Spitting Blood Like Truth: Support Generation BOCA.

I'm pushing about ten years here in Los Angeles doing the community based queer Latina/o arts organizing thing that continues to move, baffle, inspire, and exhaust me. Me da vida. I love it. I hate it. But I'm never indifferent to it.

I believe in making space for queer Latino/as living in Los Angeles to share creative work at an emerging level that often goes unseen and unheard. Oftentimes that's the least of our troubles in the cacophony of violence that surrounds our realities as either gender-non-conforming outlaws trying to make a home in the communities we are from. We remember Gwen Araujo. Lawrence King, presente. Sakina Gunn, RIP. These youth did not have the chance to spit their truth and so we, as poets and artists, render their struggles poetically to remember.

As a poet, writer and performer coming into my 30s, I look back at the amazing artists and activists that stepped aside and helped me up onto their shoulders so that I too could have the space to spit my truth. It only makes sense that I do the same for an exciting group of folks that have survived the post-adolescent/current queer adolescence where we make stunning discoveries about ourselves and the worlds of our making.

I hope my straight-leaning, straight-acting, hetero to the last drop readers can pause and think about the LGBT gente in their lives--have you ever thought about the struggles that they face as they remain true to themselves while occupying spaces with family, friends, and institutions like church and school. Have you ever stopped some bullshit language flying around the schoolyards or did you let the slap in the face go unpunished? Did you ever not talk to somebody because the gender line was crossed in such a way that...ni porque decirlo?

If you're new to this struggle, then welcome. I hope we can become the best of allies. If you're at all interested in learning more about young brothers and sisters currently trying to fight it out in the name of self-determination and puro empowerment whilst having a good time then check it: BOCA ESCUPIENDO SANGRE // MOUTH SPITTING BLOOD: Queer Latina/o Writers Under 30 is going to break it down and break it hard like many of our queer corazones when too little is never enough. This is the generation that spits blood like truth. Boca Escupiendo Sangre comes from Matriz Sin Tumba O: "el baño o de la basura ajena," a poem by the ferocity that is Gloria Anzaldua from her ever important text, Borderlands. This poem tells us that even as we die we crave and dream ourselves into a world worth our beauty, that sees us as we should see each other.

This weekend I'm happy to announce that San Jose-based slam poet, Yosimar Reyes, will be sharing work from his totally DIY-style chapbook, For Colored Boys Who Speak Softly. Yosi holds the title for the 2005 as well as the 2006 South Bay teen Grand SLAM Champion, has been featured in the Documentary 2nd Verse: the Rebirth of Poetry. (2ndversefilm.com) and is published in Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry (Floricanto Press). His words have open up concerts for Carlos Santana in his latest endeavor Architects of a New Dawn, a multimedia project launched earlier this year. (Aoand.com).

I have organized two chapbook parties in two counties where Yosi will share the platform and microphone with a stellar line-up of young queer latina/o writers in the Los Angeles area:

Rubin Rodriguez
Lils Pancha Gonzalez
Emmanuelle Neza Leal-Santillan
Junue Millan
Genevieve Flores
+MAS MAS MAS

BOCA ESCUPIENDO SANGRE / MOUTH SPITTING BLOOD --> OC Edition
April 3, 2009, FRIDAY | 8pm
@ BREATH OF FIRE LATINA THEATER
310 W. 5th Street (2nd Floor)
Santa Ana, CA 92701
http://www.breathoffire.org/

BOCA ESCUPIENDO SANGRE / MOUTH SPITTING BLOOD --> DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES
April 4, 2009 SATURDAY | 8pm
@ COMPACTSPACE
105 E. 6th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90014
http://www.compactspace.com/

These events are free but please make it a point to support the young artististic endeavors by purchasing a chapbook and donating to both these amazing art spaces in both counties. Nos vemos here and forever.

C/S

Raquefella

Boca Escupiendo Sangre // Mouth Spitting Blood : Queer Latina/o Writers Under 30 Share WORK!

DEAR FRIENDS & COMMUNITY:
I'm really excited to announce these two upcoming events in both Santa Ana and Downtown Los Angeles. They will feature the 20yr old genius slam poet YOSIMAR REYES from San Jose, California, whom just self-published his chapbook FOR COLORED BOYS WHO SPEAK SOFTLY. I have organized two chapbook parties April 3+4, 2009 in two counties where YOSIMAR will share the platform and microphone with a stellar line-up of young queer latina/o writers in the Los Angeles area:

Rubin Rodriguez
Lils Pancha Gonzalez
Emmanuelle Neza Leal-Santillan
Junue Millan
Genevieve Flores
Xuan Carlos Espinoza Cuellar
+MAS MAS MAS

BOCA ESCUPIENDO SANGRE / MOUTH SPITTING BLOOD --> OC Edition
April 3, 2009, FRIDAY
@ BREATH OF FIRE LATINA THEATER
310 W. 5th Street (2nd Floor)
Santa Ana, CA 92701
http://www.breathoffire.org/

BOCA ESCUPIENDO SANGRE / MOUTH SPITTING BLOOD --> DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES
April 4, 2009 Saturday
@ COMPACTSPACE
105 E. 6th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90014
http://www.compactspace.com/

These events are free but please make it a point to support the young artististic endeavors by purchasing a chapbook and donating to both these amazing art spaces in both counties.

Tell your people about it!




YOSIMAR REYES BIOGRAPHY

From the Mountains of Guerrero, Mexico comes Yosimar Reyes, a Two-Spirit Poet/Activist Based out of San Jose, CA. His style has been described as "a brave and vulnerable voice that shines light on the issues affecting Queer Immigrant Youth and the many disenfranchised communities in the U.S and throughout the world."

Yosimar’s distinct style has managed to get him to perform from the Bay Area to New York City (always Representing East Side San Jose and his beautiful Mexico).

He holds the title for the 2005 as well as the 2006 South Bay teen Grand SLAM Champion, has been featured in the Documentary 2nd Verse: the Rebirth of Poetry. (2ndversefilm.com) And published in Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry (Floricanto Press) His words have open up concerts for Carlos Santana in his latest endeavor Architects of a New Dawn, a multimedia project launched earlier this year. (Aoand.com)

He is currently touring his self-published chapbook For Colored Boys Who speaks softly…


When he is not rocking the stage with his Diva attitude you catch Yosimar waiting for the bus and sharing PALABRA with his Abuelita always breaking it down hood and speaking from a community spirit.

He currently lives in East Side San Jose.

Hipster Anxieties Abound: I finally saw MfM

Thank you, Ernest Hardy, for taking me to school and tipping me off to Medicine for Melancholy.

(*Sigh*)

Yesterday I booked it hard through the Redline to the 2 bus down Sunset in West Hollywood trying desperately to get to the 3:10pm showing of Barry Jenkins' emotional stinger of a flick at the Sunset 5. I got there on-time and waited for my friend, Shizu, to hurry up the steps. No color people time for us. We roll into Theater 3 only to be subjected to 15 more minutes of previews. So far so good.

Medicine for Melancholy is a really good film with a lot of good things going for it. I highly recommend it to anyone that went and saw and thought they loved Danny Hoch's gentrification show. MfM brings the tensions around authenticity, blackness, gentrification and class to a boil in a quiet storm of unsaturated colors. There's no white guy shouting people of color characters into your already burdened consciousness with skull snaps and the utmost of hip-hop ironies in the background.

Basically, we meet Micah and Jo in the first 45 seconds coming out of their hook-up hipster hangover. How funny that it transpires between the seemingly only two black people at the white hipsters loft party--complete with a white guy wearing tight cut-off corduroy pants offering the sheepish walkers of shame some cereal before heading out. Is it the site where the category of black truly empties?

Then we see the courting session begin because boy unicorn can't let go of girl unicorn just yet. When can you be assured that you will meet another unicorn in the sad worlds of your making?

I couldn't help but wonder about their choices in clothing and gearless bicycles, thinking to myself that I, too, would like to have a track jacket with fighting roosters on it to match my tattoos. Or that I would totally date a woman that screened female directors' names on t-shirts. Am I revealing too much here?

It sort of has a "each one, teach one" vibe about it with boy identity-checking girl and girl resisting labels in such a way that will appeal to all my essentialist revolutionary peoples yet is anchored by a certain cynicism making the rounds with the more angst-riddled existentialists de colour. But it's really about two people trying to connect but end up unloading their racialized anxieties in a city where black people make up only 7% of its population.

I really enjoyed the moments where it's just the ambivalence wrapped in giggling, glances and goosebumps taking hold (on a carousel, at the organic food co-op) while society is drowned out by the music and the identity politics are temporarily shelved. The kind of moment propelled by curiosity and chemistry--those little luxuries rarely afforded to complicated people of color on film. These transcendent moments are ever ephemeral but when they occur I appreciate it because pretty soon the anger will take back the reins and I remember exactly where my place is in the already overwhelming schema.

Anyway, here's a quick excerpt taken from an interview with Barry Jenkins on blackvoices.com:

Why shoot the film in black and white?

BJ: That was one of the original discussions I had with the cinematographer, my buddy James Laxton. We wanted the visuals to portray San Francisco,and the first thing we decided to do was to capture the image that would best display the emotional mood of the characters in relation to the city of San Francisco. It's not completely black and white. It's about 93 percent saturated. In a way, it reflects the small population of African Americans in the city. There is some color in the film, when the characters are being more intimate and are talking about politics and race.

I often forget that Shizu is from San Francisco/Mission District and post-film and over garden burgers she shared her own frustrations with a city that has no place for kids of color trying to listen to Bloodcat Love and Oh No! Oh My! amongst their own. It is hard not to feel blessed (for lack of a better affective state) to live in Los Angeles, where you could find and make a ghetto in your own image, readjusting the center to reflect the true majority. Shizu and I both agreed that the music was pretty phenomenal and that it would suck to only get to enjoy it in white-dominated spaces.

Lightbulbs - The Answering Machine

New Years Kiss - Casiotone For The Painfully Alone

No One Needs To Know - The Changes

I Have No Sister - Oh No! Oh My!

I'm jamming to the soundtrack right now. Are you mad? Do you hate me? Do you feel overshadowed by my tragic hipness?

Heh heh, I thought so...