Flor y Canto en el Barrio: A Celebration of Latino Poetry

Date: Thurs., July 24
Time: 8pm
Admission: FREE



Brave New Mundo
Featuring: Javier O Huerta, Alejandra Mojica, Marc Pinate/Tocayo and Las Manas Tres.

Join us at Galeria de la Raza, in San Francisco, one of six venues participating in the Flor y Canto en el Barrio kick off and Lit Crawl, on Thursday, July 24. Translated to mean "Flower and Song in the Neighborhood," the festival brings young, unpublished poets alongside authors such as two-time winner of the American Book Award, Alejandro Murguía, and San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman for poetry readings, workshops, and a special exchange of culture and history. "Flor y Canto is about the pursuit of peace through the celebration of poetry, art, culture, and friendship," said the event's curator and critically acclaimed poet Alejandro Murguía.

The Festival will begin on Thursday, July 24 with a kick-off party at 6:00pm in Balmy Alley (24th St. between Harrison and Folsom) and a Lit Crawl of both established and emerging poets. The Lit Crawl will take place at over six different venues on 24th Street (between Mission and Bryant). Poetry readings and workshops for various ages and interests will continue throughout Friday and Saturday, July 25 and 26. For locations of the poetry crawl or for more details visit the Friends' website at www.friendssfpl.org.


Thursday, July 24

Event 1:Festival kick-off party and Lit Crawl with young poets
6:00 pm; Balmy Alley, 24th St. between Harrison & Folsom; Lit Crawl locations include:

7:00 pm—"Other Voices/Many Americas"
Café La Boheme
3318 24th St.
(415) 643-0481
7:00 pm—"La Nueva Flor"
Philz Coffee
3101 24th St.
(415) 282-9155
7:00 pm—"El Corazon de la Misión"
Sundance Coffee
3000 24th St.
(415) 824-1706 8:00 pm—"Breaking Borders"
Accion Latina (El Tecolote Headquarters)
2958 24th St.
(415) 648-1045

8:00 pm—"Fuerza: From Sor Juana to the Mission"
L's Café
2871 24th St. 8:00 pm—"Brave New Mundo – Cutting Edge of the 21st Century"
Galería de la Raza
2857 24th St. @ Bryant
415.826.8009

Event 2:Reception for young poets
9:00 pm; Casa Sanchez, 2778 24th St



Contact: Katie Ambellan
(415) 626-7512 ext. 123
Katie@friendssfpl.org



Friday, July 25

Event 1: The Word From The Street (Tomas Riley of Youth Speaks hosts teen reading)
2:00 pm; Mission Branch Library, 300 Bartlett St. @ 24th St.

Event 2: Nuestra America I (Main Reading featuring six poets)
7:00 pm; Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission St.

Saturday, July, 26

Event 1: The Word Made Perfect: The Art and Craft of Translation (Translation reading/workshop)
2:00 pm; Mission Branch Library, 300 Bartlett St. @ 24th St.

Event 2: Nuestra America II (Main Reading featuring six poets)
7:00 pm; Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission St.

Featured Poets



v Lorna Dee Cervantes
v José Montoya
v Mamacoatl
v Roberto Vargas
v Jackie Mendez
v Alfredo Arteaga
v Nina Serrano
v Alejandro Murguía
v Cipactli
v Norman Zelaya
v Melissa Lozano
v Javier O Huerta
v Kim Shuck
v Francisco X Alarcon
v Victor Valle
v Naomi Quiñonez
v Marc Piñate
v Milta Ortiz
v Darren de Leon
v Las Manas Tres
v Alejandra Mojica
v Tomás Riley
v Barbara Jane Reyes
v Jack Hirschman
v Leticia Hernández
v Alfonso Texidor
v Catrióna Rueda Esquibel
v Jorge Argueta
v Janet J Cruz
v Adrian Arias
v Noelia Mendoza
v Walter Huracan Gomez

Amor Cubano

Mapping the Mission: Between Place and Memory in San Francisco's Latina/o Arts Community

DC has been great absolutely great. I spoke in two of Ana Patricia's classes yesterday and almost lost my voice from so much beautiful central american diasporic poetic dialogue. Did you know the dominant Latino Group in DC is Salvadorans? Pupusa-Eaters heaven! But tomorrow is the day. 8am east coast time this neardy hotness is going down! MC


The American Studies Association

Scheduled Time: Sat, Oct 13 - 8:00am - 9:45am Building/Room: Philadelphia Marriott / Room 415

Session Participants:
Session Organizer: Cary Cordova (Dickinson College (PA))
Chair: Cary Cordova (Dickinson College (PA))
Panelist: Yolanda Lopez (Artist)
Panelist: Maya Chinchilla (San Francisco State University (CA))
Panelist: John Leaños (Arizona State University (AZ))
Panelist: Ana Patricia Rodriguez (University of Maryland, College Park (MD))



Abstract:
To map San Francisco’s Mission District is to chart the meaning of “America Aquí.” As a pivotal site for Chicano and Latino civil rights community organizing since the 1960s, the neighborhood has served as a locus for generations of activists and artists from all parts of the Americas. As the birthplace of the widely known Galería de la Raza, the Mexican Museum, and the Mission Cultural Center, the aesthetics of the Mission have had a wide-reaching impact. Over several decades, the Mission arts scene has produced a vast array of posters, paintings, murals, films, music, multimedia projects, and performance. In the late 1990s, the rapidity of gentrification in the Mission spurred a wave of cultural production to preserve, commemorate, and historicize the meaning of the neighborhood. This roundtable panel will bring together a multigenerational mix of artists and scholars inspired by the Mission in their writing, thinking, aesthetics, activism, and practice.

All of the panelists are engaged in the use of diverse media and technologies to capture the spirit of a community in flux, but also to advocate for social change: panelist Yolanda Lopez is famous for her iconic contributions to Chicano art, from her “Self-portrait of the artist as the Virgin de Guadalupe,” to her contemporary digital murals series that mocks the trite understatement, “Women’s Work is Never Done”; panelist Rio Yañez, Lopez’s son, uses photography and animation to document the history and people of the Mission in a surreal, or “Ghetto-lomography” fashion; panelist John Jota Leaños embodies the definition of provocateur with his performances and multimedia presentations, frequently targeting the contemporary culture of surveillance and violence; panelist Maya Chinchilla is a spoken word artist and filmmaker whose work focuses on female empowerment through the arts; and both panelists Ana Patricia Rodriguez and Cary Cordova have dedicated their scholarship to documenting the many forms and twists of transnational Latino cultural production.

Our objective is to meditate on the meaning of the Mission, to explore the themes and ties that penetrate our works, and to contemplate how our creative and intellectual explorations can evolve in a place increasingly scarred by stories of physical and symbolic displacement. By bringing together different generations of scholars and artists, we will contextualize change over time, and illustrate the diverse perspectives, technologies, and methods that cross-pollinate in our work. We will contemplate the mainstream art world’s relatively recent cultivation of a “Mission School,” which both tends to displace the long trajectory of arts practices in the Mission, as well as accords the mantle of creativity to predominantly non-Latino artists. To talk about the history of art in the Mission opens the door to discussing the state of Latino and American art in the United States and the construction of Latinidad. This is a panel on the cross-currents between art and scholarship, between activism and aesthetics, between place and memory, and between the United States and the Americas.

I miss the mission