Bueno, so I haven't been writing because I've just finished two manuscripts, and cross-your-fingers, parece que I have a good chance of getting them published with UT Press. There were agents interested in my Golondrina (a love story about a woman who falls in love with the man who helps her cross the border), pero a dream I had told me to let the money-thing go. I want a beautiful book, a forever-book, and UT Press understands me. That doesn't mean I'll get it, it just means our stories deserve the editors, artists and publishing houses that turn our books into the jewels they were when our grandmothers left them to us. So. It's time, maybe by this time next year I 'll have two books to tell you about. Speaking of books, my favorite subject, even before politics, I've just finished a novela by Almudena Grandes, a Spanish writer I discovered at the Intl PEN Festival of World Literature in NYC in April (when I lost my panties in the subway, see previous ...

I"m in New York City this week for the PEN World Voices Festival, an annual gathering of writers from around the world, no Chicana/o writers hanging out here, just me and la colombiana Raquel... Anyway, been staying with the journalist Roberto Lovato in Brooklyn, and as I left the N Train on 14th Street yesterday, a man rushed to reach me, saying "Excuse me, I think these are yours." Raquel and I turned around. Nobody hardly talks to anyone on the subway. He was a big, white, professional-looking man. In a pin-stripe suit, pa' acabar. With my black Victoria's Secret panties in his hands. If you know me, I always have something to say. This time, I was frozen, stunned with verguenza , what would my mother say? Why does this always happen to me? Raquel turned to me as he came forward clutching my french-cut calzones with the pretty pink rosettes. She was accusing. "Did you forget to wear your calzones?" "No." "Well, then how come he has the...

I got a pretty nasty email from Nikki (?) about my Chingazos postings, relating to FightNight outside the Museo Alameda Smithsonian during the VIP Gala (see previous posts). Don't have time to interview the other side, but here's what I do know. Artista Franco Mondini , dicen different sources, saw the fight. According to Rina Moreno, who was assaulted by Henry Munoz' family members, Juan Ramos, another well-known artista, talked to Cruz after the chingazos and repeated her depiction of events, telling Cruz that Franco had told him what happened just as Rina alleges. You know what happens next, doncha? The right thing to do is for Henry Munoz to apologize, he's buena gente, que no? But it won't happen. Political people, trust me, Munoz is one, don't think in terms of what's right. They think in terms of advantage, appearance, deals, money. They don't listen to their soul, they listen to their ego, which is richly rewarded in this material and a...

Ok, so I got a call from a relative of Rina's, the woman who was beat up outside the Museo Alameda on Thursday, April 12th, during the VIP Gala in downtown San Antonio. Los chingazos were apparently given by relatives of Henry Munoz , the Museo Alameda Smithsonian's empresario, the Alameda Museum's founder, and resident star-maker. Rina Moreno, the social worker wife of Cruz Ortiz, artista, has filed a police report and intends to press assault charges against Peter Falcon, an actor. Falcon is married to Meredith, Henry Munoz's niece, and they brought their two young daughters to the Alameda VIP pachanga. Here's what happened according to Rina's familia: It was about 12:30 am on Thursday night, and Cruz was helping put an easel away a few feet outside the museum. While he worked on this, Rina decided to return to the dancing which was still rockeando the museum. On the way there, she wished outloud to no one "Goddammit, I want a fucking giftbag!...

Ok, so everybody I know is mixtiado about Henry Munoz, the (alleged, some say) founder and corporate fuerza behind the Museo Alameda Smithsonian, which celebrated an exclusive dinner for the hoi politicos in San Antonio before the public's opening night on Friday the 13th. The food was delicious and VIP. My good sources on the scene tell me that Rina, la esposa de Cruz Ortiz, a chicano artist of repute who was in Henry's Chicano! exhibit by Target some years ago, got into some chingolazos with la wifa de Peter Falcon (the niece of Henry Munoz) outside the Alameda's steps by the plush sofas close to the midnight hour. Hey, it was meant to be a let them eat cake night (check out the installation by Franco Mondini Ruiz with a Venus de Milo on a stack of pancakes) Emily Bueche also got into it, Henry Munoz's sister, throwing down puro alamierda style (as it is commonly referred to in barrioesque), according to very good and reliable chismosos working on the inside of ...

I can't believe the media hasn't even tried to tell the truth about the Duke University stripper so I will. I'm a writer, who's also worked as a social worker. Contrary to popular myth, las strippers don't w ant sex. They become strippers or prostitutes because they've been raped, sometimes by all the men in their family, and they have been socialized to believe this is what a woman does. They want to please men, and yet they hate them. Many times the stripper/prostitute will take drugs to escape the pain. Or she becomes an addict because that's how Daddy wanted it. I believe the stripper in the Duke University case was raped. Horribly. Likely with a broom. But she was too drugged-up and too unstable to tell her story. The rich white guys have so much power, and who's going to listen to this poor black stripped-down woman? Some of these guys will be judges someday.... I have seen prostitutes, strippers, abused women. It...

Let me count the haters: Coulter; Limbaugh; O'Reilly...and our own wolf-in-sheep's-clothing, Jonathan Gurwitz of the San Antonio Express-News. There's more but I don't listen to talk radio or watch TV because of their rhetoric. What Imus said isn't free speech, it's hate speech. He said it because he's gotten away with it but there are others who've said much worse. Imus is a symbol of Big Media that places profit over protest. The airwaves belong to all of us, not just to white men like Imus. We need real debate in this country. Diverse, informed, contextual, impassioned, but not racist, sexist... And we deserve to hear other voices besides the haters. Register your protest to the FCC. See the link below. http://www.stopbigmedia.com/minoritymedia.php artistic credits: http: www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~cperaza320/555%20copy.htm