Meet The Writers: Lupe Mendez & Kathryn Vomero Santos
Join us for an evening on the art of book smuggling and mind-altering prose and poetry. We are thrilled to celebrate the release of two books that will add to the legacy of the Librotraficante movement.
This forms part of The Global Reading Series, funded in part by The Brown Foundation.
Shakespeare in Tongues by Kathryn Vomero begins by delving into the work of the Librotraficantes. Prayer Holding Night: New & Selected Works by Lupe Mendez emanates from the imagination of one of the co-founders of the Librotraficante Caravan.
Professor Tony Diaz, El Librotraficante, and founder of Nuestra Palabra, serves as Master of Ceremonies for this evening of contraband prose.
Kathryn Vomero Santos is Associate Professor of English at Trinity University, USA. She is a co-founder of the award-winning Borderlands Shakespeare Colectiva and the co-editor of several books, including The Bard in the Borderlands: An Anthology of Shakespeare Appropriations en La Frontera (with Katherine Gillen and Adrianna M. Santos).
Lupe Mendez made his literary debut on the stage of Nuestra Palabra. He has gone on to become the Texas Poet Laureate. Prayer Holding Night: New & Selected Works forms part of TCU’s Poet Laureate Series. He is also the co-founder of Tintero Projects, the poetry editor for The Texas Observer, and Poetry Editor of Huizache.
Nuestra Palabra will provide book sales of both works. Buy your copy, get it signed by the authors. Each purchase supports Latino publishers and writers, and helps Nuestra Palabra continue to give back to the community.
In addition, you will hear from new and rising voices, with an exhibit of Latino Visual art and Latino books.
Admission is free.
RSVP in LUMA, check in that evening, and stay. You will be entered in a drawing for banned books. Winner must be present and down for cultura.
Shakespeare in Tongues interrogates the popular conflation of “the language of Shakespeare” with English by examining the role Shakespeare’s works have played in overlapping histories of colonialism, slavery, and migration that continue to shape the linguistic cultures of the United States.
Prayer Holding Night: New & Selected Works ranges from excerpts from Mendez’s collection. Why I Am Like Tequila to new poems featuring redacted poems based on real-life press releases that add profound meaning to press releases by Texas officials, to homages to Galveston and the ocean.
Professor Tony Diaz, El Librotraficante, is the author of The Tip of The Pyramid: Cultivating Community Cultural Capital and The Aztec Love God.
The 2012 Librotraficante Caravan, which smuggled into Tucson the books in the prohibited Chicano Studies Curriculum banned by Arizona officials, was founded by Tony Diaz, Laura Razo, Bryan Parras, Liana Lopez, and Lupe Mendez.
To stock your under ground library, visit: www.NuestraPalabra.org
Parking info:
Trinity University - Dicke Hall, #104.
1 Trinity Place, San Antonio, Texas 78212
Parking map: https://www.trinity.edu/directory/campus-map.
Park either in the Laurie Auditorium parking garage, Lot G, or in the Alamo Stadium Lo
Sponsors:
Borderlands Shakespeare Colectiva
The Law Office of Carolina Ortuzar-Diaz, PLLC
The BIPOC Arts and Network Fund - BANF
Librotraficante
Email us to get involved: [email protected]