大象传媒

Our Extra Interview today is Professor Alicia Gaspar de Alba.

A native of the El Paso/Ju谩rez border, Alicia is a Chicana writer/scholar/activist who uses prose, poetry, and theory for social change. With a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico, Alicia is a Professor of Chicana/o Studies, English, and Gender Studies at UCLA, where she has taught since 1994, when she was hired as a founding faculty member of the C茅sar E. Ch谩vez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies. She served as Chair of Chicana/o Studies from 2007-2010, and since 2013, has been the Chair of the LGBT Studies Program.

鈥淕aspar,鈥� as her students call her, has published 11 books, among them, the award-winning novels, Sor Juana鈥檚 Second Dream (University of New Mexico Press, 1999), which was named Best Historical Fiction by the Latino Literary Hall of Fame in 2000, and Desert Blood: The Ju谩rez Murders (Arte Publico Press 2005), which received both the Lambda Literary Foundation Award for Best Lesbian Mystery in 2005 and the Latino Book Award for Best English-language Mystery in 2006. Her most recent historical novel, Calligraphy of the Witch, about a mestiza immigrant from New Spain accused of witchcraft in the New England witch trials of 1692, was published by St. Martin鈥檚 Press in 2007, and released in paperback by Arte Publico Press in 2012. Other creative publications include two collections of poetry, La Llorona on the Longfellow Bridge: poetry y otras m贸vidas (Arte Publico Press 2003).

Alicia shares her experiences of La Llorona throughout her life, from a shadowy partner in a game of tag, to a way to embrace a forbidden identity and then as a lifelong artistic muse. She shares one of her many poems about the Weeping Woman 鈥楰yrie Eleison for La Llorona鈥�.