Aster(ix) Newsletter #7

“I try to imagine these books as bodies, as protests, as experiential spaces of multi-layered truths.”

Aster(ix) Newsletter #7

This is our seventh newsletter, and we have much to share with you. As many of you know, throughout the year we publish guest-edited issues online and also in print–as well as new and/or noteworthy pieces in our Asterisms section. This month check out a conversation with Aster(ix)’s own Armando Garcia and filmmaker Alex Rivera, short stories by Daniel Alarcon and Estella Gonzalez, and an Alternate Canon by Rachel Eliza Griffith. Also, on our homepage and in print is our current issue, featuring translations of Kianny N. Antigua’s short fiction. Stay tuned for our forthcoming issue, “Girls In Their Bedrooms,” guest edited by Gabrielle Civil and Ellen Marie Hinchcliffe. Enjoy!

Asterisms

The Anodyne Dreams of Various Imbeciles by Daniel Alarcón

“In the second year of the war, the President of the United States was accidentally shot while hunting at his ranch.”

Conversation between Alex Rivera & Armando García

“The word that causes the crisis is “Latino.” And, being honest, “Latino” is a word that’s long been problematic for the people it claims to name. It’s a very imperfect word to describe us. But all words that name people break down at the borders. “

Powder Puff by Estella Gonzalez

“You can’t rush this. Nuh uh. That’s why you get up at four in the morning even if you don’t have to be at work until nine because you never know when you might run into one of your old boyfriends or worse, one of those old skanky metiches from high school like that cha-cha girl Sonya. So take your time. Ignore your parents, especially your mother who bangs on the door like she’s gonna crash through it.”

Alternate Canon by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

“When I look at the list of books I’ve included here, I try to imagine these books as bodies, as protests, as experiential spaces of multi-layered truths.”

Aster(ix) Recommends
Life in a Box is a Pretty Life by Dawn Lundy Martin

“Dawn Lundy Martin’s Life in a Box is a Pretty Life investigates the ways in which language claims absolute knowledge and draws a box around lived experience. Martin writes poems that seek out moments when the box buckles, or breaks, poems that suggest there is more. Life in a Box is a Pretty Life continues Martin’s investigation into what is produced in the interstices between the body, experience, and language, and how alternative narratives can yield some other knowledge about what it means to be black (or female, or queer) in contemporary America.”

A Robot Walks Into a Bar by Alex Rivera

Can a new bartending robot help patrons drown their sorrows, all while keeping them from harming themselves? He soon learns his mission may be next to impossible. A film by Alex Rivera.