Finished

The Ramona Diary of SRD

I got kicked out of the house in High School in Ramona, California and got sent to live with my uncle Billy Bob in Dallas, Texas, a culture shock of Anglo Texanism to be sure. I always dreamed about going back to SoCal where I felt I belonged and connected more with my mother's side. My grandmother's almost last words to me were about staying Mexican American.  She would take me to the Missions our native and "Spanish" ancestors lived and died, tell me never let the gringos call you an immigrant, they are. Our family history is about the invasion and the dregs of the ranch land we tried to hold on to, to blocking our acknowledgement  of our native blood. Our story and California's story was taken away and told as Ramona. 
My novel is about going back and reclaiming the story.
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Check out chapters published online:
​"The Head Joaquin" at Label Me Latina/o
​"M'ijo Don't Dance With No White Devil" at Pithead Chapel
"Wrath of Mom" at Diagram
"My Heart is Bathed in Chilis" at Somos enescrito 

Mexpocalyptic, Speculative Xicano tales

​The stories of Mexpocalyptic Tales deal with identity and the impositions and mysteries of society as it approaches “the Mexpocalyspse”, the time of Mexican American majority in the United States (hence they are mexpocalyptic).  In “The Bifurcated Half Breed” a mixed character splits his Anglo and Chicano sides into halves.  More than ethnicity, these stories deal with the surealities of life, the looming terror of the norm and what to do—there are worlds upside down and reversed.  Such for the boy in “Wisdom” who experiences life as a minority, as of the last of the Texas Panhandle rednecks in a world dominated by the Mexica.  In “Hanging” a man loses his girlfriend and then his friends and so he attaches them all to himself and becomes too heavy to leave the house, an amalgam shut in.  Characters deal with new stages of life in inhibiting manners—the young man in “What the Giant Lady Likes” notices sexuality for the first time…in the form of the giant woman who battle a giant robot eternally above his ruined city. Having no place in society is explored in “Chicano Time Machines” as a Mexican American cannot find acceptance in the past nor the future.  In “The Black Button,” a strange, ostracized person (his face changes to primary colors, has gills, and his body is time-disjointed) inherits a device that causes changes to himself, the world until he finds he may be the one responsible for much of the misery and destruction around him. 

Check out published chapters:

IN THE WORKS

Why Me? Myths About Myself

Memoir and myths combine to form the tales that we live.  The English language stories are accompanied by Spanish translation by Carlota Caulfield.