Welcome Back

Some housekeeping notes for 2022, Lowriting's anniversary and other stuff

Hello and welcome back to, well, whatever this is. Just keeding! It’s my blog, stupid! Remember? I guess maybe you could be saying ‘welcome back’ to me since it’s been a minute but allow me to explain my brief hiatus and also to go over some housekeeping stuff for moving forward into this year of our Lard, 2022.

I know a lot of people like to front that what they do online is what they do in real life. And maybe there are a few people like that, these online bigshots, where it’s 24/7 cash flow, mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money! But I’m not one of those cats. Like many of you fine folks, I have a day job and sometimes that job gets really busy because, well, that’s life que no? This was certainly the case for me for December 2021.

Not that I’m complaining about either thing; having a day job or being busy with it, but when that happens other things tend to suffer, hence my brief lapse on here. Did you miss me?! Ha!

In addition to the day job, I also have a second small business that I help run as well, which has also been pretty busy; This is all in addition to normal every day life shit, tu sabes? So, yeah, been effin’ busy, cabrones. How the hell are you?

There was also the holi-daze. Happy new years and all that good shit to you homeboys and homegirls. Seems like most people shut things down during this time, or they flip on the autopilot button to ride out the wave of end-of-the-year-itis. Can’t say I ever stopped working but I definitely slowed my roll as far as social media goes. I am rather enjoying keeping a low profile there.

But yeah, new year same you, same ol shit. Bingo, bang-o. Here we go again, huzzah. Honestly, there’s so much shit to say most of the time but as I have said before, if you don’t write about it in “the now” it tends to lose its potency the longer you wait. And well, I can’t be “on” all the time cuz I got bills to pay. Ya sabes.

I guess I should mention that I recently consolidated my subscriber list from my publisher website, so if you find yourself reading this out of the blue and are wondering how the hell you ended up on here, now you know. Feel free to unsubscribe if it’s a nuisance.

This is a mostly “paid” blog, meaning that it’s subscription-based to read the good stuff. It’s not what I would consider expensive but opinion’s vary and I won’t be offended if you tell me to fuck off. Subscribers get access to the archives and exclusive content.

Making a buck or two on here helps with overhead and expenses, which, I’m sure most aren’t aware, still exist even though it’s been a couple of years since I published a book. Contrary to popular belief, keeping books in circulation is not free. Neither is maintaining a small business. I will tell you that taxation is theft and leave it at that for now. Consider subscribing to help keep this thing going.

So, yeah. I’m back. The plan is to crank out shit more regularly now that the holi-daze is over. If you have topics you would like me to cover, give me a shout. Otherwise, I already have a few goodies in the works so stay tuned.

What else? I was recently reminded that the book I published, Lowriting,Shots, Rides & Stories from the Chicano Soul just had its eight year anniversary. I originally published it on January 8, 2014. I could kick myself for not being better about these kinds of things and anniversaries etc. But, as mentioned above, I’m a one man show doing this in my spare time so if I had a staff and was “fancy” like that, I’d likely be better at shit like this. Spoiler: I’m not.

That said, I wanted to talk just a little bit about Lowriting and what it meant, what it means now and how I feel about it eight years later.

For starters, I honestly do not feel like I could pull that off again. It was a monumental task to field all the submissions and seek talent for the book, not to mention the amount of editing that went into the project. It was exhausting!

It was a perfect storm of cohesion and community online that happened at just the right moment for it to work. Funny as it seems now, there was a loosely knit sense of unity among Chicanos waaaay back in 2014 and it seemed like everyone was willing to lend a hand or pitch in. It ultimately would be the end of that unity but it was fuckin’ pretty cool while it lasted!

Plus, I had more “juice” back then online. I no longer have that kinda juice, especially after everything fell apart shortly after 2016, but when I had it, I felt like Rakim.

Lowriting is still about as unique as it gets and it’s still doing quite well 8 years later. Of course, as the publisher I am biased, but I am yet to see another book even come close as far as Chicano anthologies go. It is, in my unashamed opinion, the best at what it is.

The thing with Lowriting is that it was trying to capture a movement - a revival if you will. I tried to take the smoldering ashes of the Chicano Movement from the old days and breathe new fire into them. And for a short time, I did exactly that. It was glorious.

I can only speak for myself but what we were doing back then was important and rooted in the spirit of the original Chicano Movement. It was grassroots to the core! And it spread like wildfire. Everyone wanted a piece and Lowriting made it not to the top, but it certainly made waves. People noticed.

Lowriting was about Raza pure and simple. You don’t see that anymore, and I’m not sure we ever will again. That’s what makes that book so special. It was pure in its form and message. No apologies!

I wanted the book to be about the Chicano experience. I didn’t want to share it with others and invite other experiences. I wanted it to be about Chicanos and by Chicanos, period. I wanted it to be puro Chicano. And it was. That was allowed back then. Not that we were asking for permission!

But now? Eight years later, and with the way things are and with how fucked up everything is right now? Pssssshhh. Forget about it, ese. What we did was a perfect moment in time and you can’t catch lightning in a bottle.

Hell, you can’t even say the word “raza” anymore without causing a shitstorm. Things are fucked up on the Chicano front and they are not going to get better any time soon.

But that’s part of what makes me so proud of Lowriting. We took that grassroots movement from that time and immortalized it in print. We told the establishment: fuck you! And we did it OUR WAY! I treasure that kind of freedom. I preach it. That’s pretty goddamn amazing if you really think about it; zero corporate influence, all raza, all independent voices working together. To quote George Lopez: Chingon!

Back when I was coming up with the concept, all I really wanted to do was create a book that a Chicano kid somewhere could see and say: Hey! This speaks to me! I wanted representation in the literary world because the bookstores treat us like tokens and pariahs. I wanted to show people that publishing was not a ‘whites only’ playing field and that we could do this too. And fuckin’ A - we did.

And of course, I was not reinventing the wheel. Previous generations of raza had done the same. I simply wanted to carry that tradition forward, and so I did.

But the future looks bleak and I miss that fire. I miss the unity and I miss the grassroots activism that we did. It was a throwback to the 70s, which is exactly what a colleague said I was: a throwback to that era.

I still have that fire in my belly but I no longer have the juice.

I have so much more to say about the death of the Chicano Movement and what brought it about but I will save that for future writing. For now, I just wanted to stop in and say hello and also pay a little tribute to Lowriting on its anniversary.

Here’s to 2022 and to further chronicling the Chicano experience. Lord knows ain’t know one else gonna do it for us - chale.

• S/C

Sarlos Cantana is a writer/publisher based in The Twilight Zone, USA who has published several subversive and counter culture books relating to the Chicano Experience. Follow him on Instagram.