"They’ve actually brought so much attention to our community that I think right now we really are on the verge of a Latino Renaissance. It’s beautiful, all around art, because only art can save us."
"They’re scared that we will overhaul the government through voting them out of office. And that’s exactly what’s about to happen, because what’s wrong is they’re sabotaging the American Dream for our young, and for everybody."
- El Librotraficante (as seen on DemocracyNow!)
_________
The Banned Book List includes around 90 Books, below are a few that caught my eye! - Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paolo Freire
- Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, by B. Bigelow and B. Peterson
- A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present, by H. Zinn
- Occupied America: A History of Chicanos
- Puro Teatro: A Latino Anthology, by A. Sandoval-Sanchez and N. Saporta Sternbach
- Immigrants in Our Own Land and Selected Early Poems, by J.S. Baca
- Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools, by J. Kozol
- Mexican American Literature, by C.M. Tatum
- Civil Disobedience, by H.D. Thoreau
Read these books! Start Banned Book Readings! Honour and Treasure Our Diverse Literature!
________
It’s a windy spring day over the artificial green grasses of
a New England suburban park. Poet Tree is angles into view through my
perspective, as if seen through a filmmaker’s lens. He begins reciting diligent
lines with a fascinating edge. Almost as soon as he begins, the piece is ended,
though now, the cool breaths of night play over the treetop sunset. The night
in this town is a life or death truth. The cut rug of hospitality has its clear
lines of disillusion for everyone with bad luck. In and out of the fire escape
stairways beside brick fortress alleyways, I push on past the escalating
traffic to my space and time. Inside my crooked little haunt, the VCR is
malfunctioning. I play classic exploitation films from the 1970s, boom and bust
raw in the piercing fire of aloneness. Walking outside from my unlocked door,
my surroundings foretell the great epoch of Hong Kong, known in such a film as
“In the Mood for Love”. I’m outside in the Chinatown midnight and it’s as
lively as mid-day. Food is still hot off the oven. One sticky-mouthed Chinaman near
a heated tray of veggie-covered noodles asks about my wife. “She’s not at
home?” His lazy English tongue burns upon my already branded aching, any one
can see it in my eyes. A love as hot as the sun drains my blood in every
instant with a magic touch, changing from burdensome to lightening in every
unpredictable way. “She likes to go out, speak Cantonese with her people, be a
part of her culture,” I said glowingly, appreciating his kind interest. In our
apartment, as I take out the soon-broken VCR tape, my one feels behind my
shoulder. “What grace?” I know. The dim, cornered light is perfect, it is her
night.
________
Movie
"If you dream that you are playing a role in the movie, something from your unconscious is about to be revealed. It can also mean you are getting to play a new role in your life and go down a new path." (iDream)
________
poem for the children of the Biblioburro
- excerpt from "Epistrophic Misdirection"
"the sheer brevity of a reptilian dystopia" - I got nothing to add to that!
ReplyDeleteHow pleasantly surprising to find myself in the "dim, cornered light" of one of your lucid dreams. How appropriate too that on this same day I've translated another dream of mine into a new poem!
I find the Hong Kong movies played in a broken VCR fascinating when juxtaposed with the cinematic richness of your up-close Asian experience. I don't have the flair - unlike you - for personal dream interpretation, however.
As for fucking Tucson, I've pulled up their banned book list, and it's sadly consistent with their long tradition of keeping anything that is actually alive out of circulation:
Bad Meal in Tucson
Haunted desert places (like Tucson and Albuquergue) is a fascinating phenomenon deserving of further study and discussion. Don't be lured in, however, by the waving Confederate flags...