Melissa Harris-Perry producer Shanta N. Covington wrote a cool postscript about my book that starts:

The proposed immigration deal introduced last month by the Gang of Eight was one of many issues President Obama spoke about at his White House press conference on Tuesday. The president was complimentary of the deal. “I feel confident that the bipartisan work that’s been done on immigration reform will result in a bill that passes the Senate and passes the House and gets on my desk,” he said. “And that’s going to be a historic achievement.” CONTINUE READING HERE.

Glam Belleza Latina, Glamour‘s digital beauty destination for Latinas, gave me some love today. It starts:

In her new book Bird of Paradise, Raquel Cepeda delves into her Dominican ancestry. Here, we delve into her beauty insights. CONTINUE READING HERE

I can’t front: I was a bit nervous. I have  an intellectual #girlcrush on Melissa Harris-Perry. She is one of the smartest women on the planet and certainly an anomaly in the world of television hosting and political commentary. I only wish we taped the commercial breaks for my own use. I was impressed by the fact that she actually read my book herself rather than have a producer dig into it and formulate all the questions: Melissa went a step further and absorbed it. We were supposed to discuss three passages from the book but got caught up in the convo so we only covered the topic of my birth mother.

During one of the commercial breaks, Melissa asked me how I came up with the title of my book, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina. I told her that I see the title as being two separate titles, one for each part. Bird of Paradise is the title of Part 1: Paradise is the Spanish translation for Paraiso, the name of the ‘hood I lived in for some time with my maternal grandparents. The word “Bird” is a nod to Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Birds Sings. How I Became Latina is the title of the second part of my book because it chronicles just that—how I became a Latina. The second part of the book chronicles my genetic adventure through the science of ancestral DNA to unearth who my peeps were before they ended up in the Dominican Republic and, ultimately, I became a Latina-American or dominiyorkian. There it is.

Here is The Writer’s Corner video clips, below.

I also sat on a panel with Janice Junn, Jelani Cobb and Andrea Plaid about how talking about women changes the immigration conversation. Check it out:

and…

The Arkansas Literary Festival in Little Rock was, for the most part, awesome. I loved my first panel (although I wished it took place an hour later) at the Central Library. The moderator brought up an excellent question about language. Part I of Bird of Paradise… is peppered here and there with Dominican Spanish. If you read the sentences carefully you’ll find clues to their definitions within but I chose not to translate them outright because I want the readers to feel as uncomfortable as I imagine Rocío and Eduardo must have been as spanking new immigrants to New York City in the 1970s. I want the readers to walk in their shoes, even if for just a few moments. The best thing about these talks for me is hearing fresh perspectives from folks who’ve read the book and those curious about the narrative. I missed seeing a new friend’s book reading and my other homegirl Rebecca Walker, who was in town giving a talk at a local high school because I had to jet back to the airport.

I fell asleep the moment I slipped onto my seat on the plane and awoke a couple hours later in Chicago, deliriously tired, only to be happily surprised by none other than Rebecca Walker grabbing her carry-on out of the luggage compartment right in front of me. It was a serendipitous moment, indeed. We took a self-y, proof below, when we went our separate ways to catch our respective connecting flights.

We were in Boston over the weekend looking at universities with my daughter Djali Rancher as Boston marathon runners and their families were checking in to our hotel and going on practice runs around the area. It’s a sad day for everyone. From our family to yours, we are #PrayingForYouBoston.

A snippet of this poem is also in my book Bird of Paradise…

Snapshot of a Pseudo-Revolutionary Poetry Reading

Entered the room full of my brothers and sisters

Beautiful faces

Different shades of Black and Brown races

But those faces hint traces

of hate when I enter the place

Guess my hair is too straight

But I’m Black                                    as Black as my master permitted

From Spain, the man was acquitted

Of the crimes he committed against my ancestors

Against my tatarabuela

But people give muela

When I enter the place                        like I was a disgrace to my race

And welcome me with shade to make me seem darker

Más oscura, que locura

nunca puede ser . . .

I say, “Peace, sis”

To the woman at the door

She snaps, “Whatever, five dollars please”

Like she was my pimp and I was her whore

Funny how our complexions were exactly the same

But she sported fashionable dreadlocks

Host is deep

Eyes glaring staring in confusion

Disillusioned if he thinks

Black is that monotonous

After the show, though

He and other pseudo-revolutionary-Peter-Pan-Africans

Cluster and talk about Black unity at the door

While drinking bottles of Heineken

 Raquel Cepeda © 1995

…inspired this short essay I was invited to write for Latina Style magazine.

ORIGINAL SOURCE

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel—it started at 8:00AM!—hosted by the ACLU and Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) at the gorgeous Newseum in D.C. The panel, filmed by C-SPAN (it’s not embeddable) was a continuation of the discussion of CJR’s March/April issue package on media coverage of race, class, and social mobility. The coverstory and panel were moderated by the incomparable author and fellow Journalist-American Farai Chideya. My co-panelists were Jeff Yang, Gene Policinski and Richard Prince.

I could barely hear myself speak, as my ears popped loudly throughout the discussion. The night before I couldn’t figure out how to turn off the AC in my hotel room and fell asleep re-reading a long article about white plight in Philadelphia that was as uninspired as it was superficial. It literally bore me to sleep. I woke up the following morning congested and with a swollen nose, rushing to make it to the venue on time. 

The issue that I was most interested in was improving coverage about race, in which class and social mobility are interdependent factors. A major reason that articles like Being White in Philly and If I Were A Poor Black Kid are so banal and outrageously out of touch is because the outlets they are published in are totally gentrified. We know what happens when a community becomes gentrified: the gentry comes in and sets up shopt, builds communities atop of existing ones, rendering the native population invisible. The same can be said across the board in mainstream publishing.

We need more biological/phenotypical, sociopolitical-cultural, and gender diversity in the media—even with writers and editors who identify as white. One of the best essays about race I’ve read this year is from the perspective of a white man (Disclosure: I’m not giving David J. Leonard props because he reviewed by book for HuffPo months later. I posted the article across all social media outlets when it first came out!).

For photos from the panel, visit my Facebook page.

The Dominican Studies Institute at CUNY is near and dear to my heart for obvious reasons. I donated my book to their library earlier this week. They wrote a short review which, in part, states:

Cepeda celebrates vividly her ethnic makeup and with raving honesty; she dissects concepts of race, identity, and ancestral DNA among Latinos by using her own Dominican-American story as a specific example.

Last night I had the honor of being hosted by La Casa Azul Bookstore in East Harlem. I labored through the reading, congested and all, with those in attendance graciously sitting through it all. I cut it short because, well, I couldn’t breathe and read but I’m glad I did. The discussion that followed really informed me. The crowd was diverse and included a group of students from Trinity College in Texas (whose professor says he wants to teach Bird of Paradise… in the near future!), and folks from the community. Thank you to all those that came and a special shout-out to Casa’s… founder Aurora Anaya-Cerda for her support.

 LA CASA AZUL: BIRD OF PARADISE… BOOK READING & SIGNING

]]> http://djalirancher.com/2013/04/the-week-in-review/feed/ 0 http://djalirancher.com/2013/04/the-week-in-review/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RaquelCepeda/~3/XVL7vzmbw_o/ http://djalirancher.com/2013/04/the-sisterhood-of-generation-i-adult-children-of-immigrants-by-melody-moezzi/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 01:59:48 +0000 admin http://djalirancher.com/?p=5451

Author Melody Moezzi waxes poetic on what binds us in Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina. She also writes about the risks children of immigrants (mostly hailing from communities of color) take writing  multicultural memoirs in a convention, male-driven lit world.  

“As with most risks, however, it invites criticism from more conventional voices. Case in point: Publishers Weekly, which refers to Cepeda’s language in the book as at once “street-slangy and outspoken” and “prickly and preachy.” The review describes Cepeda herself as “scrappy, street-smart, [and] quick to take offense.” I highly suspect that if she were a man, Cepeda’s “prickliness” may very well have been seen as wit and her alleged evangelism as insight. Furthermore, “quick to take offense” may just as well have morphed into “sharp and incisive.”

Read the piece HERE.

CONTINUE READING HERE.

First of all, loving Ebony.com. It’s a really great looking site. Bravo!

Secondly, while I didn’t entirely agree with the review, mainly the idea of whether or not Bird of Paradise “settl[es] questions of racial identity,” I love how books, films, and other forms of cultural production draw something unique and thoughtful from its beholders. I look forward to discovering Millner’s work, especially seeing that it deals with gentrification (the theme of my next book).

While we’re on the subject: one’s racial and/or cultural identity is never really settled. One should rather do the work of exploring and shifting. We must never settle. We must always examine, redefine, revisit, and revise.