Books of Interest by Writers of Color—Part 2

This is another in my series of posts on books of interest by writers of color. I am making my way through a long list of great writers. (Please forgive the HTML junk, but I don't know how to get rid of it since I don't know why it suddenly started showing up. If I try to delete it, it takes out half of my post.)

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Diane Glancy, Stories of the Driven World (Mammoth Publications) Glancy’s latest work of poetry brings her list of works on Amazon to three pages, and I think some are actually missing from that. She writes poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, novels, plays, and screenplays, and she’s won major awards in all those genres. Glancy has published so many books, had so many plays produced, and won so many awards that she hardly needs any attempt from me to bring her more attention—except for the fact, that many people outside the world of writers of color are not familiar with her name or her work. This always astonishes me. She’s a writer of rare abilities and excels in pulling the reader into her world that has one foot in today, one foot in the past before Europeans imposed their culture on those they found when they arrived on this continent (Glancy is Cherokee/Irish), and a third foot, for she does not believe in dichotomies, in the spirit world, which, for Glancy, includes both the spirits of her Native ancestors and Jesus with whom she has a close relationship. My favorite of her novels is Pushing the Bear, A Novel of the 1838-39 Cherokee Trail of Tears, truly a poet’s novel, my favorite of her books of short fiction is Firesticks, my favorite of her books of poetry is Lone Dog’s Winter Count, and my favorite of her essays is Claiming Breath. But the truth is you can pick up just about anything by her and lose yourself in it. Her latest move is into the field of filmmaking. A Renaissance Indigenous woman.

Here is a link to the website of her latest book’s publisher. Here’s a link to her Amazon page. Glancy has been published by many small and university presses, as well as some of the big guys in NYC. I encourage you to use it to learn about her books, then go to the publisher’s website to buy it. As always, I believe we need to support the small and university presses since they are the ones who publish most writers of color.

Carlos Cúmpian, 14 Abriles: Poems (March Abrazo Press) This chapbook is Cúmpian’s latest offering in a long career as writer, editor, and activist. Cúmpian has been publishing Latino and Native American writers for over thirty years as editor of March Abrazo Press in Chicago. A poet of protest with a distinctive, fiery style, a great sense of humor, and a strong, entertaining style at readings, he should be better known than he is. My favorite of his books is Armadillo Charm. Any of his books, though, will send you looking for others.

Here’s a link to the March Abrazo Press website. Check out all the great writers they’ve published through the years.

Here’s a link to Tia Chucha Press for Armadillo Charm, and here's a link to Woodland Pattern, a wonderful bookstore that specializes in small press books. You can order his chapbook from them.

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Ching-In Chen, The Heart’s Traffic: a novel in poems (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press) This first book by a young writer who is a member of both the Kundiman and Macondo writing communities is a fierce, sensual work that can also bring tears to your eyes. It tells the story of and immigrant girl coming to grips with her sexuality and the long-lasting results of her best friend’s death at a young age. Chen uses a variety of forms—narrative, epistolary, even riddles—to tell this story in poetry, but she writes with great control and at the same time without holding back. She is a writer of great promise.

Here’s a link to Arktoi Books.

So, what are you waiting for? Go buy one or more of these books and settle in for a truly rewarding read. I know, I know, books are so expensive. I want to paraphrase a Dutch wise man and tell you, “If you have enough for two loaves of bread, instead buy one loaf and a book.” Especially if you are a struggling writer, buy books. You can learn from them. They will comfort you. And you’ll be supporting the industry and the small presses that make publication of writers of color (of most writers, actually) possible.

More fine writers to come. See you next time.

Books of Interest From Writers of Color-Part 1

Well, I'm later starting this series of posts than I'd hoped, but here goes. These will not be reviews since I'll be talking about three writers at a time in each post and that doesn't leave enough space for a real review. (Though I may post some of my reviews that have run in other places along the way.) What I'm trying to do here is to bring some attention to writers of color who might otherwise not receive it. Some of them may be well-known in their field of poetry or whatever, but probably aren't outside of that. I will probably look at someone highly regarded within their field but not well-known by the general reader each time, along with a couple of emerging or new writers. I want to give a brief overview of their work and info on where it can be found for teachers or those interested in learning more or purchasing it.

Caveat: The world of writers of color is fairly small. Most of the writers I will mention in this series are friends or acquaintances of mine or friends of friends. Not always, of course—of the three Erdrich sisters mentioned below, I’ve only met Heid once very briefly. However, since I’m trying to get people to read writers of color and make a resource for teachers and librarians here, I will not post about anyone, friend or not, whose work is not good. It would defeat the purpose. Fortunately, I know a lot of wonderful writers of color.

Marjorie Agosín, La luz del deseo/The Light of Desire (Swan Isle Press) This is the latest of many wonderful books by this gifted poet and activist. (See October 2010 of this blog for a fuller account of her many awards and books.) This book is a gorgeously produced bilingual edition of an unusual effort on the author’s part. Usually, her poetry deals with injustice and oppression, often against women, or what she calls, “memory activism,” in which she imaginatively recreates her own ancestors and the oppression they faced—the poet is the child and grandchild of Holocaust survivors who settled in Chile. La luz del deseo, however, is a poetic love song in the tradition of the Bible’s Song of Solomon that celebrates not only a passionate human love affair but the poet’s love of Israel and her calling of that country back to the ideals on which it was originally formed. For La luz del deseo, I will give the link to the small press which published it since I believe in supporting these small presses without which we wouldn’t have many writers of color published, at all. Buy it from them. But if you want to see a wide selection of all the many books of Agosín, click on this Amazon link, as well.

Lise Erdrich, Night Train (Coffee House Press). This collection of extremely short pieces of fiction is the first by Lise Erdrich, sister of well-known novelist Louise Erdrich and highly regarded poet Heid Erdrich. Played out in the towns and reservations of Indian country, Erdrich’s brief stories put us into the hearts and minds of a dizzying array of characters with skill and love. Here’s a link to Coffee House Press for the book. Also, check out the sisters. I’ll be dealing with each of them later. This is a multi-talented family of Native writers.

Phyllis Becker, How I Came to Love Jazz (Helicon Nine Editions). In this first book, Becker writes of an African American woman’s life in the heart of the country with an emphasis on both identities. Jazz plays a major part in her family history and in her poetry, which echoes to the rhythms of America’s greatest music form. Becker isn’t well known outside of the two-state area of Missouri and Kansas, but she really should be, and I think she will be as more and more people discover her work. Here is the link for her book.

This is, of course, only a beginning. Lots more talented writers of color to come.

Phil Miller, Poet, Literary Activist, Educator (1943-2011)

Phil Miller reading one of his poems. Photo by Bonnie Walker.

On Valentine's Day, February 14, 2011, Phil Miller died in rural Pennsylvania where he had retired with his wife, Nancy. Many of you who read this and live outside of Kansas City will have no idea who he was, but all the Kansas Citians will recognize his name. I counted him a friend, as did so many poets and other writers in the area. He gave me my first public poetry reading a long time ago when I only had a few poems published in scattered magazines.


Phil was a fine poet himself with several collections of poetry published and a number of anthologies that he had edited or co-edited. But it's easy to forget that, because he poured so much of his time and energy (which often seemed boundless) into building the public poetry community in Kansas City and later in Pennsylvania. With no funding, Phil co-founded the Riverfront Reading Series in Kansas City in 1987 and ran it for decades. It continues to this day as one Kansas City's major reading series. Later, he and I were part of the founding board of The Writers Place in Kansas City, which is eighteen years old and still going strong. I remember when Ben and I got married at The Writers Place the year it was founded. Phil organized the reception entertainment--Riverfront Reading at the Wedding. Later, Phil became president of TWP's board. He taught at Kansas City, Kansas, Community College and mentored many working class and minority poets through the years.


None of this gives a true sense of the man, however. Phil was a really sweet guy, and he could be funny as hell, wry and sardonic and witty. He was a great ally to have when you were struggling to try to create something for the community. He was a hard worker. He was the kind of person who was loved by scores in Kansas City. He was also a fighter when he had to be. He had been fighting cancer for several years and refusing to let it knock him completely out of the community or out of poetry. He continued writing to the very end. His newest book, The Ghost of Every Day and Other Poems (Spartan Press), is forthcoming.


We will--I will--miss him. I suspect we'll not see his like again soon. I only wish more people could have been blessed by knowing him. I would wish him to rest in peace, except I know wherever Phil is he is raising hell and trying to get some readings started and persuade someone to write poetry and more to read it. Phil was never a man to rest in peace. He was always too alive for that.

Books of Interest From Writers of Color-Introduction

This will be a fairly regular feature on this blog from now on. Silly me. I thought I’d do a blog entry on this—a simple list with a brief annotation for each author. After the single-spaced pages of just author + one book grew to four pages and I still wasn’t anywhere near finished, I knew I needed to break it up into a series of blog entries focusing on just a few authors each with perhaps a little more about each author.

The idea for this came from being asked, not for the first time, what books by people of color there were other than the few name-brand authors, such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Sandra Cisneros, Amy Tan, and Sherman Alexie. This question has been coming from sincere people, often teachers.

With such a long list, how can they not know any of these names? Easy. Many of these writers are published by small presses or university presses or were originally published by these presses and have just recently started publishing with the big New York trade houses, which may well not publicize them much at first. I know about them because a lot of them are my friends or they are friends of my friends or I have just been studying the field for a long time. This abundance of wonderful, gifted writers of color is one of America’s best-kept secrets. I may be doing these blog installments for many months, and when I finally exhaust all the fine writers I know about, there will still be many that I am not aware of. But at least, it will be a starting place.

Here’s just a partial excerpt of that long list I made. It’s in no particular order—just the way their names occurred to me--with no books or details. Just to whet your appetite. Each week, I’ll try to go into some detail about several of these authors (and many more, eventually) with titles of books and, if possible, links to where the books can be bought.

Marjorie Agosín

Diane Glancy

Luci Tapahonso

Francisco Aragón

Deborah Miranda

Kristin Naca

Sherwin Bitsui

Linda Hogan

Craig Santos Perez

Kimberly Becker

Tony Diaz

Anastacia Tolbert

Belinda Acosta

Carla Trujillo

Phyllis Becker

Virgil Suárez

Celeste Guzman Mendoza

Sehba Sarwar

Fred Arroyo

Manuel Muñoz

Fan Wu

Charlie Vásquez

Erika Wurth

Charles Rice-Gonzalez

Kim Shuck

Allison Hedge Coke

Blas Falconer

Daniel Chacón

Erasmo Guerra

Janet McAdams

Carolina Monsivais

Josie Dykas

Ruth Behar

Ching-In Chen

Joy Harjo

Levi Romero

Juan Felipe Herrera

Lisa Alvarado

Sandra Cisneros

Juliana Aragón Fatula

Leslie Marmon Silko

Carlos Cúmpian

Michael Medrano

Lorraine López

Alex Espinoza

Luis J. Rodríguez

J. Michael Martinez

Paul Martinez Pompa

Brenda Cárdenas

John Olivares Espinoza

Francisco Alarçon

Lorna Dee Cervantes

Martín Espada

Oliver de la Paz

Pat Alderete

Rigoberto González

Patricia Spears Jones

Allison Joseph

Phong Nguyen

Amada Irma Perez

Rene Colato Laínez

Helena Maria Viramontes

Richard Yañez

Cornelius Eady

Tomás Riley

Shin Yu Pai

Richard Blanco

Achy Obejas

Michelle Otero

...and the list goes on and on. Lots of good reading ahead!

Recovering and Looking Forward

Since I'm recovering from a bout with pneumonia and injuries from a bad fall a couple of weeks ago (right before the big blizzard hit), I am only posting a poem from my book, Heart's Migration, that relates to new life, new beginnings.

I'm a quadruple Scorpio, and Scorpio is the only zodiac sign to have more than one symbol. We have three--the scorpion, for those of us who are less developed, the eagle, for those of us who are more evolved, and the phoenix. I believe the phoenix is one of them because we live so many different lives, one after the other. At least, I have. Hence, this poem.

A PHOENIX, SHE MOVES FROM LIFE TO LIFE

and leaves only the ashes of her old self

behind. She plunges into the dark

future from the glare of her funeral pyre

that brightens the sky of her past

for miles and years and leaves a legend

told to generations of children

of a vast golden one whose gleaming

body rose from the burning corpse,

blotting out the moon

with huge wings beating against

the burning air to lift the dead

ground to the living night sky and fly

through the moon to a new place

with new people where she could be

new herself—until the destroyer

strikes again. Like a hunting eagle,

she lands, claws outstretched,

golden crest and feathers lost

in transit, her wings already disappearing.

She grows backward, smaller.

Now she can only crawl

into and out of shallow holes

in the ground of this new life.

Still, the wise avoid trampling her

for they know

she drags death behind her.
--Heart's Migration (Tia Chucha Press)

Today has been 75+ degrees, a new record for Kansas City on this date. The birds are out, acting as if they think spring is finally here. It seems very much a time for new beginnings, new growth. I hope you're experiencing the same, as well.