Scenes from la Cuenca de Los Angeles y otros Natural Disasters

Acknowledgments

xiii Acknowledgments For their support of me and my writing, often via the increasingly quaint—según algunos—medium of e-mail (no he caído presa todavía al Facebook, or CaraBobo, como le digo, pero never say never . . .), I thank the following friends and colleagues: José Cartagena-Calderón, Lucía Guerra, Andrea “Chabelita” Gutiérrez, Daniel “el Itch” Hernández , Shaun Levin, Jorge Mariscal, Alistair McCartney, Tim Miller, E. Miguel Muñoz, Andrea “Silvana” Ostrov, Chris Sadiq, Tina Schiller, Ana María Shua, Ilan Stavans, Adam Teicholz, Miguel Tinker Salas, Paulina Vinderman, Suzinn “Lee” Weiss, Pamela Williams, Joanna M. Woolfolk, and, in memoriam, Howard T. Young. The help of my research assistants—Jonathan Raz, Elaine McGlaughlin, Bethany-Rachel Bentley, and Marian Williams—has been invaluable. Para Uds., my heartfelt thanks. I am especially grateful to “el J-Raz” for designing the book cover and to Bethany, “la B,” upon whose keen bilingual and creative writing–trained eye I relied during my “brief yoke”—the months of opposition entre Saturno y Mercurio during which she and I revised this manuscript. Slightly different versions of various crónicas appeared in the following journals, and are reprinted here with permission: “In My Country Crónica” and “Unos Cuantos Piquetitos Crónica,” When Pressed 2, “Movement in Language” (May 2009), http://whenpressed.net/collections /editors/movement-in-language/; “Diary Inside/Color Local Crónica ,” PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies 6, no. 1 (January 2009); “Arañita Cobriza Crónica,” “Trincheras Crónica,” and “Hawk Call Crónica,” SLAB (Sound & Literary Art Book) 3 (May 2008): 21–23, 42–44, 120–23; “Currawong Crónica,” Chroma: A Queer Literary and Arts Journal 6 (Spring 2007): 46–48; “Oda a la Ambigüedad Crónica,” PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies 3, no. 2 (September 2006). I’ve performed different versions of these crónicas in many venues during the past four years. Mil gracias to the following friends and colegas for indulging my Sagittarius-rising penchant for far-flung locales as well as my Moon-in-Leo embrace of the spotlight: Melanie Nicholson (Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, September 2004), Paulina Vinderman and Martha Goldin (Biblioteca Nacional, Buenos Aires, Argentina, October 2004), Adriana Estill (Carleton College , Northfield, MN, February 2005), Eva Valle (University of Redlands , Redlands, CA, March 2005), Florence Moorhead-Rosenberg (Boise State University, March 2005), Azila “Tzili” Reisenberger (University of Cape Town, South Africa, August 2005), Edward James Olmos (9th Annual Los Angeles Latino Book & Family Festival, October 2005), David William Foster and Elizabeth R. Horan (Arizona State University, Tempe, April 2006), Alicia Gaspar de Alba (University of California, Los Angeles, June 2006), Paul Allatson (University of Technology , Sydney, Australia, July 2006), Emilie Bergmann (University of California, Berkeley, September 2006), Conrad Romo (The Hotel Café, Hollywood, CA, September 2006), Ray “Raimundo” and Terri Riojas (Square West Gallery, Pomona, CA, November 2006), Juan Poblete (University of California, Santa Cruz, November 2006), Carol Dell’Amico (California State University, Bakersfield, February 2007), John Carlos Rowe (University of Southern California, Los Angeles, March 2007), Tom Callinan (Rio Hondo College, Whittier, CA, April 2007), Sergio “Serge” de la Mora, Robert McKee Irwin, and Desirée “la Desire” Martín (University of California, Davis, May 2007), Darrell B. Lockhart (Biblioteca Nacional, Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 2007), Rebecca Morgan (Valdosta State University, Valdosta, GA, October 2007), Juan Carlos Galeano (Florida State University, Tallahassee, October 2007), Deb Cohen (Slippery Rock University, Slippery Rock, PA, October 2007), Verónica Dantán (Allegheny College, Meadville, PA, October 2007), Lázaro Lima (Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA, October 2007), Carlota Caulfield and Héctor M. Cavallari (Mills College , Oakland, CA, February 2008), Adelaida López-Mejía and Robert R. Ellis (Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA, February 2008), Laura “Lauris” Gutiérrez (University of Arizona, Tucson, March 2008), Elaine S. Brooks (University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, April 2008). I owe a big debt of gratitude to the anonymous readers for the University of Wisconsin Press (I baptized you, together, my “ideal reader”), xiv Acknowledgments xv Acknowledgments whose painstaking, probing, generous readings and suggestions pushed me to rethink, restructure, and rephrase. Also at the Press, eternal gratitude to my dear friend and longtime editor and Muso, Raphael Kadushin . To Chris Caldwell, publicista extraordinario, who pushed me way beyond my comfort zone in learning the art of the cold call (o, al menos...