Latest / Tales From Aztlantis / Throwback Thursday: Aztlan Libre Press w/ Juan Tejeda

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Throwback Thursday: Aztlan Libre Press w/ Juan Tejeda · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Representation matters.
• 0:02
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• 0:10
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  SPEAKER_02: Now, on with the show.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: You must excuse me.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: But you remember the lesson.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think we've learned a good lesson.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've always heard that honesty is the best honesty.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to yet another episode of Tales from Ostlantes.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: We are currently in the heart of Yanawana in Texas at the world headquarters of Astlan Libre Press.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: Viva Stlan.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, and joining us today for the second time, you're a return guest.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you for doing this.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: Not only that, you're our first no second return guest, right?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_04: Second return guest.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_04: And you're also our second in-person uh interview.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_04: Interview.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: We usually do these over Zoom.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_03: So that's right.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: So I think the first interview that I did was on Zoom.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: By the way, my name is Juan Tejeda.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: I was getting I was getting there.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: You're getting there.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, jump in here.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_03: Start talking about me, and then nobody knows who me is.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for coming back.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: You are, I guess, part owner of Aslan Libre Press, which you run with your wife.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: And um I'm excited to have you here because today I want to talk about the importance of Chicano publishing and what does it mean to have our own institutions, our own means of putting out our own history.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: So we you know, growing up in the Chicano movement, I was very inspired by this idea of self-determination, of doing things for ourselves, for providing telling our own stories, right?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: Which is a big reason why I became an archaeologist.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: Is I got tired of all these white archaeologists telling the histories and stories of my people.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: And the way I saw it was the only way to fix that is to become an archaeologist and start telling my own people's stories and be like a defender of the cultural patrimony of my own cultural matrimony and patrimony of my people.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I see your work as uh extremely important.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: How um you know let's start at the beginning.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: What what made you start uh your own your own press?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well thank you, Curly and uh Rubén Lakatecat for having me back back here on Tales from Astlantis.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: And yes, we are in our office here in Yanawana, San Antonio, Texaslan, and the offices of Astlan Libre Press.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, I I'm originally from here from Yanahuana, San Antonio, but it wasn't until I graduated from high school in 1972 and went to the University of Texas in Austin that I took my first Chicano history course and got involved in uh to the Chicano movement that was going on in 1972 there in Austin, and that kind of just opened my eyes and uh subsequently took all of the Chicano Studies courses that UT Austin offered and ended up getting my degree, my BA in Chicano Studies and uh and in education.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: I wanted to be a Chicano Studies teacher in high school, but they didn't let me.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, uh at least not at the high school level at that time because they required two certified teaching disciplines to be a teacher, a high school teacher, and Chicano Studies wasn't a certified teaching discipline in the state of Texas.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, long story.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_03: So, so really it was when I went to UT Austin that I I kind of got involved in the Chicano movement.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: This consciousness uh developed in me of of my history and my culture and who I was, my my identity as a Chicano developed at that time and began getting organized with different organizations.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_03: And it was the class there at UT Austin in about 1975 that uh I took with Alurista, Chicano poetry class, and that we published through that class, all the Peak Bahn class we put together ourselves.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_03: He's not talking about doing it yourself.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: This was uh one of those do-it-yourself projects from the class we published, all 13 of us, including Alurista, and the title of the book was 13 Aliens.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: So that was my first sort of foray into Chicano publishing, right out of this class.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_03: Subsequently, we had a group of writers and activists and people working with Casa, Chicanos artista, sirviendo Aslan, and then Lucha League of United Chicano Artists there in Austin.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: And we began, you know, the conjunto Aslan there in the mid-70s also, and then and then later on in the 80s, 77, 78, uh we began the grupo de danza, the Shinashli, that was by the mando of the Capitan General Andres Segura.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: He started this group here in Texas back then.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_03: And we did ceremonia with him.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: So we were doing everything.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: We were part of this whole sort of Chicano movement and Chicano cultural renaissance, right, in the arts.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we were artists, we were writers, we were danzantes, we were muralists, we were activists, we were working with different organizations and having programs in the community and music and literature and art.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: And uh we substantially published about two or three more books, Tasincho and then uh Arcoiris, and then we did a special Tejidos issue that was dedicated to this program that I directed there in Austin for about four years, the Festival Estudiantil Chicano de Arte y Literatura.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: It was run from kindergarten through the 12th grade in the Austin Independent School District.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: So we then uh published some of the work of the students there.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: So that's how I began publishing.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_03: But then I left, came back to San Antonio here in Yanawana, and uh began working with the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I worked there as the Chicano with an ex Chicano music program director for 18 years and started the Tejano Conjunto Festival there.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: We started so many things there, you know.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_03: This is a direct offshoot of the Chicano movement, right?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the Chicano cultural and artistic renaissance, right?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: The important role that these Chicano cultural arts organizations have played in the preservation of our history and of our arts, and the teaching of our arts also, right?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: And when the schools weren't doing it, right, they weren't teaching us anything, and for the most part still aren't today, teaching us anything about our Chicano history, Mexican indigenous history, uh, and the arts and the important contributions that we've made and and really the real history.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the main contribution we've made as indigenous people is that they uh uh they ended up taking all our land to start with uh for the most part, where we're reclaiming it now.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: But uh worked with the Guadalupe for 18 years.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_03: I began the literature program there.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_03: I headed up uh and edited many of the publications for the Guadalupe, like the Tonancing, it was a quarterly magazine that I edited for a few years, and then the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center Review and newsletter.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: And then about 10, 11 years ago, my wife Anisa Onofre, who is also the publications director and the uh promotions director for Gemini Inc., a literary arts organization here in San Antonio, and she was working on publications for the organization, and so she kind of said, Why don't we start our own press?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: And uh that was kind of the impetus, and I had been involved in publishing in different aspects over the years.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_03: So we started, we started Astandivide Press, um, very modest, and you know, uh just her and I part-time because we were both working full-time, and we published our first book in 2010, which was Aludista.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: So it kind of came full circle, right?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh he was my teacher, and I first published with him uh in about 1975, 1976, Tres Aliens.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: Then 35 years later, the first book for Aslan Libre the Press was Alurista's 10th book of poetry, Tuna Luna.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_03: So we started Asla and Libre the Press with with uh with that book.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_03: And uh now, 10, 11 years later, we've published 14 books and seven Chiganex art note cards with envelopes, and we're getting ready to publish our 15th book.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_03: 15th book.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, great.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: So from the time it took you when you decided, okay, we're gonna do this, to when the first book came out, how long, like how long were you able to get that book out?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like when you made the decision, let's start our own press.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm assuming you know you didn't know right then it's gonna be with Alurista and you had a plan in place.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: You like what was that journey like to get out of here?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: That's interesting that you should mention that because uh our first book was going to be we put out a call for entries, like a national call for poetry in three languages, in Nahuatl, in Espanol, and in English, and they had to use all three of the languages within the piece, you know, poetry or short story.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: And that took longer than expected, you know.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: We didn't get the response, so we continued to put out more cultural word gathering in front of you.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: In the meantime, after 35 years, that I don't think I had spoken to Alurista or so.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we spoke every now and then uh he'd called me at three or four in the morning or something.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, brother, you know.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_03: So finally we got back in touch and we started talking again um by phone.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_03: He was in Califas at the time.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_03: He said, Well, I have a new book.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, I'm just uh looking for published.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: I said, Well, send it to us.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_03: And he sent us the manuscript for Tunaluna, which I said was his tenth book of poetry, and uh we ended up publishing that first.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, the press has taken kind of interesting twists and turns, but I I think that in a lot of ways these writers that we've published over the years have really come to us, you know, just like as part of this somehow divine master plan that they have for Asla and Leave it press, you know, nice that they just all of a sudden send us something and said, Yeah, let's do that, right?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: Or we saw somebody that and we talked to them, they said, you know, I have a manuscript.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_03: Well, let me see it.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: Because after the, we were talking about this earlier, after the initial years, the first two or three years of Aslan Leave it press, and we had open submissions right off our website.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: We started our website, and we were getting so many submissions of, you know, good works, you know, and uh from a lot of different people because there weren't that many Chicano presses really, and still aren't.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: I think there were more during the times of the Chicano movement, yeah.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: Uh independent Chicano presses than there are now, 50 years later.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, we were getting so much work and just goes to show that uh there was and there is a great need uh for indigenous and chicano independent presses because there are a lot of good indigenous and chicano and chicana and chicanex writers out there that deserve to be published that are not being published because you know the major five out of New York aren't doing it, the universities aren't doing it, and we don't have enough independent presses, our own independent presses to do it.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a great need.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: So we had to stop taking submissions because we couldn't even read them all.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then we went to a different type of format after about four or five years, so we decided that we were only gonna publish like one or two books a year, you know, and give it some time and attention and promote it and distribute it and submit it for awards.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, there there's been a real interest interesting, you know, sort of evolution of the press and our thinking and uh and our work over these last uh you know 11, 12 years or so.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, how great is it that the first book was with Alurista?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: And for our any young blood listeners out there who don't know who Alurista uh is, what the importance that he had to the Chicano movement, he wrote what was basically started as the preamble, right, to um El Plan de Espiritual de Aslan at the uh the Denver Youth Conference.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: 1968 or 1969?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: 1969.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, he had so if you're uh in Mecha, if you've ever been in Mecha or you know, you've seen his work, you've you've read his work because at least when I was in Mecha, that the the plan was a a major part of uh the organization known as Mecha.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_04: And didn't you also uh study under him when you were at UT early on, and that's how you got connected to the movimiento and to danza?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_04: Can you tell us a little bit of how indigenity has inspired a lot of the work that you've done over the years?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and it was in a lot of ways through Aludista and that first Chicano poetry class that I took with him, and I got back into writing and then published our first book out of that class, Tres Aliens.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_03: But Alurista was, you know, a very important figure in the history of the Chicano movement.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: And in fact, some people consider him one of the first, if not the first, poet laureate of Astlan.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: And we were talking about this early.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: He also was influenced by Danza himself as a poet, and even by Andrés Segura and Florencio Yescas in California, because he's from San Diego, and he was part of the Chicano Park whole movement when they took over.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: Toltecas and astlan.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: And we were talking about how he was influenced by Danza back then in California and and and and through Teatro Campesino and Andrés Segura and Florencio Yescas.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: So they had a band, a kind of a strings band that was called Servidores del árbol de la vida.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_03: And they used concha, which traditionally is used just in danza.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: And technically you're not supposed, at least we heard it through Andrés Segura, they were only supposed to be used in danza.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: For ceremony.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: But then these people for ceremony through the concheros, right?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why the concheros are called concheros, but la concha de armadillo, it's on the back of the little guitar, right?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: Concha.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: But they had a group, and I think it was with Juan Felipe Herrera and various other people that um were singing cantos and original cantos and very working class and spiritual.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: So, and of course, Alurista, when he was here, he had already started, he had done the first Floricanto, which was taken directly from um the Insochirien Quica concept of flower and song, right?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_03: Which is the the term for poetry.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: So he started a literature festival, Chicago Literature Festival in 1973, I think was the first one.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: Was that here in Texas?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: No, it was in California.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: I think at Riverside, I'm not sure.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: So then the next year he came to Austin, started teaching there, and then I think a year went by, but then in 75 we helped him organize a second Floricanto in Austin, and then the third Floricanto in 76 in San Antonio.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_03: So that was the beginning of sort of my training ground, the Chicano movement getting organized there in the University of Texas in Austin, Alurista's class.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: Initially I was involved in the first Mexican-American Cultural Committee at UT Austin and worked with Mayo, Mexican-American Youth Organization, La Razonida Party, and campaign for Rams Unis, and then got involved in more cultural and artistic activism.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_03: And we formed the Conjunto Asland there and Dansa during this period later on in the in the late 70s.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, the indigenous part was was super important because we got connected first, I think, through Alurista as part of the Floricanto, but then in this search for our true sort of indigenous selves, and as a people, as Chicanos, of course, moving back.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was with Alurista that we first started writing Mechicano and Chicano with an ex.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: It was through his influence, you know, to to get that connection from uh with the ex in Mechica to Mechicano to Chicano and that historical progression that the Chicano was took us back and was related linguistically, right, through through to the term mechica, right, with the ex.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I started writing uh Chicano with an ex back then.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: So that was a connection.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_03: It was a very important connection, I think, back to our indigenous roots, albeit somewhat romanticized, right?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: That that that the mexica y la danza, uh, the impact and the important impact that it had on the Chicano movement in terms of connecting us to our indigenous roots, not just the term Chicano, Mechica, Mechicano, Chicano, but then we started getting involved in in reading, you know, uh Miguel Portia, and we talked uh we talked about this last time.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: I had classes with Juan Luna Carras, and we were started doing danza, and Andrés Segura came up here, and we went down to Mexico to do ceremonias and got involved in the whole Conchero tradition, and I was the jefe segundo for nine years.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: Jose Flores is still the Capitan now, and his wife, Sara Flores, la Capitana of Shinashli that still exists and they've been in existence since then for over 40 years.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I got out after nine years to do something, but I'm still connected with the group in a lot of ways and do ceremonias with them.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_03: But that led us to the dansa, right?
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: And again in the search for our indigenous roots.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh even then we realized that that we weren't all necessarily Mexicas, right?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_03: Or Aztecs in that sense, even though the Dansa played an important role.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: Dansa Mexica, Dansa Azteca, Dansa Chichimeca, uh, have all those influences, interesting enough.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and um that we were comprised of different, you know, indigenous peoples and mixtures, and we were all kind of in search of our indigenous roots, our true indigenous roots.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_04: The way that I'm beginning to, since I've given it more thought, right, yeah, about what it means to be a danzantes, especially here in the US, and and us as Chicano Mexicanos who are in search of our indigenous roots and trying to make those connections with with our ancestors.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_04: And when people ask me, well, or when they notice that you have danzantes that are from different communities, you have people who you know are from Yaaki communities that descend from the Maya, yeah, from uh Otomi, etc.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_04: And then you have people who ask, Well, how do you how do you reconcile the fact that these people are not Aztec Meshika?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_04: And the way that I explain it now is like, well, think of a Powau here in the US.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, when people get together at a Power, you have people from different communities, from different tribes that come together for this event.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_04: And the Dansa, in a way, even though it has its origins and it has its spiritual aspect to it, in a sense, it's almost like that as well.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_04: You have people that come from different indigenous backgrounds, but the dansa itself is what kind of binds them together in that moment for that specific purpose of celebrating your indigenity.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: And dansa is very strong because it really resonates with a lot of different people.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like the grupo that I'm in, over the years, we've had people of you know straight Totonako descent, totonako speakers in the grupo.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: We've had people from Nahuak uh communities dancing in the grupo.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: We've had Pueblo people, Isleta or uh Dene people dancing with our grupo, Hopi, you know, Chicanos, Purepecha, different groups coming together because it resonates with us.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: There's something there, and that's what I love about the Tradition of dansa is it's a way, regardless of what your specific individual indigenous community might be where you descend from, it's this way for all of us to come together and partake and express our indigenity in a way that's meaningful and important and impactful for us individually, but also it engenders this community, right?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: It gives us this way to come together as a people and be like, this is something that's ours, and we're sharing it with other people, and I don't know, it just gives it this life that I think people are really, really drawn to.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: When you when you you know, we've just had our New Year's ceremony, we haven't had an in-person ceremony in since the pandemic in a couple of years.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: And we get together, and I just realized like I don't know, I was energized because you started.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: You remember that you miss it.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's like you don't know you miss something until it's no longer there for you to access, like this ability to get together with your community and and be in in in unison and to have this fellowship for a common purpose and celebration of your culture and life, and you know, each individual can can you know interpret it however they want, they can view it as a prayer or however they want to uh express themselves, but the fact that we're together doing this collectively is that's the beauty of it, right?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and so I'm I'm kind of wondering how does all this your experience with all this, how has that translated with like for instance, we're we're here to discuss your work in the Aslan Libre Press.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_04: How does that uh relate to all the work that you're currently doing?
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's Aslan for one.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_03: Aslan is an indigenous name, right?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: And it's Nahuat base, right?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: Uh uh Nahuat name uh and ties back directly to the Mexica, you know, and the Mexicano.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: I did want to mention, I mean, it's just like our people, the Chicano people, if you want to define who we are, it's hard to define who we are because we come from a lot of a different indigenous and mestizo backgrounds, right?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we're not a pure anything, and never have been.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, that's one of our, I think our our um one of the important things about who we are as a people, you know, in a general sense, indigenous Mexican, again, that general sense, people within the United States, though we call ourselves as Chicanos, right?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: We weren't from Mexico, we weren't really accepted by the United States, we're kind of in this in-between state.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_03: So we're gonna name ourselves, and that's one of the things that was very important, that that that right to self-determination, uh, that we named ourselves Chicanos, even though it'd been used in different capacities before that.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: We took on uh the the name of Astlan as the Chicano Nation, which was very important.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_03: And the one thing about that the Dansa did do, and I think that kind of completed, I mean, really the Dansa in a lot of ways was the the glue that kept us together, that brought us together, and uh was really the the indigenous spirituality which was missing to the Chicano movement that tied to the land and to that indigenous spirituality that that gave us this uh you know that was very important to to us as a people and to the movement in general, you know, and then the dansa did that, I think.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: And little by little we started, you know, going back to our different indigenous roots, you know, and and connecting with those, uh, be they Kwawiltekan, you know, here like I did.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_03: I got out of Dansa, you know, in about 85 or 86 or so.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_03: And uh even though I still believed in in the teachings and the importance of the danza, but I knew that I wasn't completely uh uh an Aztec, right?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: And and I knew that I had ties here to Yanawana and San Antonio through my father's Martinez Tejeda side, and I decided to pursue that, uh get out of danza and search for that, and then you know, take on more of my music and my work at the Guadalupe that was taking on a lot of time, but it was all tied together.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: So it's all I think very important work that that we've done over the last you know 40 to 50 years now as part of the Chicano movement through these organizations and and things like Conjunto Aslan, Shinashli, Aslan Livet Press, where you just went to the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, and 40 years later the organization still exists and still doing some important work.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: So when you decide to put out a book, because you said you know you don't take submissions, right?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so is it more of somebody you respect?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: Because now you basically you get to choose, right?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: You you get to decide what you're going to post.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: I still think that a lot of these books are chosen for us.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_03: That's the way they turn out, because all of a sudden someone turns up and goes, I have something.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: Would you be willing to look at it?
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: Well, okay, send it over.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we're not really accepting submissions, but all of a sudden we kind of get blown away and say, wait a minute, let's take a closer look at this woman or this guy, you know, and uh books come to us like that and we have put them out then when we didn't solicit them at all.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_03: Other times we have solicited certain people, you know, and say, Yeah, we definitely want to publish Reyes Cardanas, you know, we went after him.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_03: We definitely want to publish Lauriane Guerrero from here because she was a San Antonio poet laureate at the time and Southside, you know, Home Girl, Del Barrio, and she's great too, you know.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_03: You know, on top of that, it is always that, you know, we try to publish the best people that we can, but there's a lot of people that that just call you, they you know, they call your attention.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: You know, they're important writers and and uh their work needs to get out.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: So we're contributing what we can to the publication of of our history books and our our literary and and and music books.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I see these as our modern day codices that we're leaving these books right for our children and all future generations.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: So it's an important word.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's a good way to look at it.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for sure.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: So when you um decide to publish a book, and is there you know, just getting into the nitty-gritty of running a publishing company, right?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: One, it's super important, but before we even get into that, how many Chicano small press are there?
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like how unique is it to have one?
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and and and us who've been involved in the Chicano movement and and publishing and different capacities, there aren't altogether that many.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_03: You know, God, I can think of right off the top of my head, maybe only a handful here in Texas.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and a couple of that I know of in California, you know.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, which makes it, I think, all all the more important that, as I said before, there is such a great need.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: But like Flower Song, right from the Valley, here the Texas, and uh Jade Publishing I was talking about.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: There used to be the birds out in El Paso.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_03: The birds?
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: The the uh that that was her last name, the birds they had cinco punto.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, cinco puntos, cinco puntos they sold it recently, I think for a bigger imprint.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah, but you know, and smaller kind of press here in San Antonio, Octavio Quintania does a la Brava Press and a couple little presses here and there.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um it's that Claire Massey, do you know who she is that in English that she's doing the mapping literary texas?
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: Mapping literary texts, and she has uh various other presses that I wasn't even kind of aware of.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: But there aren't again here altogether that many, not in Texas, nor as far as I know across the nation, but there are, like I said, the Achuchas press at different times have done publishing and and different kind of university-based presses that still do uh, you know, Chicano, Indigenous Latino, Arte Público Press still runs out of University of Houston.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: Uh you know, University of Arizona Press had, you know, bilingual press that they focus on Chicano Latino Indigenous.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_03: Isn't uh Somos en escrito also?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: They're starting to publish too.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_03: They just are they are they from uh Texas or in California?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_03: I think he's from California.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: California, right?
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um they started publishing also according to the city.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_04: Chicano Manifesto, that's his yeah.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: That was his book, which was very influential.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: You just recently republished it.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: Fifty years anniversary anniversary of Chicano Manifesto, and and I think they've published now two or three different books that Chicano Sci Fi book was one of them, and then uh Ernesto Mireles's um, which was an interesting book.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_03: Right, Insurgent Aslan.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_03: In Surgeon Aslan.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: I have a there's a chapter in there about me.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: He sent me a copy, and uh I opened it up and I was like, whoa, check it out.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you're in the index.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah I don't remember.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: I read it a while back now.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna have to look at it again.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_03: But and little by little, I think more and more kind of people are coming out and to publishing their own books, and of course they have some the younger people doing zines, and there's still some Chicano magazines out there, not as many as there were, I think, during the Chicano movement.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_04: But what do you think the difference is between what was happening during the movimiento days and what's happening now?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_04: Like, what do you see are the major differences between those two uh eras?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I I think it was how we were all just kind of as a people, a culture, a society, this country, the whole world, caught up in the whole civil rights movement, and uh coming to terms with our identity, the issues that involved our people and social justice, um, this whole explosion of Chicanismo and the Chicano movement as part of the civil rights movement, the black power movement, the women's feminist movement, the hippie movement, this whole drugs.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember, you know, Carlos Castañeda and his books uh having this big influence on me.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: Journey to the Tales of Power, the Teachings of Don Juan.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_03: It was the first time I think that I read something, and I was, you know, just started going out of high school, going to UT Austin, where something was written from more of an indigenous perspective, right?
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_03: And and uh a philosophy, right, a spirituality, um, this history or people and and they they they lifted us like and of course it was perfect for the times of the 60s and and moving to the late 60s and early 70s when I think the first book came out, with the whole so mind altering and and sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and and the raising of one's you know consciousness and spiritual consciousness also and connecting with our indigenous roots, right?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: And this then just kind of blew everybody's mind away as it did mine, right?
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_03: Just like when I read uh you know the The Brown Buffalo for the first time.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_03: It had a big impact on me.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: And then Revolt of the Cockroach people, the two very early, sort of important novels about coming to terms with who you are and your indigenous reality, your Mexican Chicano reality, and the movimiento chicano, right?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's interesting that you mentioned the Revolt of the Cockroach people and and the works of Oscar Zacosta because it doesn't seem like he's really getting the recognition.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there was that documentary like that.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's what I mean, right?
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_02: Not until recently has he really s been getting a broader recognition as this early early Chicano thinker before the movement even gets started.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_03: And novelist started.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there weren't that many Chicano novels, you know.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: Chicano Lit was just coming to exact to its fore, into its into its own, you know, the early days of Chicano Lit and the Chicano movement, right?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_03: And the whole Chicano Renaissance.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_04: What was that one um by Ernesto is it Galarza?
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_04: Barrio Boy.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_04: Barrio Boy.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_04: That's one of the first, like one of the early.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_04: That's not the earliest, because I have found some going back to the late 1800s and early 1900s, but as far as like within the Chicano literary canon, he's like one of the first, if not the first one, who uses the word Chicano as a self-referent for himself and his experience as a Mexican American here in the United States.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_04: And there was a novel called Pocho, I think.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_04: Pocho, right.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_04: Who was the author?
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: I don't remember.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_03: I forget right up.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: But that was one of the early ones.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: I think I have that book in a box somewhere.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_03: And then and then moving into the 80s, you know, where I think uh the chicanas and chicana literature uh started to really rise up, and and uh Chicana feminism and you know Ana Castillo and and then shortly mm thereafter, you know, Sandra Cisneros kind of came to her home with a house on Mango Street and it's kind of whole explosion of of Chicana literature.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um as as part of of the Chicano movement.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_03: Is it that one?
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_03: It is.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh what's the name?
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_03: Jose Antonio Villarreel.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_03: The the internet is a wondrous thing.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: Google it.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: Google Lele.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: Google.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_02: The thing, real briefly, getting back to Oscar Zeta Acosta, is I'm surprised that he wasn't more well known considering that he used to hang out with Hunter S.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: Thompson.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody knows who Hunter S.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: Thompson is.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: But I think what's interesting is, you know, Acosta appears in his books and his stories, but he gives him this fictional identity, right?
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_02: He describes him as like my Samoan lawyer or 300-pound Samoan lawyer or something like that.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so he never um really, you know, this Chicano movement.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and you could see some of it in the in the movie version of Fear and Loathing, they show uh Oscar Zeta Alcosta in his office, and you could see like the huelga posters on the walls and stuff.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_02: So there's like this inferential, you know, allusions to him being tied to the Chicano movement, but I think he he deserves more um notoriety.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: Personally, I really like the books.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know that uh how his two books probably got published is that uh Oscar Seta Costa ended up suing you just mentioned Hunter Thompson and um Rolling Stone magazine, because Rolling Stone magazine published a book by Hunter Thompson.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if it was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, if he did that, if that was the book, it might have been because Seta Costa was hanging out with Hunter Thompson, and uh supposedly it was Oscar Seta that uh gave Hunter this idea for what they called Gonzo journalism and talking about your own self as part of the context, and they were doing all these drugs, you know, and uh and using for using him in the novel and not giving him credit and taking you know direct passage that supposedly Oscarseta wrote and not giving him credit.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_03: So he sued Rolling Stone magazine and Hunter, and and and part of the deal, uh the settlement for that was that Rolling Stone ended up publishing Oskarceta's two books.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_03: Really?
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, that's a great story.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: I'm pretty sure that's that's the truth.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_03: I've read those uh that must have been before he disappeared.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because he like disappeared, right?
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_03: Like no one ever heard from him again.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: And that's part of the whole, I think, mystique of of Oskar Seta, that uh nobody knows what the hell happened to him.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_03: So so tell us about the mystique of Astlan Leave It Press.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, I think it's tied up in all of this, brother.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_03: You know, uh, you know, my wife and I, you know, we're both writers.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, we had a passion.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: My wife was working on as publications director and started publishing books.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_03: I've been involved in publications, and we just felt it was time there was a great need for it, you know, and that there were a lot of voices out there that weren't being published that deserved to be published, and we were gonna contribute what we can.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's a passion for us because little by little we just we didn't, you know, we've we've worked in publishing in different ways, but not on our own.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_03: But we just jumped into it and got then uh Aludista's manuscript, laid it out here on our computer, um, got a cover.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, the cover was donated by um Judith Hernandez, and this was an interesting, I tell you, things just happened.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_03: She heard that we had put it out on social media that we're gonna be publishing Aludista's tenth book of poetry, and it was Astlanida's press first book, and we had studied with, I had studied with him and E.T.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_03: Austin.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_03: Judith illustrated Alurista's first book, Floricanto Nastlan.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, wow.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we just saw it in the office here.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's her.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_03: She contacted us here again.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: Alurista ended up calling us.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: We called him, got a number from somewhere, and he called us and said, Yeah, we have a book.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_03: She called us.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_03: I heard you're publishing Alurista's book.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I published um, you know, the graphics for his first book, Floricanto Nastlan.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_03: She goes, and I'd like to contribute the cover for Alurista's book.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_03: Nice.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_03: So we ended up coming from full circle.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_03: Full circle, man, in a lot of ways, in real interesting ways.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like I said, these things happen for a reason, right?
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_03: They're just not just the pura chiripada, you know.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: Or maybe they are this ultimate sort of serendipitous, you know, had to happen because that's the way it is, uh, or that's the way it happened.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, so she adapted one of her paintings for uh Aluisa's Baptona Luna and gifted it to us for the covering.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_03: That's great.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_04: Shout out to Judith for Judith, and Judith's a great artist.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_04: So one of the first books that I bought from Astlan Libre Press was uh the one you did with Professor Gomez Queñez Qignones.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_04: Um what was it called?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_04: Indigenous quotient uh stalking words.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_04: Stalking words, right?
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_04: And it was uh it was really impressive.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um it was right at the time that I was beginning to work on on my doctoral uh work on indigenity of of Mexican Americans, and and and so I was like, this is I mean, speaking of being serendipitous, this book came out right at the time as I was beginning my work, and I'm like, this is gonna be very influential and useful to me in my work, and it was it was something that I actually used in in developing my own ideas uh and my dissertation.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_04: So, how did that come about?
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_04: How did that uh collaboration with Juan Gómez Cunes come out?
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_03: And by the way, Scansen and Paz and Poder, El Juan Great Presented Presented uh one of our great historians.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and you know, you're in history, you're a historian.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um he taught at UCLA for what 50 years?
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: Something like that.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_03: 50 years, man, of work.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh pretty amazing.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: So it was through Alurista, in fact.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um the second book we published, Alistair, was the Aztec Calder coloring book, and that has been one of our most popular sellers still to this day, you know, 10-11 years later.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: Then Alurista said, you know, man, you gotta read these two essays by Juan Gomez because they're good friends.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_03: And we ended up getting in touch with Juan Gomez and he sent it to us, and they're two sort of academic essays.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_03: I I really like the subtitle, and it always kind of gets lost, but it's indigenous quotient slash stalking words, and then Colonel the subtitle is American Indian Heritage as a future.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_03: As future, that's right.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_03: As Future.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_03: And really what Juan did, this was the first time that Juan Gomez Quiñone has had really dealt with the way history here in the US has dealt with the indigenous question, right?
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um how they've treated the indigenous people.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_03: The first, you know, pretty long essay, and then the second one is a shorter essay, and basically stating that um, you know, the American Indians here on this continent, he dealt more with North America, right?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_03: Canada, United States, and Mexico.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_03: As part of North America, or Turtle Island, as some people call it.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, that we have a lot to offer the world, you know, through our connection to the land and ecology and and to our philosophy and way of thinking and connection uh with with the divine and the arts and spirituality and more natural spirituality uh that's going to help in a lot of ways, I think, save the world.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_03: And and part of even this whole concept of, you know, I know this is uh kind of have been uh shot down on certain levels, but this uh, you know, whether we we like it or not, in Lakic was was prominent, and uh and he ends the whole book with a quote which supposedly is attributed to the to the Opie.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um say he said we are the ones that we have been waiting for.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we are the ones that we have been waiting for, right?
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I think you know, the Chicano movement, that connection to our indigenous past, it's going to be a very important part of our future, and the future not just of our people, but of the whole world, and the way we deal with each other and the way we deal with Mother Earth, uh, and the ecology movement and saving the planet and our waters and our air.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it it in a lot of ways is going to be the salvation of all of humanity, you know, and I I really believe that, that that indigenous connection is very important to the world.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_03: And that's basically what what Bond's book in that second essay says, you know, that we are important to the world because of our philosophy, our spiritual collections to the land, you know, our our relations with each other and and and all our relations, yeah, right?
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_03: That concept.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_03: So uh we published it and it's been one of our popular books also.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_03: It continues to to sell, you know, ten, nine, ten years later, and and they've used it for for various classes, primarily at UCLA and San Diego State University in California, and a couple of other ones over the years, but they still use it for the classroom.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_04: Are these uh more like ethnic studies type courses or is are they historic?
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_03: I think they are more in ethnic studies and still some general history and and and indigenous studies.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_03: Indigenous studies also.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, uh big loss with Juan Gomez King on this.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: Well, when you decide, okay, this is a book that we're going to publish, what are the steps that you go through from the the moment that decision is made to the moment you're shipping out copies?
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like what I imagine it's it's a pretty intensive process to get a book published and out.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: And especially there's only two of you, right?
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_03: There are so I mean, how's that and she's still working very part-time.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_03: I'm working a little bit more since I've been retired these last five years.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, and well, one thing that I learned, I was talking about this novel that we're publishing by Siliana Wood, and I we learned that lesson from her ten years ago because we were going to publish this novel by her ten years ago that's called La Quinta Soledad.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_03: And and now it's kind of been adapted a little bit, but it's La Quinta Soledad del Valle.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: We we worked on that novel and were working on it for about over a year, and then we had a dispute with the author, and then we had a dispute about the contract, and we ended up backing out, and she backed out, we backed out after we'd been working on it for a year.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_03: So we learned a very important lesson that we shouldn't be working on any books unless we have a contract with the author, because you never know what's gonna happen.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_03: So we usually get a contract first and begin working, and we've already seen the manuscript and read it, you know, and and uh we've decided that we're gonna publish it, right?
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um the contract just cements that and all the terms.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: And then Anisa and I both read it and proofread it, make sure there aren't any typos and anything out of place, and uh we edit the book ourselves, uh her and I, and and then we lay it out on our computer here at home.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_03: We work from home, right?
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_03: What um what do you lay it out in?
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh InDesign.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_03: In Design.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_03: And she Anissa is more of the technical person than I am, but little by little she's showing me, you know, and um learning in Design.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_03: So we lay it out the inside uh the text uh with any lines or graphics that we want to use also on the complete text and you know the size of the font and the font and the and you know what size of book, six by nine, you know, five and a half by eight and a half or smaller, and uh lay it all out.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then we work with uh usually we work with artists, um you know, a visual artist to design the cover for us, front and back cover.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: We sent out the book to get if we have blurbs for the back cover, yeah, you know, um that helps in promotion also.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um so we lay it out completely, cover and inside text, and then we send it to the printer.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and then the printer gets it back to us.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_03: And then usually we are a different type of press, and not all press do this, but since we only decided to publish one book per year uh or so uh every other year to give the the book and the author some time, then usually we work with the artist to to do a national book launch event.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_03: Over the last two years, we did a couple of virtual book launches, but usually they're in person.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_03: Then I usually we usually work with uh with the artist to do a tour, and and that's one thing that I think we do that sometimes other presses don't do because we know that you sell more books at readings than just off your website, for instance, or at book fairs or mercados where there's performances and people are out there and they get to see the actual physical books, you know, touch them, look at uh engage with them.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's very important, very important.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_03: I found and they're usually and if the author is there and they're reading and they're there, they went to see them, they're more after it and get it signed by him.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_03: So I usually we usually set up tours for them, primarily here in Texas, but we have helped to work on certain national tours, like Dr.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_03: Seatley would just he's just on a tour right now through California and Arizona again.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_03: He had done one before, and I had set up a Texas thing for him, and he's coming back to do a couple of other things.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_02: So in a case like that where they're doing a tour outside of the state of Texas, is that something that Austlan Libra Press helps finance?
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like helps help.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_02: Not necessarily.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_03: Not necessarily.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_03: Usually the host organization, if it's a university or a cultural center, will usually contract Dr.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_03: Cindley, you know, Roberto, and they might pay him a little stipend.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes he's living in Mexico now, they'll pay his flight in a hotel or have him stay with somebody.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_03: I we as a press facilitate that through uh promoting it on social media, all these things.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_03: They usually contact us and say, hey, Cindy's gonna be here in the little tour through Southern California.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, we're at the university, we'd like to order 20 copies of the book.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: Or we're at a cultural arts center, we'd like to order, you know, 15 copies.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes Cindley will take it, so we supply them with the books.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_03: We usually give them a 30% discount to to retail outlets, you know, and so there's there's shipping orders and uh social media promotion that goes along with all of this, and then we also do promotion and press releases and try to get book reviews, which amongst Rasa, they're they're too few and far between, and we need more book reviewers uh try to get press on it, you know, uh in the different cities that they may be doing readings and for our events.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um we submit them for awards, right?
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_03: Some are free, some there's a cost involved, and a lot of times we pay that ourselves.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like a submission fee to be to consideration.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, in fact, don't you have a book that won an award recently?
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, um, yeah, Edward Vidar's book, um Pandemia and Other Poems from 2020, was a finalist for uh Writers League of Texas, best book of poetry, and then the year before, in 2020, Amalia Ortiz, the book that we published by her, The Cancion Cannibal, Cabaret, and other songs, won the American Book Award from the before Columbus Foundation.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_03: In oral literature.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's a totally distinctive kind of book and performance piece.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's like a Chicana feminist punk rock opera.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's awesome.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_03: With a great title, too.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_03: It should have I know it should have won.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't know if there's a category for best title.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the canción cannibal cabaret is.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_04: I've been saying it in Spanish canción cannibal cabaret.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and actually, I think it's cannibal with two ends in English, right?
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_03: The canción cancion is obviously in Spanish, but can cannibal.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_03: But our bilingual tongues are trying to get get in the way.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_03: We think in both in both languages sometimes, and it gets confusing.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_03: And then uh Lauriane Guerrero, um, who's a Southside homegirl here from Yanawana, San Antonio, um, she was a former San Antonio and Texas poet Laureate.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_03: The book that we published uh for her, A Crown for Gomecindo, based on her grandfather who had passed away, it won the Best Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters back in 2016.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, for not having published that that that many books, I think our books have have gained uh uh some some good recognition and the press and various books, including Las Nalgas de Jelo.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great title, yeah.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_03: And the Canción Cannibal and Indigenous Quotient and Larianne's book, um, and a couple of other books have been used for you know Chicano studies and Chicano lit courses throughout the nation in different capacities.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_04: So is it fair to categorize a slan libre press as an award-winning press, right?
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely, carnal.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_04: Say it.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, say it, say it proud.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_03: Big time award-winning press.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_03: Hell yeah.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, isn't it?
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_02: What's the next book um that you have on the on the horizon?
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, we're still promoting Seatly, and we've submitted him for all these awards awards, and he's on this tour right now.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um uh because it's been less than a year since we put out that book.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_03: We put it out in October of 2023.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_03: Time gets all screwy now with the pandemic.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_03: Who's tracking what's what?
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_03: And with him we did like two virtual book launches, which are not the same, but anyway, they had to be done.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_03: But now we just signed a contract and we just started working, and I mentioned it earlier, on our first novel.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_03: And in fact, it's the debut novel of this award-winning uh Chicana author and playwright from Tucson, Arizona, Silviana Wood.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and this is her debut novel, also.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_03: She's uh she's an older woman.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_03: She's she just turned 82 years old this past Sunday, and pretty amazing, you know.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_03: You know, both as a playwright and I think as as now a novelist, this novel is pretty amazing, you know, because um uh she sent us uh 800 pages, it'll probably be less than that.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_03: We we're calling it a tour de force in Chicana literature, and I don't think that there has ever been uh a Chicana voice quite like the main protagonist and and her mother and her grandmother and her sisters that's that are the focus of this novel.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's a it's a chicana, you know, chick-lit novel.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and and and and Silviana is amazing.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't think there is a Chicana literary voice quite like Silviana Wood, nor quite uh the the protagonist in this novel.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_03: So uh we're very excited about doing that, and we hope to have it out before the end of this year in 2022, about maybe you know, November or so.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_03: Excellent.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_04: So what advice do you have for anyone out there that is thinking about you know publishing a book?
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, we were talking about this earlier, this kind of do-it-yourself um attitude that that you have taken to this because of your experience in trying to publish.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_04: Is there any advice that you would like to share with our listeners about how to go about doing this?
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_04: How to how do you get started even publishing a book, period?
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_04: If you've if you've sent it out to multiple presses and you've been rejected at every single turn, what do you do?
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_04: What is your next step?
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_04: How do you what is step one to achieving you know the success that you have with a slan library press?
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_04: I think you just have to do it.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know, um unfortunately most of our writers are not being published because there aren't uh I think enough presses or definitely not the bigs out of New York or even university-based presses, although little by little they're starting to publish more, you know, indigenous Chicano, Chicanox, Latinx literature, but still not enough by any means.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_03: So we have to rely a lot of times on independent presses and and Chicano independent presses that aren't that many.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_03: But when those things fail, just do it yourself.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_03: I think that self-publishing is becoming more acceptable now uh than what it was as a vanity press before.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um with social media and websites and all of this, you can promote.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_03: There are different avenues for promoting that didn't exist back in the Chicago movement days, you know.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_03: You had to go the traditional media route and do newspaper articles or do flyers and and you know be on TV if you could get an interview or radio or something.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_03: But now, you know, there's there's Twitter, there's there's Facebook, there's Instagram, there's uh websites, you know, that you can sell off of.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um and like I said, uh I think the stigma of publishing yourself is little little by little dissipating.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_03: And and what's important is for you to put it out, man, put it out so that people can can look at it and and hopefully read it, and and you can sell it little by little on your own.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_03: I mean it helps, I think, to have a publisher if you can, uh, because the publishers, as we do, some more than others, uh help the author to promote, to distribute, which is very important.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_03: People think, well, after you publish it, you know, that's it.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_03: No, in fact, as we said earlier, sometimes the work really begins after you print the book, right?
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's very important to promote it, to distribute it, to get it out into the bookstores, into the libraries, to do tours, to get reviews, to get awards, to keep it in the public's eye so hopefully we can sell a little bit.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_03: And we need to be able to support each other, right?
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_03: And support and buy each other's publication, because if we don't do it, who will?
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_03: And and we're still you know very iffy about even amongst uh academia and and people that are in literature.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I I wish all those people that are on my Facebook page and on our Twitter account and Instagram, if just uh you know the people that uh are supposedly into literature and Chicago art and so forth would buy a book or two, we would we would make a good amount of money, you know, but they don't, you know, even the people that supposedly are into it, right?
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so it's hard.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I used to own this little store, and uh it was, you know, we had a very small but loyal and dedicated following that would come in to support the store, but when I see people out on the streets, even now to this day, you know, we after we've been closed for so long, they'll be like, man, uh that sucks that you guys closed, and I'm like, but you never came in.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_03: Never came by, never bought anything.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_03: And if we expect our institutions to survive and our our our presses, our businesses, we as a people have to support it.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's all there's to it.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because again, if we don't, who will?
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the thing that, you know, keeping with the DIY, which for me, the the whole DIY mentality came as a direct result of the Chicano movement, seeing my mom involved in organizations that were publishing their own newspapers, right?
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_02: We had La Cucaracha out of Pueblo, Colorado, um, putting together our own community centers.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_02: We had La Gente Community Center, you know, like our people just saying, Well, we can't wait for other people to do this stuff for us, we gotta do it ourselves, right?
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_02: Because and if somebody else does it, then are they gonna do it right?
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like, can we even trust it?
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_02: So, fortunately, I think in a lot of ways, technology has sort of democratized the ability to get our work out there on a on a wide scale.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_02: And we were talking before about you know, getting back to Ruben's question about, you know, well, what what advice do we give to people?
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_02: There are two different forms of uh and technology.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_02: There's there's two forms of of printing, right?
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_02: You have the offset printing, which is like the traditional way of sending your book out and getting X amount of hundreds of copies, but now we have this uh digital printing and publishing on demand, yeah.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, which is what we use for Chimali Media.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_02: We use the the digital printing and publishing on demand, and I think the quality is great.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'm very happy with it.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_02: What are your opinions about where where people should go if they're deciding on putting out a book on their own, you know, and they have these options?
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: What in your opinion, what's the better of the two?
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_03: Well, now there are all these sites on the internet that you can go, you know, publishing, self-publishing.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_03: They'll you know, you can submit a manuscript to a uh little company on the web, uh on a website or something, and they'll do everything for you.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_03: They'll design it for you, they'll get the cover, you know, they'll put out there.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes they'll even sell it for you, you know, or or you can go with Amazon, you know, they'll they'll do everything for you and sell it for you and send you, you know, quarterly reports, right?
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_03: So it's become a lot easier, is what I'm saying, instead of you having to hire a designer, you having to hire a cover artist, and they gotta like call you know, one-stop shopping nowadays on the internet for publishing.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um and and I think that's good, and it has helped to democratize, as you say, and put out works that some people are doing that, you know, just self-publishing instead of waiting for you know press that might take two years to get back to you, you know.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's right, sorry, we're not gonna be able to do it.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_03: You know, they're they're really bad and notorious about not getting back to you in a timely fashion, and and most of the things are rejected anyway.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so yeah, I'm a firm believer in doing it yourself.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the reasons why we started Aslani Press.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_03: Now, we haven't published one of our own individual books yet, but I don't think there's anything wrong with that, you know, um if you decide that that's what you want to do.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_03: The important thing is that you do it.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_03: And there's various camaradas out here that publish their own books, you know, and sell it themselves off their personal website and so on.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_03: As I said, I think it's becoming a little bit more acceptable.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_03: There's still some awards and some, you know, academic institutions that frown somewhat and will not let you enter if it's a vanity press publication, if it's self-published, right?
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, that they won't let you submit, which I think is bullshit, but uh they still still still like that.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_03: But I think Lou by Lou it's moving away and including all these people.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_03: And again, the important thing is to get it out there, to do it.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_04: Could you be someone who, as we do with Chimali Media, have your own press that where you then publish, self-publish your own work?
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_04: Is that acceptable for some of these uh awards?
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_04: Is that kind of like a like for some it is around still for some it is not?
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, as I mentioned.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_04: So for them it has to be like a very established, legitimate publication with some history.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't even have to be an established, legitimate publication, it just has to be a different uh publishing company, other than you just publishing your book yourself.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I see.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_03: It could be somebody who starts their own press and said, Okay, my publishing company is called the Walla Productions.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm gonna publish, you know, Rubentla Katecat's book, and it's a different publisher here.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's not you, it's not you publishing.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's somebody else.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's all it takes.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_03: And anybody can become a publisher, but just do it.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_03: You like something, you like a manuscript, let's publish it.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_03: You know, get somebody to work with you, lay it out, get a cover.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, and we used to do it by hand.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_03: We did vistas, we did some, you know, put it together with spiral bound, send it, got them Xerox, came back, collated them ourselves, put the cover page on there, you know, stapled it, put the spiral bound, and also publication.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_03: All the fun work.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_03: Now I heard that first publication of of of uh a while back.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody told me that it was worth over$300 of 13 aliens with collectors, you know, that that collect sort of rare Chicago books.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_04: I believe it.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_04: I mean Curly's book here, the the one he published, uh, We Will Rise.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_04: Someone was asking me recently where they could find a cheap copy because apparently uh online it's going for about 300 bucks as well.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_04: Do you have any more copies of that?
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_04: No, I just have my own personal one.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_04: And how much is that one going for?
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the thing I really like about DIY stuff is, and it's funny because the first person that I knew who published their own book was Sinkley.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_02: When he put out that the X and La Rada 2.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_02: I remember I bought a copy from him and I'm flipping through it, and I'm like, How did you do this?
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_02: You know what?
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because I was all about that DIY stuff, but back when he put it out, I didn't know about all the avenues.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even think I had the internet, you know.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think my family owned a computer back then.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_02: So I was like, How did you do this?
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so he kind of talked me through, like, well, this is what you gotta do, just put it out.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_02: And the thing I really like about it is we're not seeking validation from someone else.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_02: Where you pour all your heart into this book and then you put it out, and people are like, no, yeah, you're rejected.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_02: The publisher rejects you, you know.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, you know, not needing that validation, especially with Chicano stuff, right?
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's like we decide what's important to us.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_02: We don't and even coming back to the very beginning of the conversation about Chicano identity, the Chicano movement, is you know, a lot of people don't realize this, but you know, we don't need anyone's validation to be who we are as a people.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like we decided who we are.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_02: We have it's a self-declared identity that emerged from our own people, and that's What makes it valid as an indigenous identity, and we don't need like a blessing from somebody else, whoever they are, to be like you are or you aren't.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_02: Well, who are you?
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_02: You recognize that's right, you that's right.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think that's what's so important about your work and about Aslan Libre Press is having our own institutions and forging our own path, right?
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_02: Doing stuff for ourselves.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's like you said earlier, if we're not gonna do it, then who's gonna do it?
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, who's gonna write, you know, and document our own histories?
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_03: Who's gonna tell our stories if not our people have to tell it?
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_03: And our people have to put it out there because if we don't, you know, like you said, we can't trust anybody else to do an authentic, you know, story, a real story, and and put it out to.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_03: And if we have to do it ourselves, you know, if nobody's gonna publish it, we'll do it ourselves.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_03: And that's that's what we're doing here.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_03: We're doing it ourselves for our people, you know, telling our own stories, you know.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_03: We validate our own selves, you know.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_03: We don't need to be validated by anybody outside of our own people and tell us who we do.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for doing what you do, it's important work, and thank you for allowing us into your home.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, thank you, brothers.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for lunch and and patties.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_02: And thank you for patties and the plateau de tripitas was delicious.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, yeah, and uh, and just thanks for taking the time to do this.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you for for being here in Yanawana and at our home and in our office here for Vaslan Leave the Press.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_03: And for anybody that's interested, uh, you know, you guys check us out on our website, Aslan Leave The Press.com, and has all our publications on there and other information about the press.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, you know, hope to be doing this uh for a number of years.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_03: I've been retired now for five years, but hopefully I have at least 20 to 25 more years.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a veterano already, you know.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_03: But uh uh got more work ahead of you.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_03: So where else can people find you?
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah, yeah, social media.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Aslan Leave it press has a Facebook account, we have a Twitter account, we have an Instagram account, uh, and as on our website, as I mentioned, AslanLived Press.com.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_03: And and little by little we're we're getting our books out into different bookstores and uh cultural arts centers.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_03: We're at the Achuchas, we're we're at Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego, you know, we're at Resistencia Bookstores in Austin, we're at the Twig here in San Antonio.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we just uh getting we're learning of new places.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I do think that we need a better distribution.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's one of the things and promotion that we really need as uh as Chicano literature in general and and publishing houses of our raza, get it out there.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um and uh there's no reason why we shouldn't have our books and should have our books, but we don't, and in bookstores across the nations and libraries across the nation.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_03: So I I think that's the next step also, really developing that mechanism where we can get our books out there into the into the bookstores, into the libraries, into the classrooms, and into the sell all kinds of stuff there at Aslan Cafe today.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we need we need some more of those people.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_02: Ain't that the truth?
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_02: And you know what I like to say about the truth?
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_02: Do you want to give us our sign off?
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_02: The the truth is like medicine, it doesn't always taste good, but it's always good for you.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I'm talking about.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_03: I think I've heard almost all of your brother.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_03: I dig a bit.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for listening to Tales from Oslandas, a project of the Giovanni Institute of Mesoamerican Art.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_02: If you enjoy the show, please consider becoming a Patreon supporter.
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_02: You can do this by visiting TalesFromOc Landis.com and clicking Support the Podcast.
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_02: Until next time,