Writing Workshops for Chicanx by Juliana Aragón Fatula

Dear Reader,

This month I’m zoom zoom zooming online with Palabras del Pueblo sponsored by Somos en Escrito and am enjoying the experience. It spans two weekends and one weeknight with a panel.

I’ve learned how to avoid signing up for every workshop I am emailed or Facebooked about. I’ve had some terrible Zoom writing workshops and some great ones. This workshop has been educational, and emotional, and it evoked something inside me, the desire to tell my story. There are so many stories inside me I hardly know where to start. At the beginning, stupid! So I’m beginning today. A new path that I’ve never been on before. A path to the truth.

This sounds so dramatic, but honestly, I’ve had a revelation. I need to get busy and write those stories dying to be told because I’m not getting younger. I turned sixty-six this year and lost another tooth, had to buy stronger reading glasses, and need a hearing aid desperately! What did you say? I hear words but not the right words.

I’m sitting in my Love Shack, my office on wheels, taking notes and listening to the icon, Luis J. Rodriguez. If you’ve never read one of his many novels, shame on you. You’re missing a wonderful opportunity to hear from a man who is a legend. I felt impressed after meeting him on Zoom. He’s real. A path to the truth. He encouraged me with just one sentence and I knew he meant what he said because he’s genuine.

He wrote a book that changed the lives of many Chicanos. Always Running. Check it out if you are brave and ready for the truth. He points out that he never graduated from college. He comes from the streets in East L.A. and he’s seen lives destroyed and lives saved.

There are a total of 15 participants in the workshop and they are fascinating. They tell their stories to total strangers and open up about the darkest and brightest times of their lives. It feels like group therapy but also like some vatos and vatas got together, had tea, and chatted and chilled. It felt easy.

The assignment for next weekend was not easy but we had the choice to do the work or read something we’ve written. One page.  After 15 participants read their work, their one page, we will have another writing prompt and we will not judge each other’s writing. This sounds cool to me. I’m not interested in everyone’s opinion of my writing but anxious for Luis J. Rodriguez’s feedback.

Tonight we have a Zoom scheduled to hear from publishers from Chicanx Presses. I’m looking forward to hearing from the panel on what they are looking for in their writers. I have a goal to be published by a Chicanx Press. I’ve published poems and essays in anthologies but never with a specific publisher who shares my heritage.

Wish me luck. I’m off to Zoom and will have more to report next month. Remember to be kind to one another.

Juliana Aragón Fatula, a 2022 Corn Mother, women who have earned accolades for community activism and creative endeavors is the author of Crazy Chicana in Catholic City, Red Canyon Falling on Churches, winner of the High Plains Book Award for Poetry 2016, and a chapbook: The Road I Ride Bleeds, and a member of Colorado Alliance of Latino Mentors and Authors, and Macondo, “a community of accomplished writers…whose bonds reflect the care and generosity of its membership.” She mentors for Bridging Borders, a Teen Leadership Program for girls. No justice no peace.