Genny Lim,
s3e8 – Rewind SF Poet Laureate Genny Lim, Afro-Colombian Poets, We the People
Genny LIm, Alejandro Murguía, Victoria Santa Cruz, Candelario Obeso
s3e8
March 20, 2025
We feature an interview with SF Poet Laureate Genny Lim, and listen to an archival reading from Alejandro Murguía . We learn about Afro-Colombian poet Candelario Obeso, and listen to Afro Peruvian poet, Victoria Santa Cruz. And The Transformative Power of Writing, We the People, Listening and Being Heard.
Tony Robles speaks with Genny Lim, and she reads her poems: This is My Country, and From Here to Gaza. Nile, Micah, John, Jhyman, Louise, Emmet and Robbie spoke about listening and being heard and “We the People.” Elizabeth Perlman presents the Transformative Power of Writing featuring Sarah Hawkins. We also heard comments from Mark Charles, Don Knotts and Andy Griffith on the Andy Griffith Show. Senator John Boehner reads the preamble to the Constitution, and other members of Congress elected by We the People, read parts of the constitution, during a reading by the entire body, of the entire constitution.
We hear Afro- Colombian Poets invited to the Cuba International Book Fair in Havana in 2023, Maria Isabel Mena, Mary Grueso and Gloria Malone. Alejandro Murguía, former Poet Laureate of San Francisco reads from his story, Lucky Alley, recorded live at Listen & Be Heard at Rafael’s, in Vallejo, CA in 2002.
Also, Afro Peruvian Poet, Victoria Santa Cruz, recorded in 1978 reading her poem Me Gritaron Negra! – They screamed at me Black Woman, the host of the Black Latam Youtube channel on Afro
Colombian Poet Candelario Obeso, and our own presentation of Song of The Absent Boga (Cancion Del Boga Ausente .)
And finally, Meredith Leigh, author of the Ethical Meat Handbook and Laura Lengnick, author of Resilient Agriculture, give us food for thought about how we can participate in building regional resilience where we live.
CREDITS– HOSTS: Martha Cinader, Tony Robles, Jay Rodriguez Sierra. FEATURED SPOKEN WORD: Genny Lim, Afro-Colombian Poets at Havana Lit. Fest 2023, Alejandro Murguía, Victoria Santa Cruz, Senator John Boehner. GUESTS: Genny Lim, Elizabeth Perlman, Sarah Hawkins, Meredith Leigh, Laura Lengnick. MUSIC: Groove Collective, We The People. ORIGNAL SOUNDTRACK, MIXING, MASTERING, SOUND DESIGN: Jay Rodriguez Sierra. BANNED BOOK THEME VOICE & WORDS: Yvette Murray.
FEATURED GUESTS
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Genny Lim – SF Poet Laureate
Read more: Genny Lim – SF Poet LaureateGenny Lim is an American poet, playwright, and performer. She is the ninth poet laureate of San Francisco, California, and the first Chinese American in the role.She was the Chair of Community Arts and Education Committee, and Chair of the Advisory Board for the San Francisco Writers Corps.
FEATURED READERS
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Genny Lim – SF Poet Laureate
Read more: Genny Lim – SF Poet LaureateGenny Lim is an American poet, playwright, and performer. She is the ninth poet laureate of San Francisco, California, and the first Chinese American in the role.She was the Chair of Community Arts and Education Committee, and Chair of the Advisory Board for the San Francisco Writers Corps.
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Victoria Santa Cruz – Poet, Choreographer, Costume Designer
Read more: Victoria Santa Cruz – Poet, Choreographer, Costume DesignerIn 1958, together with her younger brother Nicomedes, she cofounded the first black theater company in Peru, Cumanana, which she codirected until 1961. The three-act musical play Malató (1961)—which she wrote, choreographed, and staged—revealed “the historically prevalent intimate relations between slave and master that were omitted from the official history of Peruvian haciendas and biological mestizaje.”
FEATURED BOOKS
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Alejandro Murguía – This War Called Love
Read more: Alejandro Murguía – This War Called LoveFrom Mexico City to San Francisco’s Mission District, nothing comes easy—in life or in love. Here is an unstereotypical view of a world as treacherous as it is tender, as hilarious as it is heartbreaking. Authentic and honest, these nine stories focus on today’s Latino men, their strength and vulnerability, their fears and deepest desires.
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Candelario Obeso – Cantos populares de mi tierra
Read more: Candelario Obeso – Cantos populares de mi tierraCandelario Obeso was an Afro-Colombian poet known as the precursor of the Poesía Negra y oscura (black and dark poetry) in Colombia, a literary style that focused on describing the daily activities performed by the Colombian black communities. He wrote his narrative in the first person and using the language the Afrocolombian communities spoke.
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Genny Lim – Child of War
Read more: Genny Lim – Child of WarThese pages are filled with grieving and making sense of a mother’s loss of a child as the world once again finds itself in a state of war. In 2001, Genny Lim’s daughter, Danielle Mai Ting Jue, died at the age of 19.
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Heather Cleary and Gabriela Jauregui – Tsunami
Read more: Heather Cleary and Gabriela Jauregui – TsunamiFeaturing personal essay, manifesto, creative nonfiction, and poetry, Tsunami gathers the multiplicity of voices being raised in Mexico today against patriarchy and its buried structures.
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Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim and Judy Yung – Island
Read more: Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim and Judy Yung – IslandIn the early twentieth century, most Chinese immigrants coming to the United States were detained at the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay. There, they were subject to physical exams, interrogations, and often long detentions aimed at upholding the exclusion laws that kept Chinese out of the country.
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Laura Lengnick – Resilient Agriculture
Read more: Laura Lengnick – Resilient AgricultureReal world stories from the frontlines of climate change, resilience, and the future of food. CLIMATE CHANGE PRESENTS an unprecedented challenge to food and farming in the U.S. and beyond. Damaging weather variability and extremes capture the headlines, but more subtle changes caused by hotter summer nights, warmer winters, and a longer growing season have…
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Meredith Leigh – The Ethical Meat Handbook
Read more: Meredith Leigh – The Ethical Meat HandbookEthical Meat is meat from an animal that had a good life, a good death, a good butcher, and a good cook. Ethical Meat is a movement that seeks to repair entire regional meat supply chains, and much work is underway by brave hardworking farmers, butchers, processors, chefs and cooks. Working to create the capacity…
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Noel Alumit — Talking to the Moon
Read more: Noel Alumit — Talking to the MoonNurse Belen Lalaban and her letter-carrier husband, Jory, came to America from the Philippines to escape their class-crossed origins. In 1999, the couple about to pay off their 30-year mortgage when Jory is shot by a white supremacist. Alumit entwines the inner lives and memories of Jory; Belen; and their son Emerson.
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Paul Auster – Baumgartner
Read more: Paul Auster – BaumgartnerBaumgartner’s life had been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife, Anna, who was killed in a swimming accident nine years earlier. Now 71, Baumgartner continues to struggle to live in her absence as the novel sinuously unfolds into spirals of memory and reminiscence,
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Richard Koloda – Holy Ghost – The Life & Death Of Free Jazz Pioneer Albert Ayler
Read more: Richard Koloda – Holy Ghost – The Life & Death Of Free Jazz Pioneer Albert AylerAyler synthesized children’s songs, La Marseillaise, American march music, and gospel hymns, turning them into powerful, rambunctious, squalling free-jazz improvisations. Some critics considered him a charlatan, others a heretic for unhinging the traditions of jazz. Some simply considered him insane. However, like most geniuses, Ayler was misunderstood in his time.
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