Sex y Corazon Symposium @ UCLA

On Friday, February 12, 2010 the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies and Chair Alicia Gaspar de Alba will be hosting a one-day symposium that looks back over the last fifteen years of Chicana/o Studies and examines how Chicana/o queer and feminist scholars have changed the field.

This historical symposium will gather over twenty-five Chicana and Chicano scholars and practitioners whose work intersects race, class, gender and sexuality paradigms within both traditional and interdisciplinary fields. Speakers will also speak to how their scholarship and activism utilizes love as a political strategy for social change.

The symposium is free and open to the public.

Online registration required at http://sites.google.com/site/sexycorazon2010/.

Seating is limited so register today.

"Love has no gender..."

It makes me very proud to have had two of our wedding pictures selected for this Courage Campaign "igualdad" advertisement. The pictures, especially the one showing "the kiss" part of our ceremony, always puts a little knot in my throat as I remember what an incredibly beautiful day that was, and how perfect everything was from the passion roses to the clear color of the Pacific Ocean, to the way Captain Chuck's white uniform and Alma's Veracruzana dress and the black embroidery of the Virgen de Guadalupe on my white guayabera all stood out against the colorful Mexican dresses of our flower girls, ring bearers, and madrinas. It's almost our one-year anniversary and I can still relive every moment of that perfect day in which our families and closest friends came together to celebrate and honor our love and union. It's a bittersweet memory, however, when just a few months later the retrograde people of this State overturned the right to marry for gays and lesbians. What I love about these Courage Campaign ads, in English and Spanish, is that they put that right into the context of other civil rights struggles which have been won through the unity of open hearts and minds. As Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz once said, "love has no gender, love is our very soul."

Scenes from a Journal

7/3/08
In the Plazuela de San Martín in Segovia, a stone fish spouts water into a fountain and a saxophone spouts low notes into an afternoon of geraniums and white-canopied tables on the side of a hill, and two little girls watch the woman I love sketching orange over a yellow heart, the fish that caught both of us in this tiny plazuela in Segovia.


7/11/08
The Mass is ending at Notre Dame. We found la Guadalupana here, resplendent in her own nicho with a jeweled crown on her head and candle offerings with her image stamped on the cup. She's the only Virgin we've seen with her own line of candles. This is how great Paris has been so far. Yesterday I proposed (again) on the Eiffel Tower and today we said vows of love and gratitude to each other during the mass at Notre Dame. Our wedding in California isn't until August, but it feels as though, in another lifetime, we must have sat in this cathedral before, perhaps married each other for the first time in this very spot, the nave filled with the smoke of incense and the voice of an angel singing blessings over our heads. I sit here writing and Alma draws another Virgin in watercolor hues.

8/24/08 (honeymooning in New Mexico)
Now we're at Chimayo where we came to film Marion Martinez for Alma's "Our Lady" DVD that we're going to include in our book. It's so green because of all the rain this summer, and the trees look younger than I've ever seen them, while the santuario looks older, more rickety and worn with age. I find the contrast amazing--the young, fertile trees, the dynamic energy of the water crashing through the acequia, and the old dilapidated church. There's a family of Mexicanos having a picnic out here under the cottonwoods and weeping willows. Mexicanos love their Sunday picnics in the park. A baby cries, a young boy calls out to someone in the parking lot, children laugh and play along the ditch. This is Llorona territory--the ditch, the flowing water, and the children playing too close to the stream. At dusk, la Llorona will come down from the red hill and see if anybody left a child here, or a memento of a child, a doll's head, a baby's shoe, a toy of some kind, and she will gather it up and carry it into the santuario to bless the lives of the children who played there that afternoon.

My First Legit NaNoWriMo Experience

So yesterday was the official end date for this year's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month for you non-initiates) novel contest. I did not win. I did not even get close to winning, as you have to reach the 50,000-word mark to be declared a winner, and I only got to 17,879. But I started a week late, did not put in the suggested 1,667 words per day, and on some days, didn't write at all, so I knew from the get-go that I was not going to be among the winners this year. And yet, I started a novel anyway. Or rather, I started to flesh out an idea that I saw while under acupuncture needles one Wednesday morning, as each of the characters presented herself to me in fully-fleshed-out form, with a name, a backstory, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a situation. And I knew that even though there was little chance in hell that I would reach 50K words, I wanted to see what would happen if I did sit at the computer whenever I could and try to listen to those characters' stories echoing off the inside of my skull. The last time I tried the NaNoWriMo approach was in 2005, and I was able to finish the last half of my historical novel, Calligraphy of the Witch (2007), though it was February rather than November, and the only other wacko person doing it was my buddy, la Emma Pérez (of Gulf Dreams and The Decolonial Imaginary fame). So I knew the approach could work, if only because of the constancy of daily writing and the clarity you get from being in your imaginary world with your imaginary peeps day in and day out for 30 days. What I love about the NaNoWriMo approach is the freedom it gives you to write crap, to play with technique, to do whatever it takes to increase your word count and in the process to free yourself of any rigid thinking about plot or the logistics of novel-writing. Because of this, I now have 67 pages of new work that I actually really like, and that I can feed into work that I've had on the back-burner for years, like a bunch of ingredients needing a recipe to become something solid and whole. Those 67 pages are not crap--I still haven't learned to free myself that much--but they do have a lot of breathing space around them, and the truth is, I love these new characters, the time-weaving that I'm doing between a meta-story set in the second century AD (or is that now CE?) and the contemporary story set in 2005, and the way I get to summon up characters and situations of my previous novel, Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders. Right now, the new work is called "The Nine Sisters," and even though I'm not on a crazy deadline anymore, I'm still going to write every day and follow these girls and women until they lead me wherever it is that they want me to go. I started out not knowing anything about this book, and I still know very little, except that these characters have become three-dimensional for me, and I like being in their company. Plus, I'm good at tracking, eavesdropping, taking dictation, and then spinning everything off in a new direction. And so, you see, I am a winner after all.

Travels with Crumley

In Memoriam: James Crumley

I just read in the L.A. Times that my friend and writing mentor, James Crumley, or Crumley or Crumdog as he was lovingly known by his friends, passed away on Wednesday, September 17, 2008. I loved this man. This man and I shared some good times on the border when he was a Fiction Professor in the English department at the University of Texas at El Paso, where I was starting my M.A. (back in the day when his son, Shorty, was just a baby). I'm a local to El Paso and Juárez, and Crumley liked going to bars, which were one of my favorite hangouts at the time as well. Because I was a starving graduate student earning $400 a month as a teaching assistant, Crumley and I made a deal that whenever we went drinking in Juárez, I would translate for him and he would buy my beer. Seemed like a great bargain to me. So we spent many a Friday night (or maybe Thursdays, after class) across the border at the Kentucky Club and further in to the darker holes-in-the-wall on Mariscal Street where naked women danced for us in exchange for shots of Cuervo and a $5 tip. There was this one particular bar that I don't remember the name of and which I feature in my short story "La Mariscal," in The Mystery of Survival and Other Stories, where Crumley and I both fell in love with the same girl. She was a beautiful "Aztec princess," as Crumley called her, and I was supposed to tell her that in my good Spanish. I told her what he'd said, and added my own bit of Mexican charm, telling her I thought she was a "reina" not a princess, and insinuated that I would be a much better catch than Crumley. Told her I had good hands and knew how to treat a woman right. She didn't take either of us up on our offers, but Crumley realized I was flirting with her when at one point she winked at me as she picked up a tray of drinks to deliver to her tables. "Just my luck," Crumley muttered under his mustache, "I'm buying the drinks and you're getting the girl."
Crumley was a good friend. He saved me a couple of times from getting arrested by the Juárez police (sorry about nearly driving your Volvo into that lady's house, Crumley), he threw a party for me when I got my Master's degree and invited the whole English department, he gave me the best writing advice ever--I don't give a shit what you write as long as you give a shit about it--and he said that I wrote "like a fuckin' angel," but didn't know it. Huge praise for an aspiring writer.
I am so grateful I knew him. The last couple of times I saw him he didn't look too healthy, but at least he was doing what he wanted to do, and that's all that matters. I spent a few hours with him and Martha at the Chicago Bouchercon (big conference for mystery writers and fans) in 2006 and that's where the picture above is taken. What I am most grateful for is that he took the time to blurb my novel, Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders and this will connect us for all time. He wrote that my novel "... takes your breath away, page after page, and grabs your heart." Well, Crumdog, you sure grabbed mine. Adios, maestro.

A Note from Sor Juana

Dear Alicia,
From my perch in the heavens I can see the cyber-universe quite clearly, from where I keep tabs on what is happening in the mortal and busy lives of my Chicana and Latina sisterhood, and what to my surprise do I discover in the cyber-universe but your brand-new and beautifully designed website at http://www.aliciagaspardealba.net. Whoever "Viceroy Productions" is (and of course I already know that, since I see all in the cyber-universe from my perch in the heavens) they have done an amazing job of showing the intricate web of writings that emanates from your not-so-mute pen and inkwell. What I most like (other than that impressive collection of fountain pens on display) is that it shows the world that you are a writer first and foremost, and that your academic life, though rich and productive and successful, is but one aspect of your identity. Let the world know that you wear both the mortar board of an academic and a writer's hat (a brown felt Stacy Adams that you bought on Venice Beach), and that for 15 years now, you've been doing a juggling act balancing your writing projects with your working life at the university. So I just wanted to post a kudos to you and Viceroy Productions for making your presence felt in the cyber-universe. It's about time, sister.

Vote NO on 8 in 2008

For those of you who don't know yet, Alma Lopez (yes, that Alma Lopez of the "Our Lady" fame, of the "Lupe and Sirena" fame, of the best parties ever given on 18th Street fame) and I got legally married on a yacht in Newport Beach almost a month ago, and I can honestly and gratefully say, I've never been happier in my life. To think what I'd been missing: friendship and passion, kindness and silliness, depth and more depth. To think that she and I had been friends for almost ten years, that we had collaborated on projects, that her artwork graces the cover of two of my books, that we've partied together, laughed together, talked long hours into the night together, and sat in dark movie theaters eating out of the same popcorn bag, sharing blood oranges and chocolate, to think that we even shared the same hyperthyroid condition, the same memory lapses, the same loquaciousness and locura for art and politics and Sor Juana--all without a hint that we would one day be spouses forever, just blows my mind. But spouses we are, and spouses we shall remain, regardless of what happens in November, though of course we would like to continue to have our marriage be recognized as a legal union by the state. So please, please, please, save our marriage and vote NO on Proposition 8 in November.