Existing While Brown or Black in America by Linda Rodriguez In all the turmoil around #BlackLivesMatter and the extrajudicial killings of Black men and women by police right now, I notice the inevitable outcries from parts of the White community that the police wouldn’t shoot and kill these people for nothing, that they must have […]
¡AY, QUÉ LÀSTIMA! by Linda Rodriguez The men—husbands, father-in-law, cousins—sat in the living room on the flower-covered couch and armchairs or sprawled on the shag carpet in front of the televised football game, beer cans in all hands. The only differences from the majority of living rooms across America were the brand of beer (Dos […]
The Arts Are For Everyone! by Linda Rodriguez A few years ago, I was giving writing workshops at a local high school on the wrong side of the tracks. These kids had already been through lots of trauma and stress, though they were only in their teens. These particular twenty kids, however, fell in love […]
CINCO DE MAYO – More Than Mexican for a Day by Linda Rodriguez It’s time for the drunks to fill the bars and overflow into the streets again, time for posters and commercials of sultry señoritas sucking down cervezas while their whirling skirts of many colors reveal slim brown thighs, time for The-Holiday-That-Coors-Built in its […]
Trigger Warnings for child molestation and abuse and for sexual assault and domestic violence. Whenever I read this poem in public, I preface it with a statement that there is a war against women taking place, followed by the current statistics on sexual assault, rape, physical assault, and murder, statistics that have risen every time […]
For Native American Heritage Month by Linda Rodriguez I have a strong propensity for crows. They’re birds that don’t get the love and respect that other birds do because they’re not as flashy in appearance and their voices are harsher, even though they are classified as songbirds. Crows are intelligent, can make tools and remember […]
by Linda Rodriguez October is my birthday month, which makes it quite an important month to me. It’s also Domestic Violence Awareness Month, a topic about which I, unfortunately, have a great deal of experiential knowledge from my childhood. Most well-known, it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I’d like to talk about breast cancer […]
by Linda Rodriguez One of my favorite places on the planet is the Flint Hills of Kansas. The Flint Hills is the largest surviving Tallgrass Prairie in the country, 4.5 million acres of bluestem and wild animals and cattle and tough people, all survivors. I went to school there, and my parents are buried there. […]
by Linda Rodriguez This past week, we have been treated to the spectacle of the heads of of the hugest publishing companies in the United States sitting in a federal courtroom under oath, testifying about the publishing industry. We have heard things that were patently untrue, even if the CEO making the statement is sworn […]
by Linda Rodriguez I’m excited to announce that on Tuesday, September 7th, the first of my Skeet Bannion mystery novels, Every Last Secret, will be re-released in ebook and trade paper format in a new edition with new covers. This is a thrill, especially, because readers have asked for a paperback version of these books […]