AVAILABLE NOW: "Lana Turner Slept Here," in Latinos in Lotus Land: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern 

California Literature, (Bilingual Press, 2008). 

 Review

Link to new writing:  "White Lies" 

AVAILABLE NOW:  Creative nonfiction, "Chile Tales," in  What Wildness is This: WomenWrite the Southwest (University of Texas Press, Spring 2007).  Review

BLOOD MOTHER BLOG

Octogenarian Philosophy:  Review of Vonnegut and Carter on Moorishgirl.

The Kite Runner:  review on La Bloga

EROTICA IN OLD SANTA FE
  
   We don't know what those Latinas of yore did, now do we? Obeyed their husbands? Check. Fathers and brothers? Check. Priests? Mothers-in-law? The list just grows.

   The Sandoval sisters did exactly what they wanted, when they wanted, and to the intensity that they wanted. And all while living on a rough frontier at the juncture of three cultures. read more about The Sandoval Sisters


SEPHARDIM

From Providencia Sandoval's diary written in 1563:
Chapter 17, La Soltera, The Secret of Old Blood:  The Sandoval Sisters

   I sat on my father’s lap and kissed him, no longer the newlywed, but the loveliest daughter in the household. I asked him about the family chart. He was gratified that I took an interest in the family history. I stroked his hair and tickled him. I asked him about Hidalgo.
 
   “He was my father’s cousin. A notable man with a position of great responsibility. He was a Grand Inquisitor,” my father said, and winced. He adjusted the way I sat on his lap so that we could both be comfortable, the same as he had done when I was a young girl. I began to rock slightly in his arms, the same as I had once done, moving my buttocks almost imperceptibly. 

   “He left no heirs?” I wrapped an arm around Father’s neck, and tickled his earlobe absent-mindedly. I nested my head into the hollow of his shoulder, and walked the fingers of my other hand up the inside of his forearm. His breathing changed. 

   “No . . . yes.” He was not concentrating. I stopped rocking and looked at him. His face was flushed. “Hidalgo left no legitimate heirs.” Father pulled my head down again, giving my hips a little nudge to start them rocking again. “He had taken up with Catalina Nuñez de Ribera. Her mother was a midwife in the Jewish district.” 

   “She was a Jewess?” I tried to raise my head, but Father held me cradled like a baby. My hips no longer moved of their own accord; he moved them for me . . . and for himself. 

   “The mother peddled trinkets and charms to ward off the plague. Hidalgo tried her for witchcraft.” Father’s breath came in trembling gasps, but still he continued. “Of course, she was found guilty.”

Catalina became Hidalgo's mistress and a procurer of counterfeit limpiezas de sangre.
Her mixed-blood progeny settled the remote northern regions of New Spain.