Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Banned Literature
This Saturday, I'll be at Tia Chucha's Cultural Center and Bookstore signing The Sandoval Sisters' Secret of Old Blood, and participating in an author panel: Liberating Queer Stories, 3:30 to 4:15. Special added short story bonus w/book.
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Sandra Ramos O'Briant
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11:25 AM
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banned literature, celebrating words, queer fiction, The Sandoval Sisters' Secret of Old Blood, tia chucha
Monday, May 13, 2013
All the Things Wrong with the World are Made Right With You
My son usually introduces me to new music on road trips. This time he navigated hwy 22 to Memphis and we talked about the future of the planet. Gerald has done quite a bit of research on global warming and said we have reached the point of no return: life as we've known it will not be the same for future generations of humans.
We were commuting from his law school in Tuscaloosa to Memphis, where my husband's family will gather for simultaneous celebrations of birthdays and Mother's Day. I leaned toward him, hanging on every word, while at the same time admiring the vibrant green trees and pasture land we passed. There had been frequent showers in the area and his dire warnings ran counter to the verdant zone through which we drove. "People take all this for granted," he said. "We abuse it." He's living in an area of fervent unbelievers . . . in global warming. They do believe in hell fire, though, so maybe a convincing argument could be made from the pulpit. If preachers got on the side of science they'd just have to get creative, convince people that the Lord Almighty wanted them to choose to live now. Emphasis being their choice not the Lord's. Gerald said it would never happen, and that's why he felt hopeless about our future.
The earth underlined his words with a blinding downpour and punctuated his hopelessness with thunder. Cars flashed emergency lights or pulled over to the side of the road. We kept moving, and talking, the Honda a tiny world of its own. Long haul trucks sped past us, fearless and mighty above our puny vehicles. Seizing the opportunity to gain time in their individual and corporate pursuits-the American way-they pounded us with highway surf. I love you, honey. Your ideas are good. Now let's see if we can change the world.
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Sandra Ramos O'Briant
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8:52 AM
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carbon dioxide, change, floods, global warming, hell fire, hopeless, Lord Almighty, love, planet, preachers, rain, science, son
Wednesday, May 01, 2013
FIDELITY & MORTAL ILLNESS
How would you feel about your mate having an affair if you were stricken with a mortal illness and uninterested in having sexual relations?

In graduate school, I did an internship in a tutorial center. My boss was a kind and knowledgeable man who loved his wife and family dearly. She'd had two heart attacks and the prognosis was not good. You would have never suspected it to look at her. She was robust and cheery, the affection between them palpable.
At that time, I had no experience with grief of the death-inspired sort, but one of the tutors in our group was dying of leukemia. Everyday he appeared paler and weaker, but he still attended classes and reported for work. "You can tell his family has made the separation," Dr. Jackson, my boss, said one day after meeting the tutor's family. Responding to my expression, he added, "It's not that they don't love him, but when you know someone is going to die, you go through grief while they're still walking and talking. You protect yourself from the finality."
"Does that mean you become more feverish about your own life, about living, and everything that that means?" I asked.
"I hope so," he said, "but you also pull back a little. Your love is there, but a boundary is there, too." That's when he told me about his wife, and how a hardening within him had taken place.
Over a decade later, I hooked up with a cheap bus tour of Italy. The tour was packed with Europeans. . . Germans, Irish, British. The only Americans were a Sikh family from Silicon valley. There was also an Iraqi couple.
Those were my thoughts, then. Now, even though she was clearly punishing him, perhaps she wasn't dying. I don't understand the kind of negative vehemence she had, nor do I understand her husband remaining under its power. Only if she had a death sentence would it make sense for him to stand by her side. If he'd chosen to seek affection elsewhere, could you blame him?
Why would I think of this now? Just finished Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, which is a treacherous tale of a sick marriage. The wife in it reminded me of the Irish Wife in Italy and her forlorn husband. With the passage of time and lessons learned from my own marriage (a happy one, but not without bumps), and my friends' marriages and divorces, I've reconsidered the death sentence I'd given her at the time. Maybe they were just miserably bound for life.
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Sandra Ramos O'Briant
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10:00 AM
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bus tour, creative writing, death, Europe, marriage, Rome, sexuality, travel
Monday, April 22, 2013
How not to pitch your book at a book festival
Later,
an athletic-looking middle-aged woman with a masculine haircut, who might have
been a women's PE teacher, was particularly enthused over a fictional account
of a cross-dressing woman of the old west. She wanted to buy the book on the cowboy/girl, but the only
book for sale was The Sandoval Sisters, one of whom dressed like a man in
1840’s Santa Fe. She married an older man with whom she had a happy marriage, but when widowed fell
in love with her childhood best friend, Monique. This aspect of Pilar is not
even a subplot, but part of the spectrum that has always colored not only the
west, but Santa Fe. I thought this woman might be interested in
this tidbit, but the bowtied gentlemen had knocked the wind out of my sails,
and I failed to speak up.
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5:54 PM
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arranged marriage, bisexual, Book, festival, historical, history, lesbian, mansplainer, New Mexico, Salma Hayek., Sandoval Sisters, Texas Rangers
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Signing The Sandoval Sisters at the L.A. Festival of Books
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Sandra Ramos O'Briant
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9:46 PM
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books, festival, Greater Los Angeles Writers, los angeles, The Sandoval Sisters, women writing the west
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Love During the Conquest
- Cast of Characters:
- Oratoria Sandoval: "I first entered the Sandoval
compound a barefoot slave . . . Estevan had traded for me—a bag of flour for a ragged peasant girl of five—after I had been captured by Apaches in Mexico. He brought me to this high mountain desert, to Santa Fé, the City of Holy Faith, as a wedding present for his bride. I became doña Teresa’s favorite, who was sixteen and far from her family in Mexico City. She taught me to read and to cook, and christened me Oratoria because of my skill with languages. - Alma Sandoval: "I’d been in the grip of ancient memories, reciting a list of family secrets that stretched back for centuries. I’d developed an eccentric reputation in Santa Fé, even for a Sandoval. I wasn’t sure if the memories were from an unknown part of my mind, or if they came from reading Sandoval diaries when I was much too young."
- Pilar Sandoval: "I’d read a few
. . . Bunch of whiners and schemers, if you ask me. I like creatures who are half this and half that, in myth's and biblical stories, not in my flesh and blood relatives." - Geraldo Quintana: “I’m no saint,” he said. “I loved my wives, but I was a young man, selfish and uninformed. Penetration, the young man’s dream, is not all there is to lovemaking.”
- Consuelo Benavides: “You Sandovals think you can take everything. You’ll suffer. I’ll make you pay for what you’ve stolen from me!”
- L.B.: “Mexes ain’t too poplah round here, but I guess you knows it already . . . you as white as B.B., Miz Alma. You could pass fa her daughter. Make the most of it, girl. Passin’ is good.”
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11:30 AM
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characters, conquest, diary, love, reviews, Santa Fe, table of contents, U.S., war, witchcraft
Sunday, April 07, 2013
My Ideal Female Superhero
During this time, she states her ideas fiercely and people are afraid not to listen. She becomes ultra aware of bad vibes and evildoers galore. My superhero wants to ignore them and get her work done, but they always end up getting in her face by abusing the defenseless when she's having a hormonal surge.
Bad timing for them because her anger and fearlessness increase beyond imagination. Her superpower is her perception of the evildoer's most vulnerable psychological weaknesses. She's a hormonal Hannibal Lechter when it comes to using words, articulate and razor sharp. She has an uncanny ability to hone in on the secrets hidden in the dark hearts of her opponents, and often goads them to tears or to some act which is their undoing.
When she gets her period she dyes her hair and wears tailored clothes. She sleeps with her competitors and drops them right after. The week after this she returns to her mousey self as if nothing happened. The men and women she's tossed aside either become her staunch supporters hoping for more, or her bitter enemies. No one can figure out her variable schedule. She barely understands it herself.
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9:30 AM
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female power, Hannibal Lechter, hormonal surge, menstruation, PMS, superhero, voluptuous


















