Friday, October 20, 7:30 pm
A special work in progress viewing of Riding The Currents of the Wilding Wind
Stories and songs about sharp shooters and earthmovers, roaming dogs, helicopters in the sky, quarantines and men that fly, inspired by Helena María Viramontes' epic novel Their Dogs Came with Them
Risley Hall Theatre, 535 Thurston Ave, Ithaca, NY 14853
Created in collaboration with musical director Martha Gonzalez and writer Virginia Grise, Riding the Currents of the Wilding Wind is a theatrical concert about what happens to a community when six intersecting freeways are built right through the heart of a neighborhood. Inspired by Helena María Viramontes’s novel, Their Dogs Came with Them, the concert directed by Kendra Ware features stories interwoven with songs about sharp shooters and earthmovers, roaming dogs, helicopters in the sky, quarantines and men that fly. With an introduction by Michelle Habell-Pallán (University of Washington), the performance at Cornell University will be the first in progress showing of the work before it premieres at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco April 2024.
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Saturday, October 21
All Saturday events take place at the A.D. White House, 121 Presidents Drive, Ithaca, NY 14853
9:30 am: The Impact and Legacy of Helena María Viramontes
- John Alba Cutler, Associate Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley
- Dean Franco, Winifred W. Palmer Professor of English, Wake Forest University
- Rosaura Sanchez, Professor Emerita of Latin American and Chicano Literature, University of California, San Diego
- Moderated by Deb Vargas, Associate Professor of Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, Yale University
1:30 pm: Tribute to Helena María Viramontes by Cherríe Moraga
2:00 pm: Reading by Manuel Muñoz, MFA ’98
Manuel Muñoz’s most recent collection of short stories, The Consequences, was a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and longlisted for the Story Prize. He is the author of two previous collections of short stories, Zigzagger and The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, which was shortlisted for the 2007 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and a novel, What You See in the Dark. Muñoz is the recipient the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. He has been recognized with a Whiting Writer’s Award, three O. Henry Awards, and two selections in Best American Short Stories.
3:30 pm: Reading by Jennine Capó Crucet, BA ‘03
Jennine Capó Crucet is a novelist, essayist, and screenwriter. A recipient of an O. Henry Prize and a former Contributing Opinion Writer for The New York Times, she’s the author of three books: the novel Make Your Home Among Strangers, which won the International Latino Book Award; the multiple award-winning story collection How to Leave Hialeah; and the essay collection My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education, long-listed for the PEN/Open Book Award. Born and raised in Miami to Cuban parents, her fourth book, a novel titled Say Hello To My Little Friend, is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster.
4:30 pm: Reading by Helena María Viramontes
- Followed by Q&A with Paula Moya, PhD ’98, Danily C. and Laura Louise Bell Professor of the Humanities, Stanford University
7:00 pm: Staged reading of excerpts from Their Dogs Came With Them
- Based on the novel by Helena María Viramontes and adapted for the stage by Virginia Grise
- Performers: Karen Jaime, Cherríe Moraga, Manuel Muñoz, Belinda Rincón, and Deb Vargas
Helena María Viramontes
Helena María Viramontes is the author of The Moths and Other Stories and two novels, Under the Feet of Jesus and Their Dogs Came With Them. She has also co-edited with Maria Herrera Sobek, two collections: Chicana (W) rites: On Word and Film and Chicana Creativity and Criticism. A recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the John Dos Passos Award for Literature, and a United States Artist Fellowship, her short stories and essays have been widely anthologized and her writings have been adopted for classroom use and university study. Her work is the subject of a critical reader titled Rebozos De Palabras edited by Gabrielle Gutierrez y Muhs and published by the University of Arizona Press. A community organizer and former coordinator of the Los Angeles Latino Writers Association, she is a frequent reader and lecturer in the U.S. and internationally. Currently she is completing a draft of her third novel, The Cemetery Boys.
Martha Gonzalez
Martha Gonzalez is a Chicana artivista (artist/activist) musician, feminist music theorist and Associate Professor in the Intercollegiate Department of Chicana/o Latina/o Studies at Scripps/Claremont College. Born and raised in Boyle Heights Gonzalez is a MacArthur Fellow (2022), Fulbright Garcia Robles (2007-2008), Ford (2012-2013), Woodrow Wilson Fellow (2016-2017) and United States Artist Fellow (2020). Her academic interests have been fueled by her own musicianship as a singer/songwriter and percussionist for Grammy Award (2013) winning band Quetzal. The relevance of Quetzal’s music and lyrics have been noted in a range of publications, from dissertations to scholarly books. Their latest recording “Puentes Sonoros” (Sonic Bridges) was released on Smithsonian Folkways in the fall of 2020. Gonzalez along with her partner Quetzal Flores has been instrumental in catalyzing the transnational dialogue between Chicanx/Latinx communities in the U.S and Jarocho communities in Veracruz, Mexico. Gonzalez has also been active in implementing the collective songwriting method in correctional facilities throughout the U.S. Most recently, and as a testament to the body of music and community work Gonzalez has accomplished on and off the stage, in the summer of 2017 Gonzalez’s tarima (stomp box) and zapateado dance shoes were acquired by the National Museum of American History and are on permanent display in the "One Nation Many Voices" exhibit. Gonzalez’s first book, Chican@ Artivistas: Music, Community, and Transborder Tactics in East Los Angeles, was published by the University of Texas Press and was recently awarded best first book (non-fiction) by the International Latino Book Awards. Gonzalez currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband Quetzal Flores and their 17 year-old son Sandino.
Virginia Grise
Virginia Grise writes plays set in bars without windows, barrio rooftops, and lesbian bedrooms. She is a recipient of the Alpert Award in the Arts, Yale Drama Award, Whiting Writers’ Award, and the Princess Grace Award in Theatre Directing. Her published work includes Your Healing is Killing Me (Plays Inverse Press), blu (Yale University Press), The Panza Monologues co-written with Irma Mayorga (University of Texas Press) and an edited volume of Zapatista communiqués titled Conversations with Don Durito (Autonomedia Press). Her interdisciplinary body of work includes plays, multimedia performance, dance theater, performance installations, guerilla theater, site specific interventions, and community gatherings. She is a founding member of a todo dar productions, an alumnae of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, the Women's Project Theatre Lab & the NALAC Leadership Institute. Grise has been a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, a Matakyev Research Fellow for the Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University, a Jerome Fellow at the Playwright’s Center, and a Herberger Institute Projecting All Voices Fellow at Arizona State University. Currently, she is the Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence at Cara Mia Theatre. Virginia has taught writing for performance at the university level, as a public school teacher, in community centers, women’s prisons and in the juvenile correction system. She holds an MFA in Writing for Performance from the California Institute of the Arts.
John Alba Cutler
John Alba Cutler, associate professor of English at UC Berkeley, researches in the fields of Chicano/a/x and Latino/a/x literature and culture. His book Ends of Assimilation: The Formation of Chicano Literature (Oxford, 2015) argues that Chicano/a/x literature provides a powerful counter-discourse to sociological accounts of assimilation in the post-WWII era. He is now working on a book tentatively titled “Latinx Modernism and the Spirit of Latinoamericanismo,” which examines the influence of Latin American modernismo on Spanish-language newspaper literature in the early twentieth century. He is the co-editor of a forthcoming volume from Cambridge in the series Latinx Literature in Transition. Cutler has published articles in such journals as American Literary History, English Language Notes, and Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, and has contributed chapters to the Cambridge Companion to Transnational American Literature, American Poets in the 21st Century: Poetics of Social Engagement, and Culturas de la prensa en México. His research has been supported by fellowships from the Alice B. Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the American Council of Learned Societies. Before coming to Berkeley in 2021, Cutler spent more than a decade at Northwestern University, where he was recognized with a Weinberg College Distinguished Teaching Award in 2013.
Dean Franco
Dean Franco is professor of English and director of the Humanities Institute. Since joining Wake Forest University in 2001, he has introduced new courses into the curriculum, including Studies in Chicana/o Literature and Multiethnic American Writers, and he has taught courses on comparative race studies, human rights and literature, literature and theory, and first year seminars on secularity and religion, and uncertainty. Dean served two terms as the English department co-chair, and he was the founding director of the Jewish Studies minor. In 2010, Dean was among three faculty who co-founded the Humanities Institute. Dean’s books include Ethnic American Literature: Comparing Chicano, Jewish, and African American Writing (Virginia UP, 2006), Race, Rights, and Recognition: Jewish American Literature Since 1969 (Cornell UP, 2012), and The Border and the Line: Race, Literature, and Los Angeles (Stanford UP, 2019). Dean’s essays appear in PMLA, Modern Fiction Studies, Contemporary Literature, and NOVEL, as well as books published by Cambridge UP and Oxford UP.
Rosaura Sanchez
Rosaura Sánchez is professor emerita of Chicano and Latin American Literature at the University of California, San Diego. Born and raised in San Angelo, Texas, Professor Sánchez received her PhD in romance linguistics from the University of Texas, and joined the Department of Literature at UCSD in 1972. She is widely considered one of the earliest contributors to the field of Chicana/o literature and has explored the issues of race and gender extensively in a variety of literary forms. She is the author of numerous publications in the field of Chicana/o studies and literature, including: Essays on La Mujer (1977); Chicano Discourse: Socio-historic Perspectives (1983); Postmodernism and Chicano Literature (1987); The History of Chicanas: Proposal for a Materialist Perspective (1990); Discourses of Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in Chicano Literature (1992); Telling Identities: The Californio Testimonios (1995); and Deconstructions and Renarrativizations: Trends in Chicana Literature (1996). She is also the editor of the selected works of Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, as well as the author of two fiction collections: He Walked in and Sat Down, and Other Stories (2000); and Lunar Braceros: 2125-2148 (2009).
Deb Vargas
Deborah R. Vargas is Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale University. As an interdisciplinary scholar, her work engages the fields of queer studies, feminist studies, Chicana/x Latina/x Studies, and American Studies with an emphasis on the cultural politics of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Vargas is the author of Dissonant Divas in Chicana Music: The Limits of La Onda, awarded Best Book in Chicana/o Studies, The Woody Guthrie Prize for Best Book in Popular Music Studies, and an honorable mention for Outstanding Book in Latino Studies. She is also co-editor with Nancy Raquel Mirabal and Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes of Keywords for Latina/o Studies. Vargas is currently working on two manuscripts. “Toward a Sucialogy of Culture,” (under contract with Duke University Press) explores Chicana/x working-class aesthetic forms and queer gender performances deemed as “cultures of poverty” in relation to normative Latino citizenship. And in “The Lower Frequencies of Brown Soul,” Vargas assembles an archive of Black and brown music and art to explore alternate geographies, queer intimacies, and sonic ecologies. Vargas has conducted oral histories with Chicana singers for the Smithsonian Institute’s Latino Music Oral History Program and written for National Public Radio’s “Turning the Tables” music series. Vargas has been awarded fellowships from The UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, The University of California Humanities Research Institute, The Ford Foundation and The Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science.
Cherríe Moraga
Cherríe Moraga is an internationally recognized poet, essayist and playwright whose professional life began in 1981 with her co-editorship of the groundbreaking feminist anthology, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. The author of several collections of her own writings, including: A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness, Loving in The War Years, and Waiting in the Wings: Portrait of a Queer Motherhood, Moraga is the recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship for Literature and the American Studies Association Lifetime Achievement Award, among numerous other honors. As a dramatist, her awards include an NEA, two Fund for New American Plays Awards, and the PEN West Award. Moraga’s most recent play, The Mathematics of Love, premiered at Brava Theater Center in San Francisco. In 2017, she began her tenure as a Professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where with her artistic partner, Celia Herrera Rodriguez, she has instituted Las Maestras Center: Xicana[x] Indigenous Thought, Art, and Social Praxis. Her most recent memoir, Native Country of the Heart, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In 2023, Haymarket Books published new, updated anniversary editions of Waiting in the Wings and Loving in the War Years.
Information for Attendees
- Venues are wheelchair accessible. To request additional accommodations, please email englishevents@cornell.edu as soon as possible.
- For lodging in Ithaca, we recommend The Canopy Hotel.
- For more information about the events, please contact Professor Mary Pat Brady at mpb23@cornell.edu.
Our Sponsors
These events are hosted by the Department of Literatures in English and the Creative Writing Program at Cornell University.
The October 20 performance is additionally supported by the College of Arts & Sciences, the Departments of Comparative Literature, History, Music, Performing & Media Arts, and Romance Studies, American Studies Program, Society for the Humanities, Stephanie Vaughn, Alice Fulton, and Robert Morgan.
The October 21 events are sponsored by Minority, Indigenous & Third World Studies (MITWS) at Cornell University.
Riding the Currents of the Wilding Wind by a todo dar productions is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana, Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University, Cornell University’s Department of English and Critical Race Theory Series, Las Maestras Center for Xicana/x Indigenous Thought, Art and Social Practice at UC Santa Barbara, the Alliance for California Traditional Arts and NPN with support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s National Playwright Residency Program administered in partnership with HowlRound Theatre Commons. Developed at Texas Performing Arts at the University of Texas at Austin and The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, the tour of the show has been made possible in part, through the sponsorship of Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, with funding by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Theater Project, with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and additional support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.