Collective Amnesia Part 1

30 Minutes  presents part 1 of a panel from the Pima County Public Library/ Nuestras Raices Stage from the 2017 Tucson Festival of Books entitled “Collective Amnesia”. Local Author and Tucson Weekly contributor Margaret Regan moderated this panel which features Tim Z. Hernandez, author of All They will Call You. Maceo Montoya is the author of You Must Fight Them and Chicano Movement for Beginners.

Margaret Regan is the author of two prizewinning books on immigration. The most recent, “Detained and Deported: Stories of Immigrant Families Under Fire” (2015), which won a starred review in Publishers Weekly, looks at the fate of undocumented immigrants who are arrested long after they’ve established lives and families in the United States. “The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona-Mexico Borderlands (2010) investigates the tragedy of migrant deaths in the desert.

Tim Z. Hernandez is an award winning poet, novelist, and performance artist. His debut collection of poetry, Skin Tax (Heyday Books) received the 2006 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and the James Duval Phelan Award from the San Francisco Foundation. His debut novel, Breathing, In Dust (Texas Tech University Press) was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, and went on to receive the 2010 Premio Aztlan Prize in Fiction. His second collection of poetry, Natural Takeover of Small Things was released in 2013 and received the 2014 Colorado Book Award, and his novel, Mañana Means Heaven, which is based on the life of Bea Franco, also released in 2013, went on the receive the 2014 International Latino Book Award in historical fiction. Both books are with the University of Arizona Press. His latest book, “All They Will Call You,” was released on January 28, 2017, also with the University of Arizona Press. A genre bending work labeled a Documentary Novel, it is based on the song by Woody Guthrie, “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee).”

Maceo Montoya grew up in Elmira, California. Montoya’s first novel, The Scoundrel and the Optimist (Bilingual Review, 2010), was awarded the 2011 International Latino Book Award for “Best First Book” and Latino Stories named him one of its “Top Ten New Latino Writers to Watch.” In 2014, University of New Mexico Press published his second novel, The Deportation of Wopper Barraza, and Copilot Press published Letters to the Poet from His Brother, a hybrid book combining images, prose poems, and essays. You Must Fight Them, a novella and story collection, was published by University of New Mexico Press in 2015 and was named a finalist for Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award. TheLatinoAuthor.com cited it as one of its “Top Ten Best Fiction Books by Latino Authors for 2015.” Just released, Montoya’s latest publication, Chicano Movement for Beginners, is a work of graphic nonfiction.

Montoya is an assistant professor in the Chicana/o Studies Department at UC Davis where he teaches the Chicana/o Mural Workshop and courses in Chicano Literature. He is also the director of Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer (TANA), a community-based arts organization located in Woodland, CA.

Recorded and produced by Amanda Shauger.