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Mangos With Chili Presents Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead in the Bay Area Tonite & Nov. 15th

7 Nov 2009

MWC_Front_Vert2 Porque we remember our loved ones from our familias and community everyday and porque the mujeres that are involved in the creation of this project are beautiful and kick culo.

Mangos With Chili: the floating cabaret of QTPOC bliss, dreams, sweat, sweets & nightmares
proudly presents the premiere of:

BELOVED: A Requiem for Our Dead
because we refuse to forget you

Featuring:
Nalo Hopkinson
Charleston Chu
E. Rose Sims
SoliRose
Nico Dacumos
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Ms. Cherry Galette
and more

With video by Storm Florez, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Kortney Ryan Ziegler, and more

November 6th and 7th, 8PM
The Lab
2948 16th St
San Francisco, CA 94103
$12-16, no one turned away for lack of funds

November 15th, 8PM
Hechos en Califas Festival
La Pena
3105 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA
$12-16, no one turned away for lack of funds

In this highly anticipated premiere of the newest Mangos With Chili production, we invite you to join us at the crossroads for a night of conjuring, memory, mourning and celebration. Through elegies of story, song, dance, drag and more, the Bay Area’s noted and notorious queer and trans people of color performance crew will honor our erased, fallen and slain queer and trans people of color family lost to hate crimes, war, colonization, and genocide. We will celebrate our queer legacies and the ways we’ve found to survive through the beautiful resistance of memory, and whisper stories about grief, loss, healing, sweet darkness, and walking between worlds towards rebirth.

Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead will feature the brilliance and blaze of renowned Caribbean speculative fiction storycrafter Nalo Hopkinson; multimedia invocation performance art heart wrench by playwright and poet Nico Dacumos; In Memoriam, a new collaborative dance theater work by Charlston Chu and Cherry Galette; ancestral prayer/spoken love letter by writer and theater artist Rose E. Sims; a mixed media jazz dance cabaret extravaganza by Charleston Chu, an autobiographical musical journey traversing the Middle East and African Diaspora by virtuoso trio SoliRose; the powerful truth renderings of queer Sri Lankan writer and performer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha; and the premiere of Moorish Salt a burlesque-dance theater/ritual performance art piece by fusion dance artist and theater-maker Cherry Galette.

Mangos With Chili is a Bay Area based arts organization committed to showcasing high quality performance of life saving importance by queer and trans artists of color to audiences in the Bay Area and beyond. Founded in 2006 by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ms Cherry Galette, Mangos With Chili has performed to sold out houses across North America, wowing audiences in world class theaters, underground performance spaces, bars, and campus halls, with their high intensity, breathtaking performance, politics, and storytelling craft, reflecting the lives and stories of queer and trans people of color, while making art that speaks out in resistance to the daily struggles around silence, isolation, homophobia, and violence that QTPOC face. Mangos With Chili is a fiscally sponsored project of the San Francisco based arts organization CounterPULSE, which provides space and resources for emerging artists and cultural innovators: www.counterpulse.org. Mangos With Chili is supported by the Horizons Foundation, the Astraea Foundation, and the generous support of our community of donors.

Both venues are wheelchair accessible. The show contains material of adult nature. Parental discretion advised. Please refrain from wearing scented products to ensure that audience members and performers with multiple chemical sensitivity can attend.

For more information:
mangos.with.chili@gmail.com
mangoswithchili.wordpress.com

Who’s Your Mama : Event at Food for Thought in Amherst on November 13th

11:41 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Books| Events| Family| Women| boston · 1 Comment

4 Nov 2009

223 I met the organizer of this event, TK, at the Allied Media Conference this past summer. Another amazing mami media maker puts together an amazing event. Those in the Amherst area represent and support.

NOVEMBER 13, 2009 * 7PM
Food for Thought Books

Please join us for a very special evening of women’s voices and responses to benefit To Tell you the Truth. Featuring Who’s Your Mama: Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers (Edt. by Yvonne Byone) Contributors: JLove Calderon (We Got Issues!/ That White Girl), Marcella Runell Hall Hall (Hip Hop Education Guidebook) and Marla Teyolia (Empowered Mama!). On site childcare provided.

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Monday Morning Musica y Moviemiento : All the Ladies Say

2 Nov 2009

The history of hip hop is often told in a male voice and from a male point of view. The role of mujeres, from MC’s to B Girls, is told as an aside. Enter the legendary Rokafella, a figure I knew growing up, as an example of fierceness, presenting a new documentary that highlights the lives of six street dancers exploring motherhood, sexual tension, femininity versus masculinity and the rap industry/mainstream images.

This coming Saturday at BAAD!, in the Bronx, NY you can catch a sneak peek screening of All the Ladies Say. The event includes performances by guest artists and photos by Vanessa Bahmani and Emily Lady Caprice. This event is a fundraiser to support the completion of the film and will be followed by an after party with an open jam.

Click here to RSVP

Why Does Latino in America Equal Spanish Being Criminalized and Pushed Aside

28 Oct 2009

It’s not just immigration that is being criminalized as some people have commented. Any trace of Latinidad deems people as targets for varying forms of harassment ranging from traffic stops, to tickets, to jails, to beat downs, to deaths. While some think that skin color alone can “mark” someone as other, and in this case Latino, language and varying levels of accents also brand. Just look at how much time is spent in this discussion on Latino in America on the issue of assimilation, acculturation and the role of language.

The issue always is how can you speak Spanish and still assimilate/aculturate with the ultimate goal seemingly being not being labeled/identified/called out as “other”. If you are going to insist on speaking Spanish then for everyone’s sake do it at home, where no one else can see or hear you or else face the consequences:

Let us not forget that we started 2009 with someone getting physically attacked while having a cell phone conversation in Spanish.

Sometimes we don’t even need language. Just having a name that could remind someone that you are Latino is enough to get you fired.

Monday Morning Movie : Voces Soy Andina

6:45 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Media| Movies| Peru| TV| dance · 4 Comments

26 Oct 2009

The more I think about the series Latino in America, the more comments I read here and on other sites, and the more I seek out real lives of Latinos and Latin Americans. Who needs cable when I found another documentary in the PBS Voces series, Soy Andina.

What really resonated with me about this film was how the young Peruana went to Peru and struggled with being confronted about her identity. Because she was born in the United States, she was viewed as gringa not as the Peruana she felt she was. This was done through exploring the folkloric dances of the “home of her heart”.

From Hispanic Heritage Month to Hateful Halloween

9:00 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Culture| Shopping| history| holidays · 7 Comments

18 Oct 2009

As a Latina mami, I think I hate September through November more than any other time of the year. Hispanic Heritage Month, Columbus Day, Halloween, and Thanksgiving provide way more damn teaching moments than I care to experience and the worst part of it is that I’m not teaching my children, but rather those charged with educating them, why certain things are just plain old fucked up.

So far, with la Mapu, my older daughter, in a new school, I haven’t had to send notes to her teacher or make copies of articles, as I have done in the past, about why it’s wrong to teach what a great guy Columbus was. For Latino Heritage Month, she wrote about Chile and it’s U.S. sponsored 9-11-73 military coup and was praised. I was pleased to hear that there was an actual discussion of how the conquistadors contributed to what amounted to Native American genocide. There was discussion not of the contributions the Europeans brought to the not so new world but rather of the diseases they brought.

Now comes Halloween. Now I love Halloween. It’s always been one of my favorite holidays. With a long family history of good relationships with muertos, it was more about dressing up in fanciful costumes, begging for candy, and decorating the house with carved pumpkins. I don’t ever remember thinking that it was ok for me to dress up as an “Indian Princess”, a stereotypical Mexican (or a Puerto Rican for that matter), and sure it sure as hell wasn’t ok for me to dress up as an “illegal alien”. I was a smurf, a vampire, a poodle skirted 1950’s girl, and a devil. I even wanted to be he-man one year because I was obsessed with He-Man pero that’s another post. My kids have been cats, hot dogs, turtles, pirates, dead punk zombies, mimes, dinosaurs, skeletons and ghosts. As if the racist costumes that have me pretty much boycotting most Halloween shops wasn’t enough, there’s a lack of appropriate tween girl costumes. My 12 year and I, thanks to my mom, have put together a pretty awesome costume but that came after hours of being disgusted by having to treat my daughter like a baby or a slut.

And then it’s only a hop, skip and a jump to thanks for nothing day or as I always used to hear Tiokasin Ghosthorse on WBAI say, “There goes the neighborhood day”.

What’s in a Name? New Mexico Hotel Owner Fires Workers Over Latino Names.

9:35 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Culture| New Mexico| history| language · 4 Comments

14 Oct 2009

According to my great-aunt Lucy (que en paz descanse), my last name, the name my daughters carry as well, means that I can be traced in Spanish language history books to Spanish language conquistadores. The last name my older daughter sometimes uses (legally she can’t because of her “bastard” status), reveals that she is Mapuche. Pero what if I had to be Maegan Ortz, as some people have pronounced my last name, or if my daughters’ Latina first and last names cost them their way of living? In Taos, New Mexico, which held a few languages before English, I’m sure, a hotel owner fired some of his employees because of their names.

What I find interesting about Whitten (shall we shorten his name to “White”), is how much this is about his comfort and his history. For example, he talks about him not being from the area and him not being of “Spanish” background and how he wanted English only spoken in his presence. So it becomes about everyone adapting to him and respecting what I perceive as his “fear” of being spoken about and about making sure that employees know their place, below and subservient to him. Whitten likens his employees to spoiled, ungrateful children and he the benevolent boss.

Via / Santa Fe New Mexican, Mi Blog es tu Blog

Sweet D’Cadencia at Terraza 7 Train Cafe, NYC Last Night

1:33 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Arts| Culture| Music| New York City| Women · No Comments

8 Oct 2009

Last night amigo Diego Liriko released his first poetry collection, Arte Bestial. Because of sleeping toddlers I missed the actual reading portion of the evening at Terraza 7 Train Cafe here in Queens, NYC. Pero I did arrive in time to catch Sweet D’Cadencia, a trio of mujeres mixing poesia y musica.

Sweet D’Cadencia Performing at the Release of Diego Liriko’s Arte Bestial from VivirLatino on Vimeo.

Sweet D’Cadencia, at Terraza (7) Train Cafe, Queens, NYC , October 7th, 2009

Sweet D’Cadencia Performing at the Release of Diego Liriko’s Book, Arte Bestial from VivirLatino on Vimeo.

October 7th, 2009, Terraza 7 Train Cafe, Queens, NYC

Sweet D’Cadencia Parte 3 Performing at the Release of Diego Liriko’s Book, Arte Bestial from VivirLatino on Vimeo.

Knowing more makes you stupid

1:10 pm By la Macha · Bilingualism| Education| Immigration| children · 6 Comments

7 Oct 2009

One of my biggest pet peeves about anti-immigration pro-nativist rhetoric is how it has created this universal idea in U.S. culture about what “stupid” really is, especially in the area of language. Specifically, if you don’t speak English, you are actually (among other things) stupid. Irritating logic to say the least, but somewhat understandable how easily racism can twist lack of comprehension into stupidity.

What is beyond fathomable–what just destroys my faith in humanity every time I hear it, is the idea that being *bilingual* (or speaking more than one language), means you are stupid. Or “lagging behind.” Or somehow unable to keep up with the world or simply unprepared for life.

Witness: This very interesting clip from CNN that showcases a white family that decided to send their white children to a school that teaches it’s kids in Spanish. Which means that the kids are fluently bilingual before they graduate.

Notice how many times the reporter let us know that the kids are not “lagging behind?” And that there is a waiting list to get into the school? And that, holy Jesus, it’s actually a GOOD thing to know more? That when you know more, you are actually SMARTER?

I’ve said it a thousand times, and I’ll say it again here. Only in the Good Ol’ U.S. of A. could the population be so blinded by racism that we actually refuse to be educated in the attempt to ‘be smart.”

Only here could we honestly take pride in and form a national identity around ignorance.

Arte Bestial Presentation Tonight in NYC

6:49 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Books| New York City · Comments Off

7 Oct 2009

DIEGO-LIRICOsmall
My friend, Diego Liriko, presents his first poetry collection tonight in Queens. It’s amazing collection touching on themes of love, poetry, lust, and the animals inside all of us. Try and come through if you are in the NYC area.

(full disclosure: I translated the collection from Spanish into English)

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