About Calaca

Since its inception in 1997, Calaca has continued to expand into its role as one of the most dedicated and self-determined of U.S. independent presses. This small publishing house, operated as a Chicano-owned family business, steadily rocks the nation with its offerings of new works by progressive Latino authors. Think Nuyorican Poets' Café for the West Coast, and the Mechicano/Latino 21st century: Calaca brings it on hard, fast, in spots where you'd least likely expect (and most need) Latino culture. And Calaca knows how to represent.

Razor Edges of My Tongue

Online Excerpt:

"La Pelona Blues, Bald Woman, Hairless, Frida Kahlo's Idea of Death, Unfeminine, Bald Bald Bald Bald"

The poetry of Leticia Hernández-Linares reads like the sudden and welcome blare of electric, high-gloss, perfected graffiti: it spills onto the page in various directions, some text written in the margins, alternating between English and Spanish, lyric and music, italics and plain text ("english in italics," the author notes, "y qué."). We love the convulsive gyrations of the rhythms, the intensity of the pointed pride, all the ministrations to misgivings.

Don't look here for apologies. Here is a poet who will give you a swift kick in the nalgas, just by challenging you to turn yet another page.

We at STANDARDS recommend this book highly. Get it. Read it aloud. Read it again.

santa perversa & other erotic poems

Online excerpts offered here:

dime, liquid, and santa perversa

There is a delirium of language, a seduction of senses, in this compelling work by alejandra ibarra. We at STANDARDS confess that several Latina volunteers sat around one warm afternoon, reading certain passages, handing the book back and forth to one another's waiting grasps, and panting . . .

Luckily, we're not the kind to blush easily. Instead, we devoured these works again and again, as necessary sustenance. If you're lucky enough to expose yourself entirely to ibarra's incantations, you'll gasp with astonishment.

This is a poetic invocation to the transformation of desire. Steady yourself.

Recommended highly.

Para Las Duras: Una Fenomenología Lesbiana

(For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology)

tatianna de la tierra comes on hard, plays hard, stays hard . . . until she ripens, and comes softly toward the reader. This interplay between strident and tender is as core as the clitoris, the tongue, the fingertips heralded in the wind-blown, deeply-rooted taxonomy of Para Las Duras. Witness:

TELL ME HOW YOU DECORATE YOUR LIPS

AND I'LL TELL YOU WHO YOU ARE

some lesbians are hard.

they are the ones who wear the pants and never take them off. they are the dangerous ones. the butches. the ones who get on top. the ones who fuck. who bite. who penetrate. who dominate. the ones everyone knows are dykes.

they are the most exciting. they know how to tune into a woman's desires. they know how to speak to the breasts, how to persuade the nipples. they know the significance of each sound. they know how to caress and grab and eat. they know how to coax screams and calm anxieties. they know how to harden a clitoris and they know what to do with it once it's hard.

some lesbians are dolls.

they are the ones with matching plum lips and nails. they are the ones who are painted and perfumed. the feminine ones. the ones who like being on the bottom. who open themselves to be fucked. who long to be bitten, penetrated, dominated. the ones that not everyone knows are dykes.

they are the most excitable. they know how to submit to desire. they know how to speak with their tits, how to offer their nipples. how to calibrate each sound. how to let themselves be caressed, grabbed, eaten. they know how to scream and cry. they know how to let their clitoris harden and they know what to do with it once it's hard.

some lesbians are clay.

they are the ones who wear the pants and permit others to take them off. they are the sporty ones, the androgynous, the new generation. they are the ones who get on top and on the bottom too. the ones who fuck and get fucked. the ones who bite, penetrate, and dominate and give themselves over for the same. the ones everyone suspects without being certain of what they are.

they are the most excited. they sing and dance desire. they speak tit to tit, buzz themselves nipple to nipple. they make sounds and caress and grab and eat each other simultaneously. they know how to scream and cry. they know how to let their clitoris harden and how to harden another one's clitoris, and they know what to do with them, once they're hard.

Who says we don't have any Latina sex-positive activists?

Our humble appreciation to Calaca for the bravery and timeliness in bringing this book to the grateful hands of a waiting public — and for going to the time and expense to produce the entirety of the work bilingually (yes, the entire text is offered in both English and Spanish).

Our appreciation, again, and some big props out to Calaca, who keeps on keepin' on, a wondrous small press working against some formidable odds, and still going strong.

Of course, there are always newer ventures from Calaca. We at STANDARDS are still catching our collective breath from our hiatus; we'll be back with more Calaca reviews in coming issues.

Meanwhile, get your needs satisfied by visiting Calaca online.

Canela A. Jaramillo

2006