City Lights Books transfers@onixsuite.com 20130918 eng

COM.ONIXSUITE.9780872863132 03 01 City Lights Books 01 GCOI 87286100104370 02 0872863131 03 9780872863132 15 9780872863132 BC 1 A01 Gomez-Pena, Guillermo Guillermo Gomez-Pena Guillermo Gmez-Pea </b>was born in Mexico City in 1955 and came to the U.S. in 1978. His work, which includes performance art, poetry, journalism, criticism, and cultural theory, explores cross-cultural issues and North/South relations. He is the recipient of an American Book Award for <i>The New World Border</i> (City Lights) and a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award, among many other honors. 01 eng 244 00 244 03 03 0 03 24 Internet CL Hierarchy Art, Music, Cinema & Drama 24 Internet CL Hierarchy California Writers 24 Internet CL Hierarchy Latin America 01 If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, then a book about performance art is surely like a sonata about sculpture. In the case of <I>The New World Border</I>, however, there is little lost in translation; the force and originality of Guillermo Gómez-Peña's ideas come across loud and clear. Billed as "chicano cyber-punk art," his work revolves around the disorienting reality of living in a multilingual, multicultural society. To express the inherent confusion of colliding cultures, he creates a fictional nation called Aztlan Liberado, where various identities, races, genders, and languages all blend to create an amalgamated society. In this world, the language is Spanglish, all borders have been removed, and whites are the minority. He writes a series of news reports on this theme that turn clichés inside out and point stereotypes the other way: "In an act of random violence, two unemployed corporate executives walked into a luxurious Taco Bell Bistro and fired upon the peaceful fajita-eating customers. Today's headline in the minority paper, the <I>New York Times</I>, reads: 'Blood and guacamole all over walls; a macabre scene.'"<p> Another piece uses text and photographs to describe an act performed in Europe and the U.S. Here, Gómez-Peña places himself in a small gilded or bamboo cage in the middle of a busy plaza or shopping mall and presents himself as an "exotic multicultural specimen" who can be "activated" by shoppers who want to witness his "incredible ethnic talents." Such talents include modeling traditional Indian garb, doing commercials for organic products, and "posing in attitudes of martyrdom, despair, and poverty"--essentially behaving in any way that spectators expect their "primitives" to act--allowing Gómez-Peña to make a statement about how cultural identities are often presented as commodities.<p> This American Book Award-winning collection of essays, poems, performance texts, photographs, and "prophesies for the coming century" is by turns outlandish, illuminating, wickedly clever, and unabashedly serious. A frenetic artist, satirist, and phrasemaker, Gómez-Peña is able to convey the electricity and inventiveness of his live shows through heavy doses of humor, irony, and word play. Gómez-Peña's aim is to establish a common middle ground among North Americans; until a seamless North America becomes a reality, however, Gómez-Peña will continue to live on the border--and would like to see us all there. <I>--Shawn Carkonen</I> 02 If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, then a book about performance art is surely like a sonata about sculpture. In the case of The New World Border, however, there is little lost in translation; the force and originality of... 08 "Performance artist and self-proclaimed 'reverse anthropologist,' Gómez-Peña slashes and burns his way through the social jungle like a Latino Berzerker. Clear and energetic, he levels all, and I mean all, cultural dragons. He is not the first to observe that change in the late 20th century has been so enormous that the entire world, especially the United States, has plunged into a deep identity crisis, but unlike some social critics, he offers hope. First, he argues, we must recognize that no one is innocent. Then, only by accepting the inevitability of our innate hybridization will we find a healthy context for genuine growth. Taken from several projects, the author's poems and texts are astute, biting, and often painfully funny. Like any good trickster, he tries to awaken us by teaching how important it is to laugh at ourselves. Read at risk to your own complacency." Library Journal 08 "<i>The New World Border: Prophecies, Poems & Loqueras For The End Of The Century</i> is a carnivalesque inversion of ethnic and geo-political ideology, a 'disorienting' free-fall into the space between cultures, and a head-on collision with the real and imagined borders that separate North and South. An intercultural interpreter, reverse anthropologist, experimental linguist, and political artist of the first order, Guillermo Gmez-Pea has created a hybrid culture and articulated a borderless ethos. In this new collection of essays, poems, performance texts, and manifestos, he muses on matters of race, gender, language, and identity. A border denizen (part shaman and part trickster) he slips easily between languages and lands, creating an imaginative new world out of the places where cultures mutually invade each other. <i>The New World Border</i> explores the conceptual terrain of an alternate end-of-the-century civilization. It surveys the United States' current landscape of racial violence, separatist movements, and irrational fears of otherness. Gmez-Pea invites the reader into uncharted territory: the vast, intercontinental border zone where people live between and across cultures and countries, creating a thoroughly hybrid society where the only cultural "others" are those who stubbornly resist "mestizaje". <i>The New World Border </i>is both wildly entertaining and thoughtfully incisive, inducing a kind of cultural vertigo that erases the borders between 'us' and 'them'. <i>The New World Border </i>is a required addition to all literary and multicultural studies collections! <i>Midwest Book Review</i> 04 03 72 01 http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100104370/images/87286100104370L.jpg 07 03 72 01 http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100104370/images/87286100104370S.jpg http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100104370 City Lights Publishers 01 City Lights Publishers 19960701 08 16 oz City Lights Books 01 WORLD 20 19960701 01 02 16.95 USD