Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is this weekend, April 28-29, 2007. I look forward to this festival every year and usually go both days. It's a great place to meet up with old friends, meet authors, get your books signed, buy books, hang out and just have fun.

This year I'll be there all day Saturday and am really excited about it. Sunday I'll be there from opening till about 3pm and I'll have the grandkids along so I'm betting I'll be in the storytelling area a lot with the exception of swinging by to meet one of my literary idols Paco Taibo III and buy his new book on Pancho Villa.

If any of you authors, publishers, publicity people are interested in saying hello, shoot me an email and I'll make the time to swing by your booth, panels or maybe we can grab a coffee. Hope to see you all there!

Ringside Seat to a Revolution

Title: Ringside Seat to a Revolution
Author: David Dorado Romo
Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press
ISBN: 03854253090-938317-91-1


Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juarez : 1983-1923 by David Dorado Romo

El Paso/Ciudad Juarez was a big deal in my family. It was where my great grandparents walked to from Abasolo, Guanajuato when they left Mexico trying to escape the Mexican Revolution. It is where my great grandmother Teresa waited, out of money for word from her husband, my Papa Tino (Florentino Gonzalez) who was then working in the orange fields of Piru, California. There are many family stories about Ciudad Juarez and I've often wondered what it was like back in that wild and crazy time. David Dorado Romo's incredible book takes me right there. I'm sitting in that bar, watching the revolution happen.

Ciudad Juarez was more than just my great-grandparents landing/waiting place. It was host to Pancho Villa, the Santa de Cabora, Teresita Urrea, photographers, spies, soldaderas, escapees, immigrants, the movie industry, journalists, bullfighters, feminists, military bands, deserters, armies, you name it – it was in Juarez. The author calls it "one of the most fascinating periods in the region's history." It's amazing. There are great stories like the one about El Paso's gringo mayor wearing silk underwear because he's afraid of Mexican lice. The book is replete with photos from the era. There are over 200 black and white photos that give this fascinating and a little surreal place surprising depth and humanity. There are newspaper clippings and timelines as well.

Pancho Villa is pervasive throughout the book, after all Juarez was his town. The author admits that it was hard to find a place that Pancho Villa hadn't been. The town was a favorite of Villa's wife Luz Corrales as well. There are photos of the most random and what I think are unthinkable things like white tourists posing as soldaderas for photos to send home to family back east. Weird. You don't think of a war that your family left home to get away from as entertainment. At least I don't. It's wild to me that so many people came to this town to just sit on grandstands and watch the war. It's crazy. I guess it's no more crazy than me sitting in front of my TV and watching a war movie or the nightly news, but still, reading this book is an eye opener.

Romo's writing is clear and profoundly descriptive. He brings to life the happenings and time so adeptly that you feel you are there. His writing draws you in and keeps you rapt. I loved it all, the pictures, the writing, the essay by John Reed. This book is an education. Some of the photos are hard to take, there are executions, a man dying alone in the street, some of the faces and expressions are so heart-wrenching that it hurts to look. The face of the Mexican Revolution is a weary, pained one that changed millions of lives and I for one, feel the pain of that time still. I'm a product of the change and upheaval it brought. I think we're still all so connected to our Mexican past, us Xicanos, connected and disconnected. We're a strange breed and this book helps fill the gaps we have, those disconnected little pieces and ties them to the connected parts. At least that's what it does for me. For those that aren't Xicano, it is still an amazing and educational book.

My favorite part of the book is the quote from Enrique Flores Magon that says, "We are aliens to no country, no are we aliens to any people on earth. The world is our country and all men are our countrymen. It is true that, by birth, we are Mexicans, but our minds are not so narrow, our vision not so pitifully small as to regard as aliend or enemies those who have been born under other skies."

About the Author:
David Dorado Romo, the son of Mexican immigrants, is an essayist, historian, musician and cultural activist. Ringside Seat to a Revolution is the result of his three-year exploration of archives detailing the cultural and political roots of the Mexican Revolution along la frontera. Romo received a degree in Judaic studies at Stanford University and has studied in Israel and Italy.

Elegies in Blue

From my dictionary's defintion for elegy:
French élégie, from Latin elega, from Greek elegeia, from pl. of elegeion, elegiac distich, from elegos, song, mournful song.

This third book of poetry (and some prose) by Chicano poet, Benjamin Alire Sáenz is remarkable, beautiful and mournful. It is an astounding, touching and reflective look at life on the El Paso border told by someone who was born and raised there. The book is also an homage to people, from the infamous like Pancho Villa, to Cesar Chavez, to the author’s father-in-law to JFK.

All the work bears the lyrical stamp of Mr. Sáenz. He has a special knack for creating the most simple and beautiful lines on a page. I always find myself stopping to read a certain passage, a stanza again, to read it aloud just to be swept away by the sheer grace and raw power of it. Take for instance this section in his poem What Was It All For Anyway, Cesar Chavez?

“Flattering strategy. You wore that word out Injustice.
It made you sound accusing and superior. Not smart
Cesar, people got nervous. People hated you
Because you spelled it out – one lettuce
At a time.”

In the prose-like American Camps, he speaks eloquently of a boy in a picture he finds in a library, a boy with intelligent eyes, behind barbed wire. He speaks of the hidden histories, obscure ethnic histories.

I loved the poem At the Grave of Pancho Villa. I especially loved the line

“Well better bullets than cancer
for a General.”

My favorite of all the poems and to me, the most strikingly elegiac was The Blue I Loved. It was truly a lovely and haunting in its warm and vibrant imagery.

The poetry in this book is filled with rage, indignation, pride, community, righteous anger and political voice. Any Chicano worth his salt should run over to Cinco Punto’s website and buy it. Don’t just buy it – read it, feel it, love it and then read it again and again.

Villa and Zapata: A History of the Mexican Revolution

Villa and Zapata!

Those two generales so huge a part of our history, so often wondered about, quoted and misquoted, understood and misunderstood are brought to life in this book by Frank McLynn.

I bought the book for research and as part of my quest for a better understanding of the Mexican Revolution and was not disappointed. The book chronicles the Mexican Revolution, the beginnings of these two men who went on to become so much larger than life. McLynn also portrays many of the key players, like Porfirio Diaz, Francisco Madero, Pascual Orozco and others known and less known. There are maps, photos and details from documents.

He manages to give the reader an insight into what it must have been like living in that time, to get to know almost personally these men and what drove them, what motivated them into their roles in this very important part of Mexican history and how they changed not only their world, but the world as a whole, how they are even now influencing us. It reads more like a thrilling novel than a history and I couldn’t put it down.

I learned about Zapata and his sense of style, his brother Eufemio, his uncanny ability with horses, how he studied all the historical documents of Anenecuilco and other fascinating facts such as how an American woman who ran a hotel called him “The Attila of the South”. Each chapter is vividly written, chronicled in such a comprehensive and fascinating way that I couldn’t get enough of it. The book is like water to the thirsty.

I read of the battles, large and small, victories and crushing defeats, of betrayal, of in-fighting, of women and men who had such passion for their convictions, for their land, for the cause they were fighting for. There is no glorification. McLynn ensures that the faults of both men are just as clearly delineated as their greatness.

For lovers of history, for someone with even the slightest interest in either of these men or the time they lived in, this is a treasure of information. I encourage everyone to buy this book, read it and then read it again.