Sep 8, 2022 through Sep 10, 2022
The National Hispanic Cultural Center is thrilled to host one of the leading authors of queer Chicana feminist literature for a special two-day event in early September in partnership with the University of New Mexico’s department of Spanish and Portuguese.
Who: Dr. Emma Pérez is an author and professor at the University of Arizona. Dr. Pérez has published fiction, essays, and the history monograph, The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History (1999).
Pérez’s first novel, Gulf Dreams, was published in 1996 and is considered one of the first Chicanx queer/lesbian novels in print. Her second novel, Forgetting the Alamo, Or, Blood Memory (2009) earned awards including the Isherwood Writing Grant (2009). Her novel, Electra’s Complex (2015), is a mystery set in a college with a history professor as protagonist.
What: Dr. Pérez will come to the center for two days of education and Chicana literature. On Thursday, Sept. 8, she will host a book-reading, titled “From History to the Future, Mapping Dystopia.” Pérez will read from her historical novel Forgetting the Alamo, Or, Blood Memory, as well as her forthcoming novela Chronicle of a Shifter, which focuses on a future dystopia in which sex and gender shifters, along with Brown, Black, and Indigenous people, are held in detention camps because they rebel against the corrupt Global World Order.
Then, head back to the Center on Saturday, Sept. 10 for a free writing workshop led by Dr. Pérez titled “Emotional Truths: A Queer Chicanx Approach.” In this workshop, attendees will experiment with scenes that tap into emotional truths to write their stories, in order to help writers better write and understand characters with different experiences from their own.
Both events are part of the NHCC’s historia, idioma, e identidad Series and are sponsored by United Way.
When: The reading will take place at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 8, and the writing workshop will begin at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 10. Both events are free, and attendees can register online through www.nhccnm.org/events.
Where: The reading will be held in NHCC’s Bank of America Theatre, while the workshop will take place in Salón Ortega. Parking for both events is available on the north side of the Center’s campus, located at 1701 4th Street SW.
Why: To celebrate and learn from an author who has done so much for the field of queer Chicana feminism.
