The band’s founding member reflects on growing up Chicano & being an artist.
by Catalina Maria Johnson
From: Billboard
About 40 years ago, four musicians in a high school rock band decided to learn the Mexican standard “Las Mañanitas” to regale one of the band member’s moms on her birthday. Daunted by how difficult that proved to be — they had underestimated the complexity of their musical culture — the young East LA born-and-bred Chicanos decided to frame their Mexican roots music in rock ‘n’ roll and R&B grooves. And so, the iconic, multi-Grammy-winning band Los Lobos was born.
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A bustling York Blvd., with mouth-watering smells wafting in the air from food trucks parked curbside. Near the corner of York and Avenue 50 is Pop-Hop Books, one of L.A.’s many independent bookstores.
Main Library Book Group & Snow Flower and the Secret Fan at Santa Monica Library, SMPL
Winter Author Series & YA Author Aditi Khorana at Memorial Branch Library, LAPL – Teen Event
Mike Sonsken has been a fixture in the Los Angeles Literary community for two decades. He burst on the scene spitting spoken word verse late into the night, at many venues, events, and open mics, some that no longer exist. During the course of these two decades he’s traveled to Echo Park and Sylmar, Venice and the Eastside, Downtown and Torrance, and everywhere in-between, performing poems laced with the city’s stories and history, hosting open mics and readings, being a tour guide to its streets, teaching students poetry and encouraging them to explore who and what Los Ángeles is.
As 2018 draws to a close, it’s been another year of publishing success for Los Ángeles writers and the Los Angeles literary community. As the months went by, writers published novels, essay collections, poetry collections, edited anthologies or announced their books had been accepted for publication in 2019 and even 2020. Congratulations to all these scribes and for penning important works. Some of these books, such as Erica Ayón’s Orange Lady, which recounts the author’s experience as an immigrant growing up in South Central Los Angeles, where her family sold oranges on the street in order to survive, and Lynell George’s essay collection After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame, focused on Los Angeles beneath-the-surface, both the past and the here-and-now, explores who and what L.A. is from different personal lived experiences. Showing how the political is personal.
When Kima Jones, an independent publicist based in Los Angeles, agreed to help the poet Tyehimba Jess with his publicity campaign for his second collection, “Olio,” she knew it would be a breakout work.