CSUN professor publishes women’s empowerment guide

By Angela Melero - The Daily Sundial

Chicana/o studies professor Diana Shakti Contreras is teaching college women a lesson in identity in her book titled “Meditations of a Warrior Goddess Diva.”

Contreras writes that all women possess within themselves the three traits mentioned in the title, yet they remain dormant.

She elaborates on the roles that all three concepts play in the female experience once they are realized and unleashed, using some of her own experiences as a reference. The result is a brave manuscript that takes readers on an insightful and sometimes uncomfortable ride into the female spirit.

Contreras writes, “A woman’s full potential comes when the three powers (warrior, goddess, diva) are put to use, in harmony with each other, and in sync with the laws and rhythms of the universe.”

The book has an appropriate target audience, as the content focuses on elements like identity and self reflection, which are often confronted in college years.

Contreras’ first published manuscript acts as a guide with designated journal sections that include questions and exercises for the reader.

Readers will find themselves in unfamiliar and somewhat awkward territory, writing letters to their parents and doing an internal body cleanse that requires consuming a tablespoon of olive oil every morning for a week.

The book, which is divided into three sections dedicated to the title’s concepts, challenges women to put aside their stiletto heels and designer bags and explore a more raw aspect of themselves.

Contreras’ warrior concept encourages the female reader to be more independent in words and actions.

Contreras defines a female warrior as a woman who “uses the power of her voice to defend herself and the people for whom she cares.”

The writer instructs the reader to live on their own for a year, and to take some time off from dating. She writes that often a woman’s “lovey-dovey” energy invested in a relationship can hinder self development.

Contreras also challenges readers to connect with their inner goddess by focusing on building and restoring positive relationships and loving their bodies.

She writes, “A goddess nurtures her body, understands and cares for it like a sacred temple; she is aware of her emotions, heals them when needed and enjoys life to the fullest.”

This includes tackling issues that are normally considered awkward and taboo, such as the act of forgiving your parents.

“It is crucial you learn to heal any wounds of negativity in your relationships with your parents, otherwise you will drag these feelings into your future relationship,” Contreras writes.

This portion of the book also confronts the topic of female body image, a common issue among women. The author discourages the unhealthy eating habits plaguing the country, repeatedly insisting that “we are using our bodies as a trashcan.”

Contreras urges readers to “embrace your body as a sacred temple, by simply respecting and treating it with love, and realizing that organs inside your body are working tirelessly to keep you alive.”

Contreras redefines the diva concept in the final section, encouraging readers to dismantle the common themes associated with the term.

These days, the concept of being a diva is often associated with self-absorbed celebrities taking part in excessive lifestyles and behavior.

“(Diva) is a force centered around women’s sexuality,” Contreras writes. “If only women knew the power of their sexuality, we would have a completely different world.”

This section is perhaps the most frank and compelling. The chapters instruct readers on how to pick the perfect mate, career path and lifestyle, and master the art of managing their finances.

It concludes with an exercise in which the reader devotes an entire day to channeling her true diva essence. In a fun twist, readers are encouraged to dress to impress and to maintain their diva walk.

Each chapter ends with journal questions and exercises that are meant to put the book’s concepts into practice. It also offers the reader reflection time to allow the information and concepts to sink in.

“Warrior Goddess Diva” is not one of those books breezed through on a long car ride or during a day at the beach. It’s not a book to retire to an empty space on the bookshelf.

The book’s concepts are meant to change the way a woman looks at her life and herself.

Contreras writes, “In the process, you are creating a healthier, stronger, and more beautiful you.”

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Chicano press lands first series

[Click image to enlarge]

By Steve Bennett

Express-News

Juan Tejeda and Anisa Onofre have "realized a dream" with the birth of Aztlan Libre Press and its premiere publication, the 10th collection of poetry and writings by influential Chicano poet alurista.

"It's a labor of love," Tejeda said of the press last week at his South Side home, an adobe structure dating back to the Mexican Revolution. "But what other kind is there?"

The independent press, says Onofre, will be devoted to Chicano literature and arts.

"We want to publish books regularly and continuously by writers we admire," states Onofre, who is a poet and director of the writers-in-communities program at Gemini Ink. "It ties into my work with Gemini. I love working with writers."

"Tunaluna," the alurista collection, is the first in the press' Veter@nos series; plans are being made for a Nuevas Voces series (New Voices) and for a literary prize — the Aztlan Libre Press Premio en la Literatura Xicana.

Other irons in the fire range from a children's coloring book of animal symbols from the Aztec calendar and a chapbook of poems in three languages: English, Spanish and Nahuatl. A website has been launched at aztlanlibrepress.com.

Tejeda, founder of San Antonio's Tejano Conjunto Festival and director of the Conjunto music program at Palo Alto College, has devoted his life to the Chicano arts. It all began, he says, in 1975, in a class at the University of Texas at Austin, a poetry workshop taught by . . . alurista. Meeting once a week, first on campus, then in the teacher's or students' homes, students read and critiqued poetry and stories, made music and talked politics during turbulent times.

"alurista is considered the poet laureate of Aztlan," says Tejeda, retrieving a battered spiral-bound journal titled "Trece Aliens," his only remaining copy of a Xeroxed compilation of the class' output.

"This was the beginning," he says. "I've been involved in writing and publications, really, since my college days. It's been a dream of mine to start a press, and a couple of years ago, Anisa and I just said, ‘Let's do it.' So, now, it's sort of come full circle."

Serendipity played a role in the publication of "Tunaluna." Onofre discovered the poet's website one evening, and Tejeda — "I hadn't spoken to him in years," he says — dashed off an e-mail. A couple of weeks later, a typed manuscript arrived by mail. The would-be publishers were "amazed" — and a little giddy.

"We were a just-started-never-published-nada small Chicano press," says Tejeda, "and we might publish alurista's poems! He had published nine books, but nothing in about 10 years."

Another "interesting convergence" came when Chicago painter Judithe Hernández saw an Internet posting about the publication of the alurista collection and contacted Aztlan Libre Press about cover artwork.

"She had done the illustrations for alurista's first book ("Floricanto en Aztlan") in 1971," says Onofre. "She offered her beautiful artwork for the cover as a gift to alurista."

Small presses rarely place books on the best-seller lists, but their role is critical, says Bryce Milligan, publisher of San Antonio's Wings Press.

"The literary role of small presses in America tends toward discovery, resurrection and preservation — the discovery of new writers, the recovery of ‘lost' works, and making the noncommercial literary works of established and deceased writers available," says Milligan, who's been a sounding board for Tejeda and Onofre. "With their first book, Aztlan Libre Press has accomplished the third of these with a strong work by a pioneer of the Chicano literary movimiento. They've done solid, important, necessary work. As a San Antonio publisher, I could not be more delighted with both the book and the press. ¡Bienvenidos, Aztlan Libre!"

There is a touch of the old revolutionary spirit in the Tejeda/Onofre household, where the "compañeros" live with their 3-year-old daughter Maya, and where Aztlan Libre Press business gets done. Perhaps alurista, in a poem titled "Birdnests," captures its essence:

we
remain
standing
with our slingshots
in our hands
no goliath shall prevail.

To purchase "Tunaluna" by alurista ($15 plus $3 shipping) visit the Aztlan Libre Press Web site at http://aztlanlibrepress.com/. Several readings are planned in October, including UTSA (Oct. 5), Texas Lutheran University (Oct. 6) and Palo Alto College (Oct. 8).

Jesús Garza, "By the way... Aztlan Libre Press has a great website. Click here!"

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Interview with author & poet Daniel Olivas

Mayra Calvani, examiner.com

It's an honor to have here today accomplished poet, novelist, short story writer and editor Daniel Olivas. As if this isn't enough, he also is an attorney with the California Department of Justice and a regular contributor to La Bloga, a very popular Chicano/Latino literature blog. Olivas was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to answer my questions.

BIO: Born and raised near downtown Los Angeles, Daniel Olivas is the middle of five children and the grandson of Mexican immigrants. Olivas received his BA in English literature from Stanford University and law degree from the University of California at Los Angeles. By day, he is an attorney with the California Department of Justice where he has worked in the Public Rights Division since 1990. He is married to his law school sweetheart, Susan Formaker, and they have a 19-year-old son, Benjamin. They make their home in the San Fernando Valley.

Olivas is also the author of five books of fiction including the forthcoming Anywhere but L.A.: Stories (Bilingual Press, fall 2009), and a children’s book, Benjamin and the Word / Benjamin y la palabra (Arte Público Press, 2005). He edited the landmark Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature (Bilingual Press, 2008). Olivas has been widely anthologized including in Sudden Fiction Latino (W.W. Norton, forthcoming 2010), and Hate Crimes: Social Issues Firsthand (Greenhaven Press, 2007). His writing has appeared in many publications including the Los Angeles Times, La Bloga, The Jewish Journal, The MacGuffin, Exquisite Corpse, El Paso Times, PALABRA,California Lawyer, The Elegant Variation, and New Madrid. His first poetry collection,Crossing the Border, will be published next year by Ghost Road Press.

Olivas has just learned that the University of Arizona Press has accepted for publication his first full-length novel, tentatively titled The Book of Want, which will be published in 2011.

MAYRA CALVANI : Thanks for this interview. It's a pleasure having you here at the Examiner. Why don't you start by telling us a little about yourself and how you started writing.

DANIEL OLIVAS: When I was very, very young—in preschool—I was creating little books. I loved telling stories. My parents always read to us and our house was filled with books. But I never imagined that someone would actually want to publish my books let alone that my books would be studied in college.

When I majored in English literature at Stanford, I purposely didn’t take any creative writing classes thinking that I wouldn’t be able to “do” anything with it. But I always remained creative in my non-academic activities. For example, I was a staff artist and then art director of Stanford’s humor magazine where I not only drew cartoons but also wrote a few pieces. In law school at UCLA, I was appointed editor-in-chief of the Chicano Law Review (it’s now called the Chicana/o-Latina/o Law Review) where I edited pieces and wrote a legal article on an important immigration court decision. As a lawyer, I’ve written many articles and essays for legal publications. Eventually, I started to write fiction. This was in 1998 when I started writing a novella. It was a way for me to deal with grief arising from my wife’s multiple miscarriages. I helped Sue and our son, Benjamin, with their emotions, but I wasn’t dealing with mine very well until I started writing. It proved to be quite cathartic.

After selling my novella to a small (and now defunct press), I couldn’t stop writing. Eventually, my short stories started being accepted by print and online literary journals. Then one of my poems was accepted by Lee & Low Books for a children’s anthology, Love to Mamá, edited by the great Pat Mora. I figured that as long as editors kept accepting my stories and poems, I’d keep writing.

CALVANI: You write in English with a little Spanish thrown in depending on the character. Can you tell a little about this “code switching” and why you utilize it in your writing?

OLIVAS: I admit that I’m a pocho. My Spanish is not very good. My parents were raising us bilingually but when I was three, I stopped speaking completely. This lasted a whole year. During that time, my parents panicked. They took me to be tested. At the end of the testing, the doctor told them that I was of normal intelligence but he strongly recommended that they cut all Spanish in the household. This was in the early 1960s so the bias against bilingual homes was fairly strong. In any event, my parents agreed to follow the doctor’s recommendation. So, I struggle with my Spanish but I try to have some of my characters switch between Spanish and English when it’s appropriate for that character. I want my fiction to ring true so I think it’s important that I do that.

CALVANI: Please tell us about your latest anthology, Latinos in Lotusland. It has garnered a lot of rave reviews. What inspired you to put this anthology together?

OLIVAS: I was sick and very tired of what allegedly well-read book critics called classic “Los Angeles fiction.” Whenever some critic said this, he or she typically referred to novels or short stories that involved movie moguls, starlets and Malibu scenery. Seldom did you see Chicanos or other non-white characters unless they fell into some ugly stereotype. I wanted to change this and bring together fiction by Chicanos and other Latinos about my hometown. The result was 34 amazing and powerful stories going back to 1947. We have authors who have written many books alongside writers who are at the very beginning of their careers. I am so delighted by the response we’ve had to the anthology. It has been and will be taught in universities such as Rutgers, UC Irvine, and Ohio State. And we’ve had Latinos in Lotusland readings from L.A. to Chicago to Denver to Santa Barbara and elsewhere. I’ve been so honored and enriched by the authors who are in the anthology.

CALVANI: Latinos in Lotusland is a great title. Why “Lotusland”?

OLIVAS: The original working title was Latino L.A. but Gary Keller, the director of Bilingual Press, wanted to explore other potential titles with me. So, he suggested that we use a nickname for Los Angeles. One nickname is “Lotusland” which harkens back to the mythological race of lotus (or “lotos”) eaters “represented by Homer as living on the fruit of the lotus and living in a state of dreamy forgetfulness and idleness” according to The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Therefore, the term has entered the English language to mean “a place or state of idle pleasure and luxury, contentment and self-indulgence.” (Websters New Millennium Dictionary of English.) Some non-native Angelenos decided long ago to pin it on Los Angeles. As William Safire explained in a New York Times essay:

“La-La Land is a play on the initials L.A., perhaps influenced by Lotos-land in ‘The Lotos-Eaters,’ a poem by Tennyson: ‘In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined / On the hills like Gods together.’ In his 1941 novel, The Last Tycoon, F. Scott Fitzgerald had a character describe Hollywood as ‘a mining town in lotus land.’”

Of course, I use the name “Lotusland” ironically. As I explain in my introduction to the anthology: “[N]otwithstanding the fact that the characters who populate this anthology may have feasted on the City of Angel’s lotus flowers, they do not live in blissful oblivion and they certainly have not forgotten who they are.”

CALVANI: You have written many short story collections. Have you written novels as well?

OLIVAS: My first book, The Courtship of María Rivera Peña (Silver Lake Publishing, 2000), was a novella but I do love the short story form. Every word has to count. I’ve even dipped into the very, very short story form such as flash, sudden and hint fiction (hint fiction is a story of 25 words or fewer). One of my very short pieces will be featured in W. W. Norton’s forthcoming Sudden Fiction Latino (2010), edited by Ray Gonzalez and Robert Shapard. However, I have written a full-length novel that is made up of linked stories, many of which have been published in literary journals already. It’s called The Book of Want (as of right now) and has just been accepted for publication by the University of Arizona Press for its Camino del Sol series. I am so excited by this. I have enjoyed many of the press’s titles over the years so I know they publish wonderful books. Their author list is a who’s who of Chicano and Latino literature including such names as José Antonio Burciaga, Stella Pope Duarte, Luis Alberto Urrea, Kathleen Alcalá, Ray Gonzalez, Pat Mora, Sergio Troncoso, and Juan Felipe Herrera, to name but a few. We have a tentative publication date of 2011.

CALVANI: Do you outline your stories beforehand or do your ideas develop as you write?

OLIVAS: I never outline. That would take the fun out of writing! I let my characters take me where they want to go.

CALVANI: Let's talk about short fiction writing. What would you say are the three most important elements of a great short story?

OLIVAS: I can’t speak for other writers or readers, but I think that interesting characters play the primary role for me. If I don’t have characters I care about, my story goes nowhere. The second most important element (for me) is conflict. Without conflict, a story is boring, to put it simply. The conflict could be big such as two robbers arguing over whether they should kill for money, or small such as which tie a widower should wear on the first date since his wife’s death. Conflict and how the characters deal with it is at the center of all great short stories. The third most important element revolves around language. This, for me, is the toughest element because it truly involves what we call “art.” There are a million ways to convey one idea, but not all paths lead to the creation of literature.

CALVANI: You're a regular contributor to La Bloga, a very popular Chicano/Latino literature blog. What do you blog about?

OLIVAS: We’re pretty freewheeling over at La Bloga but, obviously, our primary focus is on literature. My blog day is Monday. I do author profiles, interviews, book reviews, notices of literary events, listings of writing opportunities, things like that. I try to write my post on the weekend before it goes live. I also like to cover Chicano and Latino artists, community activists, store owners. In other words, I focus on what we call “culture.” We don’t get paid for what we do so we do as we please. La Bloga was founded in 2004 and I was invited to join as a contributor a couple of years ago after the founders read some of my work on another literary blog, The Elegant Variation, which was created by the novelist, Mark Sarvas. Right now at La Bloga, we have eight authors working on the blog. It’s a great virtual home and I’m in the company of dedicated, interesting writers. All kinds of gente read us: students, educators, judges, lawyers, editors, book publishers, etc. I find that La Bloga keeps me in touch with so many readers and writers in a way that was not possible 15 years ago.

CALVANI: What's in the horizon?

OLIVAS: Well, I’m working with Bilingual Press to put the final touches on my new collection, Anywhere but L.A., which comes out this fall. I then must turn to promoting that book which takes a lot of time and energy particularly because I’m a fulltime attorney, father and husband, not necessarily in that order. I have to squeeze whatever little time I can out of an already hectic schedule. Then I will turn to my poetry collection, Crossing the Border, which will be published in 2010 by Ghost Road Press. I’m writing short stories, book reviews, and essays, here and there, that I am submitting to various publications. I’m participating in book events, too. I’ve started a new novel but I’m having a little trouble making time for it. And I’m reading, reading, reading all kinds of wonderful books and print and online literary journals.

CALVANI: Is there anything else you'd like to tell our readers?

OLIVAS: Number one: Support Chicano and Latino literature! Number two: Read a book! Number three: Get involved in your community!

CALVANI: Thanks for the great interview!

For more information go to : www.danielolivas.com

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