Felicidades All Around!
Congratulations and big hugs to Pine Manor MFA student Faye Rapoport DesPres, whose beautiful piece "The Diversion" is a finalist in Writer's Advice Fourth Annual Flash Prose contest (hurray! woohoo!), and to Macondo workshop participant Beatriz Terrazas, whose piece, "When I Found My True Name, I Found My Identity," was published by Dallas's GuideLive and is available here. It begins,
It's always a thrill when former students succeed. I love it that these two mujeres are finding audiences for their creative voices. Abrazos, Faye and Beatriz!
Hey, I have been getting some caca from more than one friend about not blogging often enough, so lo siento, lo siento, but right now I am a one-woman grade-a-thon. Luckily, the papers are exciting and varied in Latino Studies (lost colonias, worksite raids, the latinidad of Roberto Clemente, Selena y Shakira, the Juárez femicides).
In ENGL 258B, Autobiographical Writing, the students have to send their final, revised pieces out for submission to national undergraduate literary journals, so those assignments are coming in tomorrow complete with cover letters, envelopes, SASEs, and so on. It makes the whole process a little more real and exciting, I think, for the students to know that someone other than just "the teacher" (yawn) will be reading their revised pieces. And one student last year actually got hers published!
In the midst of my stacks of papers, we made time to go see Son del Llano ("classic Cuban son and salsa") last night. They were playing at Lincoln's legendary Zoo Bar, and it was so refreshing to listen to them: it's the kind of musica my Dad used to play (vinyl, por supuesto) when we were little--along with Johnny Mathis and Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, naturally.
Who knew Lincoln, Nebraska would have an old-time son band? Stranger than fiction. You can give them a listen right now, or you can come on out at seven o'clock on May 29th to the DelRay Ballroom down in the Haymarket and dance all night for just ten bucks.
And speaking of dancing all night, I received a CD in the mail the other day from the fledgling Oberlin band Dos Mil Días de Fuego, and I just have to say it: my mother's heart about burst with pride. Was that my kid, sounding all like a grown-up man, rapping in Spanish? Those smart, political lyrics? I tell you, it made my week.
And what's more, the CD arrived on one of those mopey blue What has it all been for? days, too (which are pretty frequent, let me tell you, LOL, toward the end of the semester). I sat there listening with tears in my eyes, a long-distance mama, thinking, This. This is what it has all been for. For this smart young artist, articulate, bilingual, full of passion and power.
(And let me just send a shout-out of thanks to poet & Oberlin faculty member Kazim Ali, who worked with Grey on his January-term project analyzing contemporary formal poetry and writing new lyrics. Working with that child takes patience--I say this with love--so Ali must have the patience of a saint. Respect and gratitude.)
These gorgeous songs are the pudding that the proof is in. I can't wait for them to be stream-able for you.
A name tells a story. It embodies a unique history that can be rewritten with the movement of a single letter. Take one out or put one in, and just like that, a name takes you in a direction you weren't meant to go. This is most true for those of us who have lived outside the mainstream, who've at one time been the "other." I should know.To read the whole thing, click here.
It's always a thrill when former students succeed. I love it that these two mujeres are finding audiences for their creative voices. Abrazos, Faye and Beatriz!
Hey, I have been getting some caca from more than one friend about not blogging often enough, so lo siento, lo siento, but right now I am a one-woman grade-a-thon. Luckily, the papers are exciting and varied in Latino Studies (lost colonias, worksite raids, the latinidad of Roberto Clemente, Selena y Shakira, the Juárez femicides).
In ENGL 258B, Autobiographical Writing, the students have to send their final, revised pieces out for submission to national undergraduate literary journals, so those assignments are coming in tomorrow complete with cover letters, envelopes, SASEs, and so on. It makes the whole process a little more real and exciting, I think, for the students to know that someone other than just "the teacher" (yawn) will be reading their revised pieces. And one student last year actually got hers published!
In the midst of my stacks of papers, we made time to go see Son del Llano ("classic Cuban son and salsa") last night. They were playing at Lincoln's legendary Zoo Bar, and it was so refreshing to listen to them: it's the kind of musica my Dad used to play (vinyl, por supuesto) when we were little--along with Johnny Mathis and Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, naturally.
Who knew Lincoln, Nebraska would have an old-time son band? Stranger than fiction. You can give them a listen right now, or you can come on out at seven o'clock on May 29th to the DelRay Ballroom down in the Haymarket and dance all night for just ten bucks.
And speaking of dancing all night, I received a CD in the mail the other day from the fledgling Oberlin band Dos Mil Días de Fuego, and I just have to say it: my mother's heart about burst with pride. Was that my kid, sounding all like a grown-up man, rapping in Spanish? Those smart, political lyrics? I tell you, it made my week.
And what's more, the CD arrived on one of those mopey blue What has it all been for? days, too (which are pretty frequent, let me tell you, LOL, toward the end of the semester). I sat there listening with tears in my eyes, a long-distance mama, thinking, This. This is what it has all been for. For this smart young artist, articulate, bilingual, full of passion and power.
(And let me just send a shout-out of thanks to poet & Oberlin faculty member Kazim Ali, who worked with Grey on his January-term project analyzing contemporary formal poetry and writing new lyrics. Working with that child takes patience--I say this with love--so Ali must have the patience of a saint. Respect and gratitude.)
These gorgeous songs are the pudding that the proof is in. I can't wait for them to be stream-able for you.
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