The 10th birthday of When the de la Cruz Family Danced, my 68th birthday, and other numbers
Today is my birthday and I’m 68 years old. Ten years ago today, I celebrated the publication of my first book When the de la Cruz Family Danced.* My father, to whom the book was dedicated, never got to read it. He had been dead eighteen years. He died the year I turned forty when…
Read MoreFarewell, Henry Darrow
The High Chaparral first aired in 1967. I was fourteen years old and a semi-regular viewer. When I watched, I watched for one reason – Henry Darrow who played Manolito Montoya. He was handsome, charismatic, and Mexican. Or rather, he played a Mexican on TV. Henry Darrow, born Enrique Delgado was Puerto Rican. What mattered…
Read MorePreparing to talk to Alberto Ríos
How does a non-poet prepare to interview a prolific and esteemed poet who has garnered national awards, was selected as the inaugural poet laureate of Arizona, and served as chancellor of the American Academy of Poets? With trepidation and fingers crossed that she doesn’t mess it up. Next month I’ll be interviewing prolific Chicano poet…
Read MoreShrinking our spaces, but not our selves
I’ve written about the house we used to live in both in fiction and for a live performance (2018 Ampersand Live, minute 18:26). It was our first house, which was also our last house, the fixer-upper that never quite got fixed up enough and in the last years that we occupied it, lost many of…
Read MoreA little boy walks toward the future …
I think about the future a lot lately, like every day, almost endlessly. For one thing, I turn 68 in a few months and the future is not as long or as far away as it once was. For another thing, I have a grandson now, and I wonder what the future means for him.…
Read MoreA fondless farewell, una búsqueda sin fin, and a reminder of the round-and-round of life
A few January notes. Bye bye, Trump I woke up at 5:00 am on January 21 without an alarm and an hour and a half before my usual time to spill out of bed after another night of ragged sleep. I realized I was up in time to see Trump’s departure from the White House.…
Read MoreDecember ends 2020 at last already
It’s time for some brief reflections on this pandemic year that nevertheless had its moments of grace and illumination for me as I hope it did for you. It goes without saying that it leaves lots of room for improvement. The dispirit of Christmas On my morning walk, I often pass a house that…
Read MoreReading books during a pandemic
There’s a terrible inequity in asking people to please read my new book Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories when I’ve been unable to read more than a few books since the pandemic disrupted our lives and unsettled our psyches. While many others found solace and refuge in books, my brain failed to connect with words…
Read MoreThe Pandemic Days of Our Lives
In which my new book of fiction launches amid the reunion of a young family separated by the pandemic, a marriage ceremony, and a first birthday. Plane travel We’re supposed to drive, but the fires up and down the West Coast mean unexpected closures of the interstate in some areas and lanes clogged with evacuees…
Read MoreArrivals
September was all about arrivals – three of them, all occurring within a ten-day span during a pandemic, with fires raging in the West, in a country swirling ever deeper into a shithole of its own making thanks to a morally bankrupt administration and, as been recently revealed though long suspected, a literally bankrupt unbillionaire…
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