Ana Castillo

2008-05-05T12:24:00.002-05:00

PALM BEACH--MIAMI COMING UP this week.

On my way on Wednesday...

It will be a refreshing break from the cool weather in the East Coast.
I must admit I'm ready for a few days of R & R.

2008-05-04T21:49:00.003-05:00

Cinco de Mayo and I'm in the East Coast...*(In the U.S. Cinco de Mayo has become a day for celebrating popular Mexican culture more than anything. Below is an excerpt from this wk's Chicago Tribune. In my own family, on my father's side, we have roots going back nearly 100 years--4 generations. In any case, I don't know about anyone else's abuela's cooking but in my family, my tía--born in el De Efe, a Pilsen resident for some 45 years, is a peerless cook.)

"Her secret is when she cooks she uses a low flame for a long time," said Vargas, who comes from Solis' hometown of Navojoa in Mexico's northern state of Sonora.

"I think her secret is love," Michelle Solis added.

Love. Food. Heritage. Maria Solis is not alone in dishing all these things out to her family and friends.

All over the Chicago area, more than 1 million residents of Mexican ancestry are serving up the beloved, authentic dishes they were raised on, especially now for Cinco de Mayo. Whether born in Mexico or the United States, they're making what you could call "Real Mex"—as opposed to the "Tex-Mex" or "Cal-Mex" of the ubiquitous restaurant chains.

And the food is becoming ever more visible in the wider community. Mexican is the largest immigrant community in Metropolitan Chicago, according to a 2007 study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, which puts it at 1.2 million people. And the numbers are increasing, as is the awareness of other Chicagoans of the culinary and cultural treasure in their midst.

"When you look at the Mexican food in Chicago, you see it's the closest to real Mexican food than anywhere else in the United States," said chef Rick Bayless. "But it also has its own little Midwestern stamp which seems appropriate. It's just an evolution of dishes."

Bayless, award-winning restaurants, Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, said he moved to Chicago because the Mexican food was genuine and true.

"If you really wanted to know about Mexican food, you went to the Mom and Pop place, it wasn't food conceptualized by some gringo guy," he said.

Mexicans have been living in Illinois since at least 1850.* Over a million Mexicans alone in Chicago? Not to mention the many varied other Latinos/Hispanics? If only one out of ten went out and bought a copy of my last novel I'd be on the New York Times Best Seller list! I know for some people that will sound completely self-serving but numbers mean nothing in this world if they don't join together. What better way than reading the most recent novel of their one of their favorite native daughters? Mexican AND born in Chicago! :-)

2008-05-04T11:39:00.003-05:00

IF'S IT'S MAY FIRST IT MUST BE NEW YORK
FEELING THE LOVE AS IT WERE AT THE WORLD VOICES PEN FESTIVAL

(After our storyslam experience--telling a prepared story without notes-- at the Moth Theatre event--Annie Proulx and I--troopers til the end...survived.)

(A quick hola--w/ Jessica Hagedorn)

(The inimitable translator Edith Grossman)

(While Salman Rushdie comes by to say hello Vargas Llosa and Humberto Eco give a few words in the patio.)
PUBLIC LIVES/PRIVATE LIVES was the theme of this year's writers' festival. Some don't like their pictures taken, I'm usually one of them. I post these with cariño while I have a matinee gras this Sunday...b4 hitting the road again...
LA last weekend was about 100 degrees, East Coast can't seem to shake the early spring nip in the air. Meanwhile, this writer has a tremendousy busy season as she traverses all kinds of terrain.
Whether they be good reads or bad reads, interminably long ones or all too brief, whether they be pulp or classics--just read, gente. Read.
(If you haven't picked up a copy of The Guardians or asked your library to order it or you haven't read any of my last books...what're you waiting for?) :-)

2008-04-29T19:37:00.002-05:00

Aztlán Books y Más, Las Vegas, NV. April 17, 2008: Featuring
A Moment with Ana la Amazona reading from her most recent novel, The Guardians.
The crowd was small, the venue modest but I was there.
In the fastest growing city in this country--where were all the Xican@s? Their teens and kids? Teachers? Social workers? Activists and journalists? Where were the mothers and fathers? The carnicero y partera?

Maybe the long history of Mexicans in the Southwest is a non-topic for most people in this country who think all Mexicans are immigrants and recent immigrants are the reason for the dollar's drop in the world economy, gas hikes, unprecedented foreclosures, school loan crisis, the ongoing invasion in Iraq, Guantanamo, water depletion, toxic waste, morbid obesity, AIDS and the return of polio, e-coli, mad cow disease, the diminishing membership of unions, the increasing membership in unions, the broken levees in New Orleans, the meth scene in their neighborhood, spam on the Internet, telemarketers on their cell phones, why their kids are lousy students and the high rate of divorce and basically every other problem in this country...

But those of us who have been on this side of the Border through ancestry for hundreds of years know better.

For all our numbers we don't love our writers and poets enough to always show them. (Yes, I know. I mean me.)

Join me at my next reading.
Bring your copy of The Guardians or any of my earlier works. I'm with you.
Let me know you are with me, too.

2008-04-29T16:45:00.003-05:00

last weekend at the L.A. Times Book Festival on a panel with J.F. Herrera, el poeta Californio and Gustavo Arellano, journalist. The panel centered on the hot issue of undocumented Mexicans. Some hostility in the air. with The Guardians I've not given a reading anywhere without some audience walking out.
Arellano, announcing his generation, said he felt energized to fight the antagonism.
That is a good thing. When you've been around for over half a century and have gone full circle, waiting for the signs to come up any minute, No Dogs or Mexicans Allowed, since you can read all the other signs, you need the yunguns with fresh blood to pick up the...well, they'll know what they will have to pick up.
src="http://anacastillo.com/ac/blog/uploaded_images/P1010019_2-734866.JPG" border="0" alt="" />

(Espedrilles, silk, Mexico City)
(A reunion in West Hollywood w/ 3 original "Voladoras.')

(Photo Credit: YoMo--please ask permission to reprint)

(Modeling Diosa dress by Alberto Ibarra and Toltec necklace by Cristy Burgos--Xican@ L.A. artists)
Ana Castillo, whatever happened to your Xicanisma? I was asked last fall in an interview. It's ALIVE and not just mine. It's doing fabulously in L.A., artistas, Xican@ fashions, amazing art, performance, music and jewelry-- a virtual celebration of la cultura that is alive and ain't goin' nowhere, so get used to it.
¡Qué Viva Xicanism@ en L.A.!

2008-04-23T12:37:00.005-05:00

TRADE starring Kevin Kline, a 2007 film based on the article about pedophile slave trade that came out in the NYT a fews year back. (It's worth looking up.)

Mexican women have been getting some attention in movies in recent times. Except for Selma Hayek, they're usually not bound for Hollywood and related to the current horrific reality of body trafficking.

Due to my ongoing interest in the subject I viewed the above movie, a modest production with international cast, in Spanish and English. Well done but they went for the feel-good Hollywood ending. Of course, in reality, international slave trade estimates about a million human beings a year.

Children from Thailand and China to Mexico and Brazil, women from Russia and Mexico and men, too. People who set out to find a 'better life' in the States or out right kidnapped. Most of us don't want to imagine what happens to the children and women.

Summer's upon us. So kids, as you go out and travel, especially young women but everyone, do not think the world is your playground and do not think your American passport is going to help you out of any trouble. Remember what your mum always said: Don't talk to strangers. Of course, you won't take my advice. So, if you insist on not believing that body trafficking is the biggest criminal business today, bigger than drugs, do yourself and your loved ones a favor, when out and about, always listen to your instinct. Be safe. It's always better to err on the side of caution than to find yourself in a car trunk, live or dead.

2008-04-23T08:48:00.000-05:00

Virtual fence on Mexican border deemed insufficient

By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 33 minutes ago

TUCSON, Ariz. - The government is scrapping a $20 million prototype of its highly touted "virtual fence" on the Arizona-Mexico border because the system is failing to adequately alert border patrol agents to illegal crossings, officials said.

PAID POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT

The move comes just two months after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced his approval of the fence built by The Boeing Co. The fence consists of nine electronic surveillance towers along a 28-mile section of border southwest of Tucson.

Boeing is to replace the so-called Project 28 prototype with a series of towers equipped with communications systems, new cameras and new radar capability, officials said.

Less than a week after Chertoff accepted Project 28 on Feb. 22, the Government Accountability Office told Congress it "did not fully meet user needs and the project's design will not be used as the basis for future" developments.

A glaring shortcoming of the project was the time lag between the electronic detection of movement along the border and the transmission of a camera image to agents patrolling the area, the GAO reported.

Although the fence continues to operate, it hasn't come close to meeting the Border Patrol's goals, said Kelly Good, deputy director of the Secure Border Initiative program office in Washington.

"Probably not to the level that Border Patrol agents on the ground thought that they were going to get. So it didn't meet their expectations."

The Border Patrol had little input in designing the prototype but will have more say in the final version, officials said.

Agents began using the virtual fence last December, and the towers have resulted in more than 3,000 apprehensions since, said Greg Giddens, executive director of the SBI program office in Washington.

But that's just a fraction of the several hundred illegal immigrants believed to cross the border daily near southwest of Tucson.

The virtual fence is part of a national plan to use physical barriers and high-tech detection capabilities to secure the Mexican border — and eventually the Canadian boundary.

Boeing was awarded an $860 million contract to provide the technology, physical fences and vehicle barriers.

"Boeing has delivered a system that the Border Patrol currently is operating 24 hours a day," Boeing spokeswoman Deborah Bosick said. She declined further comment.

Project 28 was not intended to be the final, state-of-the-art system for catching illegal immigrants, Giddens said. "I think some people understood that and some didn't. We didn't communicate that well."

2008-04-19T20:36:00.003-05:00

LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK FESTIVAL NEXT WEEK!

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Please note: Participants and panel times may change. Please come back to see updates.

PANEL 1105

4:00 PM
Immigration Beyond the Border
Moderator Mr. Marcos McPeek Villatoro
Mr. Gustavo Arellano
Ms. Ana Castillo
Mr. Juan Felipe Herrera

2008-04-19T20:06:00.001-05:00

(Yet another Latina discovers her Jewish history. She asks that I post her site. Here it is, folks. Please contact her directly w/ any questions.)

Original Poetry:
miriamherrerapoems.googlepages.
com

Chicano Resources page:

miriamherrerapoems.googlepages.com/chicanoarts&culture

Site Description:

Poetry Collection by Author, M. Miriam Herrera

A collection of original poetry from Kaddish for Columbus: Images of
nature, life, and folklore from Chicano, Native American, and crypto-Jewish
(anusim) cultures. The site also offers quality annotated link pages in
poetry: Tools for Getting Published; Writers Workshops & Residencies;
Organizing a Poetry Manuscript; Manuscript Preparation & Publishing Tips;
and also in Chicano, Native American, and crypto-Judaic studies of the
American Southwest.

2008-04-19T16:32:00.002-05:00

A note to students and teachers:

On a regular basis, via the miraculous expediency and efficiency for communication that has resulted from the Internet I receive an email like the following:

I am a student and I just finished reading So Far From God. I am
trying to research the legends and myths you use in your story. One in
particular, when the two girls (Caridad and her friend) jump off the cliff
and are swallowed by the earth. I was hoping you could tell me where you
heard of this legend. What Native American tribe does it come from? Where
can I read more about it?

First off, I have been gratified to know that my books have long been adopted in courses and classrooms. However, my web site has long stated that I am not available for academic interviews. In other words, I am not prepared to stop my work to to students' homework.

(And believe me, everyone, any time you contact me, I am working. That's is why I've checked my emails. I am at the computer.)

When that is ignored by a student who has gone to my website and obtained an email address of me and writes anyway, in addition to my time and privacy being intruded upon, it is further off putting to be written to as if I were a friend on MySpace. My mother, a woman of humble background and little formal education nevertheless taught me how to how to write letters and the first consideration was to properly address the person to whom you are writing. In my case, from a student or perfect stranger, it should be, Dr. Castillo.

By tradition or vocation, long before writing was a 'career choice' and people went out and got MFAs to become poets which seemed to signify that its purpose was to earn money like any profession and perhaps garnish some popularity, creative writers spent much of their time hard at their craft, devoted to telling the best story they could out of personal dedication. Their only desire was to some day be read. Most of us still wish for that. Poets, notorious for not making money from their art, nevertheless spent to their last cent on books they couldn't afford but prized them above all other possessions that could be had. All writers spent most of their time reading. All writers still spend much of our time reading. Moreover, novelists are not autobiographers, writing only on personal experience, we must research. During this time, we might have to earn our living doing other work, our children must be cared for and it is true, the writer's life is lonely because writing is normally a solitary experience. All this, to deliver to the reader all that they have to give. And our task and dream is done.

Therefore, I personally beseech students to not use the convenience of the Internet to contact me to help them to do their homework. I would not dream of contacting a famous surgeon to explain a surgical procedure they have developed and I am curious about but would respect the protocol of the medical profession and make an appointment--if indeed I might get one.

I am certain this does not apply to most but teachers: do not be remiss of your own duties when assigning literature to your students by encouraging your students to contact the author to give answers about the text that could be found in various sources.

Writing a book takes more than most people can imagine.
I remember many years ago, i offered to trade one of my books of poems for the small print an artist had at a street fair. He considered his print to have the monetary value he had given it but did not consider the book as a product to be worth as much. He asked me how much time it had taken me to write. It was a collection of poems, slender in pages, to be sure. "It is the sum of a lifetime of passion and dedication to the verse," I said. That is how each book should be viewed. And once read, the reader should know they have all that the poet or story-teller had to give, and much, more more.

2008-04-18T20:20:00.000-05:00

The Moth presents

Under Cover: Stories about Public Lives and Private Lives

Part of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature

Thursday, May 1

The Moth teams up once again with the revered PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature for an evening of stories about public and private lives. Annie Proulx and other PEN writers will examine the line between what is offered for public consumption and what is reserved for special guests only. The artist's life, inside out; the exhibitionist's secret; the undercover agent's big reveal.

Featuring stories by:
Ana Castillo, author of The Mixquiahuala Letters
Rian Malan, author of My Traitor's Heart
Annie Proulx, author of Brokeback Mountain
Gonçalo Tavares, author of Jerusalém
among others

Hosted by: Andy Borowitz

at the newly restored Museum at Eldridge Street
12 Eldridge Street
(between Canal and Division)

Doors open at 7:00PM
Stories start on stage at 8:00PM

$30 Tickets available now at www.smarttix.com or by calling 212-868-4444
(ticket price includes open bar sponsored by Flor de Caña Rum)

Artistic Director: Catherine Burns
Executive and Creative Director: Lea Thau
Senior Producer: Sarah Austin Jenness
Curator and Producer: Jenifer Hixson
Associate Producer: Meg McIntyre
Program Manager: Marianne Gadeberg

About the Storytellers:

Andy Borowitz (host) is a comedian, actor and writer whose work appears regularly in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and at Newsweek.com. He is the first winner of the National Press Club’s humor award and has won seven Dot-Comedy Awards for his website, borowitzreport.com. He has appeared on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday, CNN’s American Morning, VH1’s Best Week Ever and has acted in the films: Marie and Bruce starring Julianne Moore and Matthew Broderick and Melinda and Melinda starring Will Ferrell and directed by Woody Allen. He is the author of five humor books, including Who Moved My Soap?: The CEO’s Guide to Surviving in Prison, and The Borowitz Report: The Big Book of Shockers, a 2005 Finalist for the Thurber prize for American Humor.

Ana Castillo is a celebrated poet, novelist, short story writer, and esaayist. Castillo was born and raised in Chicago. She has one son, Marcel Ramón Herrera, born in Evanston, Illinois, on September 21, 1983. Long considered one of the leading voices to emerge from the Chicana experience, Castillo is a prolific author whose work has been critically acclaimed and widely anthologized in the United States and abroad. Castillo’s books include the novel, The Mixquiahuala Letters (Bilingual Review Press, 1986; Doubleday, 1992), for which she received the Before Columbia Foundation’s American Book Award in 1987. Her awards include an American Book Award for The Mixquiahuala Letters, the Carl Sandburg Award, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in fiction and poetry. In 1998 she was awarded the Sor Juana Achievement Award by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago. In 2006 she was winner of the Independent Publisher Story Teller of the Year Award.

Rian Malan began his career as a reporter on the Johannesburg Star. He left South Africa in the late 70s to avoid serving in apartheid’s army, spent a decade in Europe and America and now lives in Johannesburg. Over the past two decades he has written books, including My Traitor’s Heart, a nonfiction best-seller, served as a contributing editor on Rolling Stone and Esquire magazines, contributed articles to Time magazine, The Spectator, The Observer and various other publications, made documentaries, written screenplays, and written songs for various South African artists. He has in recent years become a newsmaker in his own right, attracting international coverage for his crusade on behalf of Solomon Linda, the illiterate Zulu labourer who created ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, and for his controversial questioning of African Aids estimates. His recent venture into music prompted SA novelist and songwriter Koos Kombuis to dub him ‘a one-man cultural revolution’.

Annie Proulx did not start writing until she was in her late fifties. Since then, she has received many literary awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dos Passos Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the Irish Times International Prize for her novels and short stories. A new collection of short stories, Fine Just the Way It Is, will be published in 2008.

Gonçalo Tavares was born in 1970. In 2005 his novel Jerusalém won the Saramago Prize. In his speech at the award ceremony, Saramago commented "Jerusalém is a great book, and truly deserves a place among the great works of Western literature. Gonçalo M. Tavares has no right to be writing so well... One feels like punching him!" The novel also appears alongside works by Philip Roth and John Banville in the European edition of "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die". In addition to writing novels, Gonçalo M.Tavares has invented a fictional writers´neighborhood, using playfully philosophical stories to introduce in book form characters such as Mr. Brecht, Mr. Juarroz, Mr. Calvino, Mr. Walser, Mr. Duchamp and Mr.Eliot.

2008-04-17T16:56:00.003-05:00

Are you a
BEING GIRL
DOING GIRL
RESISTING GIRL
OR
SUBVERTING FEMININITY?

(After reading at Aztlan Books y Más in Las Vegas--w/ at least one who subverts feminity.
Xuanito invited me to his performance of Paquita la del Barrio. Unfortunately,I turn
into a pumpkin at midnight when his show starts...)

Re-framing feminity was the topic in my women & gender studies course last
night.
No woman is just a woman but becomes one.
The topic of my class last night.
Being girl means you buy the ideal image of the feminine. Even if you have a career
you aren't fulfilled w/out your prince to protect you.
(Reading at h.s.'s in Las Vegas--it's all in a day's work, folks.)
Doing girl knows it's all performance. She's still waiting for her prince to look out for her. But she saves her smart, ironic, funny personality for those she respects--other women.
When doing girl 'slips' (like say, she commits adultery) she is punished and also ostracized or scorned for her lack of shame. (She knew all along she didn't believe in monogamous)
Resisting Girl is out to please herself not a man or society's idea of what a woman should be. (Resisting Girl always gets some flack, less at we move into the 21st century. But, unlike doing girl, she has no use for pretenses.)
Subverting femininity--it may be all camp, a la Walter Mercado to transmen and all other trans-identities, femme, butch, everything in between.
Which are you?
Most women, if asked, want to believe they have control over their body image and who they are in society and what they get paid for their work and how they've come to decisions about mates, motherhood and/or deal with their aging body image.
Do you?
Is the pregnant transman that Oprah featured a man as he identifies himself or a woman because he has a uterus and males don't?
What do you think?
How to challenge the binary gender paradigm? Stop using the gender pronouns, talk about it in public so others overhear, don't check boxes that ask if you are male or female, go in drag for a day, don't give gender-geared toys to children, if you're invested in your hetero-macho identity, get out of your comfort zone and wear pink shirts, to name a few small things you can do. One way to end sexism, homophobia, misogyny.

2008-04-10T15:03:00.001-05:00

Writers@Grinnell series features poet, non-fiction writer ...
GRINNELL — Grinnell College’s Writers@Grinnell program will continue in April with readings by distinguished author Ana Castillo and disability writers Steve Kuusisto and Kenny Fries.
News from www.newtondailynews.com - http://www.newtondailynews.com/

2008-04-08T19:44:00.004-05:00

The FAA has tightened inspections of planes at all U.S. carriers since the agency came under fire for letting Southwest Airlines Co. fly planes that had missed safety inspections. American and Delta Air Lines Inc. both canceled flights in late March to perform wiring-related inspections and repairs.

This plus 50 AA flights cancelled? I've been left at airports and had my flight canceled in recent months because of mechanical problems and because companies just want to fill their aircrafts. Flying is no longer the travel mode of the privileged. It's the realm of the flying lumpen proletariat. (When you do get on board, unless you're flying first class, take your own peanuts. (if a peanuts allergist is on board however, your M&Ms will be confiscated.) Be prepared to have a seat that doesn't recline. And while I'm complaining about economy class, be prepared to travel w/ the kind of folk who once, if they went anywhere at all, it might have been by land. I've sat next to people--men and women who pop & snap their gum, pick their teeth, fart, belch, burp, take up the elbow room on the arm next to my seat, behind me repeatedly pull on the seat to get up and get in and out of their seat, kick--don't apologize, their babies cry, toddlers get restless and need to run up and down the aisle, the older neophyte passengers take the window seat and want to get up at least 3 times during the flight ("it's all that water" or "all that soda") pull off their shoes to give their stinking socks some air as if they were home and alone. They see through or around you because you are a woman and obviously a lowly foreign immigrant so your comprehension regarding social graces must be non-existent and since you are a middle aged, dark, immigrant woman, anyway. Who cares what you think? Why don't you stay home, you old witch, you crone, feed your toothless husband and wretched grandchildren gruel or whatever it is you people sustain yourselves on, that is, if you could think.

Meanwhile on a 2 or 3 hr flight you don't even get a tiny insulting bag of pretzel crumbs with your 'refreshment.' Not to worry, your seat mates are on it and have brought on airport pizza or McDonald's and break it open as soon as you get in the air. You can survive on the deep fried fumes. While all you are able to do is pray for a safe landing.

2008-04-08T17:04:00.005-05:00

Capitalism can be counted on one thing, nothing is beyond, beneath or above it to turn a buck. So, the Chicano güate about Aztlán...turned up in a commercial ad for vodka. An article in El Païs (los gachupines?) and thanks to the Russians (?) Well, let's hear it for the pacifist Swedes then. Absolut ran the following ad to make its point about something ABSOLUTE! They showed MEXICO in 1830! (Ah! The Gringos are so loved all over the world, aren't they? (Hell, if gringo is defined by Washington, they're not any more loved HERE! Btw, this came to me via my favorite Canaria, a Xicana at heart.) Not one single email of THANKS to the company, on the other hand, for pointing out historical accuracy. I don't know about the rest of y'all, although we don't advocate for excessive drinking, this summer, when it comes to toasting, it'll be w/ an Absolut and tonic! So they received 1500 hate emails. There are millions of Mexicans on both sides of the border. Have all of us forgotten? Or are we so worried about losing a crumb of the American Pie that we don't dare say it?

California vuelve a ser mexicana, gracias al vodka

Absolut retira un anuncio en México tras la ola de protestas desatada en Estados Unidos por alterar las fronteras entre ambos países

EFE - México - 07/04/2008

La empresa sueca Vin&Sprit (V&S), fabricante del vodka Absolut, se ha visto obligada a retirar un anuncio de este licor en México tras una ola de protestas generada en Estados Unidos. La razón es que la empresa utilizó como reclamo un mapa que extendía los dominios del país azteca en territorio estadounidense hasta los límites anteriores a la guerra entre ambos países (1846-1848). La campaña de publicidad ha levantado una gran polémica en Estados Unidos donde muchos internautas colgaron hasta 1500 mensajes de protesta en la web de Vin&Sprit y amenazaron con iniciar un boicot contra Absolut.

El mapa utilizado, vigente en el año 1830, sitúa bajo control mexicano los actuales estados de Texas, California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Nuevo México y partes de Colorado y Wyoming, territorios que México perdió en beneficio de Estados Unidos con la firma del Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo que puso fin a este conflicto bélico.

La vicepresidenta de Comunicación de V&S, Paula Eriksson, a través del blog de la compañía, ya ha pedido disculpas por el anuncio y ha asegurado que la intención de su empresa no fue ofender a nadie, ni abogar por la modificación de las fronteras entre Estados Unidos y México, ni alentar el sentimiento anti estadounidense ni intervenir en el debate migratorio entre ambos territorios.

Quizás para prevenir la polémica, dos días antes, en el mismo blog de Absolut, la dirigente de V&S intentó justificar el anuncio de su empresa y dijo que fue ideado pensando en la sensibilidad mexicana. Eriksson reconoció que las personas interpretan de manera distinta sus anuncios según el lugar donde se encuentren y añadió que "obviamente" este anuncio está diseñado para el mercado mexicano y no para el estadounidense, "que hubiera sido muy distinto".

Estas declaraciones provocaron durante todo el fin de semana un sinfín de reacciones y protestas en Internet. Además de las peticiones de boicot, entre las airadas reacciones de los internautas estadounidenses destacan sendos montajes en los que aparece un muro metálico sobre la actual frontera entre Estados Unidos y México, y otro que sobrepone una cruz gamada sobre Suecia, Alemania y Francia.

El anuncio de la discordia se enmarca en la campaña In an Absolut World (en un mundo Absolut), en el que la compañía invita a los consumidores de cada país a distintas visiones de un mundo supuestamente ideal.

2008-04-04T20:42:00.003-05:00

POLITICS OF HUMOR.
How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?
One.

Feminists have not been known for their/our humor. But have you ever partied with one? Okay, so you have and now you know we're not funny.
Anyway,
I attended this reception and evening of comedy that launched off a graduate feminist consortium this evening, right? Since I teach out of Women and Gender Studies, as we all know, this semester and it was on the campus here at MIT, I got an invite. I was curious as to what was funny these days to feminists so I went. In any case, there would have to be free wine.

Back in the 80s, there were a couple of Latina comedians coming up and when I say a couple I do mean two.

But mostly, humor, even amongst socially conscious women was black and white.

When I got to the registration table no one knew me and I knew no one but a helpful transgendered ABD student showed me to the reception and with good Southern manners (hailed from Atlanta) introduced me to a few people, which was only incidental for me since I really went for the appetizers. I also found the wine. But my new host found me again and since I said I taught she introduced me to a couple of faculty women from Brandeis or Tufts or somewhere, who, with the caginess of entrenched academics everywhere made friendliesh but unembracing conversation after finding out that I am in residence, meaning free from the shackles of committees and back stabbing intrigues. "How many novels have you written?" One asked. I replied a few and then she said, "But are you funny?"
"That depends." I said.
There were a handful of people in white lab coats which at MIT is the equivalent of a student in jeans but there was something off about this group. The coats were white and starched and I suspected they were costume. They were busy wrapping empty boxes with white butcher paper and sticking on large stenciled labels that read: unmarked package. What really caught my eye while I was vaguly engrossed in my conversation with the covetous academic women was a video that lab coats were playing. I caught some Spanish. Taking one, huge lateral step, in front of the screen, I recognized my hometown immediately. "Is that Chicago?" I asked.
"Yes," one thin pale blond volunteered. None of the others addressed me in the following conversation but kept themselves busy wrapping empty boxes. Listening in.
"So what were you doing there?" I asked, "And what are you doing now?"
The woman went on to explain that they were a quasi performance/comedy group doing a quasi socio-anthropoligical study on peoples' fears. Since 9/11 they wondered what people feared--like unmarked packages, perhaps. And they went around the country dressed as they were and carrying their boxes. They had no specific questions. People usually were willing to talk to them.
But when they went to the Mexican neighborhood in Chicago something odd happened, something that had never happened before that or after, not even in the Black populated projects.
They became the objects of fear.
"I can see that," I said.
There had just been a Migra raid the week before so people were reluctant to speak to them, the grrl said. "Only the man who sold popcycles," she said, "And that was only after we bought from him."
Shortly, I made my way to the auditorium to hear the comedy.
One of the various persons who introduced the topic of the conference said the idea of politics in humor came from the fact that today there remain jokes,usually ethnic and sometimes about women and the conference was going to address what was funny and what was not and why.
There were five comedians, the host and four performers. Three white, one African American and one Indian (Indian-American, parents from India).
It is 2008 and I know I am visible but only as always in the most incidental and disturbing ways.
One of the white women remarked that the #1 issue for Republicans is not the economy (why should it be?) not the war (why should it be?) but Immigration. She said that after Gourmet Magazine ran a feature on how to make salsa it received 'hate mail."
The African American woman with a peculiarly shaped, large body and hair that went out said because of the hair in NY she is often taken for Puerto Rican or Dominican. People come up to her speaking Spanish--but she didn't say Spanish she spewed out fast gibberish.
But the real reason she isn't taken for African American, she said, was because of her flat, Mexican butt. She turned around to give us a look at the evidence. It might've been funny, funny in that way you can laugh at someone laughing their imperfect selves so critically if she had done it for a nano-second but she made sure to keep her back turned until the image would be forever engraved in our memories.
I am not sure what a lot of Mexican women w/ junk in their trunk would have to say about that, not me, but I can think of a few I've seen at the Wal-Mart in El Paso around midnight in stretch pants that would blow that stereotype joke out of the water.
The Indian girl did a piece from her show about her traditional Indian upbringing in the States where sexual promiscuity was associated with white girls (hello, people--Latinos have felt the same way here for 200 years.) While her older sister went to Med school and the middle sister stayed living at home (no Indian stereotypes there) only she was made to feel guilty by her father when questioned about her virginity. But she wanted to be free to have sex and boyfriends so she associated that with being a white girl.
That's funny, not in the ha-ha way but interesting because among poor Mexican girls the stereotype is that they have sex, get pregnant and get dumped and then go get pregnant again and they have no desire to be white. ("Güera" maybe, which is not the same thing. It's just as well because no amount of peroxide will convince anyone that they are.) Not poor white or rich white. They'll take the money and the blue eyes, if they don't have them, but they won't give up their culture.
Which in the end, was the Indian comedian's lesson.
Nor did I find myself even when the older woman, came up and started out with a couple of senior jokes. (I'm aware of my age but have no desire, especially as a feminist, to make fun of what gravity has done to my body.) Yes, her comedy was dated but in any case, not in the 80s when she started out and not much now, did I feel I could relate to the humor although I'm not terribly sure why. Maybe because as back then, it didn't relate to me.
Still, I did find humor--in between the cracks, the blank spaces, what is implied, I see it like motes in the air, only evident in the light.

2008-04-02T21:47:00.003-05:00

PUBLIC LIVES/PRIVATE LIVES--Even those who aren't public figures so to speak, or perhaps only legends in their own minds, circulate pictures of themselves on the Internet as if the whole world or even anyone outside their immediate droll clique gave a flyin' fig. And just as public figures invent their images, anyone w/ a computer today can and does invent personas, touch up photos, a combination exhibitionist/voyeur relationship forms. Who is looking and who is allowing you, wanting, desiring you to look? It's not true that people are putting up fotos and giving details without discretion as to who checks it out. It's all deliberate. It's all performance.

Yesterday morning saying good-bye
to the newest members at the old dude ranch
(the other dogs are not as willing to get
close to the biggest canine they've ever
seen as the new pup was--so they opt for once to not be in the photo shoot)

On a plane
later that day (but wait...Doesn't Ana Castillo
always travel alone???? Then
who took this picture?
a. the stranger next to me
b. I took it of myself
c. The answer falls under:
private life)

Boston late that same night.
Is this the street:
A. I live on
B. I may be acquainted w/
for reasons I don't care to disclose

C. It's just a random shot

PUBLIC LIVES/PRIVATE LIVES--See how that works?
I hope at the end of the day what will be found most interesting,
unforgettable, admired and beloved above all about me by those who did not know me, or know the sound of my laughter, or never saw what drew tears to my eyes or what my favorite ice cream flavor was, was what I gave them to read. There, too, was my heart.

2008-04-02T00:53:00.005-05:00

new kid at el rancho grande

PEN WORLD VOICES THEME THIS YEAR IS
PUBLIC LIVES/PRIVATE LIVES

In an epoch of blogging, skyping, texting, camcorders
in bedrooms and bathrooms
everyday people broadcasting every menial thought and
activity
presidential candidates just a click away
and so on (She's gorgeous, right? And so is the horse!)
the line between what belongs to you and what gets out there to the unwashed masses has been erased by millions

And here I join them w/ pix of newest additions last week
but not w/out serious reservations about how much and for what purpose
my spring break was absorbed w/ mis nuevas criaturas and not so nuevas but who still demandof my heart and don't give a hoot about my public life
or that just the week b4 with lantern in hand I'd started going into the dark caverns of a new novel.
No matter, it's my own nature to give my all to the moment.
But spring break is over and I am back in Cambridge...
to
asphalt and rain
the experimental playing of one of the resident students on the baby grande
the concrete ceiling of my apartment here
and looking fwd to the forthcoming public appearances
classes I'll speak at
young and young-at-heart whom I'll meet
New York, Las Vegas, L.A., Dublin, maybe Spain, maybe Italia, Germany revisited...Taos, Mexico...
in the next months.
The desert was warming up in March to a welcoming low 80s.
It's home, yes, it's good to have critters, books, piano, paint, blue sky, brilliant sun waiting in-between jaunts to the world--which is also home to me. And to the writer.

2008-04-01T17:31:00.001-05:00

The Over-Documented Migrant Worker la doña Ana Castillo--In addition to 700,001 other things on her plate lately, was pleased to do literary service for New England PEN:

A really Coolio cap
Boston Globe - United States
This year's judges were writers Ana Castillo, Jennifer Haigh, and Ernest Hebert.. .

2008-03-24T10:50:00.002-05:00

Easter Monday--Do you practice forgiveness? One of the hardest things to do for most of us. This email from a reader 'got it' from reading The Guardians. What we must keep in mind about forgiving 'those who have trespassed against us' is that we don't have to invite them over to eat at our table, we don't have to visit them in prison, we don't have to say hello to them when we must be face to face. We just have to 'let go' in our hearts. The 'letting go' is not for the person or people who have wounded us but for ourselves, to move on and importantly not to do more damage to ourselves or to others. When we carry the anger inside (and therapy doesn't help and we spew it out w/ chisme, bad-mouthing, and spreading our rancor everywhere, thereby doing damage to others' spirits (who have to bear w/ your whining and bitterness) and so on, we exand on the weakness of character we may have had to cause us to be duped, victimized or just act plain dumb to begin with.

The email below that reminded me of what my character Regina teaches us all:

Hi Ana,
I just just wanted to let you know that I truly enjoyed the Guardians. I
loved your writing style and hearing the different voices of Regina, Gabo,
Miguel, and el Abuelo Milton. I experienced different perspectives,
attitude, and beliefs as well as commonalities linking the four "speakers".
Although the ending was somewhat sad, I thought it was deeply moving and
inspiring. "Adopting" Tiny Tears' baby is an extraordinary choice of
Regina's which I believe is an amazing feat of strength, forgiveness, and
hope. I cannot wait to start reading your other works.

2008-03-18T13:57:00.003-05:00

Women’s History Month: A second interview with one of the students in my Writing the Body Class. I invited her to weigh in [so to speak] because while she is atypical in her views in the class she is reflective of the majority of young women her age. I hope someone out there who identifies with her experience will see what really counts is not what you imagine that people are judging you by.

When I was 21, Second Wave feminists were fighting the pressure placed on women by the media to conform to a certain look (and as ‘ethnic’ women, some of us knew we’d never reach it, even if we wanted). But it’s back with a vengeance.

This student, who has been open about how she has succumbed to the media onslaught, dropped by just before Spring Break when she’ll be off to Cancun with twelve of her friends. Here’s what she had to say about her reflections on body image:

Morgan

Major: Management finance & marketing, 3^rd year.

MIT, Sloan School

Age 21

AC: Tell me about your own body image history.

Morgan: When I was a kid I was a ballerina and a cheer leader. When I hit puberty I started getting body image issues and started gaining weight.

I completely related to one essay we read about a woman (she was Latina) who had had anorexia. It wasn’t even that I had started gaining weight but gaining a ‘figure’ and that bothered me. Being in dance, it t wasn’t allowed. In ballet there’s so much pressure in not getting a figure at all.

I’m still a cheerleader but I am a ‘base.’ I’d never let people lift me up.

AC: Where are you at now regarding your attitude your weight?

Morgan: I’m really happy about where I am now. Liposuction was so easy. I had tried every other option out there. I had every eating disorder. Tried every diet. Every diet pill. It was the last resort for me but I am really glad that I did it.

AC: You weren’t morbidly obese…

Morgan: No, that would be a case for stomach stapling. Lipo helps people get past that plateau of what dieting has done for them. That’s where that treatment can help you out. I won’t gain that weight back in my stomach but I am told if I do gain weight it will be somewhere.

AC: In your butt?

Morgan: I won’t care as long as I don’t have to look at it.

AC: Tell us what lipo’s about.

Morgan: The scariest moment was right before you go in. I read about that in celebrity magazines. I had never had surgery before. The IV is scary and then you fall asleep. When I woke up there was a compression garment, like a corset around me but I didn’t feel anything. You have to wear it for 2 weeks.

AC: Tell me about how the media influences your body image.

Morgan: I think I’m pretty much the perfect target for media. I read the gossips every day, People every week, all the shows about judging women’s beauty. You look at those people and you think, they’re so beautiful. Why can’t I look like that? It motivated me to work harder and harder but I still didn’t reach the results all that media made me want.

AC: So is there an alternative for being happy with yourself? Such as, avoiding all that stuff?

Morgan: I wish I could be like that. But that’s not my personality. The people that I hang out with, that’s our topic of discussion, celebrity lives—who’s skinnier than whom.

AC: So, what’s next for you in terms of reaching that celebrity kind of image? (What else have you done besides the lipo, by the way?)

Morgan: I had my stages of anorexia and bolemia. My motivation is different now. I wouldn’t do that again. Lipo was my solution. I go to spas. I get my hair done a lot. I’ve had every natural hair color—from platinum to brunette. I like to change things up. I go to Newbury Street [Boston] for facials (because they improve your skin) and get massages regularly and I have my nails done there every week. In the future I’d be open to plastic surgery. There are other things I’d like to change about myself. I don’t like my chin. I think it’s too square. I don’t like my nose either. That’s about all.

I can see how plastic surgery can be addicting. Now [after lipo] I ask myself, I wonder how much that would cost to change. I wonder how painful that would be or how the recovery time for that would be.

AC: Any advice for younger girls or your peers about body image issues?

Morgan: That’s a hard question for me to answer because I have definitely given in more to the media pressure. If I were a stronger person maybe I wouldn’t have given in to the issue in the first place. If I were more confident, I guess or I think of how some of the girls in our class just really don’t care what people think of them. I like to pretend sometimes that I don’t care what people think of me, but I really, really do. It’s hard for me when I see flaws in myself and I think everyone else is noticing them, too.

AC: Does it ever occur to you that other people are not seeing those ‘flaws’ or you are exaggerating them?

Morgan: I definitely think that’s the case. Even after my surgery, I noticed how happier I was although not that many people noticed the weight loss. I was just more confident.

AC: What advice would you give your seventeen-year-old sister if she were concerned about her weight or unhappy with her looks and you didn’t see real problems?

Morgan: My sister doesn’t seem to care as much as I do about what people think of her. She’s a lot more-easy going. She doesn’t care about celebrities and media in the same way that I do. But if she were concerned, I’d share my history. [My family doesn’t know about the lipo] And I’d share that it wasn’t a good idea, that it was really bad. And people really don’t notice as much as you think they do.

AC: What really matters?

Morgan: Being comfortable with yourself. When you’re not that’s when you start taking drastic measures. When you’re confident with whom you are, you would never do anything to change yourself just to look better in other people’s eyes. That’s what I was doing.

AC: But you’d still do plastic surgery in the future?

Morgan: Yeah, if it became something that I was so self-conscious about that’s when I’d get something done about it.

AC: What are your feelings about the Writing the Body Class?

Morgan: I’m so different from the other girls in the class. It’s good to hear their points of view. We talked about the Dove campaign that didn’t work because it targeted the average woman. It was great but it didn’t work. The other girls in the class said the models shouldn’t be so thin or that the Olsen twins were too thin. But high fashion markets the very thin because they are not the average person out there and they can afford those designer clothes.

The class is really making a difference for me. It’s like going to counseling because we discuss things I don’t talk about to other people

2008-03-16T02:20:00.003-05:00

Aware as I am that I have been remiss in posting shots during my days in Cambridge and nights in same & Boston. My neighborhood & some friends...