writing

LA Times | May 17, 2023

Screenshot of LA Times article

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From the ATM, the witch had withdrawn $300.

Tasteful Rude | March 14, 2023

Photo of a man holding a surf board at Venice Beach

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.

LA Taco | January 6, 2023

Rosca de Reyes painting

Why Catholics Almost Choke On Baby Jesus Each Year on Día de Los Reyes

During my Catholic childhood, I took the religion’s cannibalistic metaphors seriously. I believed what the bewhiskered monjitas taught me in catechism class, that my classmates and I were being prepared to receive the body and blood of a long-haired man born in a manger.

On the day that I first received the Eucharist… It tasted like cereal, not at all meaty as I’d imagined it would.

New York Times | April 28, 2022

Former Cop Don Jackson on TV

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 | January 21, 2022

myriam gurba with julian the cat

Julian

About the existence of cats, our father encouraged us to ask, “Why?”

He couldn’t stand them.

Cats annoyed and disgusted him and because of these effects, they also annoyed and disgusted my mother. Rarely did Mom or Dad simply utter gato. Gato always traveled alongside cochino.

Gatos cochinos.

I never asked Dad about his anti-catness. He did once mumble something about cats’ historic ties to the devil, but the comment didn’t explain his unique distaste. His grudge seemed personal, not infernal.

Nat. Catholic Reporter | November 1, 2021

Dia de los muertos

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.”

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