I just finished reading the book
Yo! by
Julia Alvarez. It was a bit hard to get into at first, especially since it has been like 6 months since I read
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. It's not just that- sometimes she writes from the perspective of an Anglo-American but the phrases that they say are Englishisms of Spanish language idioms! It gets me a bit confused and makes me wish I were reading the book in Spanish, even though it was written in English.
The book is about Yo (pronounced "Jo," or Yolanda (although yo means I in English, which attests to the biographical nature of this book and the one that preceded it). Each chapter is written from the perspective of a different person in Yo's life. I particularly enjoyed some chapters, such as the one by the maid's daughter, and her own mother, and...the best chapter was the stalker. It was the second to last chapter, with the last chapter being her dad tying everything back together. Her loved ones make her out to be the most inconsistent person around (more so than me!), so the structure makes sense. I would recommend this book to people more for the structure than for the writing or the story itself.
Anarchist Chick Seeks Fellow Anarchists to Organize Against Police Brutality
Check out this announcement from Books Not Bars:
[“No More Lost Lives” Memorial Sept. 5, 2005
This Labor Day, please join us for a very important and special memorial event.
Last year, on September 5, 2004, Dyron Brewer died in the CYA’s Chad youth prison.
We are marking this horrific event and honoring Dyron’s life with a mass memorial
and march. The “No More Lost Lives” memorial event will be held in Stockton (home
of the Chad prison) on Monday, September 5, 2005 from 12 PM to 3 PM...]
Ever heard of the
Stolen Lives Project? You'd almost think that Books Not Bars hasn't. But of course they have. And that really pisses me off.
I am always so offended when the folks at EBC/Books Not Bars/whatever organize events and don't inlcude October 22nd. I don't know if you know the history between Van Jones and the Mark Garcia family (I worked on that family's case for over a year before anyone in the Coalition told me! I was so pissed when I found out, cuz it's good to know these things), but apparently Van worked with the Coalition until shortly before I joined it, and basically his folks have spoken at our events since then but we are never invited to speak at theirs.
Doesn't No More Lost Lives sound a lot like the chant "No More Stolen Lives?"
I feel like this is the kind of event we need to have the walls at, but of course they are so out of date and we have no transportation and not enough people to set them up, and...
But basically, there should be a group in the Modesto area that's like October 22nd and is organizing to bring this issue out and not demonize people who are killed by the cops (the fallout after Andres Raya was killed comes to mind- that was a great chance to expose how bad the war is, and how he quite literally brought the war home...)
Ugh, I just get so frustrated how Rita can communicate so much with folks 5 hours away in Fresno but not want to push the issue of going to Stockton (~3 hours away, and we've got Danny Garcia in Modesto) and bringing the walls and the book and encouraging people to organize a demo for October 22nd... There is an anarchist group, DAAA, that does some PB-related work, but we don't communicate directly with them.
I think I am going to start really talking to people about getting together a local anarchist police brutality group that could support Stolen Lives.
-Mahtin
