K Romero*, a Mexican immigrant living in Pennsylvania, remains vigilant. After the 2016 election, Romero became active with a local progressive organization, but a commonplace obstacle soon emerged. The organization
November 13, 2020
Posts
LA Times l May 17, 2023
A Witch Goes to a Strip Mall and…
The last time she’d heard glass break, her head had been used to shatter it. He — she hated to even think his name — had slammed her head into the long oval mirror hanging in his bathroom. She had protected her face by lowering her head, tucking her chin against her neck, and for days after she had harvested pieces of glass from her scalp. When she told her cousin Valentina what he had done, she offered to have her husband “take care of him,” but the witch had told her, “No, prima. I can handle it. He’ll be sorry.”
From the ATM, the witch had withdrawn $300.
Luz Media l March 2, 2021
America Prefers Teachers Who Offer Themselves as Tribute
As the coronavirus continues to take lives, the lives of teachers and school staff included, the good-educator-as-unflinching-martyr trope is being used to shame those of us who express concerns about IRL instruction. Last month, New York Times’ columnist David Brooks penned a screed that all but accused educators critical of their working conditions of laziness, stupidity, and cowardice.
Brooks seems to prefer stoic teachers ready to become ill and die and I imagine the columnist watching Stand and Deliver, nodding in approval at a scene set during a night school session. Escalante, who has taken on a second job as an English instructor, shuffles about a classroom, clutching at his chest while he leads adult students through a set of language drills.
Tasteful Rude l March 14, 2023
Beautifully Ruined: Kate Braverman’s Lithium for Medea
The last time I visited Venice Beach, I made one of my wildest teen fantasies come true.
At one of the many beachfront stores where bathing suits cost five times what they should, I bought myself a gold lamé string bikini. The day was overcast but warm enough to be mostly naked outdoors and so I wore my purchase out of the shop and onto the footpath.
A nasty breeze blew my bowl cut crooked. The clouds parted. I wondered if the 24-karat glare from my bikini was bothering any seagulls. I curled my toes. Moist earth sucked them. I thought of Rose, the cocaine-fueled protagonist of Lithium for Medea, the late Kate Braverman’s first novel. In one of the book’s later chapters, Rose has an epiphany about the wetness that I let lap and slurp at my feet. Rose arrives at the understanding that our ocean isn’t pacific.
March 21, 2020
Carne De Res Ipsa Loquitur
Did November 2016 give you the shits too? Did you know that the shits are a symptom of COVID-19? The shits are a sign of the times.
Believermag.com l December 2, 2020
Chismosa Bitch
Several weeks into attending my graveyard-adjacent nursery school, my parents noticed something weird. When I got home from school, I’d grab Mom’s or Dad’s hand and take them on a tour, introducing them to household objects. “This is the television. This is a chair. This is a sofa. This is a plate. That is a lamp. This is its switch. The lamp is now off.” My behavior mystified Dad until he realized what I was doing and burst out laughing.
“Bebé,” he called out, “Myriam’s teachers think she can’t speak English! They’ve been trying to teach her! That’s why she acts like a parrot when she comes home! She’s parroting the ‘lessons’ they’re giving her.” He chuckled as hard as he did when he watched Saturday Night Live.
March 13, 2020
Coercive Control
Content Warning: Sociology. Language. Misogyny. I miss teaching so I’m going to use this thread as my classroom. I want to discuss a term I dislike versus a term I
Nat. Catholic Reporter l November 1, 2021
Death Becomes Us
My mother was raised near the second-oldest cemetery in Guadalajara, Panteón de Mezquitán. Established in 1896, murals cover the high walls surrounding its terrain. Some of these artworks feature incarnations of Death herself, and, depending on the weather, one can find Mezquitán’s graveyard dogs sunbathing, hiding from the rain or scratching mosquito bites. During my grandmother Arcelia’s funeral procession, a yellow canine appeared beside her coffin. My mother nudged me.
“It’s your grandfather,” she whispered. “He’s accompanying my mother.”
New York Times l April 28, 2022
Former police officer Don Jackson helped reveal the brutal reality of policing for Southern California’s Black citizens
Before George Holliday caught the L.A.P.D.’s beating of Rodney King on camera, the former police officer Don Jackson helped reveal the brutal reality of policing for Southern California’s Black citizens.
The night of Jan. 14, 1989, Don Jackson, a police officer turned activist, arrived in Long Beach, Calif., riding in the passenger seat of a rental car driven by Jeffrey Hill, another activist and an off-duty state corrections officer. Both men wore plain clothes, and clandestine chaperones escorted their Buick. A van carrying a television crew tailed the rental car.
Tasteful Rude l February 11, 2021
FRAMING BRITNEY SPEARS DEEPENED MY DESIRE FOR JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE TO EAT A BAG OF DICKS
Watching Britney Spears shave her head in 2007 made me want to do it too. The bitch looked good bald, better than Demi because she wasn’t doing it for a film role, she was doing it because life, and I recall feeling liberated by proxy as I watched Spears snatch hairdresser Esther Tognozzi’s razor and drag it along her scalp, using it to carve her femininity away, the precise curve of her cranium set free by her own hand. This incident and others appear in Framing Britney Spears, a new documentary by the New York Times. The film casts strong doubt over the legitimacy of the patriarchal legal arrangement under which the megastar has been stuck for the last twelve years. Framing Britney Spears also deepened my desire for Justin Timberlake to eat a bag of dicks.
Luz Media l December 9, 2020
From Persephone To Tara Reade, Rape Victims Are Relegated To Everyday Hells
As Wagatwe Wanjuki lip syncs, “Actual goals, AF!” her TikTok performance unfolds to the tune and lyrics of Eva Gutowski’s Literally My Life. Clad in athleisure, Wanjuki flashes a grin and a thumb’s up sign. Glitter splashes across the screen and she imitates a victory dance while this message hovers overhead: “Me finding out my rapist graduated law school and became a lawyer.”
Those of us who are the victims of rapists experience the ramifications of sexual assault across our lifespans. One of the ugliest and most painful dimensions of rape’s aftermath is exactly what Wanjuki so brilliantly communicated through TikTok. Rape culture requires the majority of sexual assault victims to co-exist in a society where our rapists do more than move freely. In a rape culture, our attackers thrive.
Tasteful Rude l December 31, 2020
Hilaria Baldwin & the Perverse Myth of Reverse Body-Shaming
The internet recently busted yoga instructor Hilary Baldwin for moonlighting as a Thpanish immigrant and upon learning that “Hilaria” wasn’t born in Mallorca but instead in Massachusetts, I decided to
Tasteful Rude l November 11, 2021
Honoring Our Literary Ancestors: On Arcelia
In the days leading up to my grandmother’s death, my eyes lingered on her ninety-year-old hands. As a little tomboy, Arcelia’s hands had mesmerized me. I watched them feed cookies
LA Taco l January 27, 2021
How a Brown Preacher & His Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group are Re-invigorating A Legacy of Bigotry in the San Gabriel Valley
“Welcome to friendly El Monte” is the slogan of the San Gabriel Valley city where a DIY bomb placed in First Works Baptist Church exploded early Saturday morning. The force of the
October 5, 2020
How the Term ‘Essential Worker’ Obscures the Cost of Racialized Human Life
“The Latino community is suffering a lot right now,” says Arnulfo Romero. The former field supervisor lives in Santa Maria, California, an agricultural community that, depending on which way its
Alta l July 2, 2024
In the Cemetery Where Jenni Rivera Is Buried
Because Long Beach, California, is a place where a moonlit Marine can easily find a muscle queen willing to kneel in the soggy sand and fellate him while foghorns and ship horns bellow in the distance, certain residents refer to it as Schlong Beach. My girlfriend, best friend, and I learned this tasteless sobriquet upon moving into a ground-floor condo in the middle of the city’s gayborhood. A fat masseuse rented the unit to us. She insisted that we pay her in cash and that we keep the potted ficus moping on her veranda alive. The landlady also imposed a rule that made our home feel unlike a home: no hanging anything on the walls.
We agreed to her terms, but the emptiness soon grew oppressive.
Our home felt like a generic coffin.