By Brian Dunlap

Flower Song Press has infiltrated Southern California. It began with publishing El Sereno native Matt Sedillo, in late 2018. His poetry collection Mowing Leaves of Grass, was a critical success, critiquing the American history we’re taught in school to render it in full, speaking truth to the struggle, tragedy, anger, joy, despair, possibility and faith in the struggles of working class people, specifically Chicanx, to overcome the forces of capitalism and racism that keep them marginalized.

Then Diamond Bar native, David A. Romero, published his collection, My Name is Romero, during the first four months of the pandemic. San Diego County native, Sonia Gutiérrez, published her novel Dreaming with Mariposas, about the story of the Martínez family as told through the eyes of the young, then college-aged Sofía “Chofi” Martínez, as they live in North San Diego County, as well as multiple narrators, emulating oral tradition, in late 2020. More SoCal poets announced their upcoming Flower Song publications at the end of 2020, Briana Muñoz, Iris De Anda, Angelina Sáenz, Luevette Resto and Fernando Albert Salinas, among others, and a second book by Matt Sedillo.

All of these publications were coming from a retooled, rapidly growing press out of McAllen, Texas, run by poet and former McAllen Poet Laureate, Edward Vidaurre. He’s “a poet who writes because he has no choice…He cannot be silent…His poems are about everyday resistance…survival…and refusing to go away,” William W. Sokoloff wrote in New Political Science. With Flower Song, Vidaurre strives to publish important voices like himself, the relevant, inspiring Chicanx/Latinx voices writing on topics directly related to their own and their community’s lived realities, that the rest of publishing, by and large, do not notice.

This is a poet and publisher born and raised in Boyle Heights.

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As Flower Song began to grow, Sedillo saw how the press could become a powerful voice for Chicanx/Latinx literature, for them, by them. He’s said on social media and at readings how he wants to have a direct hand in making Flower Song such a press. As he said after the Flower Song Press reading Saturday, at Tia Chucha’s in Slymar, one way he’s helped grow the press is by recruiting many of the poets who they’ve published.

The host of the reading, poet and fellow Flower Song Press mate, David A. Romero, spoke about how Sedillo recruited him to be a Flower Song author. It happened when he was working a corporate job and after he’d made a name for himself as a spoken word poet. At that time, he was down on himself and questioning the direction of his life. Questioning whether he should continue with literature. With writing. If he could take it any further. After many encouraging in-depth discussions with Sedillo at coffee shops, about writing, his own writing, how much Sedillo liked Romero’s writing, Sedillo convinced him to publish his next collection, My Name is Romero, with Flower Song and to continue to write.

The reading Saturday is part of a tour of Flower Song’s Southern California authors, that’s taken some version of the lineup from West Los Ángeles to Barrio Logan in San Diego to The Bay Area, among other places. Saturday the lineup included everyone: Matt Sedillo, David A. Romero, Briana Muñoz, Sonia Gutierrez, Luevette Resto, Iris De Anda, Gina Duran, Angelina Sáenz, Fernando Albert Salinas and Natalie Sierra.

The crowd was sizable, about 30-35 people, several arriving late who stood in the back of the bookstore. De Anda couldn’t make it in-person, so her reading was performed virtually. The entire event was broadcast from Tia Chucha’s Facebook page, over Facebook Live. After the reading began, former Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez sat next to his son, Romero and off in the front left corner, where the readers sat, was poet and Founder of the L.A. Poet Society, Jessica Wilson Cárdenas with her two young children Sol and Luna. Sáenz had brought her two boys as well.

The loudest part of the evening was when Matt Sedillo read. As usual he read his poem “Pilgrim,” from his book Mowing Leaves of Grass. The poem, about the stark realities of Chicanx in America and what America is, setting the record straight, grows angry as it progresses to its biting conclusion, where in spoken word style Sedillo inhabits that anger in his delivery. He also read a poem from his new poetry collection City on the Second Floor.

As the evening progressed, Briana Muñoz read “My Poem Isn’t a Persuasive Essay,” asking the question, how many more times do we have to protest against the same issues (gun violence, war, the patriarchy) before they are actually dealt with? And Luevette Resto recited a poem about how she connected with the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo as a young Boricua living in the Bronx.

Before Gutierrez read, as the night neared its end, she invited Luis Rodriguez to the stage, to hand-deliver a donation to his campaign for Governor of California. As a man who has spent much of his life and career building community and bridges, through his writing, founding Tia Chucha’s Central Cultural and Bookstore, Tia Chucha Press, teaching poetry in prisons, it added a warmth and connection to the evening, that everyone appreciated.

Through Flower Song Press, Chicanx/Latinx poets and writers from Ventura and San Diego Counties, the San Gabriel Valley, Diamond Bar, Pomona, L.Á., Claremont—the whole expanse of Southern California, that at times can be isolating—came together to connect with the audience and each other. Even after the reading, when the writers who could, convened at Toni’s for a late dinner and good conversation. As Gina Duran said the next day on Facebook, “I feel like I’m apart of something important when I’m with them.”