° that you can see, and thus you become quite sensitive to motion. The same applies to hearing. You can in a way defocus your ears so you're taking in all of the sounds around you, inside of you, in your memory or imagination all at once. The best image or metaphor I can give for it is a tapestry of sound: threads of sound that come and go and some that stay. Trying to expand oneself to include more and more of the field, I call inclusive listening. And then when something attracts your attention to focus in on, that's exclusive listening. You can do both at once, actually. I have a lot of exercises and pieces that try to expose these different forms. And this is what we do in the Deep Listening retreat. Deep Listening is a process. I guess the best definition I could give is listening to everything all the time and reminding yourself when you're not listening. You also have to understand that there's a difference between hearing and listening. In hearing, the ears take in all the sound waves and particles and deliver them to the audio cortex where the listening takes place. We cannot turn off our ears--the ears are always taking in sound information--but we can turn off our listening. I feel that listening is the basis of creativity and culture. How you're listening, is how you develop a culture and how a community of people listens, is what creates their culture. So that's the theory in kind of a nutshell.
- From an interview with Pauline Oliveros, who will be performing this Saturday in Houston.
(On Houston in the 30s & 40s when Oliveros was a child, she says in the same interview: I lived in Houston, Texas. I was born in 1932 and grew up at a time when humans had less impact on the environment than they do today. I mean, now the frogs are leaving and vanishing. The frogs in my childhood could be heard loud and clear. Then of course, now so much is paved over with asphalt and cement that the cicadas are trapped and can't get out. But you can still hear wonderful stereophonic cicada sounds in Houston as you walk or drive down the street. And all of those sounds were very important to me in childhood. My mother and my grandmother were both piano teachers, so I heard piano music being played in the house from early morning until early evening as they practiced and gave their lessons. We had a phonograph, a wind up Victrola, on which I used to play records. I listened to them and loved it when the phonograph ran down so the music would start to droop; that was fun. I used to listen to my grandfather's crystal radio, and I loved the static that came out of it. It was so hard to tune to stations on that radio. Same thing with my father's short wave radio, I loved the whistles and pops and things that were in between the stations. Radio was a very, very prevalent influence in my childhood, and I loved the sounds made by the foley people, the sound effects for different radio programs. So those were the different sound influences on my childhood. Then of course, I went to all kinds of musical events. In Houston there was a lot happening in the musical scene. There was the symphony orchestra, musicals, recitals, and so on. So it was very rich, as far as my memory can tell you.)
- From an interview with Pauline Oliveros, who will be performing this Saturday in Houston.
(On Houston in the 30s & 40s when Oliveros was a child, she says in the same interview: I lived in Houston, Texas. I was born in 1932 and grew up at a time when humans had less impact on the environment than they do today. I mean, now the frogs are leaving and vanishing. The frogs in my childhood could be heard loud and clear. Then of course, now so much is paved over with asphalt and cement that the cicadas are trapped and can't get out. But you can still hear wonderful stereophonic cicada sounds in Houston as you walk or drive down the street. And all of those sounds were very important to me in childhood. My mother and my grandmother were both piano teachers, so I heard piano music being played in the house from early morning until early evening as they practiced and gave their lessons. We had a phonograph, a wind up Victrola, on which I used to play records. I listened to them and loved it when the phonograph ran down so the music would start to droop; that was fun. I used to listen to my grandfather's crystal radio, and I loved the static that came out of it. It was so hard to tune to stations on that radio. Same thing with my father's short wave radio, I loved the whistles and pops and things that were in between the stations. Radio was a very, very prevalent influence in my childhood, and I loved the sounds made by the foley people, the sound effects for different radio programs. So those were the different sound influences on my childhood. Then of course, I went to all kinds of musical events. In Houston there was a lot happening in the musical scene. There was the symphony orchestra, musicals, recitals, and so on. So it was very rich, as far as my memory can tell you.)
What Kind of Times Are These
There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.
I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.
I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.
And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.
--Adrienne Rich
There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.
I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.
I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.
And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.
--Adrienne Rich
I am very ambivalent regarding self-education platforms in artist communities that serve to consolidate rather than extend knowledge by encouraging a small group of (often highly educated) people to share their knowledge with one another. I’m also frustrated by the fact that such projects often fail to engage the active discourse of critical pedagogy, and that they are uninterested in the history of learning outside of the classroom. I wish that these projects were ambitious enough to consider the implications of their work for education theory and generous enough to join a larger conversation.
In contrast to these, I’m very inspired in the work of Huong Ngo, an artist who has investigated education theory to inform her own practice as a professor and seeks to build upon existing models for alternative education. Book Club was also influenced by the open reading and facilitated conversation model of 16 Beaver, a group that is consistently attentive to the relationship between art, education, and empowerment. For many years, I have followed the work of Shaina Anand, and I am hugely supportive of her collaborative project, pad.ma. From the perspective of display, two projects that Jamal and I considered as we developed “Alpha’s Bet” were “I Wish It Were True,” a VHS archive by Leslie Hewitt and William Cordova, and the e-flux initiated Martha Rosler Library.
- From a conversation with Steffani Jemison, opening an exhibit at the New Museum in NYC.
In contrast to these, I’m very inspired in the work of Huong Ngo, an artist who has investigated education theory to inform her own practice as a professor and seeks to build upon existing models for alternative education. Book Club was also influenced by the open reading and facilitated conversation model of 16 Beaver, a group that is consistently attentive to the relationship between art, education, and empowerment. For many years, I have followed the work of Shaina Anand, and I am hugely supportive of her collaborative project, pad.ma. From the perspective of display, two projects that Jamal and I considered as we developed “Alpha’s Bet” were “I Wish It Were True,” a VHS archive by Leslie Hewitt and William Cordova, and the e-flux initiated Martha Rosler Library.
- From a conversation with Steffani Jemison, opening an exhibit at the New Museum in NYC.
What's Houston Like?
So many arty/hipstery people who have never been to Houston give me a sad or confused face whenever I say I am from Houston (and that I like it). They tell me they like Austin or mention something about driving through on the 10 from one place to another. Or they say something about how much it sucks or how they Bushes or Rick Perry or how backwards and conservative it must be.
So this post is for all those people. Days like this I am impressed and happy with Houston. Perfect weather and chock full of events.
The next person who asks me if I like Houston, I am going to mention this day of politically-charged, aesthetically wild art and words and events. This city is full of life and energy.
Xoxo from the Third Coast.
So this post is for all those people. Days like this I am impressed and happy with Houston. Perfect weather and chock full of events.
11am - Ctrl Art Create at Heights Theater (with incredible letterpressers from the Workhorse Printmakers)
2pm - Public Poetry Reading Series Downtown at Discovery Green
7pm - Crude Exhibit by Andrei Molodkin at the Station Museum
8pm - Voices Breaking Boundaries Third Worlds Part 2 Event at Nusrat Malik's House
and a birthday party for a special friend.
The next person who asks me if I like Houston, I am going to mention this day of politically-charged, aesthetically wild art and words and events. This city is full of life and energy.
Xoxo from the Third Coast.
Sus restos mortales reposan en Tijuana
It is indeed becoming more and more difficult, even senseless, for me to write an official English. And more and more my own language appears to me like a veil that must be torn apart in order to get at the things (or the Nothingness) behind it. ... As we cannot eliminate language all at once, we should at least leave nothing undone that might contribute to its falling into disrepute. To bore one hole after another in it, until what lurks behind it – be it something or nothing – begins to seep through; I cannot imagine a higher goal for a writer today. Or is literature alone to remain behind in the old lazy ways that have been so long ago abandoned by music and painting? Is there something paralysingly holy in the vicious nature of the word that is not found in the elements of the other arts? Is there any reason why that terrible materiality of the word surface should not be capable of being dissolved, like for example the sound surface, torn by enormous pauses, of Beethoven's seventh Symphony, so that through whole pages we can perceive nothing but a path of sounds suspended in giddy heights, linking unfathomable abysses of silence? ...
... At first it can only be a matter of somehow finding a method by which we can represent this mocking attitude towards the word, through words. In this dissonance between the means and their use it will perhaps become possible to feel a whisper of that final music or that silence that underlies All.
- Samuel Beckett
New Orleans Reading!
New Orleans
17 Poets Literary and Performance Series
SPECIAL EVENT: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25
Join us for a reception 7-8pm prior to the reading
Readings begin at 8pm, NOLA Time with complimentary wine and snacks
Poets Jen Hofer, Andy Young, and John Pluecker
Jen Hofer is a Los Angeles-based poet, translator, interpreter, teacher, knitter, book-maker, public letter-writer, and urban cyclist. Her most recent books are the homemade chapbook Lead & Tether(Dusie Kollektiv, 2011); Ivory Black, a translation of Negro marfil by Myriam Moscona (Les Figues Press, 2011); a series of anti-war-manifesto poems titled one (Palm Press, 2009);sexoPUROsexoVELOZ and Septiembre, a translation from Dolores Dorantes by Dolores Dorantes (Counterpath Press and Kenning Editions, 2008); The Route, a collaboration with Patrick Durgin (Atelos, 2008); and lip wolf, a translation of lobo de labio by Laura Solórzano (Action Books, 2007).Recent poems and translations have appeared in Aufgabe, Mandorla, Or, out of nothing, TRY and with+stand. She teaches at CalArts, Goddard College, and Otis College, and works nationally and locally as a social justice interpreter through antenna, a language justice collaborative. Her installation titled “Uncovering: A Quilted Poem Made from Donated and Foraged Materials from Wendover, Utah” will be on view at the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Utah starting in November 2011.
John Pluecker is a writer, interpreter, translator and teacher. His work is informed by experimental poetics, radical aesthetics and cross-border cultural production and has appeared in journals and magazines in the U.S. and Mexico, including the Rio Grande Review, Picnic, Third Text, Animal Shelter and Literal. He has published more than five books in translation from the Spanish, including essays by a leading Mexican feminist, short stories from Ciudad Juárez and a police detective novel. There are two chapbooks of his work, Routes into Texas (DIY, 2010) and Undone (Dusie Kollektiv, 2011).
Andy Young is the co-editor of Meena Magazine, a bilingual Arabic-English literary journal, and teaches Creative Writing at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Her work was recently featured on National Public Radio’s “The World” and published in Best New Poets 2009 (University of Virginia Press),Callaloo, Guernica, and Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond (W.W. Norton & Co). She has published two chapbooks, All Fires the Fire (Faulkner House Books) and mine (Lavender Ink), and has been awarded the Faulkner Festival’s Marble Faun Poetry Award, a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship, a Surdna Artist-Teacher Fellowship, and writing residencies at the Santa Fe Arts Institute and the Vermont Studio Center. She was an invited guest to poetry festivals in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Her work has also appeared in electronic music, buses in Santa Fe, flamenco productions, jewelry designs by Jeanine Payer, and a tattoo parlor in Berlin.
17 Poets Literary and Performance Series
SPECIAL EVENT: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25
Join us for a reception 7-8pm prior to the reading
Readings begin at 8pm, NOLA Time with complimentary wine and snacks
Poets Jen Hofer, Andy Young, and John Pluecker
Jen Hofer is a Los Angeles-based poet, translator, interpreter, teacher, knitter, book-maker, public letter-writer, and urban cyclist. Her most recent books are the homemade chapbook Lead & Tether(Dusie Kollektiv, 2011); Ivory Black, a translation of Negro marfil by Myriam Moscona (Les Figues Press, 2011); a series of anti-war-manifesto poems titled one (Palm Press, 2009);sexoPUROsexoVELOZ and Septiembre, a translation from Dolores Dorantes by Dolores Dorantes (Counterpath Press and Kenning Editions, 2008); The Route, a collaboration with Patrick Durgin (Atelos, 2008); and lip wolf, a translation of lobo de labio by Laura Solórzano (Action Books, 2007).Recent poems and translations have appeared in Aufgabe, Mandorla, Or, out of nothing, TRY and with+stand. She teaches at CalArts, Goddard College, and Otis College, and works nationally and locally as a social justice interpreter through antenna, a language justice collaborative. Her installation titled “Uncovering: A Quilted Poem Made from Donated and Foraged Materials from Wendover, Utah” will be on view at the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Utah starting in November 2011.
John Pluecker is a writer, interpreter, translator and teacher. His work is informed by experimental poetics, radical aesthetics and cross-border cultural production and has appeared in journals and magazines in the U.S. and Mexico, including the Rio Grande Review, Picnic, Third Text, Animal Shelter and Literal. He has published more than five books in translation from the Spanish, including essays by a leading Mexican feminist, short stories from Ciudad Juárez and a police detective novel. There are two chapbooks of his work, Routes into Texas (DIY, 2010) and Undone (Dusie Kollektiv, 2011).
Andy Young is the co-editor of Meena Magazine, a bilingual Arabic-English literary journal, and teaches Creative Writing at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Her work was recently featured on National Public Radio’s “The World” and published in Best New Poets 2009 (University of Virginia Press),Callaloo, Guernica, and Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond (W.W. Norton & Co). She has published two chapbooks, All Fires the Fire (Faulkner House Books) and mine (Lavender Ink), and has been awarded the Faulkner Festival’s Marble Faun Poetry Award, a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship, a Surdna Artist-Teacher Fellowship, and writing residencies at the Santa Fe Arts Institute and the Vermont Studio Center. She was an invited guest to poetry festivals in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Her work has also appeared in electronic music, buses in Santa Fe, flamenco productions, jewelry designs by Jeanine Payer, and a tattoo parlor in Berlin.
The most annoying habit certain Korean academics have is the way they plough through a 200-page translation that took you years to finish then triumphantly emerge crying that they have found a mistake. They see no merit in the 199 pages without a mistake, and have nothing to say about them, but they are comforted by finding proof that foreigners cannot possibly understand Korean perfectly. The mistake might be that you have called the sky "blue" when the Korean word also can mean "green," it does not matter.
- Brother Anthony (a.k.a. An Sonjae) in an interview here at Asymptote Journal.
- Brother Anthony (a.k.a. An Sonjae) in an interview here at Asymptote Journal.
Ocupemos Tijuana: "Somos el 99%, los sin nada, estamos indignados con este sistema que promueve la explotación, la desigualdad, la discriminación y la violencia de género. El 1% de grandes ricos no debe estar por encima de todo el pueblo". Detenidos por la policía durante la madrugada del día 18 de octubre.
The Occupy Tijuana Movement was shut down by the police this morning. The police moved in and removed the participants from a median in the main financial/commercial district of the city, arresting all involved.
Oh, What a Difference 31 Years Makes
George Bush calling for legal status for all undocumented workers - "honest, decent, good, strong people." And Bush saying, "I dont want to see six and eight year old kids being made totally uneducated and made to feel like they're living outside the law." And then Ronald Reagan calling for opening the border both ways.
Never thought I would say this, but Bush and Reagan are right!