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Does anyone ever ask how you choose the books you read? Probably not. Sadly, over the last forty years or so, I have seen a gradual decline in reading. NO INTEREST. That’s not news, but that’s not GOOD. I’m an ENGLISH TEACHER. When I ask my students where they find their books, they tell…
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In every beginning writing class that I’ve ever taken, I hear the advice, “Write what you know.” This sounds good, but it doesn’t always work. Often, you get so close to your subject, you can’t see the forest from the trees On the other hand, you can try to distance yourself from your subject…
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In the first or second week of each semester, I share Sandra Cisneros’s “Only Daughter,” with my composition classes. My students often connect with Sandra’s background. She beat the obstacles of racism, sexism, and poverty in her world to become both an influential writer and activist. Sandra’s childhood experience of being “the only daughter” proved…
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Fig. 1. "Caleña," I asked. I turned around and she planted a couple of kisses on my cheeks in greeting. [This is Marlon talking, from the novel Paradise Travel, meeting up with a traveling partner in NYC.] Holding on to my hands, she took a step backward to look at me, and I noticed…
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This Summer 2025, I have assigned a novel with my classes I recently plucked off my shelf here in Mexicali. It's called Paradise Travel, and it is written by Jorge Franco. I'm not giving any spoiler alerts, but it focuses upon the American Dream – two teen-age lovers, Marlon and Reina from Medellín, Colombia,…
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They told her not to come, but she came anyway. That's Bobby Kennedy on the left. That's President Kennedy on the right. And you know who that is in the middle – That's Marilyn Monroe. She had flown to New York to sing "Happy Birthday" to the president on his 45th birthday at Madison…
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I’m a big fan of Mexican crime writer Elmer Mendoza. Each time I read him, I read him TWICE: ONCE in English; and ONCE in Spanish. I have now read like five of his Narco-Lit novels; this counts for TEN on my shelf. Most of the Mendoza books I have read follow Detective Edgar “Lefty”…
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I know Chrissie Hynde from the seventies. In her Pretenders song, “Up the Neck,” Chrissie belts out, “Lust turns to anger, a kiss to a slug…” Up until then, I don’t think I had every seen a woman like that on stage before; in front of the band, her guitar slung low across her hips,…
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Rock stars come and go, but the Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan television show in February 1964 changed the world forever. Before Ed Sullivan, few people in this country had ever seen or heard the Beatles. This was before the internet. Television at the time offered maybe three to four channels. Ed Sullivan was a…
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Earlier this month I read a memoir about alcoholism that included the life and struggles of legendary playwright Tennessee Williams. The book, called “The Trip to Echo Spring,” written by Olivia Lange, shed light on hardcore drunk writers that despite their addictions were somehow able to produce some of the most brilliant literature we…