White Space: Essays on Culture, Race, & Writing

Thu Oct 14 2021 at 05:30 pm to 07:00 pm

Online | Online

Mechanics' Institute
Publisher/HostMechanics' Institute
White Space: Essays on Culture, Race, & Writing
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Jennifer De Leon with poet Normal Liliana Valdez & Writer Sara Campos. Cosponsored by LatinX in Publishing, Mesa Refuge & Puente Project
About this Event

Cosponsored by LatinX in Publishing, Mesa Refuge and The Puente Project

This is a virtual event on Zoom

Sometime in her twenties, Jennifer De Leon asked herself, "What would you do if you just gave yourself permission?" While her parents had fled Guatemala over three decades earlier when the country was in the grips of genocide and civil war, she hadn't been back since she was a child. She gave herself permission to return—to relearn the Spanish that she had forgotten, unpack her family's history, and begin to make her own way. Alternately honest, funny, and visceral, this powerful collection follows De Leon as she comes of age as a Guatemalan-American woman and learns to navigate the space between two worlds. Never rich or white enough for her posh college, she finds herself equally adrift in her first weeks in her parents' home country. During the years to follow, she would return to Guatemala again and again, meet ex-guerrillera and genocide survivors, get married in the old cobblestoned capital of Antigua, and teach her newborn son about his roots.

Jennifer De Leon is author of Don't Ask Me Where I'm From and editor of Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education. De Leon has published prose in over a dozen literary journals, including Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review, and is a GrubStreet instructor and board member. She is assistant professor of creative writing at Framingham State University and makes her home in the Boston area.

Sara Campos is a writer, lawyer and program officer at a private foundation. Her work has appeared in a number of publications including two anthologies: Basta – an Anthology of Latinas and Gender Violence and The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the U.S. and a number of other journals and newspapers including: Porterhouse Review,Platte Valley Review, Saint Anne’s Review, 580 Split, Colorlines, AlterNet Media, the LA Review of Books, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She has also received an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, and residencies and fellowships from Las Letras Latinas, VONA, Macondo, Hedgebrook, the Anderson Center, and Mesa Refuge.

Norma Liliana Valdez is a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop and a CantoMundo fellow. Her work appears in The Rumpus, The Los Angeles Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and the anthology Latinas: Struggles & Protests in 21st Century USA, among others. Norma earned a BA in Psychology, an MS in Counseling, and a graduate certificate in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University. She is an alumna of the UC Berkeley Extension Writing Program and has been awarded residencies and fellowships from Hedgebrook, Under the Volcano International, Community of Writers, and VONA, in addition to others. She is a founding member of the Xingona Collective, a women’s writing group whose mission is to nurture a sustaining writing practice for its members through mutual encouragement and writing retreats. She lives in the Bay Area.

The Mesa Refuge is a residency for writers, journalists, and other creatives located in Point Reyes Station, California, an hour north of San Francisco. Here writers enjoy time and space to connect with their muses and a supportive community, before going back into the world. We welcome both experienced and emerging writers and creatives who are addressing the pressing issues of our time. It is our priority to support writers focusing on “ideas at the edge” of the areas we value: nature, economic equity and social justice.

LatinX in Publishing is a network of book professionals committed to supporting and increasing the number of Latino/A/X in the publishing industry, as well as promoting literature by, for, and about Latino/A/X people.

The Puente Project is a national award-winning program that for more than 30 years has improved the college-going rate of tens of thousands of California's educationally underrepresented students. Its mission is to increase the number of educationally disadvantaged students who enroll in four-year colleges and universities, earn college degrees and return to the community as mentors and leaders to future generations.



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