Latino arts, history and culture
A trope is a figurative use of language—a metaphor which provides a compact way of representing a subset of cognitive and perceptual features salient to it. In other words, a metaphor mediates the … [Read more...]
The 2016 Oscar Awards fue un desmadre—a disaster, not the Chris Rock show: the Awards. I had thought about going to the Oscar Awards event this year to protest the paucity (near absence) of minority … [Read more...]
MORNING IN AMERICA: MANOS A LA OBRA DONALD TRUMP’S BID FOR THE WHITE HOUSE It’s morning in America, Donald Trump is President Elect, the sun is shining, the water in my shower came … [Read more...]
What has made the United States the country it has become? There are myriad answers. All of them right—cada cabeza es un mundo—every head is a world. My answer reflects a … [Read more...]
My dream has not withered like a raisin in the sun, though at my age I wonder what my “future” would have been had I realized my dream of being a college or university president. It never … [Read more...]
RESTORING GERONIMO’S NAME AND PLACE IN THE ANNALS OF AMERICAN HISTORY Consciousness about my Apache Indian roots came to me late in my life not because I sought to occlude or exclude them but … [Read more...]
Hard to believe I’ve made it to this milestone age of 90—more than half of those years teaching in higher education—still teaching. There were a number of years when I was a high school … [Read more...]
The best way to start this piece is with a caveat that we’re all writers. Just as we’re all speakers (of whatever language), we’re all writers (of whatever language)—with the exception of those who … [Read more...]
THE FRYING PAN AND THE FIRE: IRAN AND THE ISIS THREAT “Decisions about national security are ours to make . . . that’s not simply our inheritance, it’s our responsibility” -Rachael Maddow, … [Read more...]
In 2014 there were 14,000 Mexican students studying in American colleges and universities. In an effort to improve that number, the Mexican government approved Proyecta 100,000—a goodwill … [Read more...]
I could not have known my search for America would begin at the University of Pittsburgh. In 1946 fresh from wartime service in the Marine Corps I went back to Pittsburgh where I had enlisted in 1943 … [Read more...]
In a recent episode of The View, co-star Kelly Osbourne attempted a riposte to Donald Trump’s bellowing in a clip about shipping all illegal Mexicans back to Mexico: “If you kick every Latino out of … [Read more...]
SEARCHING FOR AMERICA: LIVING ON THE MARGIN OF AMERICAN LITERATURE Before there was American literature in my life there was Mexica literature then a host of books from foreign countries in … [Read more...]
THE FUTURE FACE OF AMERICA AS REFLECTED IN LOS NIÑOS CENTRO-AMERICANOS AND AMERICAN IMMIGRATION POLICY. There’s no doubt that the face of America has been changing—more dramatically since the … [Read more...]
STEM,MASSH & p&t : WITHER GOEST THOU? This piece is really a continuation of my work on the History and Philosophy of Education (Scribd 2009) in which I sought to lay out an easy guide to … [Read more...]
HISPANICS AND AMERICAN EDUCATION. In 1975, Dr. Marta Sotomayor and I authored a work entitled A Medio Grito: Chicanos and American Education, its research funded by the Ford Foundation and … [Read more...]
THIS WEEK ON LATINOPIA: THE ELECTION RESULTS! Many of you Latinopians I am sure are disgusted with the results of the 2016 Presidential Elections. As we work through the shock of realizing that our … [Read more...]
LIBROS Y MÁS/ BOOKS & MORE. Some years ago, my good friend and indomitable poet Ricardo Sanchez established in San Antonio a bookstore which he called Libros y Mas, a reasonably successful … [Read more...]
LITERARY NON-FICTION: THE WARP AND WOOF OF PUBLIC NARRATIVE. Since 2005, I’ve been a member of the Advisory Board of the Mayborn Literary Non-Fiction Conference of the Southwest hosted by the … [Read more...]
EN EL RINCÓN DE UNA BIBLIOTECA In a recent piece for “Pensamientos Literarios” (Somos en Escrito: Latino Literary Online Magazine, May 2013) I wrote: “It occurs to me that most of my life has been … [Read more...]
LIBROS Y MÁS. Every year in the Spring, the New Mexican writer and activist, Denise Chavez holds her Border Book Festival in Mesilla, New Mexico, near Las Cruces; and every year it turns out to be … [Read more...]
