Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Writers:  Do you know where your work is being reproduced tonight? Or by whom?  Or for what purpose?  When I was a young writer, in college, we worried about the expediency of photocopying.  But the World Wide Web blew plagerism out of the water.

The Authors Guild has undertaken a law suit against Google for willful infringement of copyright.

Writers:  withdraw your work from all look up data

bases, such as Google Print and Amazon Search Inside the Book, without your explicit permission to participate. These are programs that allow public access via the Internet to parts of your work under the assumption that such browsing will lead to increased book sales.  All of these programs, with a few clicks, allow unlawful copying of your work without proper compensation to authors.

At this time, Google has made deals with certain publishers to lease work under copyright. 

The larger issue is that Google is also claiming they have a right to

digitalize books in a number of libraries with whom they also have

agreements. If you are the copyholder of your copyright (which you only

temporarily lend to your publisher as a license and should be contacted for permission to use that copyright), the Authors’ Guild, along with other writers, feel this it is totally unlawful for both the libraries to give permission and Google to post the work electronically.

Google has publicly stated that any author/publisher can 'opt out' of their program.  Know your rights, writers.  

posted by Ana on 11/30/2005

Sunday, November 27, 2005

OVER 400 YOUNG WOMEN HAVE BEEN MURDERED and 500
DISSAPPEARED IN JUAREZ AND CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO

JUSTICE MUST BE BROUGHT TO THE WOMEN AND THEIR
FAMILIES

STOP THE FEMICIDE!
MARCH FOR JUSTICE

NOW IS THE TIME TO TAKE ACTION!
WE DEMAND THAT ALL THE CASES BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE AND
THAT THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE NEGLIGENTS OF THE
INVESTIGATIONS OF THESE CASES BE SANCTION

NOT ONE MORE
STOP INPUNITY

WHERE: ARMIJO PARK
WE WILL GATHER AT THE PARK AND WALK TO THE SANTA FE
BRIDGE
ELPASO DEL NORTE BRIDGE

TIME: NOON

DATE: DECEMBER 3, 2005

National Organization For Women
MEXICO SOLIDARITY NETWORK
JUSTICIA PARA NUESTRAS HIJAS
NUESTRAS HIJAS DE REGRESO A CASA
CASA AMIGA
Amigos de las Mujeres de Juárez
VIDA Y ESPERANZA
MADRES EN BUSCA DE JUSTICIA
MIRABAL SISTERS FAMILY CENTER
NATIONAL DOMINICAN WOMEN'S CAUCUS

posted by Ana on 11/27/2005

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Regarding academic interviews, it has been my custom to decline. It takes away from my own writing. It takes time from my own students. It takes time and focus for travel and lecture commitments, from private time and much needed rest for my brain. They are work, which I don't think students who put out such requests really consider.

The primary reason is the following: It has been my long time belief that answers for the students are to be found in the text. If they are not then, obviously the author has failed in her task. An astute and serious student will read carefully. More often than not, writers that intrigue us are not accessible. Frequently, they are not even alive any longer. Under what circumstances or frame of mind they were when writing the task, certainly, have past. Therefore, what further elaboration or explanation can a student expect or demand from an interview with the writer? The writer said what she had to say. It is there in print. She did her job. She even saw to it that it was published and made available to the public. The reader’s job is to read. If she doesn’t understand, she should read the text a few times. If she’s stuck, she might find related books to help.

Now, if a student is looking for a mentor, someone to help her or him grow intellectually or as a creative writer (they are not the same thing), yes, perhaps, there is value in communicating with the writer. It requires, however, mutual consent to enter into a relationship. With the rise of the concept of “mentorship” in the U.S. in the last ten years, this too, however, unfortunately, has become an idea taken for granted by students. Just as her doting parents have indulged her, the ever-coddled young person as a student expects the person she believes could help her career along to be there for her—just because. Just because she says so. Sometimes such a student doesn’t even ask. She just expects to be taken under the targeted “mentor”’s wing.

I have given my share of academic interviews over my thirty years plus writing life. I have also, occasionally taken someone under my mentorship. On occasion, however, I have discovered that with some of these students (age notwithstanding, they were often well into adulthood) nothing I offered was enough. After the interview came follow up calls. Soon, a friendship was assumed and more boundaries disrespected. Sometimes, the student (I repeat, these were adults not minors) they developed serious infatuations. Because the student was of the ilk of feeling entitled to special treatment that came long before I did but surely had something to do with her insistence to get and succeed in having my attention—the infatuation became an obsession. The more I insisted on my privacy and boundaries, the more the individual lost sight of our initial agreement.

Getting back to the idea of granting academic interviews, for the record minority writers in the United States have been much under the scrutiny of budding scholars for decades. It is no longer a novelty for us, or at least for me. Ongoing institutionalized racism here and in other countries does not make me feel “lucky” that my writing is studied, even if also always as a classified “minority” writer. Indeed, were it not for the fact that I am considered first and foremost as a “Chicana” writer, there is nothing about my body of work that distinguishes it from any other writer in my league.

As for my readers, I appreciate them immensely. Were it not for them I would have little motivation to write at this point in my life. The students who show up at my readings who share with me how my books, especially Massacre of the Dreamers, helped them through school or inspired them, touch me to the core of my heart. I see myself in them.

Nevertheless, the academic requests will continue, no doubt. Along with my writing expertise of thirty plus years comes my teaching experience in higher education that dates back to—1976. I also hold my degrees in education, social science, Latin American and Caribbean Studies and American Studies. Yes, when push comes to shove, I admit, I probably would have something to add to whatever I once said in a critical essay.

After much thought and discussion with colleagues I have decided that I will make a limited number of exceptions on my strict no-accademic-interview policy this coming year. However, written interviews take a great deal more time than I believe people think. They require a lot of thought. They are not only mentally exhausting, they are work. This work takes me from my own work, not just for the while that I am busy answering complex, analytical questions but because they also take me from my own work, which may no doubt has my mind in in a whole other direction. A day or two goes by before I can get back to it.

Therefore, I have decided on a compromise that might to some degree be of mutual benefit to the student and myself. In the coming year, I will set up the possibility for a limited number of academic interviews on the Website. They will take place in the form of a conference call. The student will forward a set number of questions in advance so that I may be prepared to reply. The conference call will be limited by time and may not be recorded. (Of course they can take notes and should run by any quotes to me afterward.) And, there will be a fee. It will also include the cost of the call. All these arrangements will be taken care of before the conference call.

So, if a student working on a paper or thesis feels he or she cannot possibly achieve the goal he/she is aspiring without the benefit of this writer’s personal comments on her work, there will be a possibility to have them. I do not expect that my consultation can be fully compensated even with a fee but then, the student cannot expect any guarantee that the call will secure a grade or desired degree.

posted by Ana on 11/22/2005

Monday, November 14, 2005

My condolences to Amman, Jordan’s people, most especially to the families of those lives lost in the bombings last week. Jordanians were sympathetic to the terrorist attack of 9/11. I met with poets and activists when I visited a few days there right after 9/11. Among them was a passionate artist and poet, Aisha Rezem. (Her nearly adult daughters thought she and I looked like sisters.) Aisha presented the U.S. Embassy with a painting inspired by 9/11. It was an oils on canvas imagistic piece of many lit candles. I recalled that painting when I read of the candle light vigil that took place in protest of the recent terrorist attack there. I had not stayed in either of the hotels that were attacked but one very nearby. They are grand hotels, like in any grand city that cater to people with money. (I was there courtesy of the State Department, escorted by attaches of our embassies. What they don’t give a poet in honorarium they try to make up for in travel comfort.) My last night in the Middle East was in that beautiful desert city (think Scottsdale, AZ meets Santa Fe w/ mosques in the middle of eternal arid, white sands). I was to give a reading there at a gallery right there in the Sheraton. Just before going down CNN announced that Bush's gov't had started bombing Afghanistan. Oh my God, I thought, what…can…I…say…to…them…tonight?
I was to fly out around 2 a.m. My suitcase was packed. I was in my comfortable slacks and flats, ready for the long flight back. Like any wise woman traveler I dress not just for comfort to but to not attract attention and be vulnerable from potential predators. Besides, that was when airport security had just started. My one suitcase arrived about two days after I had, with torn lock.
My book of poems, I Ask the Impossible had just come out and the collection was still new, even to me. I browsed through it hoping to find some relevant words to commiserate with my audience. I would be introduced as an American, which indeed I am by birth. But all people in the States know that there is no longer just one face for an American but many. There is not one history for the U.S. but many. Consider what the history of the United States would read like, in fact, what the shape the country would have taken if it had developed in the Southwest with the Spanish. As we know, the Conquistadors had arrived quite some time before the founding fathers of the 13 colonies established a new nation. Imagine another language, another religion, a mestizaje of indigenous and dark-haired, olive skinned Europeans being validated. But it was not and consequently I was an American who, at face value, literally, is not identified as one, just like in my story about the woman in Paris who mistook me for the immigrant maid instead of the “distinguished American guest” at her sister’s apartment.
It took me by surprise to find the poem in my new book that I did. It was dated "1998." How had I known? I consider myself neither pundit nor prophet. But there it was, a brown, marginalized woman and poet, away from her home in Chicago, in Rome when Clinton retaliated Bin Laden’s attacks of foreign embassies. Bin Laden, a man with a mission and the money to back it--had warned us.
But surely, educated, astute, Americans—real Americans, i.e., both feet entrenched in these soils unlike me, Ana del Aire, as my mother dubbed me in my youth--people with investment portfolios, the new millionaires of digital dot.com Silicon Valley, the ever-savvy, cosmopolitan New Yorkers, the Washington D.C. eggheads, think tank residents, the growing fleet of legal professionals—could see it coming too? Thanks to the CIA Bin Laden was trained to take down the enemy. Maybe if it hadn’t been him it would have been someone else. As the world collapses with the extreme disparity between tribalism and globalization absorbing ancient empires—Russia, now China, India—of course, it was, to my mind, inevitable.
I went downstairs and made my way through the elegant lobby and elegant hotel guests, down to the gallery. My audience, mostly sophisticates—socially and intellectually—did not come with intentions to hold me responsible for anything. They did not come angry. Aisha Razem came with one of her daughters. Her daughter, fluent in English, as is Aisha, was veiled, unlike her mom—my new sister. Aisha reminded me of my own generation of feminists here, where some of us are more liberal-minded than our daughters. But while her daughter had chosen to traditionally observe religious dictates for the most that pertain to women, she was also following her mother’s intellectual pursuits. A year later I rec’d an email from the daughter who had won an essay competition and had gone to speak at the United Nations. With only a copy of I Ask the Impossible and no podium I began by reading the poem, “While I was Gone a War Began.” My audience could not believe it had actually been written and published before that night.
Neither could I.


posted by Ana on 11/14/2005

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Paris is burning. Days and nights of rioting around public housing. Algerians, mostly male youth, took to the streets in the last week. Of course. When African Americans took the streets after the Rodney king verdict did other First World countries think racism was only our problem?

My experience the two times in Paris in mid-eighties was that of a woman of color of modest means, a traveler, foreigner and with no connections—save my academic ones at the Sorbonne, which was the reason I was there. I was invited because of French academic interest in the treatment of minorities in the United States.

My experience there, on the streets, at the markets picking up a pain or fruit, the train station, shopping (where I was stopped by security) was probably no different than that of the Algerians who migrated there—after an ugly rebellion against their colonization by the French.

I’ve often remembered the exerience I had in a home in which I stayed there for a few days, with a very nice French woman and her daughters. As my hostess spoke nothing but French, she informed me that she was going to invite her sister over to converse with me. Her sister was married to a physician and they had lived in the States for a time. My hostess had a Filipino housekeeper. Maybe that’s who the sister mistook me for when she came over. Maybe just any housekeeper. I was in the kitchen, like the good woman my mother raise me to be, clearing up the dinner table, when the sister arrived. She took one glance at me in the kitchen, ignored me (despite my saying hello) and called out to her sister, “So, where is the American?”

Mexican in the U.S. Algerian in France—I said to the professor at the university there when she interviewed, what was the difference?

That was nearly 20 years ago. This week Algerians cry out—enough. Violence is never the answer, in my opinion. But this has not been our world, the descendents of the colornized even as we start the 21^st century.

I do believe the end of the 21^st century will look differently—quite literally. Continuous migrations, opening of world markets in formerly closed and/or remote societies and an ever growing open attitude to miscegenation will move democracy along, regarding racism. Signs are already there (thanks to my generation of the free-loving 70s.) My son’s hip-hop generation is not as concerned with color or ethnicity as was mine. But he is living in Chicago not in Paris. Chicago had its riots in the 60s. Paris didn’t even realize then that they had a race problem. What segregated society ever has?

posted by Ana on 11/08/2005

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Auto-Entrevista

Yo: Hey, hey…hold up, Ana! Is that you with that latte grande? What’s with the Jackie Onassis shades? I’ve been looking all over for you! Where you been, mujer?

Me: Huh? Uh, well, a lot of places recently, reading from the new book and the play—giving classes in Chicago; it’s been a busy quarter. By the way, it’s a chai. Chai means tea…

Yo: Yeah, well, whatever. I been up and down this country, lookin’ all over for you, lady. Hey, whatchu do to your hair, anyway? No wonder I haven’t recognized you before. Or better question: what haven’t you done to your hair? I guess you been real busy with all your travelin’ and sh..,stuff.

Anyway, like, with all the hurricanes, I was kinda worried. Weren’t you supposed to be reading in New Orleans, Houston…Florida? Chihuahua. I’m surprised they didn’t put Cancún and Nicaragua on your tour, like maybe your publicist got a death wish thing going for you or something.

Me: Yeah, well, the “they” on this book tour included me so, it’s what we planned, which is what you have to do with small presses, work together to get the word out. As hard as it may be to believe--there’s no publicity team manning the epic poetry ship. The life of a famous Chicana writer ain’t as glamorous as people may imagine. Maybe the Chiclit first time novelists got a Sex and the City vibe going with their publishers on their tours but on the Emma Goldman circuit it’s economy class and racial profiling all the way. Pack your meds, let airport security know about the heart monitor, remember your drug store reading glasses and you’re pretty much all set.

New Orleans and Houston were on the original itinerary but had to be cancelled for obvious reasons. (The Faulkner House where I was going to read in New Orleans is going to be okay, by the way, but did get some damage.)

México was not in my travel plans but Nicaragua is scheduled in a few months—a poetry festival. And yes, I did get out to the St. Petersburg Festival of Reading last weekend. Fortunately, they had not been hit as in other places in the peninsula.

And for the record, what do you have against a few canas?

Yo: Nothing. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. After all, a little white hair at your age is natural, no? I mean I sure couldn’t let myself go like that, but hey, you’re famous. You can do whatever you want. So how did all your readings go?

Me: So far so good.

Yo: Pues, cuentame, what else is new and exciting? What’re you working on now? Hey, I bet you get asked that all the time, like all a writer is supposed to be doing is writing all the time, even when she just put out a 300 pages poem and two versions of a play. Speaking of your publications, I just read a cool essay of yours in a new book. It’s called BECAUSE I SAID SO. I think it’s edited by the same women who did that Salon.com series, “Mothers Who Think”. Yeah, like there are mothers who don’t think.

Come to think of it, there probably are, huh?

Me: Yeah, well, I really don’t have time right now to get into the polemics of modern motherhood. But obviously I have had a lot to say about it—in that essay and in the new verse novel, Watercolor Women… Thanks for keeping up with my work.

Do you really think my hair looks that bad?

Yo: No. It looks okay…

Me: My son just noticed the canas recently, when we were out taking a walk. He’s about two meters tall so he has to look down at the top of my head. He said it looked distinguished.

Yo: Yeah, well, he’s a good son, huh?

Getting back to the writing, what are you working on now? Can I ask?

Me: Yeah, I started a new novel this year. It’s called THE GUARDIANS. It takes place in southern New Mexico.

Yo: Oh, great! When can we read it?

Me: It’s on publication with Random House. The gods willing, it may be out in 2007.

Yo: Oh, my god, mujer. You never stop, do you? And then what?

Me: I have another novel planned right after that with Random House.

Yo: Wow. My eyes are practically bulging out of their sockets. You really don’t ever stop, do you? Do you know what that next novel will be about…?

Me: I know the title.

Yo: Tell me! Dime, no seas mala!

Me: No.

Yo: You’re terrible! You’re mean! Why can’t you tell me? You don’t want to jinx it or what?

Me: Right.

Yo: Okay, so tell me something else then. Any plans for the play?

Me: Yep.

Yo: Oh man, don’t tell me—you can’t say, right?

Me: No, I can.

Yo: Then?

Me: A production in Chicago next spring, gods willing. A production in Albuquerque the following year, gods willing. It’s my first official play. But I hope to do some more writing for the theatre. In between all the other commitments…which, apparently include doing something about my hair, according to my biggest fan.

Yo: Oh no! Your hair is beautiful! You look perfect like that, really. Don’t mind me. I just always say the wrong things to people.

Do you really consider me your biggest fan? Because I am, you know. You are the only Latina writer I read anymore. I know there are other good ones out there but you’ve always been my favorite. That’s why I follow you around everywhere. I’m surprised you never noticed.

Me: I noticed.

Yo: You did? You don’t mind, do you? I mean—all the text messages, the e-greetings, the postcards to your p.o.box and your office at DePaul—that’s not too much, is it? I sent you the manuscript of my poetry. Did you get it? Did you have a chance to look at it. I mean, like, do you think it might be any good—to be published somewhere?

Me: Oh, so that’s what was in that package?

Yo: You mean you didn’t open it? What did you think was in there, anyway? A bomb? Anthrax? Jeez, Ana. I mean, you’re a good writer and all, and I mean that MASSACRE OF THE DREAMERS got me over the hump in grad school but you don’t gotta be like that, like you’re too good for people and sh…stuff. I mean, I’m like your biggest fan. You even said so. And you ain’t got time to read my poetry?

Me: I didn’t say that.

Yo: Oh. So that means you will?

Me: I didn’t say that either.
I was just kidding about the meds, by the way.

Yo: And the heart monitor?

Me: That, too. You know how we like to tease, just like what you said about my canas, right?

Yo: Yeah, well, I gotta get going now, too, Ana. See you soon, I hope.

posted by Ana on 11/03/2005