Come enjoy an afternoon with Palabras, a BIPOC-centered literary salon co-hosted with Latinx with Plants, in the open air patio in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles!
We are honored to feature the inspiring Olga García Echeverría (Falling Angels: Cuentos y Poemas). Invited readers include a diverse roster of poets, and includes writers from Pride Poets. Confirmed readers list subject to change. This salon features new work by poets and writers.
This salon's theme is "mitologías," inspired by our featured reader's work. Myths as cultural knowledge, myths with feminist interpretations, myths as political influence. Excerpts of poems from Olga:
"Perhaps life begins again and again / in a giant molcajete / in the cradle of Earth / in the weathered stone passed down / in the hands that pulverize and feed"
Cihuacoatl excerpt (please see graphic below)
This event is volunteer-run and grassroots-driven. Please kindly help us with your early RSVP here to attend and join in the facilitated discussion. Last event, tix sold out! (Please join the waitlist if the RSVPs are full - people do cancel!) We are asking for RSVPs for priority entry due to limited capacity in the back greenhouse patio. Everyone is welcome and your donations help us get a headcount and pay for chair rentals and reception for this outdoor event. If you would like to bring cash donation to our event or send other payment, we gladly appreciate your support. *If you're challenged with limited funds and want to attend, please RSVP and join us.
With a mission to create intercultural community building, Palabras is a salon inspired by our elders of civil rights consciousness raising and Maya Angelou's salons in the Harlem Renaissance. Our facilitator, Jen Cheng, brings home-cooking and light snacks to the event as we build bridges by breaking bread together. We sit in a non-heirarchical circle, without a stage. This is not an open-mic. Talk-story and witnessing are ways we can build better understanding of our humanity. More about Palabras on Jen's website: www.jencvoice.com/palabras
Olga García Echeverría, born and raised in East Los Angeles, is the author of Falling Angels: Cuentos y Poemas. Her work has been published in The Sun Magazine, Imaniman: Poets Writing on the Anzalduan Borderlands, Lavandería: A Mixed Load of Women, Wash, and Words, U.S. Latino Literature Today, Telling Tongues: A Latin@ Anthology on Language, among others. In Sept of 2022, she curated Six Word Blooms at the Los Angeles Arboretum, a six-week-long exhibit that featured the pairing of large-scale Papel Picado by artist Karina Puente and poetry from local women of color poets. As co-literary executor of the beloved lesbian Colombian writer and publisher, tatiana de la tierra, she has worked with queer and feminist presses in the U.S. and abroad to help bring to fruition such projects as the republishing of de la tierra’s For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology (Sinister Wisdom 2018) and most recently Redonda y radical: antología poética de tatiana de la tierra (Sincronía Casa Editorial 2022). Olga has been an educator in the literary arts for over 25 years and currently teaches literature in the Chicanx Latinx Studies Department at California State University of Los Angeles.
Latinx with Plants is a woman of color owned business in Boyle Heights whose focus is to celebrate and uplift people of color in the plant world. While the shop began with an Instagram account that was at first dedicated to sharing fun memes, plant inspo, and plant parent goals, our community grew into something we never could have imagined. Our physical shop has been bouncing around Cesar Chavez Avenue for a couple of years, and in June of 2022, we relocated to our largest location yet. We hope that through plant parenthood, people will be able to deepen their connection with nature and the Earth, and tune into the healing that caring for plants can offer us. @latinxwithplants