I confess, I’m angry. I’ve been angry since yesterday when I read the letter written to first year students by the University of Chicago negating the idea of trigger warnings, safe spaces and student protest. Kevin Gannon at the Tattooed Professor posted “Trigger Warning: Elitism, Gatekeeping, and Other Academic Crap” which explains in detail why…
Category: Books
¡Ban This!: An Evening of Mass Education
About a year ago, frustration over the banning of Chicana/o writings by the state of Arizona, and the hate of all things Latino that seemed to be spreading across the country became a topic of conversation on Twitter and in essays written by some of us for Aztlán Reads. This might have been the end…
Wondering About This Bridge Called My Back
In the midst of Christmas celebration, I was forwarded an email from South End Press with the subject line Imagine Your World Without South End Press asking for donations to keep the press running. If you can, donate, they need and are worthy of our help. The plea for funds included the following paragraph Regretfully, we don’t have…
Introduction to Latino/a Studies Syllabus
[This is my attempt at creating a Latino/a studies (well, so far mostly literature) course. Do let me know what you think. If you have any ideas for films that could be included, please say! Thanks!] Course Description: While Chicano/as and Latino/as have been integral to U.S. history and culture, why have they are frequently…
Reading Today: What You See in the Dark
What You See in the Dark by Manuel Muñoz is a noir thriller set in 1950s Bakersfield. The fictional story of Mexican-American Teresa Garza’s romance with and murder by Anglo Dan Watson, is set against a re-imagining of the location scouting and filming of the shocking motel scenes in Hitchcock’s Psycho. The story itself is told…
Book Review: The Immigrant Advantage
In her new book, The Immigrant Advantage, Texas journalist Claudia Kolker writes against the too common stereotype of immigrants as disadvantaged burdens on society who need to either be assimilated or pushed out as quickly as possible. Instead she looks at individuals and communities from diverse backgrounds — Vietnamese, Korean, Mexican, West Indian, African and…
Listening Today: Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
Ultima came to stay with us the summer I was almost seven. When she came the beauty of the llano unfolded before my eyes, and the gurgling waters of the river sang to the hum of the turning earth. The magical time of childhood stood still, and the pulse of the living earth pressed its…
Reading Today: What Night Brings by Carla Trujillo
What Night Brings by Carla Trujillo, who edited the ground-breaking anthology Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mother Warned Us About, is the story of the life of eleven year old Marci Cruz, growing up in California in the 1960s. Marci tells us, the reader her secrets. She has two prayers: the first is that her…
Reading Today: Caramelo
Reading Caramelo was an odd experience. I used a library copy, but the only one my library had was the large print edition. The large type gave the odd impression of being shouted at. At first, I thought the larger print was the reason it was taking me a long time (several days) to read…
For Aztlán Reads: Gazing East: Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton’s Who Would Have Thought It?
[This text was written for the new blog, Aztlán Reads, to which I’m excited to have been asked to contribute. The blog post is here. Go ahead, leave a comment.] Just as there is a presumption that United States history begins in the east and moves to the west against a savage frontier, so is…