Saturday, April 01, 2006

Bronze Lit

Had a good time at the Bronze lit Reading with: Marianne Villanueva, Jason Bayani, Barbara Reyes, Jason Perez, and Joel B. Tan. Well attended reading with some 40+ folks spilling into the lobby, floor seating only.

Enjoyed listening to Marianne and Barbara read from their two new books, Mayor of the Roses and Poeta en San Francisco. Joel introduced everyone with some slight tid bit of personal insight with each writer. But we never did get to hear what happened to Marianne in Berlin.

Jason Bayani entertained us with a poem about growing up in Fremont, CA where he fell in love with hip hop.

It was my first time to hear Jason Perez who will finish his MFA at New College this month. His short story telling is dense with characters, particularly this one he read about high school. In very rich sentences he was able to give characters such a fullness from the goth artists to the b-boy player. A mix of detail, critique and comedy where you are left with a tapestry layout of people. I am looking forward to reading his book.

Plus I have to give it up to Jason Perez who pressed on with this reading while a rather rude tourist excused her way past rows of attendees to take close up pictures of the art exhibited in the room. It was one thing when she was interrupting the back row, but then she went to stand right next to Jason who was reading at the mic as if none of us were really there, even after someone had already informed her that she was interrupting a reading. Although, you almost thought that she was merely a personified character from Jason's short story.

A good discussion afterwards with questions for the writers. The crowd was a bit relieved that Joel wasn't going to press forward with putting it to the audience to answer, "what is Fil-Am lit"

A couple of quotes from it, completely out of context. Ya'll can have fun guessing who said what.

"I started writing poetry to get laid, but then I got tattoos and those worked too."

"My next project is a vacation"

"I wish Leny Strobel were here, then she could help me decolonize myself."

and bonus, the first two quoted folks also said the following:

"I didn't know about the tattoos." "I'll get you the name of my tattoo artist"

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