In her own words...
In the Fall of 2007 I resigned from my 19 year tenured position at CU Boulder as Associate Professor of English in order to return to San Francisco following the death of my father, the artist Luis Cervantes, in on order to help out with the family community arts business, Precita Eyes Muralists Center in The Mission District and found the Mission Poetry Center near where I was born and my father lived. I had divorced and we planned to sell our house. Go this website to help
Then the economy tanked, hitting California higher education hard. Jobs for me at UC Berkeley and Santa Cruz were affected by the hiring freeze and I was soon laid off from my adjunct teaching job at SFSU in Ethnic Studies.
I resigned from my position in order to cash in what I could of my retirement to buy a prefab house on a mobile home lot in Pacifica. It seemed like the ideal retirement/housing solution and the only affordable option for myself and my adolescent son in the Bay Area. In a case yet to be litigated, I lost the house to the lot owners and their lawyer who were pressuring me to sell to them and forcibly evicted during the school year.
I am now essentially homeless, but staying with a good friend in a tiny 1 bedroom in Berkeley while storing my stuff in 3 locations not including Boulder where my son, now 18 lives and attends high school without me. I need just enough cash to tide me over until next Fall when I'm sure I'll be teaching again at my level. (I don't use or have credit cards.) I need first and last month's rent plus deposit and moving expenses as I don't drive which makes it much harder and more expense for me without a place and spread out across the Bay. Any donation you can spare at this time will be noted and repaid in some way or another when I am able.
I really need a place to work and most importantly to organize my files: a home. It has been difficult to work and apply for teaching jobs or even keep up my reading schedule and I have lost jobs reading my poetry as I've been without internet access or phone service in order to return contracts and forms; even my calendar and agenda book is locked up in a storage unit I haven't had access to yet.
So any help you can give will be much appreciated in this dire time. I feel place-poor but poetry-rich, and as soon as I can set up my printers and scanners and computers I can share some of my many writing and other projects with you. For over a dozen years I was a publisher/editor/printer of an independent press, MANGO Publications and published the first work of many of the Chicana/o, Latina/o and other writers of color and "experience" such as Sandra Cisneros, Alberto Rios, Jimmy Santiago Baca, James Brown, Ray Gonzalez, Ana Castillo, Luis Urrea, Sherman Alexie and others: all with the clause "All rights revert back to author upon publication."
Please help pass this page around and email this url to friends of yours and mine who may be able to help. I know many people teach and have taught my work. The sooner I have a place to work again, the sooner I'll have work to sell. I have a new book of poetry due from Wings Press next Spring, SUEÑO: 30-Something Of The Cruelest and I've been finishing a young adult book set in The Mission as well as my novel and two screenplays. I also have several other poetry manuscripts and non-fiction projects.
If you know me, you know I'm private and proud, and I don't ask for favors or money. Now I am asking. Maybe you or someone you know has a sublet or housesit situation in San Francisco, Berkeley, San Jose, preferably for a year or more; that would help a lot! I'm counting every nickle to pay my phone and storage.
Sincerely,
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Poet, Professor, Philosopher, Publisher, Editor, Printer
http://www.pleasefund.com/pages/5743
In the Fall of 2007 I resigned from my 19 year tenured position at CU Boulder as Associate Professor of English in order to return to San Francisco following the death of my father, the artist Luis Cervantes, in on order to help out with the family community arts business, Precita Eyes Muralists Center in The Mission District and found the Mission Poetry Center near where I was born and my father lived. I had divorced and we planned to sell our house. Go this website to help
Then the economy tanked, hitting California higher education hard. Jobs for me at UC Berkeley and Santa Cruz were affected by the hiring freeze and I was soon laid off from my adjunct teaching job at SFSU in Ethnic Studies.
I resigned from my position in order to cash in what I could of my retirement to buy a prefab house on a mobile home lot in Pacifica. It seemed like the ideal retirement/housing solution and the only affordable option for myself and my adolescent son in the Bay Area. In a case yet to be litigated, I lost the house to the lot owners and their lawyer who were pressuring me to sell to them and forcibly evicted during the school year.
I am now essentially homeless, but staying with a good friend in a tiny 1 bedroom in Berkeley while storing my stuff in 3 locations not including Boulder where my son, now 18 lives and attends high school without me. I need just enough cash to tide me over until next Fall when I'm sure I'll be teaching again at my level. (I don't use or have credit cards.) I need first and last month's rent plus deposit and moving expenses as I don't drive which makes it much harder and more expense for me without a place and spread out across the Bay. Any donation you can spare at this time will be noted and repaid in some way or another when I am able.
I really need a place to work and most importantly to organize my files: a home. It has been difficult to work and apply for teaching jobs or even keep up my reading schedule and I have lost jobs reading my poetry as I've been without internet access or phone service in order to return contracts and forms; even my calendar and agenda book is locked up in a storage unit I haven't had access to yet.
So any help you can give will be much appreciated in this dire time. I feel place-poor but poetry-rich, and as soon as I can set up my printers and scanners and computers I can share some of my many writing and other projects with you. For over a dozen years I was a publisher/editor/printer of an independent press, MANGO Publications and published the first work of many of the Chicana/o, Latina/o and other writers of color and "experience" such as Sandra Cisneros, Alberto Rios, Jimmy Santiago Baca, James Brown, Ray Gonzalez, Ana Castillo, Luis Urrea, Sherman Alexie and others: all with the clause "All rights revert back to author upon publication."
Please help pass this page around and email this url to friends of yours and mine who may be able to help. I know many people teach and have taught my work. The sooner I have a place to work again, the sooner I'll have work to sell. I have a new book of poetry due from Wings Press next Spring, SUEÑO: 30-Something Of The Cruelest and I've been finishing a young adult book set in The Mission as well as my novel and two screenplays. I also have several other poetry manuscripts and non-fiction projects.
If you know me, you know I'm private and proud, and I don't ask for favors or money. Now I am asking. Maybe you or someone you know has a sublet or housesit situation in San Francisco, Berkeley, San Jose, preferably for a year or more; that would help a lot! I'm counting every nickle to pay my phone and storage.
Sincerely,
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Poet, Professor, Philosopher, Publisher, Editor, Printer
http://www.pleasefund.com/pages/5743
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