tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88262240745250814882024-02-19T01:57:26.573-05:00Following the ledeThe little stories behind, beneath and between the lines • Sabrina VourvouliasSabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.comBlogger312125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-13230185524997587622015-10-31T16:47:00.000-04:002015-10-31T16:49:42.427-04:00Ofrenda for Day of the Dead 2015<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRZ2FEfOYu4yJ9lKfRI9omNlhDK-PSuvYg5hVMF8nsd-MX1KOWKaAswhiFTZ5krPTF3_wcNQUb7R5N3nLrcBRm99_4D7v_GWz0nIAw_4mVB5DUh-LpZC2lO4aHa34C0k2zdOBOSAxJn_u3/s1600/20151031_161307.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRZ2FEfOYu4yJ9lKfRI9omNlhDK-PSuvYg5hVMF8nsd-MX1KOWKaAswhiFTZ5krPTF3_wcNQUb7R5N3nLrcBRm99_4D7v_GWz0nIAw_4mVB5DUh-LpZC2lO4aHa34C0k2zdOBOSAxJn_u3/s400/20151031_161307.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">La ofrenda</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpdQIOAv7nELUIfbDVYfBrRvQ0jtqZdJDRRjbDdZOkKKBSQ25mdrjsyMFQTSeAVGAvujGcPMSqGUnd_hFliCiWDdAXB-qgOx4B_ESYhZ7xjPEioIocay3M9UvlkIpcEIj6VL_3kohArTH_/s1600/20151031_161352.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpdQIOAv7nELUIfbDVYfBrRvQ0jtqZdJDRRjbDdZOkKKBSQ25mdrjsyMFQTSeAVGAvujGcPMSqGUnd_hFliCiWDdAXB-qgOx4B_ESYhZ7xjPEioIocay3M9UvlkIpcEIj6VL_3kohArTH_/s400/20151031_161352.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">on the right: the offerings & remembrance of my husband's parents</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgJyBE0uHW8liPEoHSd0YFoEFxVZyAvQEI35H9uIpI_h5S50e6xj2mDGcJhZaaUQTu6pP7upH2eWh8lQ2uDeRJLGPb2plwFq0-iZn1UD3Kw25YeBLQ1P3WoyjwlQTFYLAvNmBzDlddwFc5/s1600/20151031_161333.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgJyBE0uHW8liPEoHSd0YFoEFxVZyAvQEI35H9uIpI_h5S50e6xj2mDGcJhZaaUQTu6pP7upH2eWh8lQ2uDeRJLGPb2plwFq0-iZn1UD3Kw25YeBLQ1P3WoyjwlQTFYLAvNmBzDlddwFc5/s400/20151031_161333.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">on the left: the offerings & remembrance of my parents</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZH3HPowdg6-jPwTwUuXvhB2-TUsbbw_SjPSE54oN_cQEOiYwXKntDnrkf-k-o941bjrFYX0-0BlBmLHM4P8uzeqPR-r96zoVYbAumQyibPxPhMU6dtOwKUI0soMz-u3TyvKkIyUNTLbXo/s1600/20151031_161414.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZH3HPowdg6-jPwTwUuXvhB2-TUsbbw_SjPSE54oN_cQEOiYwXKntDnrkf-k-o941bjrFYX0-0BlBmLHM4P8uzeqPR-r96zoVYbAumQyibPxPhMU6dtOwKUI0soMz-u3TyvKkIyUNTLbXo/s400/20151031_161414.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At the center: the offerings and remembrance of my friend Sue Lamb, who died this year</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlfJVJ7eVv18KQziz5Agk49OzUxXBb_o8RWiFmHe-sPuOM6c4R7tUqpBbcb2Oq5FubzepaQTJpf9omBsw3AGezZU7_4qjJ09U73L_BTSKlGOqUaK2jfC1hm9-0d0zhsCX4Fm3WT9xAZhsC/s1600/20151031_161445.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlfJVJ7eVv18KQziz5Agk49OzUxXBb_o8RWiFmHe-sPuOM6c4R7tUqpBbcb2Oq5FubzepaQTJpf9omBsw3AGezZU7_4qjJ09U73L_BTSKlGOqUaK2jfC1hm9-0d0zhsCX4Fm3WT9xAZhsC/s400/20151031_161445.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr>
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"We come only to sleep, only to dream,</div>
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It is not true, it is not true that we come to live on this earth,</div>
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We become as spring weeds, we grow green and open the petals of our hearts,</div>
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Our body is a plant in flower, it gives flowers and it dies away."</div>
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— Netzahualcoyotl</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-33910611576302198492015-10-31T09:28:00.003-04:002015-10-31T09:28:56.677-04:00I'm making my ofrenda for Day of the Dead today...... and I'll be posting photos here when I'm done. But in the interim:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDYSAGPXgH70x0oHIvCvOWvXV2UoosounTUEKsHOxB74VlFPGwqagnmhHLpdTuqKgF59njMRGCYnAB213Vb5uY_FpNho6gJ9WWt4TBQ_3IrWvr_HQ9NZMlnhGoor-c79GI86dlu9rPFpvA/s1600/Inside+Day_of_the_Dead_Penn_Museum_20121103_5518_edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDYSAGPXgH70x0oHIvCvOWvXV2UoosounTUEKsHOxB74VlFPGwqagnmhHLpdTuqKgF59njMRGCYnAB213Vb5uY_FpNho6gJ9WWt4TBQ_3IrWvr_HQ9NZMlnhGoor-c79GI86dlu9rPFpvA/s400/Inside+Day_of_the_Dead_Penn_Museum_20121103_5518_edit.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Read all about the Day(s) of the Dead in <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/culture/al-d%C3%AD-ultimate-guide-day-dead/40983" target="_blank">AL DÍA News' Ultimate Guide to Day of the Dead. </a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-57253335586489084782015-10-24T21:56:00.000-04:002015-10-24T21:57:25.563-04:00Sign the petition - Trump's hate speech shouldn't receive NBC's and Lorne Michaels' imprimatur via SNL<iframe class="moveon-petition" height="500px" id="petition-embed" src="http://petitions.moveon.org/embed/widget.html?v=3&name=no-room-for-hate-on-saturday" width="300px"></iframe><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-59257272899415429182015-09-11T20:09:00.001-04:002015-10-31T09:30:05.016-04:00If you are in New Rochelle on October 15...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4OGZQLe9zbofo1BUAk-hae8ZwCmjgDkNq1S_BsP1EpGYby4zKSTvzgUKAyRoatYL2p4Q-03_8lI2W4TyJKFdLWe84UKh_mvDQncAFT9u_kLMOT_hsVMhCGNZ7O3Po9RsOEOvelPzqEied/s1600/100+HWW+Literature+Event+Oct+15+2015+final+version+9.11.15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4OGZQLe9zbofo1BUAk-hae8ZwCmjgDkNq1S_BsP1EpGYby4zKSTvzgUKAyRoatYL2p4Q-03_8lI2W4TyJKFdLWe84UKh_mvDQncAFT9u_kLMOT_hsVMhCGNZ7O3Po9RsOEOvelPzqEied/s400/100+HWW+Literature+Event+Oct+15+2015+final+version+9.11.15.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-28985019188218311022015-08-01T16:10:00.000-04:002015-08-01T16:40:30.975-04:007 things every self-respecting Latina should own*<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5y4nqOFSEgX3TSKCdlPA80c2xCgtc5fgSjGktzZ6YENBolKMxn73C5NG6AWO2EJ0S9YQ3Kv7DUpqP9fKB9fGDnrBBLu45koOXtT4Ah9eu2DkBIBK-augBbuSw4Ej-BYyGq_cOxi4ldPIH/s1600/Crop+20150801_113600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="504" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5y4nqOFSEgX3TSKCdlPA80c2xCgtc5fgSjGktzZ6YENBolKMxn73C5NG6AWO2EJ0S9YQ3Kv7DUpqP9fKB9fGDnrBBLu45koOXtT4Ah9eu2DkBIBK-augBbuSw4Ej-BYyGq_cOxi4ldPIH/s640/Crop+20150801_113600.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i>* if she is over 50, a speculative fiction writer, the bilingual editor of <a href="http://aldianews.com/" target="_blank">AL DÍA News</a>, and if Supercompressor's original <a href="http://www.supercompressor.com/buyers-guide/47-things-every-self-respecting-man-should-own" target="_blank">post</a> shows up on her twitter timeline on a lazy Saturday morning.</i><br />
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I am a sucker for beautifully styled photos with tyrannical (and status-y) lists of items and their rationales appended. Like this one:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ2AVHg5Flgq0dgSG_8TdX92Mt-6s2sxAjd-8kg60TIaOzO63bc3F2BRgcKPQIpT9SCouCriZCFjDwms1W88cYoNSQsE2rXOGIzkPDKiwsNee-KS37-CcN4VD70lYsy71TDJli51gbBcca/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-08-01+at+11.52.05+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ2AVHg5Flgq0dgSG_8TdX92Mt-6s2sxAjd-8kg60TIaOzO63bc3F2BRgcKPQIpT9SCouCriZCFjDwms1W88cYoNSQsE2rXOGIzkPDKiwsNee-KS37-CcN4VD70lYsy71TDJli51gbBcca/s400/Screen+Shot+2015-08-01+at+11.52.05+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Yeah, I'm not even the intended audience and I clicked on it and read the damn thing. It's like the writer's (or the online magazine's) id in a flash.<br />
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And I decided (since it was a lazy Saturday morning, like I already mentioned) to replicate it ... sort of. Kind of. Mostly. So here goes — my instant gratification photo components, in imitation of Supercompressor's.<br />
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #e69138;">The change-it up accessory </span></h4>
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Supercompressor's bow-tie (upper right) has nothing on the scarf I picked for my photo. Now, I could tell you this is on my indispensable list because pink is a good color for aging skin (that's what the fashion mavens say, and who am I to dispute their wisdom?), or because it distracts from my turkey wattle neck (don't tell me if it doesn't) ... but really it is because I wear a lot of black clothing and this adds a shock of color and also doubles as a shawl in hyper air-conditioned office buildings in the summer. Here I am wearing the scarf when the totally awesome <a href="http://lascafeteras.com/" target="_blank">Las Cafeteras</a> came to visit AL DÍA News Media and gave us an <a href="https://www.facebook.com/sabrina.vourvoulias/videos/10152235154939509/?l=5189665009508974980" target="_blank">impromtu performance</a>. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2nOtLJrH7MEqHhCR1ULh_vMXzVDq1dbDA6TVNEM2Fx8a0JK9K-3Pz1hAyTnH_iLZZ7KM_7qnfVxtXX0AsLf5r67oofyNLiYKLw_bAnqkf2ujLeQuiwr_FyaFveYP_sC5sZWItNMmffnEi/s1600/1901694_10152240957874509_595950509_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2nOtLJrH7MEqHhCR1ULh_vMXzVDq1dbDA6TVNEM2Fx8a0JK9K-3Pz1hAyTnH_iLZZ7KM_7qnfVxtXX0AsLf5r67oofyNLiYKLw_bAnqkf2ujLeQuiwr_FyaFveYP_sC5sZWItNMmffnEi/s400/1901694_10152240957874509_595950509_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #e69138;">The kicks</span></h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdyNIr-1LGW51fMNtao473Tr-EJP5SW1pbCnQ07iJYs0bUQ3klfdw1_rCVI3-pD6Bnfo-a89IfwKUZExo3qen5PLsdkaokLClImj8PuxZ0onB47aUrCTDkepz8SibM1Ym0IJPyKZaOAnai/s1600/20150801_114510.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdyNIr-1LGW51fMNtao473Tr-EJP5SW1pbCnQ07iJYs0bUQ3klfdw1_rCVI3-pD6Bnfo-a89IfwKUZExo3qen5PLsdkaokLClImj8PuxZ0onB47aUrCTDkepz8SibM1Ym0IJPyKZaOAnai/s400/20150801_114510.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Loafers? Not a chance. But you can never have too many boots, preferably cowboy boots. They're comfortable; they readily dress up or dress down; come in versions from flashy to basic, and they wear like iron.</div>
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I don't wear any other footwear. Really.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVYlAno-IzsRX1GyknDzGxTRGs_JRtFaHIshttqf_LkoDT2SEyeBVBNQNBlYsWS9hUFqzQ068kdRmvNdNGqOzsX8zzV_bN-Z_z9vsApTwAVcP_jC923ZSFmbr5RaVQIXzOlUG0BpAJ4VKt/s1600/Cropped+549411_10151479777444509_548205759_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVYlAno-IzsRX1GyknDzGxTRGs_JRtFaHIshttqf_LkoDT2SEyeBVBNQNBlYsWS9hUFqzQ068kdRmvNdNGqOzsX8zzV_bN-Z_z9vsApTwAVcP_jC923ZSFmbr5RaVQIXzOlUG0BpAJ4VKt/s320/Cropped+549411_10151479777444509_548205759_n.jpg" width="316" /></a></div>
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Really, really.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIUB0tWeqpPfb8Z61zseGzj5QYSyCwboyQFsx1qdErLGPQTPorU9uO9f6YaELtThyphenhyphenpIR0Q9fSveBTYXMaovdAHfsFVcFFgmY2OKtv1bR-nP4bW_aW05C3WQrgVz-SL9ynHn8GeKVZUOJYH/s1600/Cropped+2014-03-31+20.06.50.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIUB0tWeqpPfb8Z61zseGzj5QYSyCwboyQFsx1qdErLGPQTPorU9uO9f6YaELtThyphenhyphenpIR0Q9fSveBTYXMaovdAHfsFVcFFgmY2OKtv1bR-nP4bW_aW05C3WQrgVz-SL9ynHn8GeKVZUOJYH/s320/Cropped+2014-03-31+20.06.50.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I am not alone in my appreciation of the western boot. Latina writers <a href="https://twitter.com/EzzyLanguzzi" target="_blank">Ezzy Languzzi</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/lorrainecladish" target="_blank">Lorraine C. Ladish</a> rock them too. Consignment shops and places like <a href="http://www.buffaloexchange.com/" target="_blank">Buffalo Exchange</a> make it possible to buy a whole wardrobe of them without having to offer your first-born in trade.</div>
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #e69138;">The sauce</span></h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt2UHScAoSu_TxQzBq5RtrccexBKXUvNaSrLeJU91XFbp8Oo9g0EjzZbRy0ZO6bhDRk9sxuQ7EDFAKUrBbsC9wmxi0MShsvBx5x1G2V1-T_HoVp1TSHC_6CgcdfTvjtTt_Ne03oS6q62S3/s1600/20150801_114201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt2UHScAoSu_TxQzBq5RtrccexBKXUvNaSrLeJU91XFbp8Oo9g0EjzZbRy0ZO6bhDRk9sxuQ7EDFAKUrBbsC9wmxi0MShsvBx5x1G2V1-T_HoVp1TSHC_6CgcdfTvjtTt_Ne03oS6q62S3/s640/20150801_114201.jpg" width="360" /></a></div>
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In Supercompressor's world every well-appointed desk has an unopened bottle of scotch in the drawer, for "spontaneous celebration, or rapid consolation." In my world every well-appointed desk has a bottle of hot sauce for celebration and consolation too. </div>
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<span style="color: #e69138;">The multi-purpose tool</span></h4>
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If you actually go to the Supercompressor piece you'll see that the headline obscures a pocket knife. It is much cooler looking than my little Swiss Army knife — but I bet it doesn't have the hidden tweezers you scramble for when you spot one of those after-you-turn-50-crazy-hairs waving at you. </div>
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<span style="color: #e69138;"><br /></span></h4>
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<span style="color: #e69138;">The jewelry</span></h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1eKnftAyslYioU280eRo-lEUh-eWDKoHvdnzpU2PeN3L8HKWrklud-zVQy43QLjiSk4uuijBmDpR-n-CKNbXWDjf9Ju8C_uhXTwIEC8KL9uDKqq5MPgMHBcNAI3Crq3alGuEqXRiUby99/s1600/cropped+20150801_162145.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1eKnftAyslYioU280eRo-lEUh-eWDKoHvdnzpU2PeN3L8HKWrklud-zVQy43QLjiSk4uuijBmDpR-n-CKNbXWDjf9Ju8C_uhXTwIEC8KL9uDKqq5MPgMHBcNAI3Crq3alGuEqXRiUby99/s400/cropped+20150801_162145.jpg" width="381" /></a></div>
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They go old-school proposing a mechanical watch. I go old-school proposing some really big earrings. I get old-school bonus points for singling out the pair that references pre-Colombian huacas. Double old-school bonus points because my mother wore them before me. </div>
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #e69138;">The books</span></h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3EzlWNWn6vyiE4V2EWd8dM_UMvh8XV8pfhxSEh-dMgd3-IcqF0TocoACh0B0PNWeaoFispPw3WJ5oPEUzC0Q31cUgLIAd7UUroDlyVAo6OeuGsqrBNH5dpWsHGKBoGtNpscmxE50p1DUt/s1600/20150801_113944.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3EzlWNWn6vyiE4V2EWd8dM_UMvh8XV8pfhxSEh-dMgd3-IcqF0TocoACh0B0PNWeaoFispPw3WJ5oPEUzC0Q31cUgLIAd7UUroDlyVAo6OeuGsqrBNH5dpWsHGKBoGtNpscmxE50p1DUt/s400/20150801_113944.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<div>
Even where the two posts coincide, they don't really. Supercompressor suggests that not having books in your home is kind of <i>creepy</i>, I say it is <i>inconceivable</i>. Supercompressor recommends a moleskine for those thoughts not worthy of blogging, I say get yourself over to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FBkatespaperie" target="_blank">Katie's Paperie</a> if you like beautifully bound blank books, but no matter what the surface looks like, write whatever the hell you want on it ... maybe particularly your next blog post or your first novel. </div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ink-Sabrina-Vourvoulias/dp/0615657818/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438452372&sr=8-1&keywords=sabrina+vourvoulias" target="_blank">Ink</a> — my novel of immigration-based, near-future dystopia — was written variously in spiral bound notebooks, on a desktop computer, on a laptop, in bound blank books and on scraps of paper. </div>
<div>
The important thing is to write. </div>
<div>
And to read. </div>
<div>
I'm starting on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Americanah-Chimamanda-Ngozi-Adichie/dp/0307455920/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438452604&sr=8-1&keywords=americanah" target="_blank">Americanah</a> next — a story about an African immigrant couple who unwillingly split, one living in the U.S., the other in London — but there are hundreds of equally intriguing choices. Here's a <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/culture/literature/not-new-york-times-summer-reading-list/39131" target="_blank">summer reading list</a> I wrote showcasing Latino writers, and another focused on <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/culture/literature/not-new-york-times-summer-reading-list-teens/39290" target="_blank">Young Adult</a> offerings. Almost every media organization worth its salt has published a summer reading list, and honestly, there is something for every taste out there. Just get reading already.</div>
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #e69138;">The essential</span></h4>
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<div>
In their photo: a hammer. In mine: a small-batch original perfume from <a href="http://www.mountainspringherbals.com/herballuxury.html" target="_blank">Mountain Spring Herbals</a>, crafted from a proprietary blend of scents in a jojoba oil and beeswax solid. Because really, who doesn't love a scent you can't spill? ;) </div>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #e69138;"><br /></span></h4>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #e69138;">The plant</span></h4>
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I can't tell what the tidy little plant in the professional photo is, but mine is one of multiple aloes I own. The plant's mucilage is great for burns, but mostly I love my aloes because they're generous and unruly and grow like crazy, even in my kitchen window during bleak northeastern winters. </div>
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• • •</div>
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<div>
Okay, now show me your id in a flash. Post a photo of the things you would put on your "should own" list in the comments below. </div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-19760369098204513692015-07-21T07:19:00.000-04:002015-07-21T07:25:12.232-04:00Reporting on diverse communities that are not our own<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>This tip sheet was prepared to accompany a panel presentation at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Philadelphia, 2015.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Coverage</b></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>Advantages of multilingual, multicultural newsrooms</i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">According to stats released by ASNE: for the past number of years only 13 percent of journalists in newsrooms across the nation are journos of color. The demographic composition of the majority of newsrooms doesn’t reflect the city or town they propose to cover, no less the nation. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">In Philadelphia, for example, by 2010 Census categories: 44 percent of the population is Black; 36 percent is white; 13 percent is Latino; 7 percent is Asian and Pacific Islander; 0.8 percent is American Indian and Alaska Native.12 percent is foreign-born, 21 percent speak a second language at home.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">None of our newsrooms represent those percentages. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">At the moment, at AL DÍA, 63 percent of our staff is Latino; 26 percent white; 11 percent Black; and 0 percent are Asian and Native American. 47 percent of us are foreign-born; 84 percent of our staff is bilingual (the languages we speak are English, Spanish, Arabic, French).</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Because of our <i>relative</i> demographic diversity we do pretty well covering stories across most of Philadelphia; because of our demographic shortcomings we’ve become very proactive about collaborating with our colleagues from community and ethnic media to ensure that our coverage isn’t plagued by erasure or flattening, and to enable us to interview in more languages than we speak.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">An example of this was a collaboration between AL DÍA reporter Ana Gamboa and </span>Metro Chinese Weekly editor Steve Yuan, focused on Chinese restaurant owners who hire Latino kitchen workers. Interviews were conducted in Cantonese and Spanish. Steve brought years of experience in covering the Chinese business community, Ana brought years of experience covering Mexican and Central American immigrants. Both brought a very nuanced understanding of what otherwise would generically be labeled Asian and Latino in our city, and were well-versed in specific distinctions in language, regional custom and more — all of which contributed to a story that could not have been written by either media organization alone. The resulting story was published on both websites in English and Spanish and English and Chinese, and published in print in Spanish and Chinese.</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Protip:</b> Hire bilingual or polyglot reporters, and reporters from the communities your media organization should be covering better. In the interim or in addition, work collaboratively with the ethnic media in ways that will inform and engage both readerships and benefit both media organizations.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>Collegial collaboration</i> </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Beware of thinking that just having work translated — or engaging a translator for interviews for a particular story —is enough. We’d like to assume that cultural literacy and an understanding of the history and complexity of the particular community being covered would be part of any translator’s bag of tricks, but it’s not necessarily so. Particularly if it is an academic translator who lives outside of the community and has little awareness of the dynamics of the community. Collaboration with an ethnic news organization that has a history of covering the community is a far better move. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Collegiality is one of the sticking points in the relationship between mainstream media and ethnic media. We are often asked by our mainstream colleagues to share our sources, or to be sources, or to function as translators for what will be a single-byline, single-media organization story. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Worse, our own investigative work of years is ruthlessly mined, without credit or even so much as a cursory hat tip to the reporter or media organization involved. Because ethnic media is, consciously or unconsciously, not viewed by mainstream media as a peer. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">An example of this happened for us a few years ago when we conducted an hour-long video conversation with then Governor Tom Corbett. We always ask public officials about the number of Latinos on their administrations, and Corbett responded that he couldn’t find any Latinos for his staff. We immediately put that segment of the interview on our website and someone at Think Progress found it. They used the video in a piece that pointed out Corbett’s cluelessness and his erasure of the growing Latino population of PA — which was fair. But despite the fact that Corbett and I (who conducted the interview) were seated in front of an AL DÍA News Media drop, the only mention of us in the Think Progress piece was to say that the video clip was part of a longer interview conducted by “a Spanish-language newspaper in Philadelphia.” Can you imagine the parallel attribution of “an English-language newspaper in Philadelphia” if the video had been pulled off the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Daily News or even Philadelphia Magazine’s website? I can’t.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">By the next day, Salon, Huffington Post, and a dozen other news media organizations had picked up Think Progress’ story and replicated the lack of attribution and lack of link. While Think Progress did — after prodding — change “a Spanish-language newspaper” to AL DÍA News Media and inserted a link, I’ll never forget the conversation I had with one of their editors. He told me I shouldn’t be annoyed by the lack of attribution but glad that they picked up the video since it garnered far more attention than we would have gotten otherwise. I had to point out that the very reason they picked it up is that no other news organization had, at that point, bothered to ask the governor about his Latino hires, and that their lack of attribution betrayed a fundamental disrespect for us as a journalistic entity, representing a parallel to Corbett’s erasure of Latinos — which was, after all, what they were decrying and ridiculing.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Pro-tip:</b> Attribute. With at least the same level of respect accorded to mainstream news organizations. Treat ethnic media journalists as your peers — because they are. If some ethnic media organization’s investigation prompted yours, a hat tip is in order. Don’t anticipate silence on our part when we see what you did — because, hey, we can <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/opinion/governor-corbett-think-progress-and-invisible-latinos/31531"><span class="s2">call you out</span></a> in at least two languages.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Let’s talk about writing and editing</b></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>Code words, stereotypes and the political choice to break style</i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Protip:</b> Language matters.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It will come as no surprise to any of you that AL DÍA doesn’t use the terms “illegal immigrant” or “illegal alien” which we believe are — at best — a wholly inaccurate representation of people who are out of status in our nation, and — at worse — an intentional criminalization and way to slur Latinos and Asians, regardless of documentation status. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">In 2013, AP changed its stylebook, and many news organizations changed usage with it. But not only are we now seeing a <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/opinion/resurgence-term-%E2%80%98illegal-immigrants%E2%80%99/39242"><span class="s2">resurgence</span></a> in the use of these terms by big media organizations, but there have always been organizations and individual journalists who <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/opinion/clickbait-xenophobia/34925"><span class="s2">choose</span></a> to use these terms. Sometimes, the editors or copyeditors at an otherwise AP-style news organizations are, by inattention or intention, <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/local/philadelphia/use-%E2%80%98illegal%E2%80%99-outrages-immigrant-community/36625"><span class="s2">complicit</span></a> in this choice. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">We don’t have nearly enough time to argue the rationale behind the use of these terms, but many defend them as a description of an actual aspect of a group of people, and therefore not a slur. We don’t see it that way. For example, it is true that some people who speak English with a Spanish accent pronounce the word “speak” as “spic”. So that slur could be defended as a description of an actual aspect of a group of people. But of course we know it is not. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">In dealing with any ethnic community ignoring what those who are part of the community say about “code words” or slurs is not a laudable defense — nor a wise long-term strategy for the news organization’s well-being.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Protip: </b>Beware of adjectives</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">In the coverage of the recent mayoral primary in Philadelphia, I tracked a lot of <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/opinion/philly-media%E2%80%99s-angry-brown-man-mayoral-candidate-narrative/38770"><span class="s2">stereotype</span></a> plied in headlines and adjectives used to describe the one Latino candidate who made to primary day. He was described as “loud,” “outlandish” and headlines had him “flipping out.” He was also, with some frequency, left out of composite photos used to promote stories about the candidates as a whole. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I know, beyond a doubt, that I irritated colleagues I esteem in the mainstream by pointing this out every time I noticed it. The thing is, it kept happening. The ethnic media doesn’t expect mainstream to be as attentive to the stereotypes of our communities as we are, but we do expect that, if we point them out, there will be care paid to keeping them from becoming the leit motif of coverage. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Again, collaborations can be an effective way to dispel misunderstanding or misreading when certain terms are used. In the aforementioned collaboration between AL DÍA and </span>Metro Chinese Weekly, for example, the use of the word “Amigos” is key. Now, if we were working the story alone, the fact that Chinese restaurant owners used that word to refer to their Latino kitchen employees, would most likely be interpreted as a little iffy and paternalistic. After all, “amigo” is most frequently used by non-Latinos not for its actual meaning (friend) but as punctuation (to draw attention to our ethnicity and “otherness”) in sentences that often purport to tell us things “as they really are,” not as we imagine them to be. </div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">There is, of course, ethnicity and otherness pointed out in the use of the word amigo by the Chinese restaurateurs as well, but because we were collaborating with a Chinese journalist we were able to understand that there is no collective term for “Latinos” in the Chinese vernacular spoken in Philly’s Chinatown. And that in this case “Amigos” was the chosen collective term. It makes its use throughout the story quite a different thing, and something we would never had known had we not been working a collaborative story. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>Default audiences, single stories, and according credibility and authority</i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">None of us, no matter how large or small our news media organization, can afford to write to whatever was once our default audience. Demographic changes in our cities and towns demand that we reexamine if we are speaking only — or even primarily — to one portion of the population. At AL DÍA, for example, after 20 years of publishing only in Spanish, we know have a <a href="http://aldianews.com/"><span class="s2">website</span></a> that is about 75 percent bilingual (we are working toward 100 percent). Many second- and third-generation Latinos prefer to read in English. Likewise, you don’t have to be Latino to be interested in a Latino perspective on what is happening in our city and nation, or to find stories about the Latino communities intriguing and engaging. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Protip:</b> Write for people who aren’t you.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I think it is fair to say most media organizations would like to reach millennials, even when we aren’t millennial ourselves. But ... what about Latino millennials?</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Broadening the default means <i>really </i>broadening the default. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Protip:</b> Be aware of the specific heritage composition of the ethnic communities in your city. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The Puerto Rican community has shared challenges with the Mexican immigrant community or the Dominican community in Philadelphia, but also many distinct ones. A journalist at a mainstream news organization here and I play this little game where we point out to each other the number of times Puerto Ricans are called immigrants in stories. Puerto Ricans aren’t immigrants, of course, but Americans no matter whether they were born on the mainland or on the island. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Also remember that the asylum or refugee application outcomes are quite different for Cubans and Venezuelans than they are for Mexicans or Central Americans. Latinos with indigenous heritages may have access to quite different levels of services in your city — so a Mam speaker from Mexico cannot be served by the same interpreter a Mam speaker from Guatemala would be. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Likewise the Asian community — some challenges are shared by the Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Indian and Indonesian communities here, but many are specific to the particular neighborhood or community. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Communities are complex, and deserve real legwork on your part before you think of filing your story.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Protip:</b> Honor everybody. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Too often the single story leads to stories without the particular community’s voice in them, or the same story written over and over (stories about police brutality in communities tend to be particularly bad about this). And way too often credibility and authority are assigned only to those outside of the community. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Again, using the mayoral primary race here as an example, a story about low Latino voter turnout and the <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/opinion/enough-voice-over-latinos-media-and-mayoral-politics/38304"><span class="s2">Latino candidate’s chances of getting any sort of vote count</span></a> was trotted out early. With its fundamental flaw of not citing nor including any Latino voices, this piece felt — to a number of us in the community — as more anthropological treatise than journalism. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">No community wants to be the subject of an anthropological study. We have to move out of our own feelings of authority as journalists — even long-term and acclaimed journalists — to get a full story. For us, that has meant collaborating with Solomon Jones, a journalist from WURD (an independent African American radio station) to do stories about African American and Latino relations in North Philly, and upcoming (hopefully) in South Philly as well. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Protip:</b> Look at and revise your go-to list.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">We need to acknowledge that our contact lists and sources are sometimes as segregated as our neighborhoods, and then we need to make sure we do something about it — with every story we file, not just the ones we understand to have an ethnic component.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Responding to criticism about coverage</b></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">None of us like to know we got it wrong. Or that we didn’t consider a hugely important aspect of a story. For us, that happened with the story about African American and Latino in North Philly, which I just mentioned. We were called out by Afro-Latinos — and rightfully so — for the very structure of our story which centered on two “separate” demographics and their interaction. We effected, without intending to, a further erasure of those who are already usually erased from Latino, and to lesser extent, African American, discourse in the city. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It is incredibly important to hear this sort of criticism. Which is one of the reasons I don’t agree with removing comment sections on stories. While it is true that comments can become toxic very quickly, it is also that this section does away with intentional or unintentional gatekeeping. It is the comment section where these sort of omissions and erasures are most usually pointed out to us. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Protip</b>: Read the comments on your stories. Be willing to admit that your story may have flattened, done damage, reinforced stereotype in ways you had no idea it did. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Protip</b>: Cultivate a collegial enough relationship with your peers at ethnic community media that when you still don’t see it, they can help you understand it.</span></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-5338333187393353882015-06-18T07:34:00.001-04:002015-06-18T07:36:37.478-04:00Charleston and Dominican Republic — the confluence of racism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The AME church that was attacked in Charleston, in addition to being an important part of the 20th century civil rights movement, was established in the 19th century by an abolitionist who drew inspiration from the slave revolt which secured independence for Haiti, and planned a similar revolt to try to free the slaves in South Carolina.<br />
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I can’t help noting (as have others) the confluence of Wednesday night’s horrific attack in Charleston (which left 9 dead) and the fact that today, the Dominican Republic is repatriating to Haiti more than 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent. It has stripped them of citizenship (retroactive to 1929, before the DR’s historic “Parsley” massacre of Haitians) thereby rendering them stateless and highlighting a long-entrenched anti-Blackness that is pervasive in many Latin American countries.<br />
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I am heartbroken at the way we repeat our history — here and there — changing one detail or another but always with the same foundation: racism. <div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-8022392359167513512015-03-15T10:56:00.000-04:002015-03-15T13:07:38.063-04:00Revolutionaries in box braids, stilettos & layers of grunge: Older women in AHSCoven and the Walking Dead<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW3W7Hiru_N_GCUhIwTTkhd3a0UvWFWSYLW-wo7Aa21ARJhQHqKMyWls4wiOhYeaDZ-nU4gKCnmBbSWLzVHnsu7MRolmfAAnTCv_31KqvNkmiOvL5wFh30nuaNCrbQKYOnuBYQQzTFwi4x/s1600/Jessica_Lange_at_PaleyFest_2013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2prR3Ad-ySSaVG0hBIWCtmJ-7bPYTryd1pqtfq7Io1LHpgAcuqa5HnZO2M1KyzYWiTvNqhICh-iqDOAm4mkmEmwi5ZQlWnwK3C5GGIotGpIyZnomN-Kxehis-l0wNkFKFWp7Jx4pdtk11/s1600/Angela_Bassett_at_PaleyFest_2014_-_13491748704.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2prR3Ad-ySSaVG0hBIWCtmJ-7bPYTryd1pqtfq7Io1LHpgAcuqa5HnZO2M1KyzYWiTvNqhICh-iqDOAm4mkmEmwi5ZQlWnwK3C5GGIotGpIyZnomN-Kxehis-l0wNkFKFWp7Jx4pdtk11/s1600/Angela_Bassett_at_PaleyFest_2014_-_13491748704.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW3W7Hiru_N_GCUhIwTTkhd3a0UvWFWSYLW-wo7Aa21ARJhQHqKMyWls4wiOhYeaDZ-nU4gKCnmBbSWLzVHnsu7MRolmfAAnTCv_31KqvNkmiOvL5wFh30nuaNCrbQKYOnuBYQQzTFwi4x/s1600/Jessica_Lange_at_PaleyFest_2013.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW3W7Hiru_N_GCUhIwTTkhd3a0UvWFWSYLW-wo7Aa21ARJhQHqKMyWls4wiOhYeaDZ-nU4gKCnmBbSWLzVHnsu7MRolmfAAnTCv_31KqvNkmiOvL5wFh30nuaNCrbQKYOnuBYQQzTFwi4x/s1600/Jessica_Lange_at_PaleyFest_2013.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"><h4>
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<span style="color: #e69138; font-family: inherit;">Warning: Lots of spoilers</span></h3>
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I write fiction of monsters and dystopias; of the darkly fantastical just a couple of shades removed from horror. So it will surprise no one that in my television viewing, I gravitate to shows that juggle the same elements. While I’ve long been a Walking Dead fan, I only recently started watching American Horror Story, specifically season three — Coven — which revolves around witches and includes a good number of women in its ensemble cast.<br />
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Even before I watched Coven, I had heard about Jessica Lange’s tour de force performances during AHS’s previous seasons, and understood I would be seeing a mighty unusual thing — a middle-aged woman at the center of a television horror narrative. To my delight, the 65-year-old Lange was soon joined by Angela Bassett (56), and together they were sexy, powerful, complicated and compelling. And scary. Damn scary.<br />
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In oddly appropriate timing, I watched the last episode of Coven on Netflix last Sunday, mere hours before that evening’s episode of The Walking Dead (TWD) which focused some attention on the character, Carol (Melissa McBride, 49), the only middle-aged woman in the large ensemble cast and one of my favorites. The resilient character has worked her way from mousy to powerful during her story arc, and is often described as a “badass” by the fandom. But Sunday’s episode tipped her deep into scary for most fans, and soon enough the nickname “Scarol” was trending on Twitter. <br />
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I’ll get into specifics about each narrative a little later, but let me start by saying that all three portrayals are headily transgressive. These middle-aged women are not primarily mothers or grandmothers. They are sexually assertive. They are brazen enough to take on whole towns and corporations. And powerful enough to bring them down. <br />
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<span style="color: #e69138;">Watch it, kid</span></h3>
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In a brilliant move on TWD writers’ part, Carol, in the past couple of episodes, has overtly referenced the default invisibility of middle-aged women. Regardless of who she is out in the wilds, as soon as she reenters “society” (Alexandria), she becomes insignificant, and formulates her strategy predicated on that. She wears fussy flowered sweater-sets, mom-jeans and allows herself to be notable only for her cookie recipe. Even her crop of grey hair — edgy and sexy when she is herself — becomes an insignia of the practical (and practically asexual) older woman who is a threat to no one. McBride brings a fierce intelligence and self-awareness to this re-submersion into the norm.<br />
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I recently read that TWD writers had determined to kill off the Carol character several seasons ago (in the comic book she commits suicide fairly early, I am told) but that McBride convinced them the character had unexplored depths. I’m deeply grateful that they listened, not only because I enjoy watching the unfolding characterization but because of who this particular actor is and who she represents — vividly and uncompromisingly — week after week.<br />
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The moment that scared the pants off TWD fandom this past week, involved Carol deliberately terrifying a child. In our society, this is perhaps the most transgressive action a woman of any age can take. But more so if it is a woman who has given birth, been a mother, cared for other children ... that woman in particular should put the well-being of a child before any other consideration.<br />
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Not so fast, says Carol, who even before this last episode aired, had shot a child to death. Yes, she did it regretfully. Yes, she did it because the child was so wholly deranged she seemed a threat to herself and anyone younger or smaller than herself. Yes, she did it because no one else was willing to do so. But the fact the character has killed a child in the past gives the recent episode’s threat of harming another child real teeth. <br />
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Both Bassett’s character (Marie Laveau) and Lange’s (Fiona Goode) in Coven, are transgressive in this same way. There are certainly inklings of maternal feeling in each, but neither shies away from threatening (or handing into harm, or killing) their own daughters and the young people society expects them to protect. <br />
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In fact, they team up to kill one of the series’ more sympathetic characters, the developmentally challenged young witch Nan (Jamie Brewer). Yes, Marie does it so she doesn’t have to hand over an infant she’s kidnapped to Papa Legba (her yearly tithe in a deal she struck for immortality). Yes, Fiona does it because she thinks Nan might be the new Supreme leader of the coven and therefore responsible for her rapidly declining health and power. But no rationale obscures the fact it is a death, deliberately and cooly dealt.<br />
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Let’s be clear that in both series, younger women also display moments of ruthlessness, and are also deadly. But it is the older ones, the ones who society insists should be self-sacrificing mothers or grandmothers, in whom we note those qualities with especial horror and disgust. We want them to be selfless, and they’re having none of it.<br />
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<span style="color: #e69138;">Are you seeing through me? </span></h3>
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The certainty of self is at the heart of another transgressive aspect of all three of these incredible middle-aged characters: they are unrepentantly sexual. Goode has a steamy affair with an axe murderer; Laveau puts the moves on her partner, minotaur head be damned; Carol propositions her pal (and fan favorite) Daryl — half in jest, half in earnest. <br />
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Even when married or partnered, television doesn’t much like (or even allow) middle-aged women to act sexual ... and turns it into a full-on joke when women get to be Betty White’s age. The usual distaste is mitigated in these shows, somewhat, because Lange and Bassett are gorgeous, and McBride, while less stunning, has a sinewy, tough sexiness about her. <br />
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The writers of each show allow their middle-aged women to think of themselves as sexual and to act on that, but they also smack them down to remind them that the rest of society doesn’t agree with them. <br />
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For Lange’s Fiona character, it happens most evidently when she is at a bar and feeling very alone. A man at the bar starts, she thinks, flirting with her. Then, poignantly, she realizes that she is invisible to him and he is flirting through her, directing his attention to the younger woman beside her. When the camera cuts away from Fiona, we understand that even this undeniably self-aware woman is devastated by this. <br />
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As I said, the moment is poignant, but it is also annoying. It arrogantly pities its older woman in a way that betrays the youth of its writer. To the young, these moments of realization are imagined as flat tragedy — oh, my lost youth! — while for those of us who’ve actually lived them, they are a far more interesting mix of recollection, chagrin and amusement. For a character like Fiona, the sting of rejection should have been no more than a momentary blip, followed by a far more lengthy settling back to observe the incipient bar hook-up — for its entertainment value, its 50/50 chance of publicly enacted fiasco. Pro tip: If an older woman is crying, don’t assume it isn’t with laughter.<br />
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It remains to be seen whether the writers of TWD allow Carol to find physical expression for her sexuality, but you can bet that if it is with Daryl, half the fandom will be tweeting their protests. It is in the twitterverse where an adversarial sort of competition for Daryl’s affections has been contrived between Carol and the much younger and sweeter Beth (who has since died), and some of the battle lines were drawn on the basis of Carol’s age.</div>
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<span style="color: #e69138;">Revolutionaries in box braids, stilettos and layers of grunge</span></h3>
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If these transgressive women love anything it is their communities (as they define them), and they go out of their way to protect and avenge them.<br />
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The best moments of Coven are those in which Marie and Fiona team up to do a working to drive the corporation of witch-hunters (who have killed all of Marie’s magical community and threatened Fiona’s) into bankruptcy. And subsequently, the scene where the two middle-aged women walk into the corporate boardroom where the witch-hunters want to negotiate a truce. <br />
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The two of them face down some 10 or 12 men who are plotting to trick and then kill them because of who they are and what they (and their communities) represent — the ungovernable, the peskily resilient resistance to hegemony. <br />
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In that horrifically satisfying scene, the witches cooly sip their drinks at the conference table as their best-defense-is-a-strong-offense plan unfolds before them and their adversaries are reduced to blood spatter. Fiona deals the killing blow to the head honcho herself — at least in part for the sin of so grievously underestimating her and Marie. <br />
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TWD’s Carol doesn’t take down a corporation but a town full of cannibals where her fellow survivors are being held as livestock. She, like Marie and Fiona, has a plan. She, like them as well, fights for the survival of her community by ruthlessly and methodically annihilating the greater community that holds power over hers. <br />
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They are fearsome women. Revolutionaries in box braids, stilettos and layers of grunge.<br />
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But revolutions almost always prove puritan, and once the fighting part is over, those who are transgressive are perceived as dangerous for the new order as they were for the old. In fiction as in history, they don’t fare well.<br />
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I hold out hope that TWD writers will chose to let Carol’s story arc conclude in something other than moralistic punishment, but it is unlikely. Coven’s writers did not. The show ultimately betrayed all of its ungovernable women characters, reserving the ugliest of punishments for the older and most transgressive. So, lusty and power-hungry Fiona is condemned for all eternity to a hell where she’ll be sexually subjugated and have no power to block the fists of the man spoiling to govern her. <br />
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Hell is the writers’ prescriptive for those who would think to answer power with power, but the “reap what you sow” moralism is reserved only for women. Fiona’s hell is the Axeman’s heaven, even though they’ve each done equally despicable things.<br />
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Marie ends up condemned to the same hell as the virulently cruel and racist Madame LaLaurie (played by 66-year-old Kathy Bates), and is given no choice but to turn eternal torturer — not of LaLaurie but of her callow but innocent daughter who is also stuck there. In an especially telling detail for the middle-aged viewer, Papa Legba lets Marie know she is in hell because she has outlived her usefulness to him ... she can no longer provide a yearly tithe of children. Nothing subtle about that, eh? <br />
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Not even the endearingly goofy witch, Myrtle Snow (portrayed by 61-year-old Francis Conroy), who feels normatively maternal toward Fiona’s daughter Cordelia and is grandmotherly enough to advise one of the younger witches to eschew power for love, escapes the punishment wielded so heavy-handedly at the end of this show. If she is not also condemned to hell for the effrontery of being both too old and too powerful, it is because — unlike her transgressive counterparts — Myrtle is self-sacrificing and offers herself up to be burnt at the stake.</div>
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<span style="color: #e69138;">After the fail</span></h3>
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For all its fails, Coven had four, formidable middle-aged women actors in central roles, and that is remarkable. Neither show is free from criticism about representation along other axes either. I expected more African-American cast members in central roles for this show set in New Orleans, and I craved a magic more specifically tied to the locale. As for TWD, it is impossible to ignore that every African-American male cast member in the core group has either been killed off or disappeared (Seth Gilliam must be counting his days), and that the one Latina cast member in the core group is a cardboard cut-out every bit as generic as her name.<br />
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Along all axes of representation, I wish television shows like these — fantasy and horror set in real world locales — better reflected the demographic composition of our nation. 16.4 percent of us are Latino; 12.2 percent of us are Black; 4.7 percent of us are Asian. There are 158.6 million women in the U.S., more of us in the 45-49 and 50-54 age groups than any other.<br />
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It is interesting to note that the audience for both TWD and AHS is solidly in the 18-49 age group (TWD viewer’s average age is 33). Both are ratings juggernauts. The season that AHS Coven aired, TWD was the highest rated show on TV and Coven was the fifth. Which suggests that casting middle-aged women in shows that mostly appeal to millennials isn’t quite as risky a proposition as it might seem at first blush. <br />
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The fourth season of AHS, Freakshow (which I have not watched yet) had the best ratings yet for the horror anthology show, and once more Lange and Bates were primary characters, and Bassett and Conroy secondary ones. TWD has introduced middle-aged actor Tovah Feldshuh as a secondary character, and although it remains to be seen whether they get rid of her as quickly as they did Denise Crosby’s Terminus Mary, this too is promising for those of us who like to see women of our age represented on screen in our favorite shows.<br />
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<span class="s1">Next up: Game of Thrones. God help us. ;)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Photos: </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: x-small;">• "Melissa McBride 2014 San Diego Comic Con International" by Gage Skidmore. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: x-small;">• "Jessica Lange at PaleyFest 2013" by iDominick - <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/82924988@N05/15962262150/"><span class="s2">http://www.flickr.com/photos/82924988@N05/15962262150/</span></a>. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">• "Angela Bassett at PaleyFest 2014 - 13491748704" by iDominick - <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/82924988@N05/13491748704/"><span class="s2">http://www.flickr.com/photos/82924988@N05/13491748704/</span></a>. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons</span></div>
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Join AL DÍA News Media for this unique conversation leading up to the 2015 Philadelphia Mayoral Race!<br />
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This conversation will break the wall between the candidates, the media, and the public. The mayoral candidates will converse with a selection of the city’s leading journalists in front of a diverse audience. The candidates will field questions primarily from the journalists, but also from the audience, who will submit questions for the candidates via Twitter during the event.<br />
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Featured journalists will include:<br />
<a href="http://900amwurd.com/">Solomon Jones (900AM WURD) </a><br />
<a href="http://www.whyy.org/">Shai Ben-Yaacov (WHYY)</a><br />
<a href="http://www.philly.com/dailynews/">Helen Ubiñas (Philadelphia Daily News)</a><br />
<a href="http://www.nmspress.com/metro_chinese_weekly.htm">Steve Bo-Le Yuan (Metro Chinese Weekly)</a><br />
<a href="http://billypenn.com/">Chris Krewson (Billy Penn)</a><br />
<a href="http://aldianews.com/">Ana Gamboa (AL DÍA News)</a><br />
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Moderated by AL DÍA News’ Managing Editor, <a href="https://twitter.com/followthelede" target="_blank">Sabrina Vourvoulias</a><br />
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This event will highlight the lack of representation for diverse communities in Philadelphia, touching upon the disconnect between City Hall and the public.<br />
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If you’re a Philadelphian, join our audience and participate in this one-of-a-kind opportunity to let your voice be heard in front of our city’s next mayor.<br />
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This event will take place at Pipeline Philly, a multi-purpose open workspace, located across the street from City Hall.<br />
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A networking reception will take place from 5-6pm. Fruit, cheese, wine and beer will be served. The conversation will begin at 6pm.<br />
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Dynamic discussion, networking possibilities, City Hall, and the candidates: Become part of the evening that will help shape the 2015 Philadelphia mayoral race!<br />
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The following candidates have confirmed participation: Douglas Oliver, Anthony Hardy Williams, Nelson Diaz, Lynne Abraham, Jim Kenney, and Milton Street<br />
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<a href="http://aldianews.com/">AL DÍA News Media</a> is a dynamic news organization based in Philadelphia, with an increasingly national scope and reach. Our multi-platform news media organization showcases the fullness of the Latino experience in the United States — fostering engagement and driving a new American narrative.<br />
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In 2014, the company relaunched <a href="http://www.aldianews.com/">its website</a> with a focus on bilingual national content generation without sacrificing the depth of its local coverage.<br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-32853643130280210832015-02-17T05:51:00.000-05:002015-02-17T05:59:29.585-05:00ICYMI: I wrote about Latino/a Speculative fiction at Tor.com (#SFWAPro)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWP8NUeYYhcMGGv2Y19whYP5dK6G-KdI8QIAls9jEqlH8HvX7mAlbilOi0A_ZLigluBoUuGgB2H_BSohUEs_yrmPifIaSYGvWGuY09plZOzvR-1WhTB4cuUlXbHVjWFVp4FSUGNU6HHEqb/s1600/vanna-white-398159_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="http://pixabay.com/en/vanna-white-television-personality-398159/" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWP8NUeYYhcMGGv2Y19whYP5dK6G-KdI8QIAls9jEqlH8HvX7mAlbilOi0A_ZLigluBoUuGgB2H_BSohUEs_yrmPifIaSYGvWGuY09plZOzvR-1WhTB4cuUlXbHVjWFVp4FSUGNU6HHEqb/s1600/vanna-white-398159_1280.jpg" height="265" title="Pixabay photo" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/02/looking-at-us-latino-latina-speculative-writers-and-stories">Putting the I in Speculative: Looking at U.S. Latino/a Writers and Stories</a></h3>
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Spanish designates the letter Y as “i-griega”—literally, the Greek i—to mark its difference from the letter I, which Spanish-speakers understand to be from the Latin even when we don’t say “i-latina” as we recite the alphabet. In choosing the title for this blog post, I reveled a bit—as only a bilingual language nerd can—in the hidden layer of significance I could give that not-so-simple I.<br />
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Until the end of July 2014, if you looked at the Wikipedia entry for “speculative fiction by writers of color” and scrolled down past the lists of African and African-American writers, Asian and Asian-American writers, etc., to the category for “Latino writers” you saw no list, just one line: “see Magical Realism.”<br />
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To add insult to injury, if you happened to click on that “see Magic Realism” link, you were taken to a list of Latin American writers of the speculative, with not a single U.S. Latino/a representative among them.<br />
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The Wikipedia entry no longer looks like it did in July, because Matthew Goodwin, a comparative literature professor and editor of the upcoming speculative fiction anthology <a href="http://www.latinospeculativefiction.com/">Latino/a Rising </a>(Restless Books, 2016), added an entry for U.S. Latino speculative fiction writers. But the omission he corrected is emblematic. The U.S. Latino/a speculative fiction writer is largely invisible to the speculative mainstream editor, publisher, reviewer and anthologist....<br />
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The thing is, to experience the tradition and sheer range of U.S. Latin@ speculative writing, you have to venture out of the usual neighborhoods and cross into the liminal borderland between genres; into the barrios of small press and website; and onto momentarily unfamiliar streets....<br />
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Let me introduce you to a few Latino/a authors whose stories you may not have read, and show you around some of the (perhaps unfamiliar) markets that have published their work.<br />
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<a href="http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/02/looking-at-us-latino-latina-speculative-writers-and-stories">Read the rest of the post</a><br />
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-18785023751093148022015-01-13T05:07:00.000-05:002015-01-13T05:35:18.332-05:00 Dear chica, comadre, chingona, cabrona: Sci Fi, Fantasy, Speculative fiction needs you (#SFWAPro)<div>
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvgTsdsVBynYR1AKUvJA0oO9G_I6wq7OxB3kn53Ro2p_1ah9feN4hHRv69m3s1zzbiHQZc5Nz4RcrNzwlg7SV_DyxsBwn5QI-FzRCTp5WBhCVq0sHrPTY20tQZ6SRtphggNnyzeDdhqbWp/s1600/graffiti-273981.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvgTsdsVBynYR1AKUvJA0oO9G_I6wq7OxB3kn53Ro2p_1ah9feN4hHRv69m3s1zzbiHQZc5Nz4RcrNzwlg7SV_DyxsBwn5QI-FzRCTp5WBhCVq0sHrPTY20tQZ6SRtphggNnyzeDdhqbWp/s1600/graffiti-273981.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;">Photo: Pixabay</td></tr>
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Here is what I know: You are writing. Fan fiction. Stories about ghosts and legends and shapeshifters. Vampires. Monsters. Spaceships and magical neighborhoods.<br />
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Sometimes — when I'm lucky — I get to read your words.</div>
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From those examples I know you are cabronas with enough will to crash through Sci Fi's titanium ceiling; chingonas with entries that greatly expand the vocabulary of the fantastic; comadres mixing speculative into your masa and green chile sauce, and other elements of the everyday; chicas whose stories are prompted by epic or dystopic worlds first limned by others. </div>
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But most times, when I land on the pages of my favorite SFF magazines or leaf through the anthologies, you are not there.</div>
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You should be.</div>
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Latinas comprise <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/report/2013/11/07/79167/fact-sheet-the-state-of-latinas-in-the-united-states/" target="_blank">16.4 percent </a>of the female population of the United States. There is no comparable demographic breakdown for SFF women writers, but given how rarely Latina writers are in evidence in the pages of even the most diversity-focused publications, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the percentage were in the lower single digits. </div>
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There are strong voices that have emerged in short and long form: <a href="http://www.kathleenalcala.com/index.htm" target="_blank">Kathleen Alcalá</a>, <a href="http://carmenmariamachado.com/" target="_blank">Carmen María Machado</a> and <a href="http://www.guadalupegarciamccall.com/" target="_blank">Guadalupe García McCall</a> (to name just three), but there aren't nearly enough chicas, comadres, chingonas and cabronas to represent us. </div>
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<b>You need to submit your work</b>, even if it is only once or twice a year, okay? I know it's hard to put your work on the line, particularly with the microaggressions Latin@s sometimes experience about inclusion of Spanish and Spanglish words (and so many other aspects of our cultures and experiences), but here are a few submissions calls you might want to consider:</div>
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• Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, guest edited by C. C. Finlay and <a href="http://submissions.ccfinlay.com/fsf/" target="_blank">open to electronic submissions</a> until Jan. 15.</div>
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• The Los Angeles Science Fiction One-Act Play Festival, Roswell Award for Short Fiction, <a href="http://www.sci-fest.com/#!the-roswell-award-for-short-fiction-/c946" target="_blank">open to submissions</a> until Jan. 15</div>
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• Crossed Genres, current theme: failure, <a href="http://crossedgenres.com/submissions/magazine/" target="_blank">open to submissions</a> until Jan. 31</div>
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• Unlikely Story, Issue #12 Journal of Unlikely Academia, <a href="http://www.unlikely-story.com/fiction-submissions/" target="_blank">open to submissions</a> until March 1.</div>
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• Terraform, <a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-to-submit-stories-to-terraform" target="_blank">submission information</a>, ongoing.</div>
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• Fantastic Stories, <a href="http://www.fantasticstoriesoftheimagination.com/submission-guidelines/" target="_blank">submission information</a>, ongoing.</div>
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<b>Be in evidence</b> "off the page" as well. There are an incredible number of conventions across the nation at which, generally, Latinas are sadly underrepresented. My own favorite conventions to attend are <a href="http://www.readercon.org/" target="_blank">Readercon</a> and <a href="http://www.arisia.org/" target="_blank">Arisia</a>, but I have heard great things about <a href="http://www.wiscon.info/index.php" target="_blank">WisCon</a> and <a href="http://mauricebroaddus.com/uncategorized/mocon-x-save-the-date/" target="_blank">Mo*Con</a>. Financial assistance to attend some cons is available through <a href="http://con-or-bust.org/" target="_blank">Con or Bust</a>.</div>
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<b>Keep going. </b>Young Latinas (hell, old Latinas too) need to see themselves in stories, and as purveyors of stories. Each story is about so much more than just the story ... it also represents, to paraphrase Gina Rodriguez in her Golden Globes acceptance speech a few days ago, a culture "that wants to see themselves as heroes" — and not only in the narrative, but in crafting the narrative.</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="169" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/veftkYtLVBM?rel=0" width="300"></iframe><br />
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(go to approx. 1:39 to hear the section of Gina's acceptance speech that made many Latinos tear up.)<br />
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Meet some Latina writers also crafting their own narratives, <a href="http://www.followingthelede.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-81269092279753235382014-12-29T14:19:00.001-05:002014-12-29T14:19:25.814-05:00The 2014 story of the year: Immigration<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKT9ysEHpW0JSO3UNn5d5NnStf45xSwBjOVHt9kEHMtT2MXIxq6kfNulrdqylbwnRQA5RcYCfDP0PZETwLC6UduY5mW_RT-3pqxdI69cCeuPIe8FLJXpYn5aH9AUVX5aIxF21WuAwwGt3S/s1600/unnamed-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKT9ysEHpW0JSO3UNn5d5NnStf45xSwBjOVHt9kEHMtT2MXIxq6kfNulrdqylbwnRQA5RcYCfDP0PZETwLC6UduY5mW_RT-3pqxdI69cCeuPIe8FLJXpYn5aH9AUVX5aIxF21WuAwwGt3S/s1600/unnamed-1.jpg" height="217" width="640" /></a></div>
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In 2014, for a Latino news media organization — and particularly one in the Philadelphia area — there could be no more significant news story, or collective of stories, than immigration.<br /><br />In <b>January</b> of 2014, President Obama’s new secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, took over the department which had long incurred the wrath of immigration reform advocates and activists thanks to an unprecedented deportation rate that split up families and disproportionally impacted longtime residents with no criminal backgrounds. Early in March Johnson was charged with reviewing the administration’s deportation policies.<br /><br />Also in <b>March</b>, after an uncomfortable White House meeting between immigration advocates and the President, in which Obama famously “chided” advocates for their criticism of his administration’s policies, the venerable National Council of la Raza, the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization, followed the lead of more activist organizations and publicly named President Barack Obama the "deporter in chief.” Obama and some organizations with strong ties to the Democratic party tried to push back by redirecting that “title” to Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, but they were largely unsuccessful in diverting the mounting frustration directed specifically at the administration.<br /><br />In <b>April</b>, in Philadelphia, Mayor Michael Nutter signed an executive order saying that local police would no longer cooperate with ICE in holding those suspected of being undocumented immigrants without a warrant to do so....<br /><br />Read the rest of this editorial <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/opinion/2014-story-year-immigration/37080">here</a>, at AL DÍA News, which you should be reading regularly anyway ;)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-10239553456124423622014-12-09T05:15:00.000-05:002014-12-09T05:31:28.615-05:00The #Nebula eligibility cumbia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've written already about the SFF short stories and novelettes written by others that I think are fantastic and deserve to be nominated for Nebulas, Hugos, any other awards you can think of ... if you missed that post, read it <a href="http://followingthelede.blogspot.com/2014/11/looking-for-best-speculative-fiction-of.html" target="_blank">here</a>. When I wrote it, I couldn't remember the title of a wonderful story by Kai Ashante Wilson, "<a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/04/the-devil-in-america-kai-ashante-wilson" target="_blank">The Devil in America</a>," but it definitely belongs on my list.<br />
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As it happens, three of my own short stories were published this year and are eligible for Nebulas/Hugos/what-have-yous. If you've read them, and liked them, please consider including them on your list of nominations:<br />
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• "The Dance of the White Demons," in the anthology <a href="http://longhidden.com/" target="_blank">Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History</a><br />
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• "The Bar at the End of the World," in the anthology <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Many-Tortures-Anthony-Cardno/dp/0692250581/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418118568&sr=8-1&keywords=the+many+tortures+of+anthony+cardno" target="_blank">The Many Tortures of Anthony Cardno</a><br />
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• "<a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/12/skin-in-the-game-sabrina-vourvoulias" target="_blank">Skin in the Game</a>," which was just published last Wednesday at <a href="http://tor.com/">Tor.com</a><br />
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No matter what ends up on the ballot, having a long list of good stories to read is a victory for all of us, and worth a celebratory dance.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG2R9nqDDUYXtUzHhrkxJApzmCsYVeZJDplEDhH9pLjZCMvfylGBkcf1gEzjxKyo12VOA3ijNKzEKY4wFciO73aIxaOfJJYliHjHngMKgoOngHkM-AKjhtfawk6sAigNhVBWwFI9QrXW_e/s1600/giphy-1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG2R9nqDDUYXtUzHhrkxJApzmCsYVeZJDplEDhH9pLjZCMvfylGBkcf1gEzjxKyo12VOA3ijNKzEKY4wFciO73aIxaOfJJYliHjHngMKgoOngHkM-AKjhtfawk6sAigNhVBWwFI9QrXW_e/s1600/giphy-1.gif" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-79245467340836580162014-12-06T13:47:00.002-05:002015-05-16T08:15:25.170-04:00Zombie City: A story about writing, publishing and real life (#SFWApro)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUIvAgWnkhM9L-mvOl6z8M3SVIuyWfSG39EV3d-oT-MEWBli7x-nRMZQhqnsfV1Ja6cZ7wFWJZNsND_Wv38C78kdcVhVPiHxF73DhqhE_FoA35SlCDQMh94_oKFLdoTCx7Loqd0gZZcLNs/s1600/1461181_10151976503784509_898427113_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUIvAgWnkhM9L-mvOl6z8M3SVIuyWfSG39EV3d-oT-MEWBli7x-nRMZQhqnsfV1Ja6cZ7wFWJZNsND_Wv38C78kdcVhVPiHxF73DhqhE_FoA35SlCDQMh94_oKFLdoTCx7Loqd0gZZcLNs/s1600/1461181_10151976503784509_898427113_n.jpg" width="426" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">La Boca del Diablo, a.k.a. the entrance to Zombie City</td></tr>
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On Dec. 3, my story <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/skininthegame/sabrinavourvoulias" target="_blank">Skin in the Game</a> was published at <a href="http://tor.com/">Tor.com</a>. Editor <a href="https://twitter.com/EngleLaird" target="_blank">Carl Engle-Laird </a>summarizes it like this:<br />
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<i>Three kinds of people live in Zombie City-La Boca Del Diablo: the zombies, los vivos, and the ghosts. Officer Jimena Villagrán, not truly at home with any of these groups, patrols the barrio for stalking monsters. Magic con men and discarded needles make this beat hazardous enough, but the latest rash of murders threatens to up the ante by outing the horrors of Jimena’s personal history.</i></blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Under the Richmond bridge</td></tr>
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While all of the happenings in my story are fantastical, Zombie City is a real place and one that was named long before I knew about it. </div>
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The real</h3>
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Almost a full year before my story appeared at Tor, I had assigned one of the <a href="http://aldianews.com/" target="_blank">AL DÍA News</a> freelancers (<a href="http://aldianews.com/authors/emma-restrepo/858" target="_blank">Emma Restrepo</a>) to do a <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/local/philadelphia/de-los-zombis/32613" target="_blank">story</a> about Zombie City (in Philadelphia) and had walked the railbed strewn with spent needles with photographer <a href="https://twitter.com/davidcruz1" target="_blank">David Cruz</a> — who had been there years before, when a tent-city of homeless residents had shared the area with the drug-addicted "zombies." I saw and talked to some of the "zombies" shooting up, and later faced down five irate men (including a state legislator whose district includes Zombie City) who were furious when the investigative piece was published in the paper. </div>
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There are those who dislike Fantasty/Sci Fi/Speculative fiction set in the real world. I am not one of them. Although I have written SFF stories set in different universes and alternate, high fantasy worlds, there is no getting around the fact that what I love best is to read (and write) about the magical, the horrific, the dystopic and fantastical amid the trappings of here and now ... or a few days, a few years from now. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walking along the railbed in Zombie City</td></tr>
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Blame it on the fact that when a story makes itself known to me, I'm alway both a journalist and a fiction writer. (It's not a rare combination — SFF writer <a href="https://twitter.com/mjanairo" target="_blank">Michael Janairo</a> was long a journo as well, and SFF publisher <a href="https://twitter.com/talkwordy" target="_blank">Brian White</a> is in the news biz.) </div>
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The real is often horrifically fantastical and needs no more than a small nudge over the line into SFF (see my novel of immigration dystopia, <a href="http://inknovel.com/" target="_blank">Ink</a>).</div>
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The real is also, too frequently, hidden from and neglected by journalism. There are a number of reasons for this: the gutting of newsrooms; the resolutely monolingual composition of most media organizations; the fact that some communities are rarely or poorly covered. </div>
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But the stories ... the seed of investigative or speculative ... are there anyway. </div>
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Reimagining</h3>
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There are two sizable Latino communities in Philadelphia — the (primarily) Mexican immigrant community in South Philly and the (primarily) Puerto Rican (and secondarily, Dominican) community in Northeast Philly. The communities are united by a common dominant language (Spanish) and a newspaper that serves them both (AL DÍA), but the gulf between them is perhaps best illustrated by the fact they are served by completely different subway lines, and they throw separate (and <i>huge</i>) street festivals and Masses on patronal saint feast days with little overlap. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZVuZO_WBdQpPWXwqrXfVZqqoRgL6jxc15HtIYEpwYLVFqg3jwohL_n_3vly2CgVBoOCia5J7bshPBYw1ATKuFeHnDqRQgV-t7ARl-X4G1wUkgKQEam2WRQ13RVMaDwxnRnILuA8SD1prY/s1600/644358_10151436747294509_1684921744_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZVuZO_WBdQpPWXwqrXfVZqqoRgL6jxc15HtIYEpwYLVFqg3jwohL_n_3vly2CgVBoOCia5J7bshPBYw1ATKuFeHnDqRQgV-t7ARl-X4G1wUkgKQEam2WRQ13RVMaDwxnRnILuA8SD1prY/s1600/644358_10151436747294509_1684921744_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Decrying deportations in South Philly</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
Neither community has reason to love the police — the one because the police have <a href="http://www.policylink.org/sites/default/files/INSECURE_COMMUNITIES_REPORT_FINAL.PDF" target="_blank">collaborated with ICE</a> in warrantless searches that break down doors in middle of the night and too often result in detention and deportation of family or friends; the other because <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/politics/pew-poll-indicates-less-half-latinos-feel-confident-justice-local-policing/35416" target="_blank">police impunity</a> and <a href="http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/the-latest/67324-no-charges-against-4-philly-cops-accused-of-terrorizing-bodegas-corruption" target="_blank">targeted harassment</a> have a history almost as long as the history of the Puerto Rican community in the city. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And yet, as is often case, becoming a police officer is, for Latin@s in Philly, a way to try to make policing more sensitive to the community policed, as well as step up to the middle class.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So the protagonist in Skin in the Game, Jimena Villagrán, is a cop ... daughter of a South Philly immigrant Mexican ... policing a precinct in the near Northeast that she's tied to by language and Latino culture writ big, set apart from it by the differences between Latino cultures writ small, and surrounded by a larger culture that doesn't know what to do with either.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwW4VardOXEa4wf6cRobvCSb2LE-jRf6ewZnWqSecc7UfVhiv0cs9YE6muzQmMZm0vLB2HxBmIa3CahA69gwQggqR_CxESpMVRglZynCElFktsflFWCwMFA3pFL9RKQxYz_pMH7xvqi8M5/s1600/387565_10151454750209509_584461500_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="115" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwW4VardOXEa4wf6cRobvCSb2LE-jRf6ewZnWqSecc7UfVhiv0cs9YE6muzQmMZm0vLB2HxBmIa3CahA69gwQggqR_CxESpMVRglZynCElFktsflFWCwMFA3pFL9RKQxYz_pMH7xvqi8M5/s1600/387565_10151454750209509_584461500_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Protesting Judge Dugan's ruling on Lt. Jonathan Josey punching Aida Guzman </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
Latin@s are no monolith, though we are often portrayed by the pop media as such. But, it is also true that when we see each other beset and besieged we frequently step up and react as one community. Puerto Ricans are immigration reform advocates though they are citizens and the issue doesn't affect them personally; Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants stood with Puerto Ricans decrying a Philly judge's <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/opinion/ruling-punches-us-face/30847" target="_blank">exoneration</a> of a police officer caught on tape punching a woman in the face — because the barrio, the judge opined publicly, was full of drugged-out, out-of-control Puerto Ricans.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Because I write both fiction and non-fiction, I believe in the magic of community, writ small and large. Because I write both fiction and non-fiction I notice when the magic fails.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
<b>Conjuring the truth</b></h3>
<div>
I'll gloss-over the magic that got my story accepted for publication at Tor.com, but without doubt it, too, was contingent on community —the SFF one this time — and my inclusion in the anthology <a href="http://longhidden.com/" target="_blank">Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History</a> and the readings that took place during the book's launch in Brooklyn.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTIDi9gtFivNQVfG0XyXBYbpn2BNb6BR3l6HXXBDax8Brof_a7HyGOg-qODcONj3RH54O8pPGtXv6rSUYhC7i3o5szsUrLOTNa_qx5BbjyNFOhD6bBzGxoy4GTvpWQhFWWknk2BK2Pp3XB/s1600/10712870_10152730601323205_2538876019604891920_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTIDi9gtFivNQVfG0XyXBYbpn2BNb6BR3l6HXXBDax8Brof_a7HyGOg-qODcONj3RH54O8pPGtXv6rSUYhC7i3o5szsUrLOTNa_qx5BbjyNFOhD6bBzGxoy4GTvpWQhFWWknk2BK2Pp3XB/s1600/10712870_10152730601323205_2538876019604891920_n.jpg" width="133" /></a></div>
<div>
Months passed between acceptance and publication, and my anticipation escalated as I saw the illustration <a href="http://www.tor.com/galleries/wesley-allsbrook#thumbs" target="_blank">Wesley Allsbrook</a> created for my story. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And a week before publication, the Ferguson decision came down.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The wounds that the decision exculpating a police officer in the shooting death of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown created were tremendous, undeniable, heartrending. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It was, and is, a raw and ugly wound that will take many years, many amplified and prioritized Black voices, requiring many real — oh, so real — changes to be enacted before healing can even begin.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I was hyperaware that my story dealt with police who were literal monsters, and that the fictional violence and predation written into the story might further wound African-American readers. Carl (the Tor editor who acquired the piece) worried that too:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Just a week after the Ferguson grand jury decision, this is a particularly poignant time for such a story to come out. But while we could never have planned for "Skin in the Game" to coincide with such a nationally-recognized public tragedy, the sick reality is that it might not be possible to publish such a story on a week in which no hideous injustice had been inflicted by the police on an innocent young person of color. </i></blockquote>
I imposed on two friends — writer <a href="http://longhidden.com/stories/medu/" target="_blank">Lisa Bolekaja</a> whose very fine short story "Medu" also appeared in Long Hidden, and <a href="http://history.rutgers.edu/faculty-directory/197-butler-kim" target="_blank">Dr. Kim Butler </a>who is the chair of Africana Studies at Rutgers University — to read the story just days before publication. They both responded with grace and a big-heartedness that I will seek to emulate should anyone ask me to do what I asked them.<br />
<br />
I just didn't want to, unintentionally, do harm. And stories — even speculative ones — live in the real world.<br />
<br />
In my journalism, in my social media prattle, in my fiction, I've long held a stanza from a poet Adrienne Rich as touchstone:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>We move but our words stand<br />become responsible<br />for more than we intended<br />and this is verbal privilege</i></blockquote>
Having my work published at Tor is indeed a privilege. As I track responses to Skin in the Game (because, yes, I'm a newish SFF writer and this is my first story published at Tor and I squee at every retweeted link to my story and openly do everything that would make more widely published writers grimace in embarrassment) I am acutely aware that the respectful reception to my words is a privilege not accorded to every writer. And even less frequently accorded to those people out "in the real" who cannot don my same armor — SFF writer, journo, college-educated light-skinned Latina — when they seek to be heard and understood.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Despite the thrill of seeing my words on a publisher web site I frequent and admire, it is not my own words that are ringing in my ears at this precise moment in American history.<br />
<br />
Words stand:<br />
<br />
#HandsUpDon'tShoot<br />
<br />
#ICan'tBreathe<br />
<br />
#EnoughIsEnough<br />
<br />
#BlackLivesMatter<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-69949541196330560352014-11-27T13:09:00.000-05:002014-11-27T13:09:17.325-05:00Some words about San Giving<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtS6wDnHd5e-dvE_4mDh6gdnvdXzYotw3YWFwldYfkELRypvj_TGsuqL6QsXnmuE4iuLesvNfE03kJf1xGnc4k20WA8u3_QiS8Uhppq3Xqnkc2oE4wwSAGqWksEbCzvSe_RyAw1OPIlF8A/s1600/1425563_10152041302234509_2046469965_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtS6wDnHd5e-dvE_4mDh6gdnvdXzYotw3YWFwldYfkELRypvj_TGsuqL6QsXnmuE4iuLesvNfE03kJf1xGnc4k20WA8u3_QiS8Uhppq3Xqnkc2oE4wwSAGqWksEbCzvSe_RyAw1OPIlF8A/s1600/1425563_10152041302234509_2046469965_n.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
In the face of the first step taken this year to allow some undocumented immigrants to sit around the Thanksgiving table without fear; in the face of the massive work we must do to make sure African-American families don't live in fear for the lives of their children every single day; in the face of an out-of-control economic disparity that is making a lie of our shared belief that hard work is rewarded ... let's agree to be thankful for the grit, the vision, commitment and determination we will need to ensure that our future is more just and grace-filled for everyone in our nation. <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: TeXGyreHeros, Helvetica, 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif; font-size: 15.4545450210571px; line-height: 24px;"><br /></span>
Read the full column by clicking <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/opinion/some-words-about-san-giving/36679">here</a>.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-55858788567341856692014-11-20T23:13:00.000-05:002014-11-20T23:13:19.845-05:00Tonight, in South Philly...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTDAPhfnjHmrUfvkkwduEmw30eWdbDCyCP-NElTf5VTdMrrepxy-HTMkaNCbrIqAIkYGJQ9VUUMbabA1AL6-yvtzMzibZYjgO8TlpppBM7LxzrANY81Vw71AC0bidfPs-uDQg_JeES2sCT/s1600/20141120_204326.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTDAPhfnjHmrUfvkkwduEmw30eWdbDCyCP-NElTf5VTdMrrepxy-HTMkaNCbrIqAIkYGJQ9VUUMbabA1AL6-yvtzMzibZYjgO8TlpppBM7LxzrANY81Vw71AC0bidfPs-uDQg_JeES2sCT/s1600/20141120_204326.jpg" height="640" width="360" /></a></div>
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No other words necessary. ;)</div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-83268223956140963632014-11-16T14:16:00.000-05:002014-11-16T14:31:48.455-05:00Looking for the best Speculative fiction of 2014 in expected, and unexpected, places (#SFWApro)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihXjg4jc_84ZhsB03wUMorfn_0sFQLbqSNZoUJb_WwQMCd3YTLNkrhALu78FBVL32gTTUo9B0-twRz6wBUSkakthaHTJsBR3925VA7uImB1giz3Ypt57bQ1_SKVvMrmKxOhv0glTI-ljjR/s1600/jpeg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihXjg4jc_84ZhsB03wUMorfn_0sFQLbqSNZoUJb_WwQMCd3YTLNkrhALu78FBVL32gTTUo9B0-twRz6wBUSkakthaHTJsBR3925VA7uImB1giz3Ypt57bQ1_SKVvMrmKxOhv0glTI-ljjR/s1600/jpeg.jpg" /></a></div>
It's that time of year again — people are beginning to compile lists of favorite stories for "Best of" compilations for 2014. Selfishly, I hope people keep looking well into December since I have a story set to be published in early December ... but being the very impatient sort myself, here are some of the short stories (in a year with a bumper crop of incredible stories) that I love best.<br />
<br />
In no particular order:<br />
<br />
<b>Lorca Green</b> by Gina Ruiz (in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lowriting-Shots-Rides-Stories-Chicano/dp/0989631311" target="_blank">Lowriting: Shots, Rides & Stories from the Chicano Soul</a>, Jan. 8, 2014)<br />
<br />
<b>The Oud</b> by Thoraiya Dyer (in <a href="http://longhidden.com/" target="_blank">Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History</a>, Jan. 30, 2014)<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm72MJ3m-UGlwL0462N89Hy5tZNb3nkQ3Pa5OTNrMbNV31LG9YOf-srf8ass0rNt05r7QDvZ7WTBmpMebJbY_HMm5LlrHfDaRQRGQ0d5zNd5jJoORt1lPaVEc5iriwNQ91iOHp_7GM95Zq/s1600/20642659.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm72MJ3m-UGlwL0462N89Hy5tZNb3nkQ3Pa5OTNrMbNV31LG9YOf-srf8ass0rNt05r7QDvZ7WTBmpMebJbY_HMm5LlrHfDaRQRGQ0d5zNd5jJoORt1lPaVEc5iriwNQ91iOHp_7GM95Zq/s1600/20642659.jpg" height="320" width="211" /></a></div>
<b>Collected Likenesses</b> by Jamey Hatley (also from <a href="http://longhidden.com/" target="_blank">Long Hidden</a>)<br />
<br />
<b>Lone Women</b> by Victor LaValle (also from <a href="http://longhidden.com/" target="_blank">Long Hidden</a> ... and let me say there are a lot of other great stories in there that fall just shy of making it onto my list — yes, it is that good a collection).<br />
<br />
<b>A Cup of Salt Tears</b> by Isabel Yap (<a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/08/a-cup-of-salt-tears-isabel-yap" target="_blank">Tor.com,</a> Aug. 27, 2014)<br />
<br />
<b>The Litany of Earth</b> by Ruthanna Emrys (<a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/05/the-litany-of-earth-ruthanna-emrys" target="_blank">Tor.com</a>, May 14, 2014)<br />
<br />
<b>Anyway, Angie</b> by Daniel José Older (<a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/03/anyway-angie-daniel-jose-older" target="_blank">Tor.com,</a> March 26, 2014)<br />
<br />
<b>Santos de Sampaguitas</b> by Alyssa Wong (<a href="http://www.strangehorizons.com/2014/20141006/sampaguita-f.shtml" target="_blank">Strange Horizons</a>, Oct. 6 & Oct. 13, 2014)<br />
<br />
<b>The Clockwork Soldier</b> by Ken Liu (<a href="http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/liu_01_14/" target="_blank">Clarkesworld</a>, January 2014)<br />
<br />
<b>Shedding Skin</b> by Angela Rega (<a href="http://crossedgenres.com/magazine/016-shedding-skin/" target="_blank">Crossed Genres</a>, April 2014)<br />
<br />
<br />
I remembered the following favorites as being 2014 but, alas, they are 2013 and so not eligible for any awards ballots you may be compiling, but they are really worth reading:<br />
<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe854jqUEkuetaxJgOiFJaro4R-Ui8iuJQtTVuJPxoWqF2eFNHRnig0P6k7NqPisbpkp7Y6-AISN87igwL9OjV9AhGp_WFM1e6yxEi94z-pGXG8mS-3qssJtQ5Syu1GAbANMJ36Se5h2ZN/s1600/StrangeWayDying-200x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe854jqUEkuetaxJgOiFJaro4R-Ui8iuJQtTVuJPxoWqF2eFNHRnig0P6k7NqPisbpkp7Y6-AISN87igwL9OjV9AhGp_WFM1e6yxEi94z-pGXG8mS-3qssJtQ5Syu1GAbANMJ36Se5h2ZN/s1600/StrangeWayDying-200x300.jpg" /></a></div>
<b><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19734165-la-santisima" target="_blank">La Santisima</a></b> by Teresa Frohock<br />
<br />
<b>Maquech</b> by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (from <a href="http://www.silviamoreno-garcia.com/blog/this-strange-way-of-dying/" target="_blank">This Strange Way of Dying</a>, 2013)<br />
<br />
<b><a href="http://crossedgenres.com/magazine/006-baggage-check/" target="_blank">Baggage Check</a></b> by Shay Darrach<br />
<br />
<b>Pancho Villa's Flying Circus</b> by Ernesto Hogan (from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/See-Different-Frontier-postcolonial-speculative/dp/0957397526" target="_blank">We See a Different Frontier</a>, 2013)<br />
<br />
<b>The History of Soul 2065</b> by Barbara Krasnoff (from <a href="http://mythicdelirium.com/?page_id=305" target="_blank">Clockwork Phoenix 4</a>, 2013)<br />
<br />
<br />
Oh, I know I'm forgetting and leaving out so many worthwhile stories ...<br />
<br />
Go to, read! Thank me later.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-54867630526242190652014-11-04T06:23:00.002-05:002014-11-04T06:49:54.322-05:00And quite suddenly, I'm in love with Filipin@ speculative fiction (#SFWApro)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0QttUvPK5WOxlG56NkxKqvKKe-9u-xKHOBVLsLqSIdaj3bMyQHz0hQox7qq54w-5Ks3o3UFMuCYQQDXKzr3KFTKyfU2mv_QDDn4MdnthD-kbGaQWTseviwlKt_yLwSQ4aMgDHLCJar9Qy/s1600/bark-76484_1920.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0QttUvPK5WOxlG56NkxKqvKKe-9u-xKHOBVLsLqSIdaj3bMyQHz0hQox7qq54w-5Ks3o3UFMuCYQQDXKzr3KFTKyfU2mv_QDDn4MdnthD-kbGaQWTseviwlKt_yLwSQ4aMgDHLCJar9Qy/s1600/bark-76484_1920.jpg" height="425" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo: Pixabay</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
This is not a list.<br />
<br />
This is a bit of a love letter.<br />
<br />
I do this every so often. Fall profoundly in love with works of fiction that are rooted in the earth of a particular country. When I was in my early formative years as a writer, it was Argentina. Now, staring down the beginning of what in Spanish is called la tercera edad (the third age), it's Philippines. I don't think the age of discovery is a coincidence (more on this later).<br />
<br />
In any case, starting at the end of 2013 and at regular intervals during 2014, I started noticing that many of the stories that I kept returning to, and lingering over, in anthologies and magazines were written by Filipin@ speculative fiction writers: Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Alyssa Wong, Isabel Yap and Michael Janairo.<br />
<br />
There are a lot of reasons for this. The most straightforward is simply the quality of the work. Three of the writers whose work I was belatedly discovering are Clarion graduates; another has not only an MFA in creative writing but years under his belt as a working journalist. I find myself drawn first to the music of the language in a story, and one of the things these quite distinct stories have in common is that they play with cadences masterfully.<br />
<br />
Rochita Loenen-Ruiz's <a href="http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/loenen-ruiz_12_13/" target="_blank">Of Alternate Adventures and Memory</a> (Clarksworld, issue 87, December 2013) is a far-future sci fi story structured to replicate the way memory organizes itself even as the storyline explores the idea of recovering memory, of becoming living memory for what no longer wholly exists.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"I am calling in a favor.<br />I need your help.<br />Remember the bonds we share.<br />Remember.<br />Remember.<br />Remember.</i> </blockquote>
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Adventure Boy understands what those words mean now. He understands why he cannot allow the erasure of accumulated memory. No matter how insignificant or how unimportant those memories may seem, no matter that Metal Town is deemed obsolete, he can’t allow those memories or those dreams to vanish without a trace."</blockquote>
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Loenen-Ruiz punctuates the narrative with passages cited from ads and promotional copy, and these serve as the backbeat of the story — regular — until Loenen-Ruiz speeds their intrusion, and changes the tone from promo to edict to personal recollection. As she does, what is framed by these breaks changes too. </div>
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In her critical work Loenen-Ruiz frequently examines the costs of colonialism and imperialism. Her fiction does that as well. Toward the end of the story, the punctuating passages are news report — part reclamation, part promise — as flawed and incomplete as history.<br />
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I found myself reading portions of Loenen-Ruiz's story out loud for their music. It is not something I usually do — except to test the cadences of my own work in progress — but I found myself doing that with Isabel Yap's piece, <a href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/08/a-cup-of-salt-tears-isabel-yap" target="_blank">A Cup of Salt Tears</a> (Tor.com, Aug. 27, 2014) as well.<br />
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"Your hips are pale like the moon, yet move like the curves of ink on parchment. Your eyes are broken and delicate and your hands are empty (...) Your hair is hair I’ve kissed before; I do not forget the hair of women I love."</blockquote>
There is a danger in describing a story as poetic because so often that word is applied to grossly overwritten pieces that somehow manage to be filmy and leaden at once. But Yap's story <i>is</i> poetic: sultry and beautiful, deceptively bare but with lines that make you catch your breath. Yap keeps the pacing unhurried, the cadences like music in a minor key — descending, dissolving.<br />
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It is the story of a woman striking a deal with a legendary river being. A simple premise, but there is nothing simple about the story. Like Loenen-Ruiz's story, this is about recovering what is lost, and it too has everything to do with memory — unreliable, desirable, mutable. Anyone who has ever been the caregiver of a loved one with Alzheimer's (or any progressive terminal illness that makes us wish for the magic to restore) will, despite the story's beauty (or perhaps more so because of it), find this a haunting read.<br />
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Alyssa Wong's <a href="http://www.strangehorizons.com/2014/20141006/sampaguita-f.shtml" target="_blank">Santos de Sampaguitas</a> (Strange Horizons, Oct. 6 and 13, 2014) and Michael Janairo's <a href="http://michaeljanairo.com/2014/05/06/angela-and-the-scar-called-a-standout-tale-in-long-hidden/" target="_blank">Angela and the Scar</a> (<a href="http://longhidden.com/" target="_blank">Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History</a>, Jan. 30, 2014) feature beings from folktales as well, and while that is nowhere near the whole of the enchantment they exert, it is a part. Kappa, kapfre, manananggal, aswang ... the supernatural beings in the Wong, Janairo and Yap stories are unfamiliar to me and intensely compelling.<br />
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As is the language with which they evolve on the page.<br />
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In Wong's Santos de Sampaguitas, the lines between supernatural and natural power are blurred so effectively I'm not sure even now I could tell you which of her characters are wholly human — if any. Wong's language reminds me of the nickname given to blues musician Albert King — the velvet bulldozer — because it is both muscular and richly textured.<br />
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"I would give you the gift of transformation. Pledge yourself to me and I will teach you to wing about the night, unhampered by human concerns. I will show you the secret banana groves where your mother hid her legs, deep in dreamland and Bicol's jungles. [...] I offer you knowledge of charms and spells, enchantments that will guarantee your household safety, recipes to keep the curses of other aswang away."</blockquote>
The story is long (it was published in two parts in separate issues of Strange Horizons) and creates a richly complicated sense of place, but Wong keeps it moving at a clip and when the end unfolds you feel like your time with Tín has ended too soon.<br />
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Janairo's story is historical speculative fiction set in Ilocos Norte Province of Philippines in 1900, his protagonist a child, and his fantastical being the gigantic, cigar-smoking kapfre.<br />
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"Treetops shook as they sailed across the forest. The giant leapt from tree to tree, his feet barely touching a branch as he landed and pushed off again. They rose and fell as if riding waves, carried at treeswift speed, the forest canopy a blur below."</blockquote>
Janairo writes about Philippine history with the economy of a good journalist. While the story is about the indigenous resistance to a second set of cultural and economic invaders (from a child's point of view) the story really lives in Janairo's depiction of the kapfre and the forest it inhabits. They are both big, extravagant, a triumph of nature and of imagination.<br />
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Not surprisingly, given the fact that we share a Spanish colonial history, I find a lot of commonality between Filipin@ and Latin@ speculative fiction — the bittersweet sense of being separated (exiled?) from yourself (and the land that is part of the self) for one. For another, the way even the youngest writers seem to have a profound understanding of aging — its peculiar concerns, sorrows, recriminations. The complicated, multiple strands of family. The living landscape of folk tales, lore, belief. Its literary accomplishment. Its assurance with both sci fi and the fantastical.<br />
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But the music I hear underpinning these stories is nothing at all like the Spanish, Spanglish and Caló I am more attuned to hearing when Latin@s write in English. This music is —paradoxically — beautifully leisured and still staccato; soft and steely; and above all else, sticky. I can't stop hearing it. I don't want to stop hearing it.<br />
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I know this is a tiny sampling of stories. I know that not only have I discovered Filipin@ speculative fiction late, but also very incompletely. I'm not sure but I think, for example, that all these writers live in diaspora (or are first- or second-gen Americans), and I wonder as I seek out Filipin@ writers who live on the islands if the differences (and similarities) will be as clearly marked as they are between U.S. Latin@ writers and those living in Latin America.<br />
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In any case, I have the strong feeling that Filipin@ spec fic is going to transform mainstream SFF. In fact, I think it already is.<br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-23102958468186613012014-10-27T07:01:00.000-04:002014-10-28T13:40:21.331-04:00Five days left to fund this kickstarter for an anthology of Latin@ speculative fiction <iframe frameborder="0" height="360" scrolling="no" src="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2019038492/latino-a-rising/widget/video.html" width="480"> </iframe><br />
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Hey folks, there are five days left on the <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2019038492/latino-a-rising?ref=nav_search" target="_blank">Latino/a Rising kickstarter</a> and they're just over half way there. Please, if you haven't yet, support this anthology which is the first of its kind and which is really needed to change the perception that Latinos don't write (or read) science fiction and fantasy.<br />
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Junot Diaz and Ana Castillo will be included in the anthology, as will be Nesto Hogan and Daína Chaviano, among many others (including me!) and they are still open to submissions.<br />
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At a $50 donation level, you'll get a cool Latino/a Rising postcard and equally cool print by Javier Hernandez, a Latino/a Rising Tee-shirt, and the book in two ways: ebook and the print copy signed by the editor and one of the authors.<br />
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If it would be an incentive for you to go support it at the $50 level, I'll offer any of you who do (and come back here and tell me in the comments that you have pledged $50 between now and Oct. 31) any one of the following:<br />
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1) I'll tuckerize you (name a character after you) in an upcoming story.<br />
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2) I'll send you a link to a soon-to-be-written storymap or gigapixel piece of fiction with visuals, links and maybe even audio or video.<br />
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3) I'll write a piece of flash fiction (1,000 words max) to your prompt.<br />
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Yeah, it means that much to me.<br />
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I love that the anthology We See a Different Frontier had three fabulous stories by Latin@ writers in it (Fábio Fernandes, Ernest Hogan and Silvia Moreno-Garcia), but it was the exception — most anthologies have one, if any. The Latino/a anthology will be an eye-opener about the scope and range of Latin@ speculative fiction. Please help make it happen.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-4113375162505863712014-10-21T14:18:00.004-04:002014-10-21T16:24:18.185-04:00The cost of the story <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I have never thought journalism was a safe profession.<br />
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I remember as a child, my parents having dinnertime conversations about journalists they knew who were attacked and left paraplegic (or who had to flee the country quite literally in middle of the night) because what they had reported enraged the powers that be.<br />
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Read the rest of this in <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/politics/cost-story-%E2%80%94-interactive-storymap-about-conflict-journalism/36116" target="_blank">an interactive storymapped long-form piece</a> at AL DÍA News.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-55375108808332493012014-10-16T22:48:00.001-04:002014-10-16T22:49:49.744-04:00Three Latin@ writers, three reasons to support the Latino/a Rising kickstarterThree Latin@ writers, three reasons to support the Latino/a Rising kickstarter!<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/UE6qJuBORAA" width="560"></iframe><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/GMdfXgwM-VI" width="560"></iframe><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ujDJsrrrRkA" width="560"></iframe><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-79509616511352591842014-09-30T11:30:00.000-04:002014-09-30T23:55:35.689-04:00Meet the Character - Anthony Cardno<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRW-ddWKMVvDIH0blRg047OczUvcI3oN92zLh8w83TLFidnzK9xczfj_jJi7Ey-n8Oxahm6TpsxefU3UWTsfAb6ewq3E5WkgRqlqFLMoyX5TGbikq_qL_3mgdVLIZ8YTXy-abdkWUNhWyQ/s1600/man-164962_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRW-ddWKMVvDIH0blRg047OczUvcI3oN92zLh8w83TLFidnzK9xczfj_jJi7Ey-n8Oxahm6TpsxefU3UWTsfAb6ewq3E5WkgRqlqFLMoyX5TGbikq_qL_3mgdVLIZ8YTXy-abdkWUNhWyQ/s1600/man-164962_1280.jpg" height="424" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo from Pixabay</td></tr>
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Writer <a href="http://www.tfrohock.com/blog/" target="_blank">Teresa Frohock</a>, who writes elegantly chilling speculative fiction (read about her new novella, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Broken-Road-T-Frohock-ebook/dp/B00NSDAFII/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1411408600&sr=8-7&keywords=frohock" target="_blank">The Broken Road</a>, <a href="http://bibliotropic.net/2014/09/25/the-broken-road-by-teresa-frohock/" target="_blank">here</a>) invited me to participate in this deceptively simple blog tour. So, here it is, meet one of my characters.<br />
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<i>1. What is the name of your character?</i><br />
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Anthony Cardno<br />
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<i>2. Is he fictional or a historic person?</i><br />
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Well, he’s a fictional character, but he is also a tuckerization of writer and friend, <a href="https://twitter.com/talekyn" target="_blank">Anthony Cardno</a>.<br />
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<i>3. When and where is the story set?</i><br />
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It is set in Guatemala, mainly during the armed internal conflict which spanned 36 years from 1960 to 1996.<br />
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<i>4. What should we know about him?</i><br />
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Anthony is a human rights special rapporteur who will do whatever he needs to do to secure the physical evidence necessary to produce irrefutable reports on the abuses that are taking place in the countries he monitors. He has a soft spot for Guatemala, where he has struck a deep friendship with a young journalist, John Herit, and has an enduring but conflicted friendship with Corazón, the owner of a bar he frequents. Oh, and Corazón also happens to be a monster...<br />
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<i>5. What is the main conflict? What messes up his life?</i><br />
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All of the conflicts in the story are born from attempts to hide — or ferret out — the truth behind an “official story.” Countries redact their history and, sometimes, so do individuals.<br />
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<i>6. What is the personal goal of the character?</i><br />
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He wants to excise what is monstrous in our world.<br />
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<i>7. Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?</i><br />
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Well, it’s not a novel, but a short story titled “<a href="http://www.strangehorizons.com/blog/2014/08/stranger_horizons_july_2014.shtml" target="_blank">The Bar at the End of the World</a>.” Read more about it <a href="http://anthonycardno.com/2014/06/many-tortures-toc-announcement/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<i>8. When can we expect the book to be published or when was it published?</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPmiEggBuG3VOq90W4z8NZdT9ZM5ngXNJiwJet-2PnYwPQJSWWlZL0H3_myyIA3EW_QjZ5RiwLn3I2uwBfL82uWY8z1V7Lt0Jj4S_44pXLY1pTUbKnuQ6nnjaaYLJxLp6tiCtO2pafOLP8/s1600/TMToAC-Front1-682x1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPmiEggBuG3VOq90W4z8NZdT9ZM5ngXNJiwJet-2PnYwPQJSWWlZL0H3_myyIA3EW_QjZ5RiwLn3I2uwBfL82uWY8z1V7Lt0Jj4S_44pXLY1pTUbKnuQ6nnjaaYLJxLp6tiCtO2pafOLP8/s1600/TMToAC-Front1-682x1024.jpg" height="320" width="212" /></a></div>
The story is part of the anthology “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Many-Tortures-Anthony-Cardno/dp/0692250581/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411916660&sr=1-1&keywords=the+many+tortures+of+anthony+cardno" target="_blank">The Many Tortures of Anthony Cardno</a>,” which was published in July of this year as a charity endeavor to raise money for cancer research. There are a lot of well known writers who contributed their stories to the anthology including Mary Robinette Kowal, Christine Yant, Damien Angelica Walters. It also contains one of Jay Lake’s final stories before he succumbed to cancer. The anthology is available in print and as an ebook, and I encourage you to buy it both for the pleasure of reading it, and as a way to strike back at a disease that has claimed the lives of so many.<br />
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To continue the blog tour, I’m tagging three Latina writers: the incredible, seriously talented <a href="http://ginaruiz.com/writing/" target="_blank">Gina Ruiz</a>; an exceptionally promising up-and-coming writer, <a href="http://www.ezzylanguzzi.com/" target="_blank">Ezzy Guerrero-Languzzi</a>; and <a href="http://tejanamade.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Jessica Olivarez-Mazone</a>, who’s just getting started on her writer's journey but has many uniquely Tejana stories to tell.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-45063416052581553952014-08-31T12:06:00.002-04:002014-08-31T12:55:56.993-04:00Dear Latinas: Are we content being mannequins?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwHUOFa2gd01Zyo3j8PKZp-2ZkyNUq88iekHXnS8IeH-dxYavtEzeuztnmKKRgP-0-mRiZsyFdQHECJ_R2P8rjrUDekterYGXMmdJIwkXmLf67b_uDfbxsz6_hDNyHogC8JMV6zdSHPYQc/s1600/Flying_Mannequin_(3302472992).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwHUOFa2gd01Zyo3j8PKZp-2ZkyNUq88iekHXnS8IeH-dxYavtEzeuztnmKKRgP-0-mRiZsyFdQHECJ_R2P8rjrUDekterYGXMmdJIwkXmLf67b_uDfbxsz6_hDNyHogC8JMV6zdSHPYQc/s1600/Flying_Mannequin_(3302472992).jpg" height="339" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Flying Mannequin (3302472992)" by Christine Zenino from Chicago, US - Flying Mannequin. Uploaded by russavia. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.</td></tr>
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In the past several weeks I've written two pieces for <a href="http://aldianews.com/" target="_blank">AL DÍA News media </a>about how the entertainment media objectifies Latinas. <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/culture/film-television/hollywood-latinas-shut-and-get-naked/35054" target="_blank">Hollywood to Latinas: Shut up and get naked</a> deals with a study that says Latina portrayals in mainstream films (regardless of "attractiveness" of the character) are more sexualized than for any other racial or ethnic group. The second, <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/double-take/hollywood-latinas-part-ii-shut-while-we-ogle-you/35314" target="_blank">Hollywood to Latinas, part II: Shut up while we ogle you</a>, touches upon the choice of Emmy award-show organizers to put Sofia Vergara on a revolving pedestal (and her choice to comply) while the CEO of the academy of television arts spoke about the industry's advances in diversity.</div>
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Vergara, who has been dubbed "Sofia Vengüenza" (Sofia Shame) by Vanessa Smith, the VP of Marketing and Advertising of <a href="http://www.impactony.com/#sthash.4HbNcvSm.dpbs" target="_blank">ImpactoNY</a>, has responded to criticisms of allowing herself to be used, essentially, as a mannequin by saying her critics have no sense of humor. Other responses, often from Latino men (straight and gay), have posited that those critical of the Emmy bit and of Vergara don't understand Latin American cultural mores and more significantly, are simply jealous because they are ... unattractive. Well, no. Smith, for example, is a Costa Rican and extremely attractive. She's also smart as a whip and undoubtedly understands that Vergara's portrayal (on screen and off) as a dimwit distinguished only by her exaggerated accent and by her killer body has a real impact.</div>
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The fetishization of the "Latina" body has given Venezuela a curious coming-of-age tradition: cosmetic surgery. Rita di Martino (who founded a support group for the victims of faulty breast implants), told <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/life/9593102/Worlds-most-beauty-crazed-country">Stuff.co.bz</a> that many Venezuelan girls receive the gift of plastic surgery when they turn 15. The article goes on to state that "in 2011, Venezuelan women had nearly as much cosmetic surgery performed as their British sisters, an industry study says. Britain is over twice as large as Venezuela — and over three times richer." In fact, according to an <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/12/venezuelans-obsessed-with-beauty" target="_blank">article</a> that appeared in the Guardian in 2011, Venezuelans often take on debt to finance their perfected bodies. "The demand for surgery is such that banks offer attractive loans for procedures, with slogans such as: 'Have your plastic on our plastic.'"</div>
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In the United States, the proliferation of beauty pageants intended for young (and very young) Latinas points to the pervasive idea that notice comes to Latinas most readily via beauty. While there is money to be made from winning pageants, participating in them is costly. And what the <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/22/beauty-pageants-children--ban/2842431/" target="_blank">pageants reinforce</a> in terms of body image and perceptions of beauty can be reprehensible (make-up on five year olds, anyone?) and downright destructive (in 2013 the <a href="http://ux.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2013/09/27/little-miss-hispanic-delaware-stripped-of-crown-after-racial-complaints-/2883667/" target="_blank">Little Miss Hispanic Delaware</a> title was taken away from 7-year-old Black Dominican contestant Jakiyah McCoy and given to blond, light-skinned runner up Tiffany Ayala). </div>
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A study from the American Association of University Women found that Latinas between the ages of nine and 15 already have a negative body image that further drops by 38 percent as they get older. Celebrities from Demi Lovato to Shakira have <a href="http://voxxi.com/2013/06/24/body-image-latina-celebrities-struggled/" target="_blank">admitted</a> to body image issues severe enough that they led to eating disorders and cutting (Lovato) and prompted therapy to help deal with them (Shakira).</div>
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While body image ranks much lower as a concern for women in general in mid-life, middle-aged Latinas who undergo breast cancer surgery have greater "body image disturbance" than their peers of other races and ethnicities (Women over 50: Psychological Perspectives By Varda Muhlbauer and Joan C. Chrisler). Is it because we're more tied to the "ideal body" (generous breasts to balance a generous booty and a slender waist between) than any other race/ethncity? Maybe. </div>
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"Latinas ... are generally thought to be more traditional in their gender role attitudes," write Muhlbauer and Chrisler, "and that might account for part reason why they have been shown to be more distressed than Black and White women after breast cancer treatment."</div>
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I'd say traditional is the wrong word, I prefer conventional. Looking at Vergara's stint on the display stand points to a conventional gender role attitude that also finds expression in some of the defenses of it. </div>
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If you noticed, Vergara said very little while up on the pedestal. The sense that we should beautiful and seen but not heard still infects many aspects of Latina life — from Latinas who suffer domestic abuse in silence to those professionals who are told they are impolite or "too American" when they voice an opinion. Likewise, Vergara's little jokey moments were (very carefully) not rebuttals of the objectification taking place in front of her. In fact, she dealt with them in <i>exactly </i>the way Latin American women have long been taught to deal with piropos de albañil (the sometimes hilarious but always grotesquely sexual "compliments" catcalled from the street), that is, to neither confront and correct but to deflect through good nature and an understanding that "boys will be boys." </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfnmE_LgDAD9AFkY7y8h98huJ0aQkam7JlmHIQ5p4AV5BjoCY1vPuEU41VMCzAfMBMqjmnLRf-pODkZtb5TUzSCydIbKB2BgD9KfuSySvuyHLmRv7FfEoCRg22w43p4Ie2oxHnWFf90Nxa/s1600/ReuseumManniquins.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfnmE_LgDAD9AFkY7y8h98huJ0aQkam7JlmHIQ5p4AV5BjoCY1vPuEU41VMCzAfMBMqjmnLRf-pODkZtb5TUzSCydIbKB2BgD9KfuSySvuyHLmRv7FfEoCRg22w43p4Ie2oxHnWFf90Nxa/s1600/ReuseumManniquins.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Latina "femininity," of this type is never proactive, but reactive; never challenging, ever accommodating. I'd like to think we have no desire to raise daughters like this: mannequins of a type, docile and interchangeable. I'd like to think we ourselves have no desire to be like this. But perhaps we do. I recently heard a 30-ish Latina professional brush off criticism of Vergara's choices — not because she likes the stereotype the actor has chosen to embody — but because she's made so much money doing it. It's the same justification Eva Longoria uses whenever she hears criticism of the show she produces, Devious Maids.</div>
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That's another Latina stereotype, of course. That we'll do anything and everything for the bling.</div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Inset photo: </span><span style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">"ReuseumManniquins" by Kencf0618 - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.</span></i></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-15692947958525291372014-07-05T16:06:00.003-04:002014-07-05T16:34:04.084-04:00The treatment of unaccompanied minors on the border reminiscent of dystopia<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCB8B3n9u7ve2MxqxsPGmhzpCMPw9aZX-i_LXIY0_LnvpeXRx0vt_OuNv_6AI5MADJI17psyb4I-A-JM7AHjzyJpC78mRCXN9mrMYU7RVzLcGsAaEHU7iBtDPTMiiXFYOq-b60BBaJZ0qu/s1600/Signature+image+1.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCB8B3n9u7ve2MxqxsPGmhzpCMPw9aZX-i_LXIY0_LnvpeXRx0vt_OuNv_6AI5MADJI17psyb4I-A-JM7AHjzyJpC78mRCXN9mrMYU7RVzLcGsAaEHU7iBtDPTMiiXFYOq-b60BBaJZ0qu/s1600/Signature+image+1.tiff" height="295" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="text-align: center;">This week someone pointed out on Twitter that what is happening at our border — the characterization of children fleeing violence or hoping to be reunited with their families as security and </span><a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/06/24/conservative-media-stoke-fears-about-humanitari/199864" style="text-align: center;" target="_blank">public health</a><span style="text-align: center;"> threats rather than refugees; their dehumanizing </span><a href="http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Photos-show-logjam-of-immigrants-detained-at-5544928.php#photo-6434558" style="text-align: center;" target="_blank">detention</a><span style="text-align: center;"> conditions; the proposed </span><a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/south-border-youth-migrant-crisis-obama-emergency-funds-108439.html" style="text-align: center;" target="_blank">expedited repatriation</a><span style="text-align: center;"> — is reminiscent of what happens in my novel, </span><a href="http://inknovel.com/" style="text-align: center;" target="_blank">Ink</a><span style="text-align: center;">.</span><br />
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Ink is an immigration-based dystopia. I wrote it imagining xenophobia the scale of which I thought was exaggerated, unimaginable in today's United States.<br />
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And I have watched in horror as piece by piece, bit by bit, we inch toward that unimaginable.<br />
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In my novel one of my characters paraphrases St. Augustine: <br />
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"Father Tom says Augustine had it right," says one of my characters, Mari, "that the soul takes more pleasure in what it has lost and recovered than what it has had all along. He says, given enough time, even a nation remembers it has a soul."</blockquote>
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I am a person of faith. I believe in the soul, and the mercy and compassion it enkindles in us as individuals, as communities, as a community of communities. Perhaps we've simply forgotten, as we speak with cruelty or indifference about the fate of the children on our border, that we collectively have a soul. Perhaps we have lost what is best in each us as we dismiss or disregard the conditions of their detention, conditions we would fight tooth-and-nail to change if those detained were our own children. Perhaps what calls to be recovered is the mercy that prevents adults from preparing to send children, alone, back to horrific danger.<br />
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"Don't let the future be written for you," says another character in my novel, toward the end, after they've all suffered and sustained immeasurable losses in the struggle to keep their humanity alive and recover the soul of their dystopic America. <br />
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I cannot help but think we are poised at a crucial juncture here, now. What future are we letting cynical legislators, Minutemen and haters write for those powerless and vulnerable children? What future are we letting those same legislators, Minutemen and haters write for us, and in our name?<br />
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I love the <a href="http://www.aloeblacc.com/" target="_blank">Aloe Blacc</a>, <a href="http://alexrivera.com/" target="_blank">Alex Rivera</a> and <a href="http://www.ndlon.org/en/" target="_blank">NDLON</a> collaboration represented by the video that follows this post. It uses distinct signifiers — in music, in image, in activism — to write a story of human connection, of solidarity, of compassion and a future of hope ... Life's a game made for everyone, and love is the prize<i>.</i><br />
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#Not1MoreDeportation</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8826224074525081488.post-59453763901682559622014-06-28T09:09:00.001-04:002014-06-28T09:09:55.201-04:00My schedule at Readercon 25<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQDCvyLG9hHQzovup651Jj7EXzopKupTrF-iD_9kmt-tqrSdrEzF1xKlgiMwpdq-63LqlFA-GCP8nBePr-I3HmkJZynHv6iFYU_5KO-tua0-l24H_X7Uf_OtgTN3bQH-pel-N3uROmc-8p/s1600/Dorothy+on+the+C-train.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQDCvyLG9hHQzovup651Jj7EXzopKupTrF-iD_9kmt-tqrSdrEzF1xKlgiMwpdq-63LqlFA-GCP8nBePr-I3HmkJZynHv6iFYU_5KO-tua0-l24H_X7Uf_OtgTN3bQH-pel-N3uROmc-8p/s1600/Dorothy+on+the+C-train.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></div>
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Thursday, July 10</h3>
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<b>8 PM</b> </div>
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East, West and Everything Between: A Roundtable on Latin@ Speculative Fiction</h4>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Panel: <a href="http://www.umass.edu/complit/people_fac.shtml#goodwin" target="_blank">Matthew Goodwin</a>, <a href="http://faculty.bmcc.cuny.edu/faculty/fp.jsp?f=chernandez" target="_blank">Carlos Hernández</a>, <a href="http://ghoststar.net/" target="_blank">Daniel José Older</a>, <a href="http://www.juliarios.com/" target="_blank">Julia Rios</a> and Sabrina Vourvoulias </span></h4>
This freeform conversation will look at where we've been, where we're going, the challenges of representing our own particular cultures within the umbrella term "Latin@," and the challenges of being Latin@ within a overwhelmingly Anglo genre. Are there insurmountable differences in regional Latinidad? Do we have to choose between being “vendidos” (sell-outs) or “pelados” (surviving—barely—by our wits)? Can we build platform in two languages (and if so, how)? How are we combatting the “Latinos don't read/Latinos don't write” fallacy?<br /><h3 style="text-align: center;">
Friday, July 11</h3>
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<b>1 PM </b></div>
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Latin@ Writers Read </h4>
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Reading: Carlos Hernández, Daniel José Older, Julia Rios and Sabrina Vourvoulias </div>
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In concert with the 'East, West, and Everything Between' roundtable about Latin@ SFF, panel participants will read from their own work and/or work of other Latin@ writers.</div>
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• I'll be reading from my story, <b>Skin in the Game</b>, which is slated to be published by <a href="http://Tor.com/">Tor.com</a> in late 2014 or early 2015.</div>
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<b>3 PM</b> </div>
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Long Hidden Group Reading </h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU6_KW1hb2OBJwf_GsqeTsu5oHuSZ6FmT_HNiPwMlW7EyzhMJUYM0j_BAbKgy9pESCJaIq8v3hTLvuHBbSPxk_vuBsG6YF-g2I0YIJdaCQ7YpWpzd8DGDnU13MdOQJHIQ9DBj4kd0pOA5e/s1600/20642659.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU6_KW1hb2OBJwf_GsqeTsu5oHuSZ6FmT_HNiPwMlW7EyzhMJUYM0j_BAbKgy9pESCJaIq8v3hTLvuHBbSPxk_vuBsG6YF-g2I0YIJdaCQ7YpWpzd8DGDnU13MdOQJHIQ9DBj4kd0pOA5e/s1600/20642659.jpg" height="200" width="131" /></a></div>
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Rose Fox, Claire Humphrey, Michael Janairo, Ken Liu, Sunny Moraine, Daniel José Older, Sarah Pinsker, Sofia Samatar and Sabrina Vourvoulias</div>
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<a href="http://longhidden.com/" target="_blank">Long Hidden</a> (edited by Rose Fox and Daniel José Older) is an anthology of speculative stories from the margins of history. Our participants will read from their stories, which dive deep into the hidden truths of marginalized people throughout history and around the world.</div>
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• I'll be reading from my story, <b>The Dance of the White Demons</b>, which closes out the book. Look for it for purchase as ebook or in print at the Crossed Genres table in the bookshop.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
<b>4 PM </b></div>
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Rape, Race & Speculative Fiction </h4>
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Panelists: Chesya Burke, Mikki Kendall (leader), Rose Mambert and Sabrina Vourvoulias. </div>
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Rape as a plot device can be highly problematic. We've certainly seen it used as the only trauma or the worst trauma that can happen to a woman in fiction. But what happens when writers from marginalized communities include it in their fiction as a way of exploring painful history that has gone unacknowledged? We will discuss Nnedi Okorafor's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Who-Fears-Death-Nnedi-Okorafor/dp/0756407281" target="_blank">Who Fears Death</a>, Andrea Hairston's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Redwood-Wildfire-Andrea-Hairston/dp/1933500522/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403920491&sr=1-1&keywords=redwood+and+wildfire" target="_blank">Redwood and Wildfire</a>, and other examples. This panel will cover some very sensitive topics, so please be respectful of yourself and others.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
<b>7 PM</b> </div>
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Tabula Rasa Group Reading</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyVcigmRUFQHMsg8lxNfJTzBZOWRirmihTt-ZtCzj5pDVbXUSsfa4afNnrMo-JyOjrisz_fWpyzVuiquc-ztUv_CfeNymnCsXOrVH0Nbf60MSFqlp5-qs6nhDmm9aH04Jv4wvJKOyFGutB/s1600/TheManyTorturesOfAnthonyCardno.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyVcigmRUFQHMsg8lxNfJTzBZOWRirmihTt-ZtCzj5pDVbXUSsfa4afNnrMo-JyOjrisz_fWpyzVuiquc-ztUv_CfeNymnCsXOrVH0Nbf60MSFqlp5-qs6nhDmm9aH04Jv4wvJKOyFGutB/s1600/TheManyTorturesOfAnthonyCardno.jpg" height="200" width="132" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Reading: Jennifer Marie Brissett, Justin Key, Barbara Krasnoff and Sabrina Vourvoulias. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Tabula Rasa is an NYC-based writers group made up of experienced, published science fiction/fantasy/horror writers. Each member will be reading a portion of a story, published or not yet published.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">• I'll be reading from my story, <b>The Bar at the End of the World</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">, from the anthology <a href="http://anthonycardno.com/2014/06/many-tortures-toc-announcement/" target="_blank">The Many Tortures of Anthony Cardno</a> (fresh off the press at Readercon!) which benefits the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life. Look for it for purchase as ebook or in print at the Lethe Press and/or Crossed Genres tables in the bookshop. </span></span></div>
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Saturday, July 12</h3>
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<b>10 AM</b> </div>
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When the Other Is You </h4>
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Panelists: Chesya Burke, Samuel Delany, Peter Dubé, Mikki Kendall, Vandana Singh and Sabrina Vourvoulias. </div>
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Being part of an underrepresented group and trying to write our experience into our work can be tricky. We might have internalized some prejudice about ourselves, we might not have the craft to get our meaning across perfectly, and even if we depict our own experience totally accurately (as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie observed in her TED Talk "The Danger of a Single Story"), we do so while struggling against the expectation that our experience is or isn't "representative" or "authentic." How do we navigate the pitfalls and responsibilities of being perceived as spokespeople? What potentially pernicious dynamics allow us that dubious privilege in the first place? Which works make us cringe with their representations of us, and which make us sigh with relief and recognition?<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
<b>7 PM </b></div>
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Solo reading </h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNSRhBLAGR7t5SB3FEnqydGlEl9vDB3BhbObKmOgXptcCausoMRS7OYIeGJk3Jdgiwe8wdI0FHl9QuhxeJOyVmR9ZEJs1iHEY-ZYACIFSsrUI4Kr200AAT-mCyu2sV-3fVVzSUULy2Ri8X/s1600/cover-working-rectangle-80op.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNSRhBLAGR7t5SB3FEnqydGlEl9vDB3BhbObKmOgXptcCausoMRS7OYIeGJk3Jdgiwe8wdI0FHl9QuhxeJOyVmR9ZEJs1iHEY-ZYACIFSsrUI4Kr200AAT-mCyu2sV-3fVVzSUULy2Ri8X/s1600/cover-working-rectangle-80op.jpg" height="200" width="133" /></a></div>
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• I haven't decided yet whether I'll read from my novel, <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ink-Sabrina-Vourvoulias/dp/0615657818/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403959224&sr=8-1&keywords=sabrina+vourvoulias" target="_blank">Ink</a></b> (<a href="http://crossedgenres.com/" target="_blank">Crossed Genres</a>); or another story that will be published in 2015 by <a href="http://Tor.com/">Tor.com</a>, <b>The Way of Walls and Words;</b> or one of the stories or novellas for my planned collection<b> </b>of short stories, <b>Sin Embargo;</b> or perhaps even a section of my work in progress, a Sci Fi space opera, tentatively titled <b>Tierras Huerfanas/Orphan Lands</b>. </div>
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You can, of course, purchase <b>Ink </b>as ebook or in print at the Crossed Genres table in the bookshop, but for the other, you'll just have to wait.</div>
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Anyway, help me make the decision about which to read. Let me know in comments which sounds most interesting to you. You'll have my eternal gratitude, because I really, really, really can't seem to decide on my own.</div>
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And if you've never been to <a href="http://www.readercon.org/index.htm" target="_blank">Readercon</a>, what are you waiting for? I'd love to see/meet you there!</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>Sabrina Vourvouliashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08260496687186444168noreply@blogger.com0