Achiote Press & Palabra Magazine

I say this without the least bit of exaggeration: keep your eye on these two literary ventures because they’re going to impress you with the journeys they have embarked on and with the heights they’ll inevitably reach.

Co-founded in 2006 by poet and book reviewer Craig Santos Perez, a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam), Achiote Press publishes two chapbooks each season: a single-author chapbook and a chap-journal featuring poetry, prose, essay, or translation by authors from diverse cultural and aesthetic backgrounds. Co-founders Jennifer Reimer, Len Shneyder, and art director Jason Buchholz help select, edit and produce works that address “what it means to bear witness, to use adaptations as resistance, to cross borders, to map ourselves onto a dislocated world, to speak in exile, and to suffer diasporic hunger.”
Past projects include works by three of my favorite writers: Javier Huerta, Barbara Jane Reyes and Francisco X. Alarcón. Projects to look forward to: an all-Latina writer issue with Cristina García, Emmy Pérez, Brenda Cárdenas, Gabriela Erandi Rico, and Maria Tuttle; and an issue featuring several Native Pacific Island writers.
Why the Achiote as a logo symbol? Santos Perez explains: “Achiote is a shrub or small tree indigenous to Central and South America. Introduced to the Pacific and Asia by the Spanish in the 17th century, Achiote now has firm transnational roots. Achiote produces pink flowers and red spiny seed pods. Peoples have used the seeds as a dye for clothing, arts and crafts, as body paint in times of war and celebration, as spice and coloring for food. Other parts of the Achiote tree have been used to make various medicinal remedies for sunstroke, burns, fever, sore throat, blood disease, eye and ear infections, and hypertension. Achiote has also been used as an aphrodisiac. We named our press after the Achiote tree because we believe poetry has the very same powers to enrich our surroundings, inspire our passions, enhance our senses, and heal our wounds.”
If anything, this press seems to be the antidote I have been waiting for against my usual gripe when I pick up a literary journal—any literary journal—Where are the writers of color? This small press hailing from El Cerrito, Califaztlán is on a mission and so far it’s been one exciting production after another.
(You can read more about the goings-on and getting-downs of Achiote Press at Craig Santos Perez’s blog.)
Palabra Magazine is a no apologies, no nonsense literary journal founded by Chicana dramatist and poet elena minor in Los Angeles. This magazine is a forum that showcases Chicano/ Latino writing that’s all about (warning: Chicano-speak ahead): “exploration, risk and ganas—the myriad intersections of thought, language, story and art—el más allá of letters, symbols and spaces into meaning. It’s about writing that cares as much about language and its structure as about content and storytelling—and that shows awareness of and attention to the possibilities of both. Mostly it's about work with the emotional fiber that threads all honest art… Its intent is to present an eclectic and adventurous array of thought and construct, alma y corazón, and a few carcajadas woven in for good measure.”
Going strong since its debut issue back in 2006 (hmm, it must have been a good year for las artes revolucionarias) Palabra Magazine fills a huge gap in the Chicano/ Latino literary landscape since the folding of that historic all-raza journal, The Américas Review (formerly Revista Chicano-Riqueña)—the final issue was edited by my beloved cousin Lauro Flores (it runs in the family, y’all). Editor extraordinaire elena minor se deja cae’ la greña with fierce issue after fierce issue. Stay up, esa.
And from minor’s own words of wisdom: “I identified a need for a literary journal that embraced both Latino new language and bilingual sensibilities and that didn’t assume that awkward English syntax, when written by a Latino writer was, per se, just bad grammar. Palabra is intended to make no such assumptions—even if the work is written entirely in English. There are more than 900 print and online independent literary journals and presses in the U. S. Approximately a dozen are editorially Latino-focused but none doing what I envisioned for Palabra, so I added it to the mix. Because one size does not fit all and cada loco con su tema.”
This new journal also spares me another one of my frequent gripes: when liberal-minded literary journals try to be down with the brown and put out “all-Latino issues,” an effort akin to a migra raid, if I’ve ever seen one. The well-meaning editors round up la raza for one-time only party. Just watch out for the Kool-Aid, vato. Thanks, but no thanks. We’ve got Palabra Magazine, ese. And Achiote Press, and I hope this will encourage more activism from other editors-to-be. Writers of all colors need to stop waiting in line for the hand-outs and do it themselves. Peace out.