Yours truly, Maegan la Mala, is a featured poet at one of the events and will attend as many events as I can (Before I was Blogger, activist, and Mami, I was a poet).

Hope to see some of you there.

Vega Yunqué moved to New York from Puerto Rico in the mid 1940s. He was the stepfather of singer Suzanne Vega. He was divorced and was not very close to his relatives, said Colchie [his agent].

The feisty writer, who was the director of the Clemente Soto Velez from 1993 to 2000, managed to alienate a lot of people throughout the years though lately he had been patching things up.

“He was a brilliant, conflictive man,” said media activist Marta García.

His last novel was a comic false memoir about a Jewish woman who meets a Puerto Rican Romeo and falls in love. It had been tentatively titled “Rebecca Horowitz, Puerto Rican Sex Freak" but publication was cancelled by the publisher recently, said Colchie, who’d been trying to find another publisher.

Edited to add: Caro over at Soundtaste has an interesting post up about her last conversation with Vega. I had no idea he was considered machista. I've been to Clemente Soto Velez a few times (I dance with Junot Diaz there YEARS ago at a fundraiser) but I am sad to say I've never read a book by Ed Vega. Time to start I guess.
Via / NY Daily News

As it is the Latin American tradition, El Museo Gala’s fifteenth birthday will be celebrated in the style of a quinceañero; this is a coming-of-age party for a daughter turning fifteen. For this gala, guests are invited to wear white or black (with long gloves and tiaras optional).
El Museo will honor Dr. Mario Vargas Llosa, Ambassador Paul L. Cejas and Mrs. Trudy Cejas, and Mr. Angel Collado-Schwarz of Fundación Voz del Centro. Special guests will include Miss Universe, Riyo Mori; Miss Teen USA, Hilary Cruz; and the newly crowned Miss USA, and they will be wearing their tiaras.

What makes this collection unique is that while the three poets are linked, their voices are all so different.

Full disclosure : I am friends with the authors of the book and the book was dedicated to my younger daughter, but as a poet, I know good poetry when I see it and this new wave of poetry should be read, embraced, and allowed to fly as astronauts do.

If you would like to purchase the book contact Diego Vargas at llgante77@yahoo.com.

Isabel Allende answers this question be connecting generations through stories and history.

As I mentioned earlier this week, I first read this book the summer before I moved to Chile, in 1996. And the book still makes me cry today.

Purchase Isabel Allende's Paula here.

"This Instant and This Triumph" an introductory essay that puts the current women of color publishing movement into historical context by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

INCITE: Women of Color Against Violence's crucial The Revolution Will Not Be Funded reviewed by the strategically fly organizer PAULINA HERNANDEZ!

Girlchild Press's new anthology Just Like A Girl: A Manifesta reviewed by the most talented and necessary fiction writer of our generation DANIELLE EVANS! (I should note- La Mala is in here too!)

Hermana Resist's collaborative 'zine The MAIZ Chronicles reviewed by BROWNFEMIPOWER!

Check it out, buy it, and support.

Via / Kitchen Table : Women of Color Pressed for Knowledge

Linguistic Terrorism
Deslenguadas. Somos los del espanol deficiente. We are your linguistic nightmare, your linguistic aberration, your linguistic mestisaje, the subject of your burla. Because we speak with tongues of fire we are culturally crucified. Racially, culturally, and linguistically somos herfanos-we speak an orphan tongue.

Just a beautiful book.

Buy it here

A mother with a daughter in a Johnston County high school cites Julia Alvarez’s novel about four sisters who must adjust to life in the U.S. after fleeing the Dominican Republic as inappropriate for the high school age group.

"Muchos alfas posteriores, frente al grupo que hace 44, el coronel Aureliano Buendía hacía 60 de una tarde remota en que su progenitor le hace 26 a 62 el hielo'', are the first lines of the novel translated by police officers in the city of Nezahualcóyotl, on the outskirts of Mexico City as part of a program to promote reading among officers.

Venezuela's El Universal says that the Neza cops each did a part of the translation, and because of the project the "identify a lot more [with the book] and see it as something that's our own."

Via / El Universal (Venezuela)

Image via Alfr3do's Flickr

The book is a response to last year’s popular The Dangerous Book for Boys. While I take issue with the implied notion that boys can always be dangerous while girls can be daring, in a one off sort of way, the book provides songs, activities, and lessons including female heroes in history (note none are Latina although there are a few Spaniards), secret note-passing skills, science projects, friendship bracelets, double dutch, cats cradle, the perfect cartwheel or how to be a spy (espionage is cool I guess).

It gets worse:

Forget the exhausted argument that no movie adaptation can ever match the pleasure of reading: Once fans of Latin American novelist Gabriel García Márquez get a load of the stink-burger Newell has made out of this much-adored book, there'll be rioting, firebombs and general mayhem. Or at least many indignant snorts.

Faithful to the outline of the novel but emotionally and spiritually anemic, it slides into the void between art and entertainment, where well-intended would-be screen epics often land with a thud.

So I won't be checking it out tonight. I'll rely on you readers with a stronger stomach to tell me what you think of it. Leave your reviews in the comments section and please convince that I am making a mistake.

Via / Salon and NY Times