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Recently in writing Category
 Pictured top from left to right: Alesha Doan, Mako Fitts, Nicole Guidotti Hernández, Lori Baralt, Kathy Spillar (Ms. Executive Editor), Audrey Bilger, Irma McClaurin (Ms. Committee of Scholars), Elizabeth Kissling, Michel Cicero (Ms. Managing Editor), Amelia M.L. Montes. Pictured sitting row left to right: Pamela Redela, Marla Kohlman, Michele Kort (Ms. Senior Editor), Karina Eileraas, Jessica Stites (Ms. Asst. Managing Editor), María Ochoa.
These are our Ms. Magazine Feminist Scholars who met in Los Angeles! What an amazing group of women from universities and colleges across the country. We spent this weekend together learning how to think differently about our research. This is what I learned: --As scholars, we need to have a more strategic approach toward accessing public readers --Our goal is to advance public knowledge --It's not about educating the public. The public "is" smart. It's about advancing knowledge vs. educating them --Oftentimes our research, although important to scholarly audiences, is irrelevant to the general public --Learning to write for both a scholarly audience and general public is the key --It is time to reclaim our positional power and reach everyone!
And how do we do this? One of the key changes is--taking the step in actually contacting the expert/scholar to get the quote instead of searching archives for the journal article quotation --timeliness is the key in reaching readers via media outlets like Ms. Magazine, our blogs, the web, twitter. Our students are there already--we need to reach them! And we will! Thanks Ms. Magazine editors and to Irma McClaurin's work for this most wonderful opportunity in learning to connect with many more readers!
Las Mujeres! Mako Fitts, Amelia M.L. Montes, Nicole Guidotti Hernández (who just received tenure--Orale Nicole!)
Amelia M.L. Montes, Kathy Spillar (Ms. Executive Editor)
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Dear Readers, It's been a while since I've written more regularly. My spring resolution is to stick with two entries a week, no matter how short--to keep connected to you. Thanks as well to your lovely replies to my posts.
Earlier this spring I was chosen as a Ms. Magazine Feminist Scholar. What does this mean? Ms. Magazine launched this program because they see a need for feminist scholarship to reach a wider audience. Those of us who are in academia often find ourselves writing our articles and books which only end up being read by other academics. This is a chance to translate our work to the mainstream public for the purpose of change!
I'm one of 24 Feminist Scholars chosen this year. Over one hundred academics applied across the country. As one of the scholars, my charge is to write an article (and possibly more in the future) for Ms. Magazine. For the past month, we've been meeting weekly via "webinars," learning all about the history of Ms. Magazine, how articles are queried (the query letters are called "pitches"), and the types of articles Ms. publishes. They also (in the mail) sent us a number of past magazines so we could study and read the articles published in the last five years. In addition to learning all about magazine writing, it's been great getting to know the other feminist scholars through their research and their "pitches." Topics include women judges and the struggles regarding judicial appointments, critiques regarding the film "Precious," how children's toy companies market products for girls such as The American Girl Doll, pesticides and the environment . . .
I decided to connect my article to my present research on Latinas on the Great Plains/Midwest, specifically those working in the meatpacking industry. Among the many Latina immigrants who are here, there are groups of Maya women who have formed community and have organized themselves to support and keep each other strong. These women challenge the stereotype that immigrants are helpless individuals who drain our resources and/or are more of a problem rather than a contributing member to our communities. In actuality, "Immigrants pay more than $90 billion in taxes every year and receive only $5 billion in welfare. Without their contributions to the public treasury, the economy would suffer enormous losses" ( click here for quote citation and more information!).
On Friday, April 23rd, Arizona's Governor Jan Brewer signed legislation that requires all immigrants to carry their immigration papers at all times and also gives police/government authorities directives to search anyone who they may suspect is undocumented--racial profiling as law. The law also considers undocumented workers criminals ( there is more).
The United States has a very long (centuries long) history of fearing/hating immigrants (Irish, Italians, Jews, etc.). And when there is a recession, the immigrant becomes the scapegoat for the public's economic frustrations. My article focuses on a specific immigrant group and how they are surviving despite these difficult and painful political events and societal misconceptions.
In May, the Ms. Magazine Feminist Scholars will be gathering in Los Angeles to workshop their pieces. I'm sure by then, there will be more to add regarding what is happening in Arizona.
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Emma Pérez and her novel, Forgetting the Alamo, Or Blood Memory.
 
Felicidades to two amazing U.S. Latina writers! Their works have just been nominated for the Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys"-- awarded annually by the Lambda Literary Foundation to honor works that celebrate or explore LGBTQ themes. '"This has been a record year for queer books," said the 2009 Lambda Awards Administrator, Richard Labonté, who has been associated with the Lammys since their inception in 1989 as a judge and consultant. "The number of titles nominated and the number of publishers represented is in both cases about 10 percent higher than last year"' (from the Lambda Literary Foundation page).
All the more reason to celebrate Chicana historian, theorist and fiction writer, Emma Pérez' novel, Forgetting the Alamo Or Blood Memory. Pérez takes readers to nineteenth-century Texas where Micaela Campos is witness to the 1836 battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto. This is a multi-layered work that reflects our own struggles today with immigration, revisionist history, race, class, and issues of sexuality. This is Pérez's second novel. In 1996, she published her first novel, Gulf Dreams (a new 2009 edition is available). Gulf Dreams is a fascinating psychoanalytic coming of age story--also set in Texas. Orale Emma!
Kristen Naca's debut work of poetry Bird Eating Bird was the winner of the National Poetry Series mtvU Prize (selected by Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Yusef Komunyakaa). Her poetry is a tight knitting of sound and rich poignant moments of memory, global in its reach: The Philippines, Mexico, Pittsburgh, Nebraska, and the southwest are reflected. Naca follows other National Poetry Series winners: Dionisio Martinez, Cole Swensen, Mark Levine, Billy Collins. Naca deserves to be among them and there will be more from Naca! Orale Naca!
Not only are these women amazing writers and poets. They are also scholars. Both hold doctorates. Dr. Pérez received her PhD in History from UCLA. Dr. Naca received her PhD in English from The University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Currently, Naca is a visiting instructor and a CFD Fellow at Macalester college in Minnesota. Dr. Pérez is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Before you leave this site, check out Naca's poem, "House" online from Octopus Magazine! Enjoy!
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A close-up (below) of snow: glittering jewels of crystals. I never played in this stuff during my childhood. The closest comparison I have is the ocean sand that stuck to my ankles, that found itself in elbow creases and between toes. Snow was not in my experience until adulthood and this winter, especially, I am having a good share of it. Here in the Great Plains sand does exist but right now it is under translucent jeweled layers of cold.
A good part of the rose bush (the one I photographed in a previous entry) in our front yard is buried. The faded but hardy petaled bloom is nowhere to be found. We've had over a foot of snow since my last entry and the temperatures continue to remain below freezing.
This geographic area feels still, like being inside a snow globe: the earth and those in it forever contained. When I am outside removing the snow from the walkways, the drive, the sound of my shovel against the pavement feels insolent--shattering the rules of winter silence. No loud dancing, festive sounds here but more of a monasterial contemplative air. So I take intermittent breaks, take pictures, observe the plants in-between my rude snow shoveling. I imagine what it must be like in other parts of the world right now where it is summer and the people are barefoot, their bodies dancing in steamy fecund gardens, while I photograph the Milkweed (below). Its pods once softly full with cotton-like filaments that attracted red and orange-winged Monarchs, now hang literally frozen from dead stems. The plant and crown are alive, but what you see here is dead.
The sideoats grama (below) is also caught in a kind of time warp or embalmed state. I am amazed when I see pictures of this same spot just a few months ago--knowing that by March, April, definitely May--all of this white and cold will transform into buds, green, blooms, dark earth opening. Perhaps I once again write about this because I continue to marvel at the way this area of the world behaves, negotiates the seasons, even welcomes and seems so comfortable with these excessive changes in temperature. There is a beauty to this funereal viewing.
Below are two pictures of the same plant this past October and now:
Some of these plants will not return. They are dead or will eventually die, their seeds taking up the places they have left behind. I keep returning to the poet H.D., this time to her poem,
"Wash of Cold River"
Wash of cold river in a glacial land, Ionian water, chill, snow-ribbed sand, drift of rare flowers, clear, with delicate shell- like leaf enclosing frozen lily-leaf, camellia texture, colder than a rose;
wind-flower that keeps the breath of the north-wind-- these and none other;
intimate thoughts and kind reach out to share the treasure of my mind, intimate hands and dear drawn garden-ward and sea-ward all the sheer rapture that I would take to mould a clear and frigid statue;
rare, of pure texture, beautiful space and line, marble to grace your inaccessible shrine.
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