By Scott Neuffer
FROM: Trampset
My wife tells me not to talk about it: her trauma. She survived the dirty wars in Peru. If you talk, you die, she tells me. People don’t talk about it. The dead are dead. The living go on. Sorry, it’s not my place, I say. But these ghosts. I can feel them.
Continue reading “Book Review: Let the Buzzards Eat Me Whole”
By Romeo Oscar Cascolan
FROM: 700 Magazine
The inclusive mindset of the American dream makes the United States a welcoming destination for the variety of cultures that the world has to offer. As a Filipino who immigrated to the United States in 2000 and earned my American citizenship in 2018, I can personally attest to the opportunity within this country; as a result, I am more aware of the struggles and hardships that people endure in the hopes of leading a better life in the United States. The field of ethnic studies focuses on understanding the undeniable impact that these immigrants make on this country. The people involved in these studies may come from vastly different backgrounds, but their goal is always the same: to build upon the principles of freedom and independence that unite all Americans.
Conchas y Café: Bilingual Community Writing Workshops at Vernon – Leon H. Washington Jr. Memorial Branch Library, LAPL
Our weekly Conchas y Café Zine – Bilingual Community Writing Workshops are free and open to adults. This program offered by DSTL Arts, provides a 12-week creative writing workshop for adults of all ages. Participants learn more about creative writing, poetry, publishing, zine-making, and more, while receiving writing exercises and feedback on their work. Participants also have the opportunity to publish and present their work in a zine of writing produced through the program. A public reading and release party celebrates the culmination of each 12-week series.
Where: Vernon – Leon H. Washington, Jr. Memorial Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 25th
Time: 6 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 4504 S. Central Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90011
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/conchas-y-cafe-bilingual-community-writing-workshops
Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 11/25/19 – 12/01/19”
By Carolyn Neuhausen
FROM: The Argonaut
Loyola Marymount University writing instructor and rhetorical arts fellow Shonda Buchanan understands how abuse and self-hatred — the kind that ripples through families for generations — can set the tone for interpersonal relationships for decades, if not centuries.
Continue reading “LMU’S SHONDA BUCHANAN TELLS TRUER TALES OF AMERICAN HISTORY”
The Pasadena Landmark, Vroman’s, calls itself “Southern California’s oldest and largest independent bookstore,” turns a 125 years-old. It opened in 1894. Continue reading Pasadena Landmark Vroman’s, Southern California’s Oldest Bookstore, Celebrates 125th Anniversary
Diane Leslie’s Book Club: A Door in the Earth by Amy Waldman at Diesel Bookstore
Author Amy Waldman discusses and signs her new novel, A Door in the Earth at Diane Leslie’s Book Club..
This book is a about an idealistic young Afghan-American woman trapped between her ideals and the complicated truth. Galvanized by a book she reads in college by humanitarian Gideon Crane, sensitive student Parveen makes a pilgrimage to a remote village in the land of her birth to make a difference, only to find the many fabrications in the memoir and decide where her loyalties lie. The author reported form Afghanistan for the New York Times after 9/11, and has created a taut, propulsive novel about power, perspective, and idealism to reveal complicated truths in our living history.
NOTE: This is a ticketed event so check website for details.
Where: Diesel Bookstore, lower outdoor courtyard
Date: Monday the 18th
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Santa Monica, CA 90402
Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 11/18/19 – 11/24/19”
By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
FROM: LARB
Award-winning poet Shonda Buchanan honors multiple literary traditions in her breathtaking new memoir, Black Indian. An educator, freelance writer, and literary editor, Buchanan is a culture worker with deep, decades-long engagement in communities of color. Her work honors the complexity and diversity of these Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. At once Indigenous, Black Female, Speculative, Feminist, Womanist, Urban, Southern Gothic, and counter to the Tragic Mulatto stereotype in American literature, stage, and film, Black Indian is a quintessentially American narrative.
Continue reading “Locs in the Sweat Lodge: On Shonda Buchanan’s “Black Indian””
By Lynell George
FROM: Los Angeles Times
The sequence is as predictable as the season itself: The calendar reads “fall” but the thermometer registers 90-plus. The Santa Ana winds kick up. Wildfires zipper across the landscape. Once again Joan Didion whispers in the Southland’s collective ear.
Continue reading “Joan Didion’s California Captured in Sweeping New Collection”
By Brian Dunlap
The Poetry Salon has released the six episode of its Poetry Saloncast. This episode’s interview is with local poet Alexis Rhone Fancher, whose work has been described as blazing and frank and her submissions regimen ambitious. Fancher discusses her work-ethic and her ability to detach herself from her writing, even when writing about very personal subjects.
Continue reading “Episode Six of Poetry Salon’s Poetry Saloncast”
Andreina Perez & Tito, Piece of Heaven at Book Soup
Author Andreina Perez will present and sign her book, Tito, Piece of Heaven.
This is the story of an ordinary girl with no extraordinary abilities, on the contrary, she was quiet and lonely, her outfits were colorful to its maximum that the only thing that would stand out was the misery within the reflection in her eyes; only visible to those brave enough to see through her beyond what the eyes could reach. This ordinary girl without any ability is me: Amy.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Monday the 11th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/andreina-perez-discusses-and-signs-tito-peace-heaven
Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 11/11/19 – 11/17/19”
Los Angeles Literature 