Editor-in-Chief Brian Dunlap’s unpublished book review on Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo’s debut poetry collection “Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge,” originally written in 2017. “In poems of her family living in Boyle Heights and her Chavez Ravine poems, Bermejo brings this true Chicanx L.Á.—away from the overused tropes of a lack of history, of being without, of L.Á. is Hollywood—to the fore.” Continue reading Posada: Finding Home
A book review of San Gabriel Valley resident, poet, mother and teacher, Luivette Resto’s new collection “Living on Islands Not Found on Maps,” written by Compton writer Jenise Miller. Continue reading Navigating the In-Between: A Review of Luivette Resto’s “Living on Islands Not Found on Maps”
By Rachel Martin and Reena Advani
FROM: Morning Edition
In her new book, Chinese American poet Victoria Chang writes, “Shame never has a loud clang. The worst part of shame is how silent it is.”
Continue reading “‘Dear Memory’ digs into the shame accompanying immigrant silence”By Candice Yacono
FROM: Orange County Register
On any given day, you might find Susan Straight walking along the Santa Ana River or throwing darts at the local Elks lodge.
Continue reading “How Riverside Author Susan Straight Enbraced Family History For Latest Book”
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”
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 Janet Kinosian
FROM: L.A. Times
Certain books give off the sense that you won’t want them to end, so splendid the writing, so lyrical the stories. Such is the case with Southern California novelist Susan Straight’s new memoir, “In the Country of Women.”
By Daniel A. Olivas
FROM: Labloga.com
Nineteen years ago, a small independent press based in Pennsylvania—sadly now defunct—published my first book, a novella titled The Courtship of María Rivera Peña(Silver Lake Publishing). The story is loosely based on the migration of my paternal grandparents from Mexico to Los Angeles in the 1920s and follows the courtship, marriage, and family life of the cook Beto and the beautiful waitress María. Three years later, a longer, second edition was published under the same name but with a slightly different cover design. I am now exploring with a publisher whether we can publish a 20th anniversary edition that would include a scholarly introduction.
Continue reading “A few thoughts on adapting “The Courtship of María Rivera Peña” for the screen”
Los Angeles Literature 