Merely a post in twitter verse two months ago, the Librotraficante Caravan attracted crowds of more than 500 attendees to the El Paso and Albuquerque Banned Book Bash readings and delivered a payload of 1,000 books to newly established Underground Libraries in four cities – Houston, San Antonio, Albuquerque and Tucson.

Participating in Banned Book Bashes and Cultural Caucuses along the route were Sandra Cisneros, who kicked off our fundraising efforts by making a generous donation; Guggenheim Fellow Dagoberto Gilb, whose work recently appeared in the New Yorker and Harpers simultaneously; Rudolfo Anaya, whose seminal novel BLESS ME ULTIMA is banned; Denise Chavez, FACE OF AN ANGEL, who is hosting the caravan in Mesilla, N.M., and who organizes the Annual Border Book Festival; Lorna Dee Cervantes, an internationally acclaimed poet and iconic literary publisher; Carmen Tafolla, whose book CURANDERA was republished a year early specifically for the caravan; and Rene Alegria, founder of Boxing Badger Media and www.mamiverse.com, who attended one of the impacted high schools in Tucson.

“If the city of Tucson is smart enough to implement a top notch tier one graduate studies program for High School students, then we need to help secure this successful program and keep Big State Government in Phoenix from shutting it down! If state government wants to make educational reform, its missing the mark; lets make sure literature stays in the classroom, every book in every students hand,” said Tony Diaz, founder of Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say, the non-profit organization behind the Librotraficante Caravan, “Thank you everyone for helping us smuggle a payload of $20,000 worth of books to our young heroes in Tucson. The students were ecstatic and grateful.  The fight is not over. This is just the beginning. Now on to Phase II of this movement.”

WEBSITES:

www.Librotraficante.com and www.NuestraPalabra.org

ORGANIZERS:

Tony Diaz, Liana Lopez, Bryan Parras, Lupe Mendez & Laura Acosta

The Librotraficante Caravan is partnering with nonprofit organizations to help receive, catalogue, distribute and provide an open environment for students and communities to access books. We intend to collect 1 complete set of the books banned by the Tucson Unified School District for each of these libraries. We also ask all multicultural writers to donate copies of their books, when they are published, from now on, 3 years, 5 years and ten years down the line. We will also donate copies of the banned books to public libraries once a complete set has been collected for each of the Underground Libraries.

“You can bet I’ll be donating my books to the Librotraficante Underground Libraries,” said Sandra Cisneros, author of HOUSE ON MANGO STREET, now prohibited by the Tucson Unified School District.

Beginning in Houston, at 10 a.m. on Monday, March 12, 2012, from Casa Ramirez Folk Art Gallery (241 West 19th Street, Houston, Texas 77008), the Librotraficante Caravan begins its trek to San Antonio and El Paso, Texas; Mesilla and Albuquerque, N.M., and arrives in Tucson, Ariz., on Friday, March 16. The entire schedule is available online at www.Librotraficante.com.

“Our literature and our history must never be at the mercy of political whim ever again. We ask supporters to donate copies of the banned books by the dozen to these Underground Libraries to preserve freedom of speech, so that all of us can tell our stories,” said Tony Diaz, El Librotraficante.

A list of the prohibited books is available at the group’s website: www.Librotraficante.com

The Librotraficante Underground Libraries are:

HOUSTON
Multicultural Education and Counseling Through the Arts (MECA)
Alice Valdez, Founder/Director
1900 Kane Street
Houston, TX 77007

SAN ANTONIO
Southwest Workers Union
Genaro Rendon, Director
1414 E. Commerce
San Antonio, TX 78205

ALBUQUERQUE
Los Jardines Institute
Sofia Martinez, Program Coordinator
803 La Vega Dr. SW
Albuquerque, NM 87105

TUCSON
John Valenzuela Youth Center
Gloria Hamelitz, Director
1550 S 6th Ave.
South Tucson, AZ 85713

The Librotraficante Caravan will launch from Houston on Monday, March 12, 2012 at 10 a.m. from Casa Ramirez Folk Art Gallery (241 West 19th Street, Houston, Texas 77008.)  It will stop in San Antonio and El Paso, Texas; then Mesilla and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and culminate in Tucson, Arizona, on Friday, March 16.  On St. Patrick’s Day, Saturday, March 17, we’ll host a huge literary celebration of El Batallion San Patricio at 6 PM, celebrating Irish and Mexican collaboration of the past. The caravan celebrates Quantum Demographics, or multifaceted cultural unity throughout its tour. The entire schedule and updates are available online at www.librotraficante.com.

“Every great movement is sparked by outrage at a deep cultural offense,” said Tony Diaz, founder of Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say, which has led the charge, “Rosa Parks was denied seating on a bus. For us, when we heard that Tucson Unified School District Administrators not only Prohibited Latino Studies but then walked into class rooms, and in front of young Latino students, during class time, removed and boxed books by our most beloved authors – that was too much. This offended us down to our soul. We had to respond.”

Diaz added, “With their record of anti-immigrant legislation, politicians in Arizona have become experts in making humans illegal. We did not do enough to stop that, thus that anti-immigrant legislation spread to other states such as Alabama and Georgia. Now, these same legislators want to make thoughts illegal. If we allow this to happen, these laws too will spread. Other branches of Ethnic Studies will be prohibited, and then other states will follow suit.”

With its radio program and its blockbuster literary showcases, Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say has 13 years of experience promoting Latino literature and literacy with authors and thinkers from across the country. This once informal alliance of artists, activists, educators, and professionals has galvanized to create cornerstone structures for a network that will remain in place for future causes as well.

The full spectrum of this network links the talents of such people as Genius Mac Arthur Grant recipient Sandra Cisneros, whose beloved novel HOUSE ON MANGO street is prohibited in Tucson High School class rooms; to the Southwest Organizing Project – who have extensive experience organizing national caravans, and are helping with the New Mexico portion of the route; to Unidos, the student group in Tucson that is organizing teach-ins, while still attending classes and pursuing their education.

Banned writers have embraced the caravan and will participate along the route, including Mac Arthur Genius recipient Sandra Cisneros, who kicked off our fundraising efforts by making a generous donation; Guggenheim Fellow Dagoberto Gilb, whose work recently appeared in the New Yorker and Harpers; and best selling author Luis Alberto Urrea, who was the first to enthusiastically support the project through Twitter. Other literary giants participating in the Librotraficante Caravan include Rudolfo Anaya, whose seminal novel BLESS ME ULTIMA is banned; Denise Chavez, FACE OF AN ANGEL, who is hosting the caravan in Mesilla, New Mexico and organizes the Annual Border Book Festival; Lalo Alcaraz, creator of the syndicated column La Cucaracha and coined the phrase “Self Deport.” Institutions that already confirmed to host the caravan include the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio, Texas, and the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The caravan is intended to:

1. Raise awareness of the prohibition of the Mexican-American Studies Program and the removal of books from classrooms.
2. Promote banned authors and their contributions to American Literature.
3. Celebrate diversity: Children of the American Dream must unite to preserve the civil rights of all Americans.
4. Create a network of resources for art, literature, and activism.

Specific outcomes:

1.  Underground Libraries: Librotraficantes will donate copies of the banned books a local nonprofit in Houston, San Antonio, Albuquerque, and Tucson. These sites will not only be given copies of the banned titles, but from now on, all multicultural authors are encouraged to mail copies of their books to these sites when they are published, so that our community will always have access to our literature.

2.  Teach-ins and a Supplanted Book List: Workshops that include free Curriculum Guides with literary excerpts and lesson plans that can be used in class the immediately and applied to other works.

3.  Network of Librotraficantes across the country: This is a case of new media saving the classic media of books. Had Arizona done this ten years ago, we most likely would not have heard about it until it had impacted a second generation of our youth. However, because of new technologies and the number of writers and activists who are communicating on multimedia, we were not only able to hear about it, but to also use new media to organize some classic activist strategies to respond-from now on!

WEBSITES:  www.Librotraficante.com and www.NuestraPalabra.org

ORGANIZERS: www.TonyDiaz.net, www.LianaLisa.com, www.youtube.com/HighTechAztec

Nuestra Palabra & Brazos Bookstore present

An Evening with Christina Sisk

7 p.m. – Thursday, January 26th
Brazos Bookstore
2421 Bissonnet Street
Houston, TX 77005
PH: 713-523-0701

Christina L. Sisk is an assistant professor in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston. Her areas of interest are U.S. Latina/o Studies, U.S.-Mexico Border Studies, Mexican Literary and Cultural Studies, and Latin American Cinema. She is particularly interested in bridging the gaps between Latin American and U.S. Latina/o Studies. She is the author of Mexico, Nation in Transit: Contemporary Representations of Mexican Migration to the United States (University of Arizona Press, Fall 2011), and she has published articles in Latinos Studies, Aztlán, and A Contracorriente.

6pm- SOLD OUT!! Meet & Greet Reception w/the Authors
7:15pm – Author Talk – $5 donation (Limited Seating)
8:30pm – Book Signing (books will be for sale at event)

If you miss the Wednesday night event at TBH, scroll down for information about a special Thursday morning event.

Slinging Ink

$100 prize for short about this theme:

I was looking for a job and then I found a job, and heaven knows I’m miserable now.

Your stories of getting fired or quitting, or holding hold down that awful job. Incompetent bosses, demoralizing tasks, all the chronicles of what it takes to pay the bills. Not only creative writing, but also resignation letters real or imagined, reports, recommendations, memories, notes, letters, lesson plans, proposals, complaints and confessions.

We are looking for brief submissions of between 1500 and 1800 words. Submit your entries through the website. If selected as a finalist, you’ll be asked to read your work out loud in December.

The Found Poetry Review invites submissions for its inaugural found poetry contest through August 31. All contest submissions must be found poems derived from How to Analyze People on Sight by Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict, available as a free e-text through Project Gutenberg.

The winner will receive a prize of $100 (U.S. dollars) and have his or her poem published in the Fall 2011 edition of The Found Poetry Review.

Here’s how to get started:

1. Visit Project Gutenberg to view the source text, How to Analyze People on Sight

2. Select words and phrases from the text, then recombine them to create your found poem. Artful arrangements and combinations are encouraged! We want to see you do more than insert line breaks in a paragraph and call it a poem.

3. Avoid adding your own language to the poem. You can change verb tenses, plurals and make other small manipulations, but stay as close to the original text as possible. You are free to add your own punctuation and capitalization to the text.

4. Visit our Submishmash page and select “Inaugural Found Poetry Contest” to submit your poem and pay the $5 entry fee. Payments may be made securely through the Submishmash site through PayPal or credit card.

5. Follow us on Facebook and/or Twitter to hear the winner announcement in September.

Questions? Email foundpoetryreview@gmail.com for more information.

GRAND PRIZE: $1,000 and publication in 2011 Summer Books issue

GUEST JUDGE: Larry McMurtry

GUIDELINES:
- The winning author will receive $1,000, publication in the Summer Books issue of the Texas Observer, three copies of Summer Books issue, and a one-year print subscription. Finalists may be eligible for publication online at TexasObserver.org
- Contest is open to any and all participants regardless of location
- No theme/genre restrictions, but entries with Texas setting or themes are encouraged
- Stories should not exceed 2,500 words
- Entry fee is $25. For an additional $10, your story will be critiqued by Observer Fiction Editor David Duhr.

RULES AND REGULATIONS
- All entries must be unpublished. Simultaneous submissions are welcome, but stories must be withdrawn from contest immediately upon acceptance elsewhere. Entry fee will not be refunded
- While multiple entries are welcome, each story requires entry fee
- Body of email must contain name, story title, address and phone number. Name should not appear anywhere on the manuscript, as contest is judged anonymously.
- Entries exceeding 2,500 words will be disqualified. Entry fee will not be refunded.
- Winner and finalists will be notified by June 8, 2011
- Address all questions to duhr@texasobserver.org. No phone calls, please

DOOR PRIZES
- All entrants are entered into a drawing for door prizes. Winning names will be drawn at random.
- One (1) one-year subscription to The Texas Observer
- One (1) one-year digital subscription to The Texas Observer
- Copy of 2011 Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market
- One copy of a Larry McMurtry novel.

APPLY NOW

FYI…You can listen to some inside stories on last night’s radio show in the archives of KPFT – and of course it’s not too late to donate to the NP show through the KPFT website.

“It is our first book to go to print and will take readers on a time trip through the first decade of the 21st century,” says press founder Juan Tejeda.

alurista also happens to be a shining example of a Latino that deserves some mad respect on this last day of Hispanic Heritage Month. He is one of the first critically acclaimed Latino writers who sparked the 1970’s Chicano literary movement. His poetry became the political manifesto for the cause. He was the founder of the first Chicano literary festival, held at the University of California in 1973, and he helped to create the Chicano studies department at San Diego State University. After earning a Ph.D in Spanish and Latin American Literature, alurista taught at colleges in California, Denver and at U.T. – Austin.

“alurista is a well-known poet in our community that gained some fame 25 – 30 years ago but he hasn’t published anything in 10 years. It’s clear to me that this current generation doesn’t have a clue who he is, so we’re very pleased to bring him here in collaboration with Nuestra Palabra,” says Tatcho Mindiola, Director of Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston.

NP caught up with “The Poet Wizard” on his whirlwind tour that blows through town today.

NP: I’ve been told that you were the first poet to use both Spanish and English in your poetry. Is it true? Were you the first bilingual poet?

alurista: My first collection, Floricanto en Aztlán (1971), was the one that inaugurated that form in modern Chicano literature. This is not to say that other Chicanos have not written bilingually. In 1939, Americo Paredes wrote poetry and was playing with bilingual expressions. I can’t say that I’m the founder of that form of expression but I can say that in the modern world of Chicano literature, from the 60s on, I’m the exponent that brought it to the forum again and became a paradigm for new forms of expression in American Literature that came to be known as Chicano Literature.

NP: You’re renowned for seamlessly intermixing Spanish, English, Nahuatl and Maya in a natural poetic flow. I can read the same poem and come up with different meanings each time. What’s the secret to your poetry?

alurista: One of the things that I do with my poetry is…I use words in such a manner that they lend themselves to the highest level of signification. In prose, for example, you want to use a word to mean only one thing to deliver precise meaning. In poetry, the way I write is the complete opposite. I want the reader to give herself or himself the opportunity to use the meaning that best suits the readers consciousness. So the poem is really unfinished until the reader reads it and interprets it.

NP: How’s the Texas book tour going?

alurista: It’s like a homecoming coming back to Tejas. I’ve never been on a tour like this. The audiences have been ranging in sizes from a very intimate 40 people to some places that have been standing room only. In Seguin, I was taken aback because there were over 200 people there. Juan Tejeda of Aztlan Libre Press has really organized this tour well.

alurista will be presenting works from his new book of poetry, Tunaluna, at the Latino cultural one-stop-shop Casa Ramirez in the Heights (241 W. 19th St.) at 7pm this evening. The event is free.