1987 uh when I was the editor of a little newspaper called OT in San Francisco and Roberto lato wandered in and uh suggested some stories about El Salvador uh he um was a little concerned about uh you know what he wanted to say so I think in some of those stories you adopted a su Tito Alara um and so uh yeah so Roberto uh was this incredibly powerful personality uh even then even then and is today and remains today um just somebody who I was just so impressed by how his he had studied rhetoric a
t Berkeley so he had this incredible intellectual energy but he was also somebody who you want to have next to you if the fight broke out like in a bar and Rober also told me stories of fights that he got into and things that he did that he's not always proud of and he was just this incredibly honest and open person and somebody who was just uh intellectual and passionate about his community and passionate about ideas and then over the years I watched him have this slowly evolving career as an a
ctivist and as a journalist as a writer and uho I always thought he had a book in him and uh meet myself and SE several other people we encouraged him and finally last year unforgetting came out uh to really wonderful reviews and great reception in the Latino Community because it's a book that I think is filling this need that we have in our community for voices that are angry and aurbic you know uh because so much of Latino literature uh that's published in New York publishing and I know this a
s I published many books um you know in in New York publishing uh it's it's a struggle to um to have um it's a struggle to go against the tide of stereotype the the you know the this idea of us as as passive people um and to find people who are writers who are willing to take chances and do you know things that aren't expected of us and that certainly fills the bill of Roberto and so Roberto I think I first question I want to ask you uh and it's not on the list of things that you suggested so th
is is a curve is just just tell us just tell us you know the the you know to write a book to finish a book uh is this really difficult thing to do uh and you know uh you know right and it's some I had a teacher tell me once that writing a book is something that people Rush do uh do like quickly rushing to fail right uh and because it's like this act of Madness what what tell tell us about the moment in which you decided that you were going to write a book you know and write this book particularl
y oh before anything I want to thank via for Haring me into the ends of the Earth to come and do something here at this lovely space just I walked down here and I'm reminded of Mission Street Circa 1970s and 80s where there was and you can quot me there was actually a Latino community in the mission wow right not like the two dimensional murals and uh you know kind of oil that become in the mission chickens in the in the market where you're just there little minority that's why I love LA and uh
you know this space just reminds me the kind of energy we me I won't go into the details of kind of backend that make this possible beneath the radar of certain authorities in the state where um yeah I just love I think that's how we need to be we need to be like we did that camp we didn't have a bible3 nonprofit We just said there's our Target Let's Jam them up so um thank you vaa for all your work you're J for Hector's former newspap times and so like I'm just so proud of Hector ever since I k
now him it's been a an encouraging voice for my my writing and other things he's been a friend I'm you know Godfather his kid and you know he trajectory speaks for itself and um you know I'm just really proud of you Hector and you really done the work and like he said he was one of a few voices that encouraged me to write in including Martinez and um my old friend here on the east side she encouraged me our mutual friend she told me I had a post it's kind of sensibility and I like and I was doin
g my activism thing and I kind of flirted with writing you know as in love you flirt it's one thing but if you're committed it's another right so um people like Hector and Marisella and Mike Davis rending they they they taught me to commit to the word and it makes a total difference because you know when you FLIR it's Wonder but when you have that subconscious commitment where the the biggest power inside of you your subconscious has an organizing principle around it right you can really kind of
wreak havoc on so it applies to organizing and then I applied it to to wrri it so um so the question is uh what what was what led me to finally decide well you know I've been thinking about this stuff time I people tell me you have a you have a book you know and I'm like I guess you I'm actually I made cameo expences like in books like in hectors well there's this G couple in MacArthur Park back in the day um you know at the end of the piece of cords in the 1980s and um you know Hector intervie
wed us and he said we said you know me and my partner G uh said you know we don't want to be kind of one of our names in there so we're anonymously appearing in Translation Nation so I've always had this book something like it about 10 story because you know I've learned early on that I learned from for example you can't really kill people unless you erase them you know you you would have during the war you would have that was saw the founder of the death back by the US coming on television and
starting to like throw acid and darts and knives at people on National Television call be qu communist Etc and then those people would often times end up dead so uh the relationship between the dehumanization and the erer and and and not just killing people but passing immigration policies like the Democrats and Republicans are pass on people all that requires a level of discourse that dehumanizes I think there's we'll get into it I'm sure about the the the national it's been clear to me for a l
ong time that Latinos latinx peoples have been put in a position of being what I call the tropical side kick of the national narrative We're Not actors we're not we don't exercise agency in the public mind right right we're rendered into this position by I think Elite interests that that need us to be that and not the people that pulled up those massive marches around 2006 or around proposition when s and so there's a there's a real thing we need to kind get into so I had other books already I w
as thinking about and then I realiz I'm think these song I better write something quicker one of the books was about you know figure that figures I right I I had literary CH I Francis be great revolutionary and then there's a another book I had thought of but I said man I better do something I had the story and I went to visit the story getting in for years Brewing uh in the form of trauma and other stuff right so I went to this uh immigrant prison right because they're not detention centers the
y really prisons when you go there if you've been there there's guards there's Gates there's bar wire there's rotten food Rotten baloney rotten milk you know but there's children in them there's mothers but they can't call them prisons because Barack Obama Biden they wouldn't look MSNBC ready so um I went to this prison invited by my friend from here in La actually who living in Austin and they invited me to a conference then being good leftist they said hey why don't you come with this to par I
'm like trying to avoid the whole Salvadorian thing there's name and that's how you feel in some ways when you been through some of the things that we've been through in terms of violence death oppression and negative stuff so I like I don't want to doal that's but I love these guys they invited me down to car to prison and I meet this kid and the kid tells me this just sad story about seeing his uncle shout in the face in a park and ah man the whole and I was tired and broke the fences down and
really I said f I'm gonna do something about this and I pulled that story out and I said I decided to write but before I wrote I why is this think with a heavy emotional spiritual content to do this like hated therap oh W yeah not to be a bmer hippi son of a holocaust Survivor and want gu three letters l s d so I have Micro and mcro my way through unforgetting I going to publish an article about this was actually going to be in the New York Times but I kind of ran up against the Michael Poland
industrial psychedelic industrial complex it's about to hit our Consciousness and uh so they killed it so I got it prob somewhere else so I'll share it you yeah at that moment I decided I'm G do something about this and then I took the steps to to write it and S out my High Council literary ciliary like Hector and others so my back there and you know I I did it you know you you um a lot about issues of marginalization and eraser was can you remember a moment you remember what it was like to be a
person who didn't have a public voice can you remember what it was like to be you know to be when you still people saw you that way you hadn't quite you know yeah I was in LA I was in LA um you know before I became the director of I became the head Salvador in the US facto because was the big American organization in the US and that required me to adopt this public Persona that I wasn't really prior right I worked in nonprofits I did fundraising theion and I wrote for tea but I wasn't really ou
t there and I wasn't really completely radicalized like I had gotten in uh and so yeah I remember what it was like to be pretty much a non non in the public sphere as about especially like you know we we are not this one of the New York publish the big five not big four it's conglomerating published by one of us non-fiction we have fiction we have Hector other Hector Francisco Goldman but in nonfiction like like memoirs like that this is the first right so there's only been a few million of us h
ere for decade somehow they had they did manage to find a lot of white [Music] women you know who's you know in the in with outside of a certain circle of intimacy of our community she's you know take three circles for where I'm at she's one of us to some I'm like you embassies I don't understand we are on Facebook [Music] live so yeah you got well meeting you Jo IDI you know giving us the primary I remember this goes to your question I remember reading Johan salvad and gave us the preeminent th
e primary reference for El Salvador and for Salvadorans in the English language right and the phrase is terror is the giv up place I remember being in college likeu I'm G try to fit I'm G try to fit my my experience into that that's deep she's she's getting a real story and yeah I was when I was a kid and I grow I grow and then eventually I become a writer and I'm in my 50s and I'm like okay ter is the G of the place what about everything else okay where's where's the M where's the the where's m
y mom's love where's my grandmother's transnational vision for our family where's all this other gorgeous and good stuff it wasn't there and where did she write the book from the embassy she spent a lot of time in the embassy so uh so uh yeah that feeling of being colonized is I I know it I knew it you know and you I still got every so I kind of call the colonial culture come out of my subconscious I think it's a constant process where we have to keep cleaning the uh the hard drive of all this c
rap is downloaded beginning with a parents I'm sorry but it's a fact I mean you read people like I do like r l great psych psychologist and philosopher of the 60s he wrote a book called the politics of experience and another called the politics of of the family his thesis was that basically your first contact with the state or your parents because of their subconscious and the way they transmit all these values whether it's the religion to no culture Innovation culture and stuff you I mean I lik
e to yeah realiz all this other matter that was inserted in there without there are my knowing so a lot of family in your book right your dad's a huge character in it has there been any and you have a big family you have brothers and you have you know I imagine lots of cousins and whatnot and on both sides lot yeah so what what has been the reaction of your family to the to the book well you know thankfully thankfully I uh I've been a strategist in different Realms before writing a book and an o
rganizer so I'm like okay F how am I gonna align this agenda with the book the agenda of the family so I was like because I'm G to have pop my dad is my book is a father son story why yall want to csel me for that there's a lot of women I mean I'm happy with women that are in there but it's not about most tell Story the violence between Father and Son it allows me to do different things so so like my dad you know outside of ANM Circle larger than funny man poetic lyrical anding can be but humili
ate me sometimes so you know I have my The Arc of my story my dad is love Pop love and hate pop love hate and rebel against Pop and Salvador and US state and then love Pop again when I figure out like why pop was the way was um you know I I you know I had to really think very carefully how I adicted my dad because I was the wrath of myam so I like you do the nearest get one and you get another then another and another had led all with the agenda to know that this was coming that pop was going to
be in all his glory his orphic power and lyricism but he's also got that other that you all know and you can't deny so if you're going to write about family you want to tell the truth organize them first here my message to the own writers like you know and I think that part of the I think that I see that as ideological and political work actually for ourselves especially and for our hey you're not going to organize your family around you know Mar principles and join revolutionary like but it is
useful to keep the family intact to be able to have them understand what you're doing and it's on a personal level I think it's really liberating to to tell the truth you know I think we need to bust out of what I call and I said this when they were asking me about like s was like coin the term on Democracy Now the folcloric industrial complex of us Latino literature So like um the way that you know we kind of dance and with Taylor and colorful me and wow class issues who gives a and anything r
esembling any emancipatory sensibility is not really part of the mix and this concept of literature that people have well you know there's a big difference between Sandra's you know House on Mango Street I love house on mang and also like her work like um her her story woman holler and Creek so woman holler and Creek I mean you know is essentially the girl from Al Ang we grown up and having sex and doing all kinds of bad things but the book that's become like the mega bestseller is the one in wh
ich she's a little kid which I think says more about the market and the way people want to read us than it really does say absolutely but we are public personas so you either dance with a man or you try to smash them man right so that's the world you live in that's the future that awaits us right now because the challenge of climate change and the devastation and fascism around by capitalism is not you're not going to Lial Progressive your way out of this right so we need an imaginary a politica
l imaginary that's a little more Transcendent and Powerful that way and sustain Mak for sustainability so when Sandra goes and I would never have said anything had she not come out and said about this book called American American dirt that it was well like not just the great novel of man right but the great no ofic so basically go to hell you're nothing gab sorry bro you're done B will be you're still dead bro stay dead here here is is jine cumins the new force in Latin American and US literatu
re so like you how do how could you I could never see you do that I could never see you do that I could never see anybody I know that has intellectual political Integrity kind of coming out and dancing for the men on Q so um I think that's really dangerous to do I mean like even to her credit s h saved her when we lost man s said you know what all right make the best I didn't even read that thing like I didn't even read it okay they just said it to me because she felt she felt and that's what we
need to make them feel to protect your kid yeah you know that whole thing to me it exposed the little Corruptions in American literature you know because you know because there's not somebody like you and all you know sort of like you know but you know people are just doing papers for one another and it's such a small group of people you know I mean I remember I wrote a really negative review of of a novel by an African-American woman um her name annia mat I think was her name and and I got all
these messages from people thanking me for for basically taking down this novel you know which been an Oprah book club kind of choice and people like you know I mean like an established writer really sort of established Chicago um you know white Chicago writer telling me thank you so much for doing that Hector you know it was like that was such a terrible book a really really powerful uh agent West Coast agent call me thank you so much Hector that's such a terrible book you know and I mean it r
eally was a sort of melodramatic book but it got on the cover of the New York Times book review and it was um you know opra sort of picked it up and it was be and it was because people were doing each other favor she went to the Iowa writer Workshop you know and uh and you know somebody did a favor for somebody did a favor and they all lined up and said look this is a great new thing for that week and that's what happened with that book you know was that there was this publishing house that spen
t like a lot of money to buy it and they wanted to get their money back and so they pulled out all this all the J already yeah they had you know they did all this stuff whereas you and I we were fighting even just to get one person the blow seven language translation before it even got already committed they still haven't committed to translating my right yeah that's a whole big yeah so yeah to me that was yeah it was it was a scandal but it's the kind of Scandal that we're so marginal in that w
orld right I mean I know one Latino editor who works at a New York publishing house and he's like 30 years old he's only been a job for five years we both know him right B and there must be a couple of others but uh that you know they're just so few well there is they are in ya right now they know wow man those those barbarians have a lot of kids we're GNA sell them you know Coco literature and stuff that speaks I mean know some of it's good there good why literature it's consequential poetic an
d thoughtful um I don't want to dis everybody there is a an element of it that's you know it's turned into colorful kind of repealers and things for Mass concern but they trust us with the kids because they just can't resist that massive Market but in the adult Market it's another story right that's why we did that campaign was to for me it was a is basically you know as an organizer you want to seek out like in in the cultural real you want to seek out teachable woman I'm like oh wow Miriam wro
te that that scaling could you're no you're no Stein I oh wow I like the voice I look I'm organized a few things in my life and I think we can take this energy you're putting on this white woman and putting it where it belongs on the industry that created her right you know not just the Frankenstein mon but Frankenstein Dr Frankenstein and so and never you know they gave us we hit the Pata it gave up some C right gave us some jobs for people some writers getting good deals hey I appla that too w
e help make it happen but that the most important part of it was really us us us waking up us waking up to absolutely you know this this industry sees us this way and if we take action we can have an impact well it's like you said I mean it's just a a symptom of so many aspects of our culture that just see us as these marginal people when we're the ones who keep the whole country running really you know and um and just that were inconsequential and the whole stereotype of of latinx meso people a
s unintelligent you know unintellectual right and I just feel like I've been fighting that my whole life no I feel you and I mean like I had to make a decision in this book okay first I never imagine myself writing a memo like but I had to tell my dad's back end story which is really astonishingly heavy right and I do mean astonishing and then I was like H you know if I want to talk about gangs I have some life experience that resembles that as a SK so I can bring the reader closer to the heart
of this monster they've created by telling my own right my own I'm do memo do I come out about my militancy and command I never said Friends new but close friends but I I wasn't out of I was you know Trump [Music] neis pick up hey man does your heartbeat at this Rhythm this pace about condition of your world does your heart feel like this because if it does there was a time when your heart beat like this some of us decided we to become this thing called revolutionaries that was a big motive for
me to write that to the book because it's like the idea of left politics in the US again we're we're outside of the kind of progressive liberal imaginary black white binary that at the heart of no yeah we're just is poor yeah like okay immigrants the Black Panthers are great let me tell about theing transnational struggle against the empire last 12 years and cost a lot of lives a lot of tragedy but also had epic epic like stories of like I mean like your book I mean Hector Hector everybody know
Hector's most recent number right it's about a guy who was in the FM a white guy who was in the which is cool because how many get to write about white people man like that could be an EP he wrote about I mean I think that that I think that at the highest level of writing about our experience and how we have been imagined as a people and how we've been wrong as a people there's a sad White story you know and that sad I mean you know and we are marginalized by people we are created into this sort
of cartel monster on television and movies because that's an extension it's an expression of white fears it's an expression of white insecurities right the whole creation of trumpism is is comes from this lonely sad confused white person so yeah I mean I wrote this crazy novel and also I wanted to just show I could write about anything I wanted to you know and see if I could get away with it and I dedicate four or five years of my life to uh to this uh to this novel half of which takes place in
your country and you know half of it was recreating the Salvadoran Revolution which was so amazing so fun like the cestin hideouts and the coding I was like Hector man you got it good research but then I found out he had access to not yeah and I went went to moras santu when I interviewed compos you know who had who many of whom still live there yeah I mean it was an incredible experience and I just you know most people in the United States don't know this history you know the incredible improv
isation of the Salvador Revolution you're talking about a group of compos you know students undergraduates um women you know and active really people who grow up really poor because a lot of the Le mines in in the fmln were people from the L class people working class very very poor people compos you know and so and to me there was like this incredible event and I had this document from this uh you know this white guy Jose Anderson who's known to G was Lucas in in Fr and I just thought you know
I can link these two things together I can sort of Link this midwesterner this Midwestern family and this crazy Salvadoran you know epic which was the revolution in Moran right Joe belong to one of five families like in the old school 40s Market in the US there was five groups in the right and they were one of the crazier and self-destructive ones they were one yeah they he belonged to the one that was called Erp they killed Ro they killed Ro Al and led a group of poets Matt you should know the
story a group of poets was pissed off that they killed went and established their own revolutionary actually started their own revolutionary political military organization which I've always been like that's like that's that's how it needs to be because as the US has proven you can't sustain struggle Sol money the bullets fly and all those dollars don't go anywhere but if you have like this other sensibility that I associate with like Port Warrior right where you kind of just it just if it was t
o happen you ask yourself what you don't say like please mark fing save my ass bro why am I doing this why am I doing this what makes you hold your ground and suain the fight through over time and I associate that with spirituality and Poetics and so I think and that's part of the lines of the book that what's in there is communicating me communicating after 30 years of stuff to to try to say like for the young people especially look this is what makes more sustainable strugle as far as I my exp
erience well yeah I mean for me uh the Salvadoran struggle all and Guatemala too all those movements were really they start off with historical materialism right that's like the theoretical part of it Marxism you you're supposed to study history right so you the really interesting thing is you take compos and tradan people and you sit them down and you make them read the communist Manifesto with the German ideology because like a lot of people who became they had to you know history so your own
sense of Salvador and history before you became awakened with Consciousness when you were growing up what did you know about Salvadoran history postard postard history your family has this heavy back end story they're not telling you anything it's like it's almost like I would imagine this is not in common in other I made a study when we created Central American studies at North I made a study of um kind of how you turn mass murder and VI extreme violence genocide into a discipline intellectual
discipline and um know I learned all the stuff I we're doing that so like and I I you know I started learning that anytime there's this of such extreme violence there's extreme silence that follows wow yeah there's extreme sileny so the the key was how do you break the silences from me and um so we created a discipline that had as one of its priorities kind of the the study of violence one of the four how do you say in English axis axes by the way before I if you want to study the Sab Revolution
and it's kind of culture and mechanic the best book in the English language it's not mine it's my 2014 book it's called um poets and Prophets of of the uh resistance and he has a very inside view of these matters and it's very thorough and well written and I baptized the book he had some shap give it more like anyway that just me do um so history so you only had like this postcard notion a postcard notion and then I start like I start finding out like my family history a little bit on my dad's
side of there were these women who were Elites in the coffee you read if you read the book you'll see that my my dad family from our Japan which was the coffee producing region and when you're talking about C salvad you're talking about this extraordinarily bloody being right history behind it there's a good book that guy that Brit wrote a book on copy recently pretty good um so I find out some of these Elite women in particular committed old school lefties of was you know political suicide clas
s suicide you're this seate class person when you say my interests are not aligned with those of my class I'm going to take and align it with the interest of the working class right and that's class suicide so these women in Sal were my family to my dad join I didn't know them but I knew their story and they join the being commanders and they're badass so then start this time is pretty cool after all I had a lot of Shame the postcard you have the postcard have this shame that because there's not
hing that tells you look at the Cho struggle man Fu so much struggle and folks are still being like just put down discursively right labor wise and otherwise so we had no discurs of any English language so the pain and the lack of positive reinforcement and the Post Guard perspective had me being like colonized looking back on it but then little by little I started you know getting political I started like ufw in San Francisco CS bre so I was like smoking pot and then I went to Salvador a more p
olitical entity and suddenly there's this revolution all the walls the walls have slogans the the floors have poetry on them revolutionary poetry and you're around this culture where man there going on one of every three people was organized against the state during the war according to the the Central American University so imagine if we had one of every two people [Music] organized so so you know the Revolution was the Avenue for me to actually rescue myself from the the Clause of colonialism
you know it was like damn man that's you know the way they interpreted the Bible evation theology right right you know I had been in a rightwing Evangelical Christian before this you know I got on my knees and I prayed for Ronald Reagan TR book and then I found the sa Revolution andly this interpretation of Jesus as Li Jesus as a source of emancipation the Bible is a book about freedom in this life not the next and these people organizing in base communities and might fall in love with G and she
's like this ex and going to be none who becomes a revolutionary fall in love and she totally spins take me for a ride I'm still trying like well well yeah I think that uh trauma shame love resistance it's a progression you know and I think I know uh that trauma produces produces shame because uh because I see it you know I see it uh because I teach I teach a use Vine and I I have a lot of um you know immigrant students I have a lot of um first second generation students and they writing about a
ll these things that happened you know the Mexican sort of border crossing experience and it's really a natural thing to sort of take that trauma and become you know turn it into shame and silence but there's also part of and I think this is true my own family where my father was traumatized by poverty but there's this part of you that loves yourself you're taught to love yourself you're taught to love where you come from you're taught to love who you are and that part is the part says wait let
me go back and understand what happened to you let me understand how this came to be and that's the process you described that's going to require my next B about my mom my dad story like sorry sorry man that's right what you so like yeah my next book's about my mom and this walking talking flying rainbow called Scarlet my mom you seen them you just don't know sometimes called car M and it's like this border smashing like my was so my mom was one thought people they love so I I got to go through
the underworld journey of this book so that I could now kind of go into the kind of fly part of it that is a different kind of power power of you know my dad's got this whole Le gravity thing my mom had this levity thing a great power in levity like getting with light so um any I absolutely agree with you it's the love of our ourselves that we're transmitted in our culture as well that that is going to carry through um the dark night here right because it is here right we just we just don't have
the urgy because nobody's telling us how really urgent is because we're in the Empire but go south go south go anywhere South and you'll see that it's here already and it's coming here well explain what do you mean by that well I mean like I reported on immigration as a journalists gone around the world gone to interview all the some of the top thinkers about migration policy and just migration generally right and you know there's estimates that say that anywhere between half a billion to a bil
lion people will be uprooted by climate change uh next decade so um you know the peoples of the South are like I I went to the border with with turkey and Syria talked to Syrian refugees and people that are working with them studying I've been when is really heavy and still is heavy I went I got into things there so so that this high I'm there scientists and the violence in different is climate change flooding heating destroying crop Cycles pushing migration into the cities that then create tens
ion in society look at books and I'm I don't know I want to do something with it but there are these books on um on revolution in the Atlantic around the Atlantic in the 18th century and they're about climate change in the Atlantic and the way climate change enabled facilitated a revolutionary struggle because it weak in the Empire you should kind of be studying this stuff right now right the Empire really is getting weaker it just will never tell you that it will never tell you that but if you
can't feel that it's weaker if you can't feel the change is possible then you're doomed by your own right thing right so like that's what national security is all about National Security primarily like a psychological operation friends of mine who who were trained by the Vietnamese generals and Vietnam by General Japanese generals arguably the greatest political military thinkers in history so I tell my friend hey bro what's the Jedi knowled tell me drop that knowledge on any my you never know y
ou're talking to the person who has maybe like 16 more years revolutionary experience in J and he says he bookish looking guy well you know you want the Jedi knowledge it's that you know Revolution and and War are primarily some some spiritual what could be translated as psychological because you got your adversaries troops and their psychology you've got the population between you so you want the population to [Music] Beal and then you got the of your troops which is the determin and cl at the
end of the day your troops which is why the US is always getting a g in its engagements around the world because they have no no ideological spiritual sustenance to be able fight over an extended period uh in in war so um that's possibility you know uh when you think of Central in the American imagination okay there's like two The Stereotype has like these two um extremes one is the the watermalon nny right what MOS are famous for being what Monas are famous for being great nanes right Sandra L
even has a joke about it right it takes a village to raise a child and in La it's a wateran village right and the other side of that stereotype now many kind is is you know and and you and you write about write about you know gangs is in the title of your book what do you sort of make of that of that stereotype and also how you know what's going on with in you know the stereotype was born here in La anybody you all know that the gangs were born here uh of migration and of gang culture and I mean
people know Alex Sanchez of me I'm sure my friend started news so I mean yeah it's there's an industry built around creating Monsters the Mexican I there's a reality of AR and there's the image right and there's there just you know Empire is massu monsters so they found I remember back when um after the Soviet Union I was like watch who are these dud going to make monster so and I remember there was almost a menu laid out by the guy name Samuel honey he laid out like um you know thear here Clas
h civilization and it was basically a menu for Empire to decide are we going to go after the Chinese is it going to be the Muslim terrorist is it going to be you know Russia re reconfigured is it going to Naros so they had a menu of options they've exercised those menus in different ways and I think category that gamp United States start res a um country of the South a Latin American country in the 70s beginning in the 70s right when globalization is about to set in neoliberalism with thater and
Reagan kind of like decimating the state destroying unions um globalizing manufacturing all this is turning the us into a country of the South and so um when you have that you have the militarization that a companies Latin Americanization too right there's two process of what I call Latino American is you know the the destination of the welfare state and the economy and Ne liberalism and then the policing that's support which is why here in LA that's one Reas I live at it because you see like y
ou know I know you're old enough remember Adam 12 Adam 12 it has these thin ass uniforms right and now we live in an age where the uniforms are like RoboCop right so you follow the you follow the just looking at the unforms and the way they're and you start seeing the response to neoliberalism by the state in the interner city right so the gangs fit perfectly and California's always been a major innovator of militarized counter Insurgent police like in the book I traced how LAPD and ins immigrat
ion acation service help uh Define the gang issue and remember you're talking about these kids who were in P Union even when I was there they were going to Lio Market on Vermont and they were buying ma buy Maes because they were going to schools or they were in areas where they were in in contact with black G and Mexican Mafia were way better armed so kids took getting my check so then journalist like Lisa lingo Journal uh Lisa Ling um uh the LAPD and host of media and policing interest start cr
eating this most dangerous gang in the world image that to this day is so powerful in the imaginary that our peers in the media are still using Getty photos you know because you got to get the cashier photograph of gangs with tattoo face that's like 10 years ago man I've interviewed the gang leader they don't do that anymore but they're sustaining this image for obvious reasons Trump benefits from it policing benefits from it so my mission in writing that part of the book go and find dominant Im
ad I a class called experience and was it dominant image gangs gangs except the variation was sometimes it's ms3 sometimes it's 18 that's about that was a dominant image of so I'm like my mission if I I want to you know I start off talking about humanization and dehumanization I have to Human myself and our people to I canack that gang so I went in to these really scary ass places to meet with gang members who turn out to be what product of society just like you and I there some of them are real
hardcore Killers I met guys who are at the very top of this gang you know and it was a really scary thing but and people very low but low levels and you know the kids aren't po kers they're kids they're 11 years old 12 years old they're not even factoring that in into the image of so I had to go in and destroy that image to the that I could I'm not going to do it just I feel like right I'm gonna like a strategic fit to chose gangs are human beings you trust me as a narrator eventually you're go
ing to be there when I'm talking to this guy he's telling me he's a father of two kids who would never be in again he's telling me he loves uh literature that he loves he actually was reading home he's reading F Garcia Marquez Gano um you know it's in the book He's that this really super brilliant guy who happened to grow up like my dad in a shanty town with no light he told me this thing like yeah he told me he would read books under cand in a sh poetic um image that he gave me if dudes a hardc
killer at the very top of both gangs so uh my vision was to find the heart in the darkness right that's the dominant frame for us as peoples as C americ part of Darkness joh didan did a lot to which is why I've written few articles about well the whole creation of the monster image I mean just to State the obvious it's a creation of white supremacy okay because it's it's a creation it comes from the fact that there are so many and so there is like this the United States is becoming the myo coun
try there was this thinker in the 60s who said uh you know African-American critic who said that the United States will be coming and will not country you know because there was so much about the American character shaped by African-American culture right so today you would say you know the whole country has been hip hop ified right all kids all young people anybody below a certain age in a certain sense they aesthetic has been shaped by hip hop so I think what's happening United States is that
the United States is becoming shaped by a Latin American that word is loaded right by a latinx whatever Sensibility you know being like mugging each other and being like extreme you know just being emotional and so you know everybody everybody in this country unless you live in like the most remote part of like Alaska knows a Latino person in this country by relation by work and so there's such intimate contact between us and white people that the people who want to defend white supremacy have t
o create this idea of us as monsters right and so that's behind the whole MS13 that's all that Fox News ever talks about right they talk about they talk about cartels in M 13 they talk about you know the Caravans of the border and all this other stuff because it's it's just an attempt to play that card right and defend the white character of the country absolutely the border is is as much a cultural thing as it is more I would argue it's more of a cultural development it is a physical it's not r
eal planet wasn't born with this thing growing out of like a tree right it's put up by human beings and then but it has very deep material consequences but it's it's a you know people people like Wendy Brown and others talked about it as a form of performance absolutely and so all the different there's a performance there's performance of the state there's a performance of migrants at the border they're put in this in this theater there's a performance by the you know you you you want to reinfor
ce the idea of the performance of The Border you send boots on the ground to make it like this real thing that's also a threat and both parties contribute like you know the idea that the Democrats are are going to defend this anybody here I know car my friend talks um so the book's been out for a year right uh of course it was a it was like my book was a CO book right it came out during Co and all the virtual events but has anything uh has have you sort of had a sense of like the what the reacti
on was from the people intended to read it you know like oh yeah what what's the reaction I didn't write like you know that we don't write to for any specific audience but in your heart of hearts you want your people to read it yeah yeah I want s I want Central Americans I want Latin people to read it I want young people to read it and uh I started going out into the world this been in New York I've been doing California and I've U like in New York I met Dominican and some Salvadoran and Mexican
young people and I was blown away by part of the book and it's not surprising but I did surpris me when I found out what was the part that most impacted you know what it was the father son but not just for Father's son but also for daughters because daughters have fathers too right some many do so some of those fathers have a up side or completely up so I had students coming up to me even before and and we when I would talk to like cryan but then they would come up to me they would start crying
even before they um they started talking to me because they had never had some something that resembled that part of their lives that nobody you know because you know we have that folkloric sense man I don't want to dis but that that that's also killer Force because it creates this false family self this false self which is what fear does right fear ego creates a false it infantilizes us because one of the things you have to do to grow up is you have to stand up to your parents right and so we'
re infantilized in American Media because those stories aren't being told you know they're not telling stories with like this sort of Henry Miller or Tennesse Williams like type complexity about Leal people they're not getting on they're not and so people don't see that reflected and part of it is too that many of us as creators we like afraid you know because we think of our books as like they're supposed to represent the community and we want you know you're not supposed to put out your you kn
ow putos you're not supposed to put out your diry laundry and so there's a lot of that going on you know in our Among Us among us as creators but um but yeah so we're totally infanti and and so when someone sees like in your book and now more books coming out like my friend Obed Memoir which is coming out in December about his alcoholic father you know people like yeah you know that's like that up family that's my family right and there's just a real hunger for that I think and it's and um and n
ow there's this you know younger readership that's coming up and they're gonna they're gonna want those books this is why I called the book un forget concept at first discover discovered when I was a rightly Christian right because I always Christian I'd be militant Donald Trump had I got saved by Revolution so glory for the re so um you know I first discovered this term which the you know because I I did Bible studies and studied Theology and UMAS Greek ideal that is that means that refers to t
he journey of the dead into the under world before they have to go to either Hades or elisium they had to forget who they were by crossing the river lazy the lazyy river was the river of forgetting so that you had to forget who you were in life to move forward in that right which I I thought was taken with that and and the Christians turned it that term to truth synonymous with truth Alia unforgetting meant truth so then I'm like that's but you know I was a right person so you know I got out of
that join you know did what I did went back to school and I found you know studied some German philosophy classes and we had this woman named Hana talking about Alia and the way that theorist like Han looked at unforgetting was that that you needed to turn um memory into a theater of battle the fight fascism you have to fight it at its roots W so in the culture there's like a there's a there's a theater of memory that we have to win just look at like and I'm sorry G that is you Christina right y
eah that is you beautiful she's Christina iara who just won a Marthur genius award along with my friend Alex they won it with a woman named Monica Martinez Monica has written a book on something called l right in Texas which is the slaughter of something on the order of 5 or 15,000 people we don't know who were slaughtered by the Texas Rangers they were lynched they were shot they were dragged on horses they were all to steal their property this is a mass murder of an epic scale that's been comp
letely erased not just from Texas but from the the imaginary of the United States so like we have to fight that battle that's why I'm really happy not just that you know Alex and Christina one because I love that love them but uh that that matansa is one of the most important historical stories I think we need to really fight to get into the historical memory of the United States because this intersectional Empire she just ain't working right and it's bent oning further so um yeah I love the con
cept of unforgetting because it's the equivalent of what right where you gotta go back we gotta know who fill the mass graes with our dead you know that's why I put the the partic backend story there is kind of a metaphor of what is our job as as as as agents of change right now we have to piece together the bones of memory to move forward with something in our hearts and Minds to be able to move forward with or as um you know as as like mayita was was a same I use that metaph sewing together th
reads to to give back something to an indigenous woman for example who you know was dream grew up dreaming of being a princess as a child when she was in their indigenous people in the western part of Sal and then there's like a massacre and she had to fle to the city this young woman she becomes a sex my will the soda dress and gave you know she would size up the woman and say like okay what do you dream or what do you want and my I would create a dress for her and which is again for me a metap
hor of like again what we as writers you you know I think any writer and any creative person right now who's Latin expressed we know what we have to do and we have to put together the bones of our history and tell give our people back the humanity being so we have to turn memory into a theater of battle and be militant about story that's I never thought I would say sounds Arty to me like atist and radical I like who cares now I swallowed all those words that's gonna be my last question I think a
nd and then I'll we should open it up to see if anybody has any questions from the audience but yeah so you know you mentioned this idea of poet warriorship you know can you what what does that mean to you well I I mentioned like um I learned about in salad there's some of it in the book the way that you know I'm in this this whole way of being salvad that was opposite the postcard right of Salo identity that I GRE which like many of you you you grow up your family wants to curate this beautiful
image of your family for you and they don't mean ill but they don't know that they're kind of like you know kind of shaping you and your memory and your identity in ways that may not be so good for you if you don't know the deeper difficult Tru so um I I mean actually when I look back it started with June Jordan at bery poet June Jordan like was at ber he was teaching us about basically using like popular education where you use local reality immediate reality to raise Consciousness she was doi
ng it around literature so you learn to write poetry and then you go out and teach poetry right you go out you sh what you learned you don't got to be in some like big literary setting you just actually go to a spot like this put together some chairs develop your pedagogy and and then the students I have to go out into nikawa you know too bad what's happening you know many ways now but nikawa back in the day was the center of the Rev poet warriorship in the in the Americans and then Sal we learn
ed from that and like I mentioned which was a group of poets who went on to help create a political military organization so they would fire bullets of lead and of of words right and I think like I'm really taken with the concept because um you know I wrote the book in part as a blueprint for apocalyptic and I don't mean apocalyptic like stupid ass zombie I think I mean apocalyptic like we are in a very difficult moment in world history let's just face it and let's move forward your kids you got
to prepare your kids for a difficult world so you you don't prepare them by teaching them to ignore it I don't think I you know I help raise a young Bo I didn't train him to live away from I hopefully thought him to face actually oring them against the authorities that of high school before graduates statically happen so um but so so we need a a we need nourishment or what I would call we we're we need a we're not in a sustainable world anymore to get back to a sustainable world we need somethi
ng Ain to what I call um sustainable struggle so sustainable struggle like when the bullets not just in battle but in the bullets of your life start coming at you we've all got more bullets than that metaphorically speaking how do we hold our ground and and stay in the fight not resign ourselves you got to have some powerful spiritual sense and I think I associate that with poetry the truth of poetry the beauty in poetry and Po and a poetic and and and and a sense of the poetic and Poetics that
does doesn't separate the political from the poetic right because we live in a country where you all know the concept of poetry and the concept of art is over there and the concept of Pol politics even though when you look at it it's really there are one even in the you know I I there's like you know people get mad at me is like Jericho Brown everybody L Jericho Brown I don't um Jericho Brown African-American gifted for it but politically Mustang may have you know he's part of the problem politi
cally um he uh he's here tweeting about those poor Central American kids that Donald evil Donald Trump is a tweeted back and hey man I don't know if you know but this caging I've been to those cages this separation I talked to these you know who we began with by the thousands with Barack Obama what did Jer Obama Brown after I did that yeah he B blocked me he blocked me right and he is like what's considered Progressive in the in the in the politic sphere and I think that's a problem when your po
litics are separate from your politic from your poetic I think I don't know I just feel like you know I started writing a book about I called it letter to Young Port Warrior I'm starting to think about how do we what's the knowledge we to drop on the Young Folks so that they can sustain their strug so um well I think that one of the things that you do is you you validate their need to be angry you know and there's you know there's this idea that our political discourse should be friendly you kno
w and that it should be uh you know it should be a pleasant experience talk about racism and Injustice and we should all sort of just feel great about it afterwards but no we have to be unsettled and we have to be pissed off and we have to be willing to make people angry even our supposed Alice and we need to be we need to tear down but successful this don't be a Marty I didn't get into this stuff to be a Marty I get you know you gotta play the win that's what really excites me right now I think
Latin xes in particular right now are primed up to win some and really fight hard we started the ball rolling year in La back with Proposition 187 El of the democratic party took it from the East side and ched it into leadership of the assembly and the Senate and to elect mayors of Los Angeles but I think there's a other flanks of that movement that are priming to kind of um rise up to this new occasion of this epic moment I guess I'll leave you with that I really encourage all everybody to be
crazy as you can be because the political moment can man Embrace whatever epic sensibility have you know embrace it because you're in an epic moment as ever there's been right and it's going to get more intense so it pull out your best thank you anybody have any questions and I'll trans for Facebook live want ask yes it's I'm curious about uh what you mentioned earlier in your your talk about I'm gonna leave it open yeah sorry you might have to speak yeah you say you hired a therapist to go to t
he process and uh you know one things about a therapist as uh somebody help helping uh one get through uh some kind of individual experience but this book raides this book and its contents uh are about raing uh your experiences as an individual tied to your your experiences as part of a collective yeah so what was like what what the demons that you have deal with in your relationship with the therapist both at the individual level and the what I'm sorry well maybe maybe I should use the word dem
on butons yeah what were what were the were the what were the battles what were the difficulties what were the challenges that you confronted um with yourself with your upbringing and with your with your society that the therapist helped you you know no man that's but ask question because the book was I'm like some of those kids that you know I'm I'm already a middle-aged man and I to book you're talented SC you're the dude I think seen M anyway so that's thank you how did you like what was your
relationship with therapist uh well you know I go in skeptically to the you know little background I actually met a guy Nam a is a Spanish priest who became uh one of Latin America's I would argue greatest psychologist he brought us this concept of Liberation psychology taking of for is banking relationship for example where you have the teacher just dropping knowledge on one unilaterally on the student and the student just regurgitates what the bank says he applied that analysis to the client
psychologist relationship where he recognized it was power lab and that it was um you know where if it assumed in the say the war Survivor and the therapist relationship is that the war Survivor is going to carry the load of the war by themselves social the therapist has to kind of integrate consciousness of the social problematics into the therapeutic relationship you can't just drop the whole moral emotional load of a war on a victim so I went and my therapist was you know he hippie B guy son
of but he you know he wasn't a Liberation psychologist he was just really committed say progressive Lefty Jew and beautiful man I kind of like you know I have been by time I started with I'd already been to some therapist and I kind of you know it's kind of like any other car or thing you manage like okay I basically went we're going to work on this and we're going to map out the emotional Terrain that I'm going to going to Traverse in this story I want to to gerse so I knew I was going to open
up not just Pandora's box but Pandora and her sister box of hor in my life my father beating my ass humiliating me war Street vience being in Mass grave sites being in know talking to people who are experiences experience genocide subconsciously transmit these things to your own subconscious so I'm absorbed all this stuff and I gota like be very careful again I to scanners so like I want to be like scanners I didn't want to be like scanners and have my head blow up from all these things so they
took piece by piece so the most difficult things were one of them was my father and the deep deep deep sadness that still grips me to know what my father you know like my dad I'll tell you anyway my dad last living wies to Salvador is called lat 1932 which Scholars at Oxford told me is arguably the single violent episode not just in Latin American history but in world history concerned with the numbers of people killed in a concentrated space and a concentrated amount of time a matter of a week
and a half it killed tens of thousands of people my dad's now one of probably listen a handful of people that witnessed this act and to find out my dad he never said anything for almost 70 years about this to think of the terror that the child my father was had to had experience to say imagine a terror that you can't speak of for 70 years that's how deep my sadness has been that's how deep my anger has been I mean it's also how deep my overcoming has so I you know I I that was one of the most di
fficult but also liberating I think the the degree of difficulty is inversely proportional to the degree of Liberation you know I do me Liberation we really back that Jedi knowled Sly Liberation movement Liberation psychology Liberation because we have to think about Freedom Mar yeah heot book Liberation psychology translated by my friend ad Aron it's available so yeah I could go on about that one thank you else questions um [Music] I can die happy now that you said that that's precisely what yo
u just gave me you know that as AIT you just that's gift for me man thank you so honor me that's why you work hard so that like this one's going in that direction you're facing you're unforgetting you who you were I mean I had I had forgotten in my public person I had forgotten for example one of the better sides of part of me said it I'm going to blow up fascist military I had to take about that for most of my adult life and so I was like that was hard for me I really risk my life for what I be
lieved in I couldn't talk about because I feared what the state would be because we did in fact saying you have to touch the tiger right there if you're going to make social change you're so okay here's my example thank you you honor me oh in the back yes I want to say thank you as well um I'm Salvadorian first generation here my father was killed at two years old in no your dad was year two now well I was two yes [Applause] the yeah no yes um you kill other so I I grew up in matriarchal family
all women M family among salador yeah yeah and so reading your book um as you mentioned earlier was uh very powerful very cathartic um relatable it was uh in the very beginning from first page to why do sadorian sleep with machetta under their bed right I thought we were the only ones that did that I didn't realize it was such a cultural thing you know yeah um and the generational trauma that comes down even when they don't talk about it like my family still doesn't talk about um that's Norm but
we have what we carry that burden that we don't know how to define we don't have the words or the history to Define what that burden even is right and your book you know has help to kind of understand and give some words to what that burden that so many of us carry them that are the first ones here right and we we Carri their stuff and we don't know what it is or why right learning about that different side of the history um realizing that we're bonded truly any from all that we we are truly bo
nded from that experience I feel like I know you I feel like we're actually family just your book because of that and so just want to say truly thank you for writing this and for giving us starting to giving us a good name because as Lear when I meet folks when I've met sorry white folks and I said they ask me where are you from I like where in Mexico is that I've gotten that and so you know you're being playing a big part and giving us a good solid name that means something and deserves to resp
ect and the history to be unforgotten and retold over and over again by everyone here so much obliged thank you I can die again yeah thank you you too honor me I don't write the book you don't write you write um no I mean I have AIS you know when I'm writing it but sometimes like a daily basis but that I don't expect that to be the yeah the story has it own integrity and if it's right you and also novelist but you know I don't write thear but it's people find I I have cathartic moments I know it
was like man what a relief man I'm I'm to get I can go and my mom um but um uh yeah there's so many like young people here in LA and across the US single mom hited house I mean like you can see it in the book The Foot notes if can really geek out on it like car Scholars where you see like by 1922 when my dad is born more than half of all household female headed household so these are statistical reality behind that ferocious Salvadoran mom that we all many of us know like Powerhouse like driven
and you know Scrappy and doing whatever they're going to do to raise their kids out of you know this colossally bad poverty that was the poverty here so thank you man you honor [Music] me I also didn't I'm not okay um but I still feel like it's important to know history it's very seeing that in book understanding one very powerful so my question is when follow I'm not be finished I'm just starting I did some research take me about year to write another year to edit and six months or something a
fter that two and a half years or so um but I got a cool piece coming out about what I call the gentrification of Consciousness he like yeah know I'm like yeah I'm true California that way it's Bay Area Bay are that's where the Bay Area kind of way La that way conscious there you know really exposed this to psychedelics early on and I'm writing about what I call the gentrification Consciousness coming with the legalization certain things I'll be writing journalism doing things while I do this ot
her book so I can you tell us about next I think it's right to the point of everything we're talking thanks no no thank you I mean that sincerely uh I I'm writing a book it's called called our migrant souls and it's about it's essentially been trying to write a book about what it means to be you know or LX Oro in this age of and trying to see the construction of this idea of Latino Latin X within the race History of the United States because to me all the race categories that exist in United the
y're basically fairy tales right they're madeup stories and that's something that a lot of you know black Scholars have written about in the last 10 years n and painter has this great history white people which is about that it's about how this idea of white is created and so the idea of Latino of the dangerous myso of the brown person is this idea created uh in reaction to our increasing importance in American culture right United States culture and so I just sort of try to take this whole thin
g apart you know and uh all the sort of imagery of us and um all this up stuff too in our own sort of definition of what our identity is because Latino or even latinx I the or the term Latin races our indigenous African identity and that's a huge chunk of what it means to be uh Latino so to me Latino is a synonym for mixed it's a story about Empire the one thing that unifies all these different peoples the Puerto Rican Dominican Guatemalan Cho you know what unifies US is that we all have a story
of Empire have our lives have been shaped by us question so so uh in terms of a dream team for an adaptation for film or streaming in terms of director music you know score soundtrack with being people that Inspire be V dies I mean physique you got the physique I'm more inclined to to the Rock just seems to be a little more shaped than of these days so you know um I don't know like the book has been [Music] option yeah I'm hoping the suggestions you have other actors want to play you have consi
der it last question both got more experience you start the process of writing a book wow well first of all it's sort of like becoming a monk priest you know it's like it's something that you really shouldn't get into thinking you're G to make any money out of it and you should do it because you hate the idea of being quiet you hate the idea of other people being print telling your story you know and that's why that's that what that need to become a writer and then you know it's sort of like you
just do a daily process it becomes part of your daily life I mean you know all of us have other jobs right I I'm a university professor before that I was so this morning I was up 6:00 in the morning and to me that's sleeping in because I used to get up 5 or 4:30 in the morning to work on my last book and uh usually write like an hour or two a day and then seeking out criticism I think when you first start out too when you first start out um I took classes at Beyond Baro and in Venice I took cla
sses that us like short story writing um you know just to sort of get feedback and get a sense of what the craft is because when you become a writer you're entering into this craft this it's a really really old craft you know it's a couple of thousand years old um and there's certain lessons and there's tricks and there's you know things that might not immediately obvious you know when you first set out to do it and just getting feedback from people is really really important and then just disci
pline and being staying true to yourself believing that there's something that you need to say that no else say and I'm really holding on to that and I just have a lot of faith in my readers you know I just feel like they're intelligent people they don't want me to condescend to them they just want I want to give them all of my intellect my passion and it's all done in this thing this thing language you know and also just recognizing how important all the languages that we have are like for exam
ple I mean I grew up speaking Spanish and English and I never read anything in Spanish until I was in college when I was 17 years old but I had all the Spanish in my head and just the language of the street you know and nicknames and you know Roberto's great you're great with that you know just all the Argo and the you know the uh just the language of the streets and all that is valuable you know you have to really uh you know have faith in it's a word game and so you collect words all the time
you're just out looking for you know the descriptions of colors and bces and just you know when you get really really into it it becomes almost kind of like this religious experience every day where you just feel really powerful for like 15 minutes you know and then you feel really shitty you look at what you wrote and it sucks and you know so it becomes this whole sort of process you really have to live yeah my language it's like is really like there's a quote by a dead white dude German dude p
o really G actually not by him some dude that actually said it he took what said but Essence of it is like commit now because then Providence is going to fall into place in your favor I take that phrase and I say instead of Providence subconscious commitment organizes your subconscious just look at parents look at your friends who you grew up with like I did before they were parents after they parents they're like parents they're focus and there's this deep thing that happens to you when you com
mit something um and organiz the most powerful part I believe so something to commit to that me a beautiful Vision has be has to be beautiful in some form because you GNA be sleeping with this mug for a long ass time you know like yeah you're still beautiful you are more beautiful than I've ever seen so you gotta like really love what you're doing and then organize your life in terms of economics so that you are sustainable in a consistent way to be able to write stay writing stay have an econom
ic stability or an economics that allows you to have a chunk of time every day or every week however you organize it you don't have to write every day you organize your life like I I I you know I'm an organizer so like okay I'm committed I got Vision thing I want I [Music] got I got this guy there people around the United States Amer I was selecting to be myari in terms of the had another set ofari on the issues of publishing that's a separate issue you gotta see your way so your vision has to c
arry you not just through the writing of the book then there's selling the book to a publisher or you can self-publish now with tools I'm too old for that kid so good Lu that but um if I was young I would be crazy I'd go build big audience andell BS and show that it's possible but I'm know I don't want to use that so um you know having a um people that feedback I made a list ideally and you know the more you fall in love with it the more you want to spend time with it so like I was like w I want
to spend week or two weeks just writing the concept when I first discovered damn this people really live like the Hector Hector like God bless you all right like you know I made a list of friends who you know I knew would let me borrow their place to go right like go in a retreat like my friend Department in Santa Department in Miami they're like close friends I'm TI with them like I want to go right and I knew they were using their place so I got my own residency when official residencies woul
d not like honestly I told you I get rejected n out of 10 times right now after my fellowships residencies and grants and I'm told by people who I trust partly not just being that's not just being leftist over here doesn't get you in the in the U in The Graces of the liberal imaginary that dominates publish I had to Res by a week here at this apartment and we over there you know but stuff like that is really there take care of the Practical stuff is a big deal take surviving to right another day
yeah slow and steady is the way yeah and editing is writing really really really that's a whole that could be a whole what do you call it you can have a whole you know couple of seminars on like editing is writing I've never understood that until now for really really you lay the first draft on the canvas of the page and then the real for me the real writing starts when you're really starting to figure out what is really this about and that's editing editing helps you figure out what it's reall
y about and how to how to edit how to cut it down how to add in a way that get the real story thank you so much here for sale you guys want to sign and if you guys could help stack chair we can all chill and hang out that' be great
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