Dennis Miller’s Gay Joke About Barney Frank

Published on by Lisa Category: Uncategorized

Dennis Miller can bite me.

On the O’Reilly Factor, Miller made a anti-gay joke about Barney Frank- an openly gay member of the House of Representatives – being arrested. Even O’Reilly recognized that it was wrong. Like Nader, who was schooled by a Fox anchor for using “Uncle Tom” as a phrase to describe Obama, Miller goes well over the line with his anti-gay remark.

He was met with mild resistance and discomfort from O’Reilly, but the laughter behind the camera confirms what I already know: the passing of Prop 8 cannot be blamed on one segment of the population. While religious influence clearly plays a role in America’s ill treatment of gays and lesbians, this stupid Miller video reveals one of the many hearts of the problem:

mainstream America still trivializes and laughs about homophobia behind the camera or in the privacy of our homes.

Locks of Love Hair Challenge

Published on by Lisa Category: Uncategorized
If there is one thing that I was blessed with – it’s my hair.
I’ve got good, dare I say great, hair.
It’s thick, radiates a black shine, and I have never done anything to it except wash and brush and I often get compliments while I am standing in line for something.  
A few years ago, I discovered Locks of Love and donated my hair.  They ask for a minimum of ten inches to use for one hairpiece, but also accept shorter hair as well.  My locks are long, intentionally so, cascading down my back and  I’m thinking, THINKING, of shaving my head and donating my hair to kick off 2009.
I consulted Adonis about his thoughts and as always his reply, “I support whatever you really want to do.  It’s just too bad the idea of a woman shaving her head has been stained by Britney’s breakdown.”
When I think about the children – particularly young girls – who are sick and went through chemo and want to have the feel of hair on their heads, I can’t help but think about how I normally just chop my hair at a salon and leave it on the floor.  Young girls usually love long hair and I’ve got it to donate.  It’s just HAIR.  It’ll grown back.  My hair grows like springtime weeds.  What really sends me over the edge is when I think of little girls of color who want black hair and have a limited selection of chestnut, brunette, redheaded, and blond pieces to choose from; again, not seeing themselves in the world in the face of choice.  I nearly breakdown  if I think of a little Filipina girl asking for a black hairpiece.
Anyone out there willing to cut (or shave if you’re daring) for Locks of Love?  I’m thinking of doing this sometime in 2009 and would love to have a Hair Challenge with a fellow volunteer.

LET’S HEAR IT FOR PINAY POETS!

Published on by Lisa Category: Uncategorized


Press Release: Filipina Poets in Library of Congress Special Exhibit

Filipina Poets Featured at the Library of Congress

The APA Collection at the Library of Congress is exhibiting the books of Asian American women poets in collaboration with the
First Annual Festival of Women’s Poetry (Wompherence) on the worldwide web. 

A collection of the published works of select poets in the list of “100 Filipina Poets”
featured on the Wompherence website (curated by poet Luisa Igloria), is part of this special exhibit. 

Filipina poet Angela Manalang Gloria’s Poems released in 1940 is considered
the first published poetry collection in English by a woman. The original,
the revised edition and the updated edition, The Complete Poems,
are on display. Two seldom seen monographs,
Two Voices, Selected Poems of Abelardo Subido and Trinidad Tarrosa Subido,
published in 1945 and Trinidad Tarrosa Subido’s
Private Edition: Sonnets and other Poems (2002) are likewise included.

The Wompherence Exhibit in the Library of Congress is open to the public,
Monday through Saturday during the month of November 2008. It is displayed in the 

Asian Reading Room, LJ150 
Jefferson Building
101 Independence Avenue, N.E.
Washington DC 

For more information, contact 

Reme Grefalda 
Librarian/Curator,
Asian Pacific American Collection
Asian Division; &
Program Chair,
Asian Division Friends Society
Library of Congress
(202) 707-6096(202) 
707-1724 fax
regr@loc.gov

The Filipina poets featured in the Library of Congress exhibit are: 

Mila Aguilar
Cora Almerino
Linda Alburo
Lilia F. Antonio
Merlinda C. Bobis
Carlene S. Bonnivier
Sofiya Cabalquinto
Catalina Cariaga
Marjorie Evasco
Penelope Flores
Sarah Gambito
Jean Vengua
Reme Grefalda
Jessica Hagedorn
Luisa Igloria (Ma. Luisa B. Aguilar Carino)
Marra PL Lanot
Babeth Lolarga
Susan T. Layug
Fatima Lim-Wilson 
Ruth Elynia S. Mabanglo
Angela Manalang-Gloria
Maningning Miclat
Barb Natividad
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Cristina Querrer
Lilia Quindoza-Santiago
Barbara J. Pulmano Reyes
Patria Rivera
Nadine Sarreal
Trinidad Tarrosa Subido
Eileen Tabios
Ester Tapia
Edith L. Tiempo
Rowena T. Torrevillas

Readers can find the works of 100 Filipina poets in the 
Wompherence section on FILIPINA POETS at
wompherence.proboards82.com

Walang Hiya

Published on by Lisa Category: Uncategorized

CALL ALL PILIPINA/O WRITERS AND ARTISTS!

Call For Submissions
**** Please Forward Widely ****

Walang Hiya … literature taking risks toward liberatory practice
Will be published by Arkipelago Press Spring 2009

Walang Hiya … literature taking risks toward liberatory practice is a
literary anthology committed to using the narrative as a departure
point for personal and political transformation. We seek to challenge
the boundaries and cultural norms, sharing our stories without shame.
Walang Hiya believes in the idea of Cultural Work or the use of
artistic expression as a form of education and community mobilization.
We feature emerging Pilipina/o artists, works that capture the spirit
of innovation and contradiction.
We pay homage to the literary roots of our Diaspora and with this
offering hope to embrace the future tense.
Walang Hiya seeks submissions in the form of prose, poetry and short story.

We are interested in the stories that move beyond the identity politic
to embrace other
forms of coming to oneself as individuals and as a people. We’ve read
the stories of
Pilipina/o pride and reclaiming our culture, but what’s next? We are
familiar with
characters caught in the culture clash hovering around notions of
identity and homeland
that helped shape the literature of our Diaspora, but what is on the horizon?

We seek submissions exploring the space of contradiction where our stories live:

What are the resiliency stories borne out of our legacy of colonization?
How do we as Pilipinas/os transform accepted norms, whether positive
or negative, in religion/spirituality, language and culture?
How do we practice a healthy forgiveness in order to sustain
relationship and community?
How do we practice everyday acts of resistance?
How do we keep our humanity in the face of unequal power dynamics … At
work? With the people you love? With institutions intending to help,
but do more harm?

We are interested in utilizing prose and poetry to creatively teach
and speak our
experience as first, second, third (and beyond) generations of
Pilipina/o’s in the Diaspora.
Walang Hiya will feature a study guide in the back of the anthology
for educators and
community groups to use as an entry point for dialogue and political engagement.
Guidelines

All submissions will be read thoroughly and with respect. If selected
for the Walang
Hiya anthology, additional editing may be required. The author(s) will
be contacted
directly for input.

Submission Deadline: December 5, 2008
Submissions should be no more than 3,000 words, double-spaced,
single-sided, 12-point font
Please include a bio of 100 words or less
Send works via email as an attachment in Microsoft Word to
walanghiya2009@gmail.com
Questions can be directed to Roseli Ilano or Lolan Buhain Sevilla at
walanghiya2009@gmail.com

Contributors retain all rights to their work and will receive two
complimentary copies as
compensation.

lolan buhain sevilla
www.lolansevilla.com

“they are even afraid of our songs of love”
– – carlos bulosan

With Your Mouth Open

Published on by Lisa Category: Adulthood, Notes From Home Plate

I used to be a horrible daughter that nudged my brother, Fran, for laughs when our Dad fell asleep with his mouth open. I would shake my head in wonder, Are you THAT tired, Dad, that you can’t close your mouth?

Apparently yes.

Apparently that also runs in the family.

In an uber-productive weekend where we took to the leaves the way soldiers took to Normandy, and I tackled my closet and *finally* unpacked from a 4 weekend trip October, Nick and I accomplished much this weekend, domestically speaking. We cooked dinner, celebrated Books’ 30th birthday with the loyal Tom Ward from the ‘Nati, and even squeaked in an early 9am mass on Sunday morning. We rock like that.

After all that activity, I crawled to the sofa and sank into a poetry book, ready to be taken into a deliriously gorgeous Nikki Giavonni world, and then fell asleep, books on the floor, limbs sprawled like I’d been drugged, mouth gaping open. I was exhausted. Nick read Time magazine and covered me with a blanket. He’s kind like that.

Life is so much easier when you’re organized and wake up early. It’s so much easier to decide what to wear when your clothes are actually hanging on hangers and not crumbled up like leaf piles on your bedroom rug. I may be converted to Nick’s style of living – uncluttered and happy.

In other non-exciting details that we love to talk about, I continue to lament the lable of True Adult which Nick and I have humbly accepted. WIthout alarms, I wake up at 6:45am. Now for those of you out there who think that is not a big deal, remember two things:
1) I used to have nearly all evening classes at Xavier because I couldn’t wake up before 11am and 2) I am unemployed

I suppose it’s the rigor of raking leaves and rearranging my magnetic poetry that drains me and I need a fitful 8 hours to be productive. This transition is quite shocking, to say the least. Nick, in his balanced life patterns of wake, shower, work, eat, read, sleep gets routinely heavy lidded at 10:30pm (how embarassing) and rises to the world like clockwork at 7:30am. We don’t even have kids to blame for our lameness. We are Adults.

Blaming the "Feminist Movement"

Published on by Lisa Category: Uncategorized


Another fascinating postcard at PostSecret reveals a not so big secret that many women feel about the Feminist Movement.  I long to meet this person and hear what is her full story and what exactly transpired to blame a “Movement” for her unhappiness. I have to be honest, though, and say that when I read it,  I immediately nodded and empathized. 
I knew what she was talking about.  It’s hard to find happiness when the Feminist Movement (leave the F and M capitalized) ignores you.  Or has misled you (or continues to do so).  It’s difficult to be “liberated”  when your desires, sexuality, choice, and culture are absent from the Agenda. The Feminist Movement has insulted and hurt me more times than I can count.  It has pissed me off to the point of tears and hurling books across the room because of its unapologetic history of racism and deliberate short-sightedness of womyn of color and international feminisms.  It has rained on my footpath with its pathetic “first, second, third waves” explanation of progression and its ruthless inability to prioritize critical analysis of race, class, religion, and citizenship.  
Women’s and Gender academic programs have bulldozed its own field and played the Master in the house of so-called freedom.  What is particularly nauseating is the US feminist’s inability to unglue herself from either her navel or mirror and pay attention to transnational issues where she is asked to not be a savior or charity worker to other causes, but a vessel of understanding and soldier of true feminist journalism; to tell the stories of marginalized and silenced womyn.
That was me, my anger, before.  That was MY ecdysis about a year ago.
And it is that truth that has bolstered me through so many disgusting episodes in the feminist blogosphere, in the political arena, and in media.  And it is the community of like-minded feminists with whom I find a safe haven and courage to say, still, I believe in feminisms, plural. I believe there is much to till and even more to plant.  I believe in womyn of color and that their voices are the future of this nation.
Whoever you are, dear postcard creator, I hope I can someday hear your story and find out what or from whom you learned about the Feminist Movement.  I hope that you find the untold stories of women who are living evidence of choice, accountability, and deep joy.  So, it with great respect to your secret and to sharing it with the internets that I share this with you:
Find your community.  Find your cause.  Build your feminism.  Build your movement.  There, inside that sacred piece of collaboration and relationship, where passion and energy still have breath, will be your happiness.
If I still relied upon mainstream Feminism for deep sages or guidance with its icons, fames, and blindspots, I’d be pretty unhappy, too.  Luckily, and this is my hope for you as well, I learned how to define myself in relation to, and sometimes despite, the Feminist Movement.