“Cenzontle: Poems”

Marysville author-poet Marcelo Hernandez Castillo recently spoke to Butte College students, reading from his memoir “Children Of The Land.” An immigration advocate and part of the college’s Diversity Speaker Series, Hernandez Castillo was born in Tepechitlan Zacatecas, Mexico, studied at Sacramento State, and “was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan.”

His award-winning book, “Cenzontle: Poems” ($17 in paperback from BOA Editions Ltd.; also for Amazon Kindle) is a kind of ever-changing song: “The song becoming the bird becoming the song.” “Cenzontle,” we are told, “means mockingbird in Spanish and comes from the Nahuatl word centzuntli, which refers to one who holds 400 voices or songs.” The voices are many in these poems, the meanings elusive. 

The young poet grasps for meaning as well. In the title poem, the mockingbird echoes something beyond words even as the poet is trying to find just those words. “Can you wash me without my body/ coming apart in your hands?/ Call it wound--/ call it beginning--/ The bird’s beak twisted/ into a small circle of awe.// You called it cutting apart,/ I called it song.” 

Behind many of the poems is Hernandez Castillo’s own story and the story of undocumented family members, deportations, a severe life in the home country and uncertainty in the States. 

And a father who beat him with a white belt he called Daisy. “And after it’s over, we know we have both become men./ Him for the beating,/ and me for taking his beating.” Yet somehow it’s an act of love: “I love you Daisy.// My father’s hands will love a man/ at the first sign of weakness./ I am weak/ therefore, I gather that he loves me.” It is a complicated relationship.

They all are: “We made love then argued,/ or, argued then made love.// It didn’t matter either way,/ everything had the aftertaste of gasoline….” Then: “I only wanted to look far enough back/ to see where I split in half.// How dumb we were/ endlessly searching/ for a definite shape/ our longing would take.// I leaned into you,/ all of you,/ as if in chorus.” 

The song lives.

“Letting All The Light In: Gracefully Surviving Illness, Injury, And Grief”

Dax Meredith (daxmeredith.com), the pen name of a Chico area author, college instructor and counselor, wrote of her escape from the Camp Fire in "The Sound Of The Snow Geese." But she is also dealing with a years-long debilitating illness. 

“Both the illness and the fire almost killed me,” she writes in “Letting All The Light In: Gracefully Surviving Illness, Injury, And Grief” ($15.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle). “Twice now I have been much closer to death than I like to consider. But I am a better person because of it. … I am more patient, more grateful, more present in the moment each day because of those events.”

This is not a story of “arrival” but an ongoing journey as Meredith navigates the health care system and returns with cautionary tales. 

The book’s three parts include the harrowing memoir of her mysterious illness where, she writes, “The left side of my face was numb for almost a year. … My spine was numb. I remember constant and continual migraine headaches. The pain was excruciating. I remember endless vomiting, blurred vision or partial and temporary blindness, and on several occasions, hallucinations.” She adds: “As a general rule of thumb, hallucinations are just not a good sign.”

The second part features short interviews with two dozen sufferers, of all ages, each presenting the biggest challenge (including grief at the loss of a son and wife, amputation, addiction, miscarriages, multiple cancers, depression), resources used, the person’s belief system (some are Christian, some “spiritual,” some have no professed religious commitment), what others need to know, the roughest parts, and what wisdom has emerged. The accounts are devastating, gut-wrenching, in part because this is you or someone you know.

The final section is practical advice; Meredith covers everything to be aware of, from how to talk with one’s children to fighting the judgment from others and oneself. “I don’t believe all the bad things that occur are a punishment from God. But there are lessons in the bad things that happen to us.”

With graceful kindness, Meredith may well change how you understand your very life.

“Even Broken-Winged Divas Can Fly”

Forty-something Chicoan Jennifer Kuhns (www.jenniferkuhns.net) has published more than a dozen books. “I write children’s books,” she tells readers in her latest memoir, “most of which have a disabled protagonist with a strong and positive character and attitude. Well, maybe a little bit of a snarky attitude … What can I say? I put a little bit of me into all of my characters.”

Her own story is told in “Little Diva On Wheels: Growing Up Differently-Abled” and now “Even Broken-Winged Divas Can Fly” ($16.95 in paperback from Shalako Press) which focuses on her high school and college days. Born ten weeks early, diagnosed with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, Kuhns notes that while “my fine motor manual dexterity is basically non-existent,” she has “the ability to memorize like a freaking elephant.”

This “broken-winged diva” has a penchant for literary symbolism, “a strange sense of humor,” a competitive instinct, and self-advocacy.

Her cerebral palsy affects speech. “I can say the word. The problem is ‘saying’ and ‘enunciating’ a word are two absolutely, completely, different animals.” Most of her family members, friends, and those who have interacted with a disabled person understand what she calls her “CP-babblelistics.” She is “greeted, not ignored. I was spoken to, not at. I was not made to feel like I had leprosy. And I was verbally understood.”

Perhaps other adults lack the patience or are afraid, but there is no rancor in Kuhns’ description. Instead, she reveals a well-rounded life, including raising a sheep and an awkward relationship with her mother: Mom is the boss at home, but she is also hired as an aide by the Department of Rehabilitation and so Jennifer is her boss at school.

“I’ve not always been happy about my condition, my situation in life. I’ve been mad, and I’ve been sad, and I’ve hated the body I’m in.” And yet, “I know how to harp like nobody’s business to get what I need, want, or think I should have … not that it always works.” 

A color section at the end showing some of her tattoos (one for each book published), receiving her MA, and newspaper clippings, demonstrates that something very much worked.

“Welcome Back To The World: A Novella & Stories”

Rob Davidson teaches creative writing and American literature at Chico State. His new collection of stories takes readers to the precipices of life. “Welcome Back To The World: A Novella & Stories” ($24.95 in paperback from Cornerstone Press) offers deeply felt characters and a trajectory of hope.

In “Unfinished Business,” Mark, a single dad with his daughter, Claire, attending Sac State, learns that his wayward ex-wife, Solange, has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. And now Mark will be forced to take her into their household.

“The Photograph” is about a campus budget analyst captured on film by a famous street photographer. “I like predictability and routine. I favor a closed system with known parameters.” Then he becomes the star of a prestigious gallery exhibition.

“Buxiban Blues” is set in Taiwan at one of the many buxibans or “cram schools” for learning English. Director Will is an American ex-pat who pleases the parents because he’s white; his star teacher, Margaret, California-born with Chinese ancestry, has a more difficult time. “They were two loners and outcasts, each lonesome and sad, each struggling to find new footing in the world.”

“Packing Out” is a harrowing tale of Jon’s fishing junket with his gruff father which goes tragically wrong. In “Search for Florence” actor Van Wheeler searches for legendary Michael Florence in Spain, finally relying on intuition, “an urging beyond language or reason, what could only be described as a yearning.”

In “Parallel Lines” Grant is a middle-school student who falls for classmate Melinda Díaz and must confront his pal’s racism. In “Welcome Back to the World,” the novella traces the aftermath of Dennis’ decision to leave a Buddhist monastery after seven years. He must face trauma, betrayal--and his own hollowness.

Davidson’s stories are like the Zen koans Dennis describes. “A koan doesn’t point the way directly, but works subtly via innuendo, suggestion, and ambiguity.”

Rob Davidson is Nancy Wiegman’s guest on Nancy’s Bookshelf on Northstate Public Radio, mynspr.org, Wednesday, November 27 at 10:00 a.m., repeated Sunday, December 1 at 8:00 p.m. He’ll be signing books Thursday, December 12 at Chico’s 1078 Gallery beginning at 7:30 p.m. The public is invited.

“Number Mania: A Visual Exploration Of 0 To 100”

Chico mathematician Scott Lape, aided by Madrid-based illustrator Víctor Medina, will make readers fall in love with digits. Even if you don’t like math, he has your number. Actually, 101 of them.

In “Number Mania: A Visual Exploration Of 0 To 100” ($19.99 in hardcover from Odd Dot/Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group) Lape and Medina provide a carnival of number lore on every page not just for kids ages 6 through 12 but for adults as well. 

We’re surrounded by numerals, in street signs and digital clocks, but things get really interesting when we start counting. “The number representing a group of objects only has meaning if there’s somebody looking at the objects, counting them, or wondering, ‘How many are there?’” 

Each number has its own mathematical personality and each colorful, whimsical page looks at how the number is expressed in other languages, its factors, a bit of numerical history, and a section that’s just wild about that number. There are 64 colors in many Crayon packages; Forty-Four is a small town in Arkansas; “The traditional gift for a 70th wedding anniversary is something made of platinum (element 78).” Bowling balls can’t weigh more than 16 pounds.

You’ll see 36 on a yardstick, of course, but also “there are 36 counties in Oregon. There are 36 black keys (and 52 white keys) on a piano.” In Judaism, “the commandment to be kind to strangers is found 36 times in the Torah.”

Zeroing in on nothing, Lape writes that “The idea of ‘none’ being a number took a long time to catch on…. The first known use of a small circle to represent zero was in 876 CE in India…. Now we have a bunch of words that mean 0: nada, zilch, zip, diddly, and diddly-squat! … There used to be a town called Zero in Iowa—but sadly, its population is now 0.”

You’ll have fun with this book. Count on it.

Scott Lape will have a book signing at the Chico Barnes & Noble on Saturday, November 23 at 1:00 p.m. And listen to a recent Nancy’s Bookshelf interview with the author by host Nancy Wiegman at www.mynspr.org/show/nancys-bookshelf.

“And I Love Her Still”

Chicoan Pamela Dean “was a wildland firefighter in the early 90s and worked on engine 4 out of Adin,” a small town (fewer than three hundred residents) in Modoc County. Though an injury ended her career, “she was proud to be a part of the group of women who forged the way.”

Adin in 1988 is the scene of what is billed as a “heartwarming romantic comedy,” but what Dean delivers is so much more. It’s a literary tour de force that propels the reader to the very end and takes no prisoners along the way.

“And I Love Her Still” ($19.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) introduces two combustible characters in Kenny, a beautiful badass woman firefighter and EMT (who handles a chainsaw with finesse), and 32-year-old Patrick, a handsome but disillusioned Seattle mystery writer who inherits a ranch near Adin. Sparks, as they say, will fly. 

Kenny and Patrick narrate alternate chapters throughout the book, always in the present tense, and the reader listens in. They are no strangers to barnyard epithets or explicit descriptions.

“Her features,” Patrick muses to himself, “are a contradiction, sweet and innocent with a touch of sin. … She has dark-brown eyes and a bunch of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She is tanned … and damn is she fit.” “He is actually kind of adorable,” Kenny thinks. “Bumbling professor kind of cute. I mean looks-wise he is a hot professor type. Dark hair and brilliant blue eyes.”

As self-deprecating Patrick gets to know the ranch that belonged to his late great-uncle Mitchell, and read his cowboy poetry (and eventually write some of his own), he finds he’s entangled in something of a family mystery. Kenny is plagued by Ryan, a young crewmember on the prowl for women, and the love lives of both Kenny and Patrick are pretty much on the skids. Until they meet.

I couldn’t put it down.

The author will be having a book signing party November 13 at the Blue Agave Room at Tres Hombres from 6:00-8:00 pm. The cover painting is by local artist Virginia Wright who will be offering hand-painted bookmarks at the signing.

“Stand Easy: Creating A Small British Pub And Considerable Comradeship In The Corner Of A Garage”

For Chicoan David Bruhn it happened almost by chance. After weekly mountain biking with longtime friend Pat O’Connell, the two would “sit at a small bar in my garage and enjoy a beverage—he a bottle of water, and I a bottle of beer. (I attribute these choices to his having served in the U.S. Air Force and I in the U.S. Navy.)”

The bar was something like a British pub, and over seven years, with input from a group of friends, it took on real character, befitting the real characters who frequented “Stand Easy” (a military term meaning “take a break”). And now Bruhn has published an account of its construction, filling it with a hundred photographs and diagrams, stories from the friends who meet there regularly, and an assortment of British pub jokes.

“Stand Easy: Creating A Small British Pub And Considerable Comradeship In The Corner Of A Garage” ($23.50 in paperback from Heritage Books, Inc.) is not just about the artifacts that populate the pub, including a hand-made chandelier of 9 wine bottles with their bottoms cut off, but “about building friendship and espirit de corps.”

Bruhn writes that “moderation is the key” during “our weekly use…. The Stand Easy is formally open between 5:30 and 7:00 p.m. During this time everyone enjoys at most two drinks and a home cooked meal prepared by my wife Nancy or Rich Varlinsky.” (Recipes in an Appendix include Nancy’s Kickin’ Crab Corn Chowder.)

Friends’ stories add to the ambience of the book, from Deadhead Grace who dated Neil Young to Rich and Cindy’s Mexican Riviera cruise. 

In 1989 sociologist Ray Oldenburg argued that “third places,” like local bars, were democracy’s grassroots where people, putting aside the demands of work and home, could meet for lively conversation, lessening some of the division that characterizes the moment we are in. Among Stand Easy’s small group of friends, the garage pub is indeed a “great good place.”

David Bruhn is Nancy Wiegman’s guest on Nancy’s Bookshelf on Northstate Public Radio, mynspr.org, Wednesday, November 6 at 10:00 a.m., repeated Sunday, November 10 at 8:00 p.m.