Legacy of Poetry 2023 Day 3: Ghost of Cesar Chavez

Sun Apr 30 2023 at 04:00 pm to 07:00 pm

Student Union Theater Courtyard | San Jose

Legacy of Poetry Festival
Publisher/HostLegacy of Poetry Festival
Legacy of Poetry 2023 Day 3: Ghost of Cesar Chavez
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San José State University's annual Legacy of Poetry Festival is back! This year, our poets will deal with the theme "Feeding Our Hunger".
About this Event

Welcome to the third day of SJSU’s Legacy of Poetry Poetry Festival, presented by the Poets and Writers Coalition.

Student Union Theater, 4:00 -7:00p.m.

Join us back at the Student Union Theater or on Zoom at 2:30 pm to watch Poetry Performance Videos screened on YouTube, sponsored by DPWC. Following that, we pay tribute to Cesar Chavez on the thirtieth anniversary of his death through student readings and performances with author J. Michael Martinez.

We will end the evening, and the festival, with a Feeding San Jose/Ghost of Cesar Chavez Keynote performance by playwright/essayist/poet Luis Valdez, featuring David Dominguez, and Xochiquetzal Candelaria.

Speakers and Their Stories:

Luis Valdez is a renowned Chicano playwright and director. His Obie award-winning theater company, El Teatro Campesino (The Farm Workers’ Theater) was founded by Luis in 1965 – in the heat of the United Farm Workers (UFW) struggle and the Great Delano Grape Strike in California’s Central Valley. His involvement with Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the early Chicano Movement left an indelible mark that remains embodied in all his work even after he left the UFW in 1967. “Zoot Suit Riots of 1943″, two of the darkest moments in LA urban history – Zoot Suit – is considered a masterpiece of the American Theater as well as the first Chicano play on Broadway and the first Chicano major feature film.

David Dominguez is the author of the collections Marcoli Sausage (2000), published in Gary Soto’s Chicano Chapbook Series; Work Done Right (2003); and The Ghost of César Chávez (2010). A resident of California’s Central Valley, Dominguez writes poetry that reflects life in the area, often focusing on work and family history. Rigoberto González elaborated on the importance of place to the collection The Ghost of César Chávez, noting that the Central Valley is “a place where generations of Mexican families have lived, worked and witnessed periods of both economic hardship and prosperity.… Dominguez pays homage to a different fruit of this labor: the hard-won comforts of domesticity and the impulse to reflect on the legacy of sacrifice.” Dominguez’s poems have been published in the anthologies The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (2007), Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems and Poetics from California (2008), Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes (2009), and Camino del Sol: Fifteen Years of Latina and Latino Writing (2010). Dominguez is the co-founder and editor of The Packinghouse Review. He teaches at Reedley College in Reedley, California.

Xochiquetzal Candelaria’s book Empire was published by the University of Arizona Press. Her work has appeared in The Nation, Tin House, New England Review, Seneca Review, and other magazines. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley and New York University and is the recipient of many awards including an NEA Fellowship in Poetry and grants from the Vermont Studio Center, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, The National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the LEF Foundation. Her poetry and essays have been anthologized, most recently in Other Musics: New Latina Poetry, The Poetry of Capital, and The Awesome Difficult Work of Love: June Jordan’s Legacy. She teaches writing at City College of San Francisco.

Special Guest: Yosimar Reyes is a nationally-acclaimed Poet and Public Speaker. Born in Guerrero, Mexico, and raised in Eastside San Jos, Reyes explores the themes of migration and sexuality in his work. The Advocate named Reyes one of "13 LGBT Latinos Changing the World" and Remezcla included Reyes on their list of "10 Up And Coming Latinx Poets You Need To Know." His first collection of poetry, For Colored Boys Who Speak Softly… was self-published after a collaboration with the legendary Carlos Santana. His work has also been published in various online journals and books including Mariposas: An Anthology of Queer Modern Latino Poetry (Floricanto Press), Queer in Aztlán: Chicano Male Recollections of Consciousness and Coming Out (Cognella Press), and the forthcoming Joto: An Anthology of Queer Xicano & Chicano Poetry (Kórima Press). Reyes was featured in the Documentary, "2nd Verse: The Rebirth of Poetry." He is a LAMBDA Literary Fellow as well as the recipient of the Undocupoets Fellowship. Reyes previously served as Artist-in-Residence at the media and culture organization, Define American. He is currently working on his one-man show, "Prieto," to premiere in the near future. Reyes holds a B Ain Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.

The Legacy of Poetry Festival is supported by the College of Humanities & the Arts Artistic Excellence Programming Grant and the MOSAIC Cross-Cultural Center.

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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Student Union Theater Courtyard, 149-157 South 9th Street, San Jose, United States

Tickets

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