Bibliocracy

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6. black, the page is white. Together we learn to read and write. A child is black, a child is white.
7. The whole world looks upon the side, a beautiful side.
8. Welcome to Bibliocracy. I'm your host, Andrew Tonkovich, editor of the Santa Monica Review
9. and founding editor of Citric Acid, Orange County's unlikeliest online literary arts and culture journal.
10. I'm a proud member of the Community of Writers,
11. which sponsors both an annual summer writers conference and year-round programming.
12. See communityofwriters.org for more information.
13. My guest this week is Adolfo Guzman-Lopez,
14. a journalist, radio documentarian, and memoirist, and a poet.
15. His fans have relied on Guzman-Lopez's familiar and encouraging voice to guide us.
16. He's been a reliable and empathetic chronicler of civic and cultural life in Southern California
17. as both a reporter and a creative artist.
18. Guzman-Lopez is out now with a collection of poetry, part documentary and part memoir,
19. more than 50 pieces from over 30 years, assembled in California Southern, writing from the road 1992 through 2025.
20. Its themes reflect decades of personal, public, and poetic engagement with migration, identity, border politics and community, ecology, a road trip, and a road map of our region.
21. Guzman-Lopez has been a reporter at NPR affiliate LAist 89.3 FM in Southern California for 25 years.
22. In 1994, he co-founded the San Diego performance poetry group The Taco Shop Poets.
23. He produced and hosted the Chicano true crime broadcast The Forgotten Revolutionary and his poetry over these many years has been published widely now collected in California Southern by the nonprofit Inchas Press It my joy and pride to welcome to Bibliocracy Adolfo Guzman Thank you for asking me to be part of your beautiful community Andrew I really appreciate
24. it.
25. Well, you've been in my community for a very long time, friend, and I'm so pleased for you.
26. You must be thrilled to have this actual physical document of your work because it's hard to imagine
27. all your reporting published in one place, whereas this side of your life of creative engagement,
28. of personal engagement, is right here in this gorgeous collection. I have to say my Spanish
29. is pretty terrible, but I looked up the name of the press. Am I right that in Espanol it means
30. to inflate? Exactly. Enchar is when something swells up. But the other meaning, because the
31. founder of the press is Argentinian-American. An hincha in Argentina is a group of soccer
32. followers, fans, right? You can almost picture that when they go to the stadium, they swell up
33. and, you know, you just add a little water of soccer excitement, you know, with the noise and
34. the energy and that sort of thing. So hincha's press. It's perfect and it's very affirming.
35. Your book of poems is, I would argue, and I think the work speaks for itself, lucky for us, you're going to read many of the poems for us, but your work does at least two things simultaneously.
36. It documents and it memorializes some elements of what some of us might recognize as a familiar narrative.
37. But I think even more importantly, it offers a counter narrative and even a resistanced narrative, so much of which is defined by your own life story.
38. In the first poem you're going to read, we get a lot of that.
39. But if you don't mind, for listeners who don't know your story, it's very much plotted out almost topographically in the funny reverse syntax of your title.
40. So instead of Southern California, it's California Southern and your drift from South to El Norte.
41. I was thinking about how I came up with the title, and I really do have to go back to the late 80s when I was becoming familiar with some of the performance artists in California.
42. One in particular, Guillermo Gomez Peña, and I think he was very significant for me in looking at his work because he was from Mexico City.
43. That's where I was born. I wasn't raised there. That's where I was born.
44. And when you're born in a big city, at least for me, it really stays with you.
45. So Guillermo Gomez Peña, born and raised there, came to Southern California, attended CalArts. Anyway, his work flipped the script, if you want to say it that way, flipped the script when the North is the South, when the South is the North. For me, at least at that time, that was very significant, right, to look at a different way of looking at the border and that sort of thing.
46. And so that's one of the things that drove me to call it that, you know, California Southern.
47. And I liked the sound of it, but you're very right about that.
48. And it also underlines these paths that are well-worn over, it's not an exaggeration to say thousands of years, from north to south along North America, Mesoamerica, Central America, and then back up north.
49. You know that was happening long before 1492 1519 when Europeans came Well thanks for that I say it a reorienting and very helpful to know
50. both our history and the life of Adolfo Guzman Lopez.
51. So here he is with a very voice-driven
52. and performance-driven autobiographical poem called Wrestle.
53. I wrestled the 24-year-old me down C Street
54. past the Stevie Ray Vaughan mural,
55. We landed on 16th Street.
56. I tore his Aztec necklace and swallowed it.
57. I wrestled the 14-year-old me on a fiber-flex skateboard on Mission Boardwalk Sand.
58. I ripped his brown OP cord shorts down Ingram Street, flipped off Mr. P for that F in English.
59. The three of us, two younger me's and me doing Fulmelson, Camel Clutch, Sunset Flip,
60. pile drivers as we tumbled on the Coronado Bridge back to Chicano Park. The border didn't stop us.
61. The Mexican migran man ran after me. Where were all of you born? Isn't it obvious? I pointed to
62. the cactus. Move along. My younger self saw that I passed the test and changed my name.
63. You're now Salvador.
64. Salgo de donde?
65. La salgo.
66. Tu sales?
67. El sale?
68. Nosotros salimos?
69. Sal si puedes.
70. Sal va vidas.
71. Sal si te dan ganas.
72. Has it been 40 seconds?
73. 40 days?
74. 40 years?
75. Looking, waiting at the edge of the land.
76. I want to enter
77. next to a sign that says
78. D-F-A-T-J-N-C-S-D-L-A-L-B-D-F-T-J-N-C-S-D-L-A-L-B
79. We moved laterally into the waves
80. got caught in fishing lines from the Imperial Beach Pier
81. kept wrestling to the wall
82. saw an opening
83. followed the wind, the mist, the butterflies through
84. You know what?
85. Jacob got a better name
86. Mine only means struggles with Spanish, struggles with English, struggles with absent father, struggles with fatherless mother, struggles to remember the final score, struggles with green, white, and red, struggles with red, white, and blue
87. We stop, dust off the pieces, and kiss each other on the cheek
88. Thanks for reading that, one of the early poems from California Southern, writing from the road, 1992 through 2025, by my guest this week on Bibliocracy, Adolfo Guzman Lopez.
89. I was worried about you and all yourselves and all the struggles until that final couple of lines where there's this gorgeous acknowledgement, reconciliation and affirmation of, I guess, what we're not allowed to say lately, multiple identities, choices and also the empowerment by a multiplicity of language options at a time when I don't have to tell you as a reporter.
90. everything about the assumptions of our polyglot democracy
91. are being attacked.
92. Thank you for asking me to read that,
93. because in reading it, that's a poem that I haven't read
94. either in public or out loud very much,
95. but in reading it, I realized how important
96. the story of Jacob and Esau in the Torah has been to me right that image of these two twins these two fraternal twins battling in the womb of their mother
97. One is born first and then the birth, right?
98. And they have this really, I mean, one way to call it is a yin and yang, right?
99. But this really, one's a scholar, one's a warrior, right, a hunter.
100. That's what was in there.
101. And in the story, they do battle with each other.
102. They're about to engage because Jacob stole Esau's birthright, but they end up reconciling and kissing each other on the cheek.
103. Well, thank you for cluing listeners in and reminding me.
104. I probably should have set this up even more by way of your biography, but there's a lot of allusion here to Judaism,
105. in addition to what one might, of course, expect or anticipate by way of cultural references.
106. But this is very much informed by your own, what to call it, spiritual engagements.
107. Absolutely.
108. And, you know, the question is, am I Jewish?
109. Is Adolfo Jewish?
110. Well, I was born and raised, I was baptized in a colonial church in Mexico City, went
111. back to do my first communion there.
112. My wife is Jewish and we were married by a very liberal rabbi.
113. I haven't converted, but in the last, right, 12 years, we have been very involved in our
114. Reform Jewish community in Long Beach, and I've been going to Torah study, which it really is a
115. very engaging way, method, and it's calling on really over a thousand years of commentary to
116. the Torah, right? So that's become a very important part of me to understand or to see
117. my Mexican identity, my American identity, my Chicano identity, my travel, my geographic
118. identity in a different way. This Jewish lens and how it's become part of me has been so enriching,
119. Andrew. You know, I think that poem really encapsulates some of that.
120. Encapsulates, announces, and celebrates. Okay, possibly my favorite, because you know I'm a
121. civic-minded guy, is a poem which further elaborates on and celebrates your journey,
122. and especially the importance of civic life and public affirmation. This one has a ceremonial
123. angle. I guess I'm an old-fashioned, sentimental American guy, but this one is about one of my
124. favorite holy places, which is the library, and it's called On the Opening of the New National
125. City Public Library. Of course, your journey involves some time, again, moving toward Long
126. Beach and Southern California and life spent in National City. And you really take this to heart
127. and make the library your own and our own. A little preface to this. This was read,
128. it's going to be 20 years in August when the librarian in National City, who I had grown up
129. with as a teenager, new, and who was really a mentor and champion for me because I went to the
130. library a lot. She asked me to write and read a poem at the opening of this brand new building
131. in National City, the library. Such an honor. She has since passed away, a sad thing. This is what
132. I wrote and read almost 20 years ago. Our history is written in 19th century journals. Our history
133. is written in Cholo script in an alley behind St. Anthony's. Our history is written on the
134. sandy banks of the reservoir. Remember the artist who destroyed all his art?
135. They brought their books to the Rancho de la Nación.
136. Protestant chanting streams out of the Bay Theater and into the harbor.
137. The library was my sanctuary.
138. The library kept me inside and took me out.
139. Children still play among the mountains of recycled metal.
140. A boy opens a book and dreams.
141. Underneath 8th Street, you can still hear the chanting of Torah.
142. The train tracks came and went.
143. The nightclubs and pizza parlors came and went.
144. The Navy ships will have come and gone.
145. The mile of cars will one day be a yard of tires.
146. But the people will have their books.
147. But the people will have their language.
148. The people will have their stories.
149. A girl opens a book and dreams.
150. One day, the house with the best view will be the one atop Mount San Miguel.
151. We have lived to see the day when the books get their rightful repository.
152. Rise, Raza. Wise up, people.
153. Georgia's cakes will become a taqueria, will become manila fried chicken,
154. will become a pupuseria, will become a union hall,
155. will become an overseas call center for Chinese credit card companies.
156. Don't touch the words because they are holy.
157. Devour the words because they are holy.
158. read to the children so they can leave and come back.
159. There's a railroad diary buried there.
160. There's a Bible buried there.
161. There's a Torah buried there.
162. There's a Koran buried there.
163. And the water we have cast has sprouted these new walls
164. so that a little boy and a little girl can open up a book and dream.
165. From your mouth to God's ear, Adolfo Guzman Lopez,
166. we need our institutions, we need our history, we need those liberatory spaces that actually
167. create people. I find that civic enunciation just so inspiring. I'm trying to squeeze in as many
168. poems as possible with Adolfo Guzman López. One of the histories he chronicles is of the movement,
169. and his is a personal and political but also journalistic chronicle of that
170. included in a poem about the movement called The Movement.
171. I don't think you need to do a lot of setup for this one
172. and that's one of the beauties of this piece.
173. It's a little history 101 from somebody who observed and participated.
174. I saw the heirs to the great movement divided by the 150-year-old legacy of isolation, fear, dangerous oppression.
175. I saw the great Chicano minds bickering over the whiteness of their skin.
176. I saw the heirs of Emma, Corky, Reyes, and Jose Angel waiting for the spoils of handout government cheese already rotten in the refrigerator of white America.
177. I saw the history books which we had begun to write in the 1960s erased by the hands of the moral and assimilationist majority and by our Hispanic governors and other politicians.
178. I saw these same history books used as firewood in the fireplace of white America.
179. I saw the brightest Chicano minds of my generation put war paint on their faces, leave their knowledge behind, and make the pilgrimage to the capital of Aslan burning.
180. burning I saw the great Chicana women fighting for their place in a divided and sexist movement being told not to divide and to get some cafecito mi amorcito
181. I saw the great Chicano minds go through the mechanized garbage disposal education system,
182. come out with many Ks in their paychecks and with an amnesia of Hispanic proportions.
183. That's the Black Plague I saw.
184. I saw the great Chicano shaman of my generation shave their heads in desperation and go into exile to the country that was once theirs, the great Mexico, now taken away by the mispronunciation of Tecnócratas Solidarios Educados en Gringolandia, new home to liberal economics and muck burritos around the corner from the Zócalo.
185. And in a side street, really any street, five cops wait for a night raid on a Chicano house looking for heroin among the medicine bottles of a newly operated señora waiting to search in Estelita and Luisita's vagina for the rocks that kill us.
186. and instead of 6,000 activists that August day
187. I saw the soldiers of La Raza lined up on each side
188. of the Appian Way Whittier Boulevard
189. crucified five feet apart for miles
190. with acupuncture syringes on their bodies
191. each Sebastian an unwilling martyr
192. hanging from the bus stop sign and the sodium light land post
193. the needles made a Guadalupe aura
194. I saw their hands through the bars of hopelessness
195. their futures as sirvientas, busboys, mechanics, and third-rate actors.
196. That made me weep.
197. At the base of each cross, three taxpayers crouched,
198. gambling away the belongings of each victim,
199. a cascade jack and a mascada, a hairnet and a cruz,
200. and the title to the land grant, Rancho de las Californias, now Rodeo Drive.
201. That's Adolfo Guzman-Lopez channeling Allen Ginsberg and being both very tragic and kind of hilarious at the same time.
202. This collection spans 30 years, Adolfo. No doubt you've been writing all that time. And recently there's been a whole lot to write about. So I can't help but ask you to please read this about our recent fires, which just to remind people,
203. Adolfo Guzman Lopez is a reporter.
204. He has to go out and every day affect a kind of objectivity combined with empathy and look
205. at stuff that not all of us get to see up close, interview people, make friends, but
206. also adopt some kind of strange so-called journalistic objectivity.
207. Here he is being total empath with a poem called Fires.
208. I asked the poet, do you know anything about Jervie's house?
209. Salomon posted that his house burned down.
210. Beatriz wrote that it's like the feeling of losing her house in the war in El Salvador.
211. Hilda lives close to me in Long Beach.
212. She posted that her relative's homes are gone.
213. Cato wrote about the landmarks, loved and gone, now living his memories.
214. the mapmaker's home, the Episcopal church, the bunny museum, the Will Rogers ranch house,
215. an OG influencer, a sentry of gold.
216. I told my editor the mission arches in the photo are on the west side of a courtyard
217. where you drive into the Pasadena Jewish temple and center You can yes I spoke in the present park diagonally where those four and five foot poles are Are the flames behind the arches consuming the homes behind the synagogue
218. No, I said, that's part of the center.
219. The sanctuary is to the right, just outside the yellow-orange photo.
220. It's where I attended services several times last year
221. on days that I would work late on a Friday
222. and couldn't get down to Long Beach in time for services.
223. The rabbi told me staff entered the buildings and saved 13 Torah scrolls.
224. It was Tuesday.
225. I sat down and opened the word file to write the story about the shul.
226. Same feeling like when I sat down 10 years before to write the obituary of my spoken word friend, Michelle Saros.
227. On Saturday, Jeff asked me to host in the afternoon.
228. I was on the air from 2 in the afternoon to 8 at night.
229. Updates every 10 minutes.
230. acreage, containment
231. los muertos
232. homes called structures
233. in the texture of my voice I said
234. memories, displacement
235. streets, sidewalks, wood, roofs
236. laughter
237. writing, art, ceramics, watercolors
238. oils, pastels, typewriters
239. in LA news for almost 25 years
240. and I always thought the big one was going to be an earthquake
241. That's a very jocular conclusion to an otherwise very sobering and insider account.
242. I'm so grateful that you decided to kind of break the third wall there a little bit and let your fans, including myself, apprehend what it's like for a poet to, in his day job, have to presumably report objectively.
243. And of course, one of the beauties of this collection is that the descriptions by the poet ultimately are not that different from the descriptions by the reporter, something that you do kind of magically just by way of context.
244. context. I'm pretty sure that's a reference to our friend, the writer Jervie Turvalon,
245. whose house burned down along with so many of our friends and comrades, fellow reporters and
246. fellow academics, family members. You were there to witness it all. And by witness, I mean witness
247. as a poet as well as a journalist. Thank you for that, Andrew. I mean, you make it sound so easy
248. as you observe and reflect on what I do. Is it easy? I don't know. Is it hard? I don't know.
249. I think growing up, bicultural, bilingual, in between my parents who split up, in between San Diego and Tijuana, in between blue-collar working class, and then, you know, the community where I went to schools, which is upper middle class white, present beach, always in San Diego, right?
250. I don't know. I think all of those things either prepared me or set me up for these liminal spaces, right? These places in between. I think that's where I'm, I don't know if I'm most comfortable, but that's what I'm used to. Not having to pick a side, not having to pick reporter, not having to pick poet and somehow work out what's in the middle or center right or left right.
251. Yes, you're multiliminal. You're multilingual. Okay, we've got time for our, I think,
252. concluding anthemic poem, which makes me weep when I read it. And it's called Leaving Los,
253. a prelude to Fresno, recently at a live performance. This one just brought the house down.
254. So we conclude with Adolfo Guzman We all arrive in some way or another and we all have to leave in some way or another
255. Goodbye to the four directions.
256. Goodbye Eastern, goodbye Western, goodbye Slauson, goodbye Ventura.
257. Before we leave, let's roll up our pants and wade into the river.
258. Before we leave, let the river slide its palms under your feet.
259. Before we leave, let's write our wills on the banks of the river.
260. It's an open book.
261. Some have written their birth names here.
262. Some have written their death names here.
263. The water will wash the names away.
264. Let's get back in the car.
265. Let's get back on the I-5.
266. Let's wind our way through Burbank.
267. North.
268. Golden.
269. In spring, the flowers engorm and fill your mouth, fill your eyes, fill your ears.
270. As we make our way through the grapevine, watch out.
271. Dodge the ghosts of the yellow umbrellas.
272. They're still here.
273. The umbrellas sprint across the freeway.
274. Right there.
275. A family of yellow umbrellas crossing.
276. Father umbrella holding the hand of mother umbrella holding the hand of daughter umbrella dangling towards the future.
277. Slow.
278. Your heartbeat through the grapevine.
279. Hold tight to the steering wheel.
280. Now you can see it
281. There it is in front of you
282. The San Joaquin Valley
283. The peach trees sleep
284. The asparagus shoots
285. Will one day race for the sun
286. Not today
287. Now we must decide
288. Could we take the 5
289. Or the 99
290. Let's take the 99
291. To Fresno
292. Vamos
293. A Fresno
294. There's the journey through geography, through time.
295. Watch out for the killer Cristo installation art umbrellas,
296. but do trust your voyage to the poet and journalist Adolfo Guzman-Lopez,
297. author of California Southern, Writing from the Road, 1992 through 2025.
298. What a pleasure and what a joy to get to hear you read these poems for us.
299. Thank you so much, Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, for being my guest this week on Bibliocracy.
300. Thank you for the platform, the opportunity, the engagement with the words and the chance to talk to your listeners.
301. Thanks for listening. And thanks to board operator D'Angelo Jones and engineer Mark Maxwell.
302. Tune in next Thursday at 2.30 p.m. for another celebration of the literary arts on Bibliocracy.
303. Oh, the ink is black, the page is white.
304. Together we learn to read and write, to read and write.
305. And now a child can understand, this is the law of all the land, all the land.
306. Oh, the ink is black, the page is white.
307. Together we learn to read and write, to read and write.
308. The program that you just heard was a rebroadcast.
309. It previously aired here on KPFK.
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