• Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s ELA Music Stories
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen

latinopia.com

Latino arts, history and culture

  • Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s ELA Music Stories
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen
You are here: Home / Literature / FEATURES / LATINOPIA WORD TREVIÑO HONORED WITH AMERICAN BOOK AWARD

LATINOPIA WORD TREVIÑO HONORED WITH AMERICAN BOOK AWARD

October 31, 2016 by Tia Tenopia

AMERICAN BOOK AWARD ACCEPTANCE SPEECH – OCTOBER 30, 2016, San Francisco, California

Thank you, Justin Desmangles, Ishmael Reed and members of the Before Columbus Foundation for the vision to see what was needed and the follow through to make it happen, to reclaim what is ours. To make events like today a reality. It is, indeed, an honor to be in company of such a distinguished group of writers, activists, storytellers. And isn’t that what we all fundamentally are: storytellers?

I begun my storytelling career in 1968, as a student activist, brandishing a super-8 camera on a picket line in East Los Angeles. It was heyday of the emergent Chicano civil rights movement. I learned to tell our stories using film and television. These were stories mainstream society didn’t want to hear, stories of oppression, stories of struggle, stories of overcoming, stories of victories in the face of defeat.

For fifteen years I was a documentary filmmaker. Then I shifted, becoming a narrative storyteller–directing episodes of prime time television programs like ER, NYPD Blue, Star Trek, Criminal Minds, Law and Order and others while continuing to write short stories and a memoir.

Throughout, I’ve struggled to find a balance in my storytelling, a balance between documenting and telling the dark side of our troubled past–and we know it all too well. The history of discrimination, rape, lynchings, the murders, the genocides that have been committed against people of color. But I also wrestled to find hope amid this backdrop of horror. For to relegate our storytelling only to these atrocities, ignores a past that is also filled with steadfast resistance, with fierce struggles, with irrepressible victories.

Perhaps the most difficult challenge for me has been to focus beyond the immediate and visceral. It’s easy to focus our storytelling on the political, especially when the times demand it. Harder to find quiet time to write when we know brothers and sisters of the Standing Rock Sioux nation and so many others are today taking a stand, or we confront the sordid realities of a potential Trump nation.

Much harder to find the time we need to be quiet, to reflect, to ponder, to muse. But it’s only when we do this, when we overcome our anger, allow our creativity to simmer, to distill, to nurture deeper insights into who we are, that our craft as storytellers can truly come to the fore.

We must be bold and courageous enough to allow ourselves time to think.

My latest short story collection, Return to Arroyo Grande, is filled with alternate universes, optional mirror images of who and what we might be–for the good or the bad.  I have a character who has fallen at a construction site and wakened with an indisputable memory of living in an ominous, terrible world. A world where there is only suffering, where all her friends are enemies, and despair is the order of the day. She is so convinced of her abhorrent past–what the doctor calls “false memories.”– that she can’t accept the possibility that another, more positive world might exist. Yet, her doctor insists its all due to the peculiar cerebral shock arising from her accident.

“But what if these false memories really took place, she questions? Aren’t I cheating, I mean aren’t I denying the validity of these events?”

“Jeannie,” the doctor replies, “the point is you must not allow the bad memories of a terrible past to cripple you and your future. It’s a simple as that.”

So as storytellers, let’s not allow ourselves to be paralyzed. Let’s open the door to those alternate visions of whom we might become. Let’s go forward, breaking barriers, and telling stories of purpose, stories of resilience, stories of hope.

Thank you for your time, for the work of the Before Columbus Foundation, and for this great award.

____________________________________________

Copyright 2016 by Jesús Salvador Treviño.

Filed Under: FEATURES, LATINOPIA WORD, Literature Tagged With: American Book Award, Ishmael Reed, Jesús Salvador Treviño, Justin Desmangles, Rudolfo Anaya

BURUNDANGA BORICUA DEL ZOCOTROCO 5.23.25 – EMINENT DANGER

May 23, 2025 By wpengine

In 2012, in Puerto Rico there were 13,000 farms; in the recent agricultural census, between 8 and 10,000 farms are recorded; a substantial decrease in the figure reported for 2012. At present, the agricultural sector of the Puerto Rican economy reports approximately 0.62% of the gross domestic product, which produces 15% of the food consumed […]

BURUNDANGA BORICUA DEL ZOCOTROCO 5.23.25 MORE ON THE NEED TO GROW

May 23, 2025 By wpengine

The title of the documentary, The Need to Grow by Rob Herring and Ryan Wirick,  is suggestive. Its abstract character is enough to apply in a general and also in a particular way. The Need to Grow applies to both the personal and to so many individuals. At the moment, the need for growth in […]

BURUNDANGA DEL ZOCOTROCO 5.16.25 PELIGRO INMINENTE

May 15, 2025 By wpengine

Peligro Inminente En 2012, en Puerto Rico habían 13 mil granjas; en el censo agrícola reciénte se registran entre 8 y 10 mil granjas; una disminución sustantiva de la cifra reportada para 2012. Al presente, el sector agrícola de la economía puertorriqueña reporta aproximadamente 0.62% del producto bruto interno, que produce el 15% de la […]

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 5.23.25 MAYA BLUE EXHIBIT

May 23, 2025 By wpengine

Maya Blue Exhibit Incorporates the Artwork of Latino/a Artists A new exhibit, Maya Blue: Ancient Color, New Visions, at the San Antonio Museum of Art [SAMA], brings together for the first time pre-Columbian crafted clay figures, the art of Mexican modernist Carlos Mérida, and works by contemporary Latino/a artists Rolando Briseño, Clarissa Tossin, and Sandy […]

More Posts from this Category

New On Latinopia

LATINOPIA ART SONIA ROMERO 2

By Tia Tenopia on October 20, 2013

Sonia Romero is a graphic artist,muralist and print maker. In this second profile on Sonia and her work, Latinopia explores Sonia’s public murals, in particular the “Urban Oasis” mural at the MacArthur Park Metro Station in Los Angeles, California.

Category: Art, LATINOPIA ART

LATINOPIA WORD JOSÉ MONTOYA “PACHUCO PORTFOLIO”

By Tia Tenopia on June 12, 2011

José Montoya is a renowned poet, artist and activist who has been in the forefront of the Chicano art movement. One of his most celebrated poems is titled “Pachuco Portfolio” which pays homage to the iconic and enduring character of El Pachuco, the 1940s  Mexican American youth who dressed in the stylish Zoot Suit.

Category: LATINOPIA WORD, Literature

LATINOPIA WORD XOCHITL JULISA BERMEJO “OUR LADY OF THE WATER GALLONS”

By Tia Tenopia on May 26, 2013

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is a poet and teacher from Asuza, California. She volunteered with No More Deaths, a humanitarian organization providing water bottles in the Arizona desert where immigrants crossing from Mexico often die of exposure. She read her poem, “Our Lady of the Water Gallons” at a Mental Cocido (Mental Stew) gathering of Latino authors […]

Category: LATINOPIA WORD, Literature

© 2025 latinopia.com · Pin It - Genesis - WordPress · Admin