Saturday, February 17th 4-5:30PM Occidental Center for the Arts Literary Series. Book Launch for Pink Paisley Scarf byMarylu Downing. Vivid imagery, humor in the ordinary, and the complexities of intimate relationships propel Marylu Downing’s writing. Her most recent book, Pink Paisley Scarf is a work of fiction. Marylu, long time resident of the Occidental community, and board member at the inception of Occidental Center for the Arts now lives in Avila Beach, California with her husband Roger House. Selected readings, and conversation with Patrick Fanning, author, publisher and President of the OCA Board. Audience Q&A. Free admission, all donations gratefully accepted. Book sales and signing. Refreshments/Wine/Beer available for sale. Persian Love Cake available by donation. OCA: 3850 Doris Murphy Way, Occidental, at corner of Bohemian Hwy & Graton Rd. OCA’s facilities are accessible to people with disabilities. More info: occidentalcenterforthearts.org or 707-874-9392.
Anthony Christian Ocampo, Ph.D. is Professor of Sociology at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He is the author of The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino AmericansBreak the Rules of Race and his new book Brown and Gay in LA: The Lives of Immigrant Sons. Thank you for joining us this evening Anthony and congratulations on the publication of this incredible book.
Gary Carnivele chats with Anthony about his books and his work.
Sunday, February 12th @ 2pm at Occidental Center for the Arts Literary Series: An afternoon with local award-winning author Suzanne Maggio as she shares selected readings and answers questions about her latest book, “Estrellas – Moments of Illumination along El Camino De Santiago”. Her debut memoir, The Cardinal Club, was a finalist in both the 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and the 2020 IAN Book of the Year Awards. This is a free event, donations gratefully accepted. Fine refreshments and books for sale, author signing. 3850 Doris Murphy Way, Occidental, CA. OCA’s facilities are accessible to people with disabilities. For more info: occidentalcenterforthearts.org or 707-874-9392.
Sunday, January 29th at 2-4 pm Occidental Center for the Arts Literary Series presents A Celebration of Elizabeth Herron, our new Sonoma County Poet Laureate and book launch for her recently published In the Cities of Sleep. She will also discuss her Being Brave Poetry Project and website Poetry As It Happens. Free admission, all donations gratefully invited. Refreshments for sale. Selected readings, Q&A, book sales & signing. OCA: 3850 Doris Murphy Way, Occidental, CA. OCA’s facilities are accessible to people with disabilities. For more info: occidentalcenterforthearts.org or 707-874-9392.
This year brought a fascinating and eclectic number of books by Latino authors to store shelves and online selections, spanning different genres and earning high praise from readers and reviewers alike.
Below is our list of 10 very distinctive works by U.S. Latino authors.
‘Trust’ by Hernan Diaz
The award-winning Peruvian American writer organizes this novel about the life of powerful financier Andrew Bevel and his wife, Mildred, into four sections, each forcing the reader to question what’s true and who really holds the power as it examines the ruthless pursuit of wealth. The novel, which is being developed as an HBO limited series, is a fictional dive into the world of finance, the 1920s and the ensuing Great Depression.
The compelling novel has been recognized as one of the top 10 books of 2022 by The New York Times and The Washington Post and as one of the best books of 2022 by Time, NPR, Vogue, Oprah Daily and others.
‘High-Risk Homosexual: A Memoir’ by Edgar Gomez
Labeled as a “high-risk homosexual” after a doctor’s office visit, Edgar Gomez describes his experience growing up as a gay Latinx man and the issues around Latinidad and machismo in this highly praised debut memoir.
Through his humorous and touching storytelling, he invites readers into different aspects of his world — from his uncle’s cockfighting ring in Nicaragua to the queer spaces where he learned to love being a gay Latinx man.
‘Olga Dies Dreaming’ by Xochitl Gonzalez
In this novel about an Ivy League-educated high-end wedding planner — whose parents were Puerto Rican activists — the author deftly depicts a woman trying to balance the different worlds within New York, as well as family, work, romance and, more importantly, herself.
“The author paints a vivid and lively story throughout, highlighting various family dynamics, politics, history, queerness, inter-generational trauma, love, and more,” said Karen Ugarte, the manager at Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore in Los Angeles. “It has a little bit of everything!”
‘A Ballad of Love and Glory’ by Reyna Grande
Inspired by true events and historical figures in the Mexican American War, Grande’s novel follows the story of Ximena Salomé, a Mexican healer whose hopes of building a family come crashing down after the Texas Rangers kill her husband. After she joins the Mexican army to honor her late husband’s memory, she meets an Irish immigrant who eventually joins the Mexican army — and they fight for a future together.
Grande is the award-winning author of the acclaimed novel “The Distance Between Us,” as well as “Across a Hundred Mountains” and “Dancing with Butterflies.”
‘Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality’ by Tanya Katerí Hernández
“Because it’s so entrenched to deny that we have these problems with racism,” she said in a recent interview, Afro Latina legal scholar and professor Tanya K. Hernández’s book uses legal cases and accounts to show how Latinos have discriminated against Black Latinos and other people of color in different areas — from housing to employment to education.
Her book emphasizes the importance of recognizing the prevalence of Latino racism and its impact on everyday life as the Hispanic population grows, as well as its corrosive, real-world impact on Black Latinos’ and others’ livelihoods, economic opportunities and well-being.
‘The Hurting Kind’ by Ada Limón
In “The Hurting Kind,” Limón, who this year became the first female U.S. poet laureate of Latino and Mexican American heritage, weaves indelible snapshots of experiences and people — both living and dead — with unforgettable images of the flowers, trees and animals around her or lovingly dredged from her memories.
“We’re still in the middle of a pandemic — bouncing from trauma to trauma,” Limón said in an earlier interview. “It’s been such a tormented time.” Poetry, she said, is a way to connect to feelings, emotions and even stillness.
‘The Prophet of the Andes: An Unlikely Journey to the Promised Land’ by Graciela Mochkofsky
Journalist and author Graciela Mochkofsky, the dean of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, spent years researching the incredible story of Segundo Villanueva, a Peruvian self-taught biblical scholar who converted to Judaism and led a group of followers first to the jungle and later to Israel. Although Villanueva’s life took a different turn, many of his followers and their children, known as “Inca Jews,” are still in Israel.
Mochkofsky, who is from Argentina, said in a discussion of her book that Villanueva was “a pioneer” of a movement that is spreading in Latin America — dozens of communities across several countries that have mainly eschewed Catholicism, turned to evangelicalism and then turned to Judaism.
‘A Kiss across the Ocean: Transatlantic Intimacies of British Post-Punk and US Latinidad’ by Richard T. Rodríguez
Why would Mexican and Chicano youths like British post-punk music? “The answer is ‘why not?'” University of California, Riverside, professor Richard T. Rodríguez says about his book.
“’A Kiss across the Ocean’ is more than an academic read!” said Sarah Rafael García, an author and the founder of LibroMobile in Santa Ana, California. “It intersects the personal with post-punk music and icons, creating an era for those of us in U.S. Latinx communities who felt left out of mainstream culture and genders in the ’80s, early ’90s and even to this day.”
‘Crying in the Bathroom: A Memoir’ by Erika L. Sánchez
Published before the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist Erika L. Sánchez’s memoir is an account of her life growing up in a working-class Mexican immigrant household in Chicago, exploring her sexuality, religion and feminism and grappling with racism and colorism. She writes about how an abortion saved her life and candidly details her experiences dealing with suicidal thoughts and depression.
Sánchez, who is also the author of “I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter,” a 2017 hit that is being adapted into a Netflix film directed by actor American Ferrera, spotlights the issue of mental illness by describing her experience with electroconvulsive therapy and her time in a psychiatric ward. “It’s an illness that really takes over your entire life, and you need a medical specialist to determine what it is that you are suffering from and to get the right kind of treatment,” Sánchez told MSNBC host Alicia Menendez on her show, “American Voices,” in July.
‘Solito’ by Javier Zamora
In his captivating memoir, poet Javier Zamora relates his migration journey from El Salvador to the U.S. as a young boy. Writing from his perspective at 9, he talks about traveling thousands of miles alone to Arizona to reconnect with his parents, who fled El Salvador years before after the country’s civil war.
Zamora recalls his experiences with the help of strangers along the way, including learning to raise himself and facing challenges from Border Patrol agents. “Solito” has been recognized as a New York Times Bestseller and as one of the 10 best books of the year by the New York Public Library and as one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Washington Post and Kirkus Reviews, among other publications.
Thursday, May 5th, 2022 @ 7PM, Friends, Sonomans, and the culturally curious! Occidental Center for the Arts’ Literary Series is thrilled to present An Evening with Andrei Codrescu, star of page, screen, and NPR who will talk, read, and generally hold forth. Tickets $25 GA/ $20 for OCA Members. Ticketholders will receive a poem by Andrei Codrescu in a limited handset letterpress broadside edition of 100, designed and printed by Pat Nolan and Eric Johnson at North Bay Letterpress Arts Limited tickets available – get yours today! Refreshments for sale. OCA: 3850 Doris Murphy Way, Occidental, CA. OCA’s facilities are accessible to people with disabilities. For more info: occidentalcenterforthearts.org or 707-874-9392. Thank you for your continuing support of OCA by posting our listings.
Sunday, May 1st,@4 pm Occidental Center for the Arts’ Literary Series presents American Peace Gardens: A Memoir, 1996 to 2020 by Stephen C. Fowler. In August of 1996, Steve Fowler set out on an odyssey, gathering soils from organic farmers all across America in preparation for a ceremony, with Native American collaborators, on the Mall in Washington, D.C. The narrative of that adventure, and the personal challenges that led up to it, are the subject of this short book. The connection between peace work and farm practices is the main theme. Quixotic and quirky, this is the script of a work of performance art by an actor and poet (50 Cent Poems, 2017) who is a gardener by trade. Free admission, all donations gratefully invited. Refreshments for sale. Selected readings, Q&A, book sales (Hand assembled in loose-leaf binders; includes a 70 minute CD which contains 32 tracks, mostly interviews with farmers, plus a few musical interludes)& signing. OCA: 3850 Doris Murphy Way, Occidental, CA. OCA’s facilities are accessible to people with disabilities. For more info: occidentalcenterforthearts.org or 707-874-9392.
Sunday April 24th 4-5:30 Occidental Center for the Arts Literary Series presents artist Leeann Lidz. Adventures on the Gringo Trail: An Artist’s Awakening. In 1974, the author set off on a nineteen- month journey through Central and South America including the birth of her daughter in the Andean highlands of Ecuador. As an artist, she kept a journal of over 100 pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations of the places she visited: The unique story of her travels and evolution as an artist and mother living in Ecuador in a time before technology. Free admission, all donations gratefully invited. Slide show/Andean music with selected readings. Refreshments for sale. A Q&A, book sales & signing. OCA: 3850 Doris Murphy Way, Occidental, CA. OCA’s facilities are accessible to people with disabilities. For more info: occidentalcenterforthearts.org or 707-874-9392.
Sunday April 10th 4-5:30 pm Occidental Center for the Arts Literary Series. Local Author Michael David Fels’ Bodies in Motion: Short Trips in An Expanding Universe. A collection of first-person memoirs, an internal journey on the impact of movement/travel on the author, taking the reader to The Philippines, China, Dubai, Lebanon, Canada and Thailand as well as California, Kansas, New York, and New Mexico. Free admission, all donations gratefully received. Masking requested for unvaccinated. Selected readings, Q&A, book sales & signing. Refreshments for sale. OCA: 3850 Doris Murphy Way, Occidental, CA. OCA’s facilities are accessible to people with disabilities. For more info: occidentalcenterforthearts.org or 707-874-9392.
Welcome to May We Present…, a column from Lambda Literary that highlights authors with recent or forthcoming publications. This November, we’re featuring Nefertiti Asanti and their new poetry collection, fist of wind, published on October 29th by Foglifter Press. fist of wind centers the simultaneously magical and mortal Black body as a site of healing and transformation from pain, ranging from larger forms of structural, communal, and intergenerational pain to the personal pain of menstruation out of which the collection was born.
With fist of wind, Asanti became the first winner of the Start A Riot! Chapbook Prize, a prize for local emerging queer and trans Black writers, indigenous writers, and writers of color, created by Foglifter Press, RADAR Productions, and Still Here San Francisco. The win was well deserved, as fist of wind is a breathtaking and candid lyrical testimony, one that might be thought of as an exceptional exploration in translation. Asanti masterfully translates the physical into the textual and, through the reader, back into the physical again. Through bold engagement with form and space, Asanti translates the dynamic qualities of the spoken word into the written word without losing its sense of embodiment. Reading fist of wind becomes a transfixing, corporeal undertaking, one that everyone should experience at least once.
Below, Nefertiti Asanti elaborates on the most difficult tangible sensation to put into words, how poetry interacts with other forms of text, and the last thing she read that surprised her.
When did you realize you had to write fist of wind?
When I started writing toward fist of wind, I was actually writing toward stopping some pain. I was living alone in Brooklyn in a basement-level apartment I could barely afford after resigning from the first full-time job I’d ever had. I was living alone, and I was in pain, physical pain as a result of my period. I had cramps, debilitating cramps that demanded my attention once they hit and kept hitting.
One day it was just out of control—the pain was so uncomfortable and relentless and beyond me, something inside me was like, “This don’t belong to me; this ain’t mine,” so I prayed a spell into it. Eventually, the pain subsided and along with it went the idea of the pain being a singular thing that I owned, that owned me.
During that time, I wrote what I called “full moon lunes,” three-line, three-syllable, three-word per line poems that were prayers to my womb to welcome healing and expel the pain I’d absorbed from being Black and bleeding and alive and the un/healed histories of my ancestors, lineage, and community. As a person who absorbs so much of what’s around me, it was important that I let go of what I could in a form that echoed the physical boundaries pain can create and transcend them. At least two pieces in fist of wind are in lunes or borrow from the form. I wrote fist of wind because I wanted to have conversations with other Black people about periods and healing from violence, whatever the source.