Featured Posts
Taxi Dancer
By Cecelia Flores
In 1973, I was a single mother of three small children. I was working in a wig distribution warehouse in downtown LA packing wigs in boxes that were sold at major department stores. I was always looking for a better paying job. My co-worker suggested I get a job where she worked nights. She was a taxi dancer
Red Dust and All
By Felecia Howell
I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia. The radio broadcast repeated itself every hour. Yet despite news of the coup, I, like most people in the small town where I lived, went about my usual daily activities. That day I needed to go to the town market to shop for rice.
Un Mitote Mas
By Miguel Roura
As I grew up, what I knew about Mexico came mainly from her recollections, and the conversations I overheard from her friends over the years. Usually, the talk revolved around heartache, tears, and suffering. Through my adolescence I never wanted to accompany my mother when she went to visit her family.
Tia
By Sarah Alvarado
At the party, Joanie and Jim got into an argument. Joanie left on foot, alone, in a dark and lonely part of town. After blocks into her journey she made it to a pay phone. She called and called. Rosana wasn’t home. The children who answered had no way of helping her. Joanie called Eileen. Eileen wasn’t home, either. Joanie’s body was found not far from her home, in a deserted area …
The Lesson
By Andrew L. Ramirez
The most beautiful and gentle voice greeted us. A Belgian accent both calming and fascinating. As if sent by God himself, there stood the most angelic Nun. Her bleached white habit was perfectly pressed and pleated. … I was in a fairy tale. Dashing in the Bavarian Alps, hand in hand with my very own godsend singing “Doe a deer, a female deer, ray a drop of golden sun…”
Finding Jerry
By Peggy Adams
Daddy was hired for a 15-minute radio program and his sermons became so popular, especially with the shut-in audience, that his time was extended to a half-hour. Unable to immediately fill the time with sermon, he created The Adams Quartet with his children. Daddy selected a song related to his sermon of the day. He taught us harmony and soon we too were a big hit.
Fairy Tales
By Jian Huang
“Your father is legally blind, Miss Huang. We need some more tests, but it looks like he had a seizure in his sleep that caused the loss of eyesight.”
I was 18 years old and just a few weeks out of high school graduation when I heard these words.
The Blue Serpent
By Maria Fernandez
After he married my mom, he inherited part of my grandparents’ back yard to build his own house, as well as a few acres for farming. In 1973, around the time I was born, he started taking courses by mail to become an electrician. He hung the diploma on the wall in our house.
Padrino
By Lena Solis-Aguilera
At one time, I wondered aloud to Costello why Padrino wasn’t in a relationship and didn’t have his “own” children. He looked at me like I was an idiot –“He’s gay.” Padrino had elevated four godsons to the rank of son; Frankie, Costello, Juan and Johnny. He had godchildren in abundance, but I never knew him to have a partner; he was a celibate Santero.
Aureliano and Esther
By Maria Fernandez
Nobody knows why Moices Salceda pointed his gun at Rafael that afternoon. Rafael was sitting on some steps leading to the plaza. Later, they said Moices threaten to kill Rafael for no reason, other than feeling like bullying someone he knew was unarmed. Antonio, Aureliano’s younger brother, happened to be standing nearby. He saw Moices pointing his gun at Rafael, a close relative, and ran to find a gun for himself, snatching it from one of his uncles.
Manifest Destiny
By Jian Huang
When I turned six in 1991, I saw my dad again at the Los Angeles airport. I helped my mom push two carts worth of luggage up the carpeted ramp to the arrival gates at Tom Bradley International Terminal. Two years had taken a lifetime’s toll on his face.
“Life is a slippery thing,” he said at lunch. “It takes all the courage you have just to keep living.”
Smoke Screen
By Peggy Adams
After the birth of their son, Homer enlisted, departed for boot camp and was sent to Korea. His company was ambushed while on an early morning patrol in the mountains near the 38th Parallel. He took shrapnel in his neck and face, some loss of sight in his left eye and was medically discharged.
Homer returned changed — restless and bothered by nightmares.
Heaven Knows
By Fabiola Manriquez
Raised in East Los Angeles in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, we lived in the barrio with gangs and violence. Prejudice and bullying at school and home made life unbearable for me most of the time. My mother had an iron constitution and my father was an alcoholic. They were dedicated to their family and did their best. But a dysfunctional, traditional Mexican Catholic family home was not a place I wanted to be.
I escaped through disco dancing.
Toque de Chicharra
By Miguel Roura
That morning, I had awakened to Guadalajara narcotics officers bursting into my bedroom, guns aimed at my head. Handcuffed, they ushered me through the courtyard out to the street and into the waiting unmarked car as the neighborhood watched.
Fruit of Labor
By Celia Viramontes
Don Luis lined up, just as he did at the border bracero processing center where ranchers’ representatives gathered to select workers. He knew the routine. No shiny belt buckles, smooth hands, or back talk.
Crazies in the Hood
By Susanna Franek
He described the Flores clan, a multigenerational family from the Philippines that lived in the tiny two-bedroom Spanish bungalow, and that drug dealing and gang activity had been going on for years.
“They’re a tough lot,” he said.
Sonia
By Sarah Alvarado
Most of the movies were in black and white, from the 50s or 60s, and starred actors they didn’t recognize. They picked their tapes based on the pictures on the boxes and hoped for the best. They walked away with 70 tapes, 16 of which were marked “XXX,” and each costing between $60 and $150.
Susana
By Sylvia Castañeda
One morning, Susana left her adobe one-room house to fetch water from a nearby well; she instructed her children to remain, under lock and key. Susana never returned. Doña Petra, Susana’s mother, received word that the soldiers had left the region, but had snatched her, taking her by the waist as she walked home and forcing her onto a horse.
Buddy and Dean
By David Fallon
Dean was a wiry guy with tangled hair sticking out from under a grimy baseball cap. He had a long, grizzled beard and striking blue eyes that hid a fast wit. When he talked, he grew animated, with arms waving and face twisting. He was a storyteller who loved having an audience. He was also a drug addict who used just about anything he could get his hands on. Let’s be real, I need beer! his cardboard sign read.
Sounds of Home
By Celia Viramontes
Inside, the village’s unofficial postman drew envelopes from a pouch. He’d carried these miles from the nearest town, where mail arrived almost daily, postmarked with the names of far-away places: Arkansas, Texas, and California. Always so many from California. He waved white envelopes in the air, calling out names.
