Month: February 2018
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Finding My Latino Roots in a War Zone
Michelle and I flew into Nicaragua in the fall of 1985, a country that gringos weren’t supposed to visit. Ronald Reagan was at war with the country. The Nicaraguans had run Somoza out of the country, the bloody dictator whom the United States had propped up for decades. The Sandinistas were now in charge. And […]
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El Testimonio, capítulo 1: El Nacimiento del Pocho
¡El primer podcast en español! (But, like any Salvadoran party, everyone is welcome) Aquí hablo de la vida del pocho–que significa, una fruta podrida, y un Latino que no sabe nada de su cultura, que no habla español, que está lejos de sus raíces. Pero, este pocho decidió, en su juventud, meterse en la cultura salvadoreña para […]
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T.C. Boyle and I Talk About Sex and More Sex and More Sex…
T. C. Boyle is one of our own southern California writers, and is an international figure. You can’t pin him down, can’t pigeonhole him. One novel is about the love between migrant farm workers and gringos who live in gated communities (Tortilla Curtain), another is about an eco-warrior whose daughter lives in a tree (A Friend […]
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Writing from the Classroom: Silvya Rivas and her Spanish Poetry
Poemas en español, ¡qué alegre! These are three poems by Silvya Rivas, a student at Mount St. Mary’s University in Los Angeles. You’ll note the Central American tone to them, with “vos” intermixed with “tú” throughout the lines. HOY Hoy, un día regular, mi mente se pierde ¿Qué será del día de mañana? Traerá novedades, nuevas […]
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Trump, Guns, and My Ill Mind
After the most recent school shooting in Florida, President Trump blamed the mentally ill. The liberals jumped on him, but this time around, there was much more emphasis in the news on how dangerous mentally ill people can be. The Trump syndrome is rousing in my liberal, ostensibly intellectual acquaintances, something akin to how he […]