Tag Archives: Latina

GuerrillaReads No. 66: Santino J. Rivera

¡Ban this! Santino J. Rivera double dog dares you.

Rivera reads his poem “Librarian’s Creed,” which appears in his new book, ¡Ban This! The BSP Anthology of Xican@ Literature.

I must read better than my enemy
Who is trying to ban my books
I must read, write and educate minds everywhere
Before he succeeds.

He did this guerrilla reading at LA’s own Cypress Park Library, just before An Evening of Mass Education. More than twenty contributors to the anthology read from their work, live at the library. More about the event and the book at the Broken Sword Publications website.

As Rivera says, “You can ban our books but you can’t ban our minds.”

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GuerrillaReads No. 52: Jeanne Córdova

Jeanne Córdova is a proud troublemaker with a storied history. She’s been an activist nun, human rights editor for the L.A. Free Press, and political organizer. Her newest book, When We Were Outlaws: a Memoir of Love & Revolution, tells her personal story in the context of the struggle for gay rights and women’s liberation in the 1970s.

Learn more about Córdova – writer, activist, publisher and Latina – on her website.

GuerrillaReads No. 38: Reyna Grande

Today’s guerrilla reader, Reyna Grande, reads from her award-winning novel, Across a Hundred Mountains. This book won the 2010 Latino Books Into Movies Award, a 2007 American Book Award, and the 2006 El Premio Aztlan Literary Award. It was chosen by Eastern Connecticut as its 2007 “One Book/One Region” selection and in 2010 the city of Watsonville, CA selected it for its “On the Same Page” community reads program.

In an interview with ¡LatinoLA!, Grande said this about her work:

I write about things that I care about, that matter to me. The immigrant experience is one of them. Right now I am working on a memoir in which I write about my childhood in Mexico, living in poverty, being raised by my grandmother because my parents were here in the U.S. working. I write about what it was like to come here as an illegal immigrant, and the difficulties of trying to close the gap created by eight years of separation between me and my father. So to answer the question, yes, I do plan to continue writing about immigration and families, among other things. I am always looking for new ideas and topics. One has to grow as a writer, and one way to do that is to take chances and try new things.

Find more on Grande’s website, Facebook and Twitter.