{"id":9534,"date":"2012-01-04T12:00:43","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T18:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=9534"},"modified":"2012-01-03T23:48:37","modified_gmt":"2012-01-04T05:48:37","slug":"austin-peay-state-universitys-dr-blas-falconer-edits-anthology-on-other-latino-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2012\/01\/04\/austin-peay-state-universitys-dr-blas-falconer-edits-anthology-on-other-latino-experiences\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Peay State University’s Dr. Blas Falconer edits anthology on “other” Latino experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – Dr. Blas Falconer, a poet and Austin Peay State University professor of English, grew up in northern Virginia, the son of a Puerto Rican mother and a Caucasian father of German-Scottish descent. Occasionally, in an effort to reconnect with his mother\u2019s heritage, he\u2019d flip through books of verse by the Puerto Rican poets who populated New York City\u2019s Spanish Harlem neighborhood. But when he read this poetry, he felt disconnected from his heritage.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy identity was shaped by my Latino background, and yet I struggled to identify with a lot of Latino literature being published,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of it came from these centers of Latino communities \u2013 the Puerto Rican community in New York or the Cuban-American community in Miami or the Mexican-American, the Chicano community, in the American Southwest. And so, a lot of the writing that came out of there addressed community concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

The works didn\u2019t reflect what it was like to be a young Puerto Rican boy growing up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. This feeling of otherness and the question of identity continued to trouble and fascinate Falconer as he got older, and earlier this year, he posed these questions to the public with the publication of a new anthology of essays he co-edited, \u201cThe Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity.\u201d The works in the book, by prominent Latino writers, deconstruct and challenge the public\u2019s mainstream perception of Latino culture.<\/p>\n

Falconer developed the idea for the essay collection years ago, when he encountered other Latino writers with similar experiences. He became friends with the poet Helena Mesa, a Cuban-American raised in Pittsburgh, and he later met the poet Lisa Chavez, a Chicano who grew up in Alaska.<\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/a>

Dr. Blas Falconer<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI started thinking, \u2018you know what, there are a lot of us out there who identify as Latino, but don\u2019t have this experience of community,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI thought, \u2018I want to explore this more. What does it mean to be Latino?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Falconer ended up creating a panel for the Association of Writers and Writing Program\u2019s (AWP) annual conference. He invited Chavez and Mesa to sit in on the discussion, along with Juan Morales, a poet of Ecuadorian descent raised in Colorado. During that roundtable, the group discussed, as Falconer put it, the \u201cdiversity within their diversity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sitting in the audience that day was Falconer\u2019s publisher with The University of Arizona Press. In 2007, the press released Falconer\u2019s book of poetry, \u201cA Question of Gravity and Light.\u201d She asked if he\u2019d ever thought of doing an anthology of essays on the subject.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had,\u201d he said. \u201cI wondered what other stories were out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

After writing a proposal and receiving approval from the press to go forward on the project, Falconer contacted the fiction writer Lorraine M. Lopez, an associate professor of English at Vanderbilt University\u2019s Master of Fine Arts program, about co-editing the book with him. She agreed, and they each contacted 10 poets and 10 fiction writers, seeking submissions.<\/p>\n

What they received was a powerful collection of essays that the noted scholar and writer Ilan Stavans called \u201can assemblage of personal viewpoints that isn\u2019t afraid to unsettle the complacent, reductionist picture of who Latinos are, or better, what \u2018lazy thinking\u2019 wants us to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marjorie Agosin, author of \u201cOf Earth and Sea: a Chilean Memoir,\u201d described the anthology as \u201can essential and vibrant collection of essays that explore the plurality as well as the differences found in Latino voices and their journeys into their past.\u201d<\/p>\n

The works present the diversity and complexity in a culture often painted in broad strokes, but what makes this anthology so readable is the contributors.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that Lorraine Lopez\u2019s essay is not only insightful in the way it approaches its subject, it\u2019s very moving,\u201d Falconer said. \u201cIt\u2019s funny. We didn\u2019t ask just anybody to contribute. We asked writers, and they\u2019re in their element.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Other Latin@\u201d is currently available online at amazon.com. For more information on this anthology, contact Falconer at falconerb@apsu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – Dr. Blas Falconer, a poet and Austin Peay State University professor of English, grew up in northern Virginia, the son of a Puerto Rican mother and a Caucasian father of German-Scottish descent. Occasionally, in an effort to reconnect with his mother\u2019s heritage, he\u2019d flip through books of verse by the Puerto Rican […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[6326,23,262,2423,1020,2278,2279],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-2tM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9534"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9535,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9534\/revisions\/9535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}