A journalist and poet based in LA’s East Side, Abel Salas is the publisher and editor of Brooklyn & Boyle, a monthly community arts paper. His poems have appeared in Zyzzyva, Huizache, Cipactli, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Americas Quarterly Magazine among others, as well as the recently released anthologies Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice (Ed. Francisco X. Alarcón, University of Arizona Press, 2016) and Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising From the Cultural Quakes & Shifts of Los Angeles (Tia Chucha Press, 2016). As a journalist, he has written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Los Angeles Magazine, Latina Magazine and The Austin Chronicle. I met Abel Salas at one of his readings in Los Angeles. I went up to him to say how much I enjoyed his poems, and asked him a few questions about his magazine Brooklyn & Boyle. Here’s what he had to say.
Freddy:
Tell us a bit about Brooklyn & Boyle
Abel:
Brooklyn & Boyle is a monthly tabloid-format newsprint arts paper, described in The New York Times by performance artist, novelist and filmmaker Miranda July as “a paper just for the arts in the Eastside of L.A. – Boyle Heights, Cypress Park, South Pasadena. It’s very Latino, historical and radical in a community minded way.” It’s my monthly love letter to LA’s Greater East Side (GES) neighborhoods, a swath of the city that includes the historic GES communities of Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, El Sereno, City Terrace, Cypress Park, Highland Park, parts of Downtown, a sliver of Eagle Rock as well as a sizable section of unincorporated East L.A. We have distinguished ourselves with consistent coverage of arts in every conceivable discipline, but we also make it a point to provide thoughtful political analysis of issues that affect the quality of life for long-time neighborhood stakeholders, especially as it becomes, increasingly, more about gentrification and dislocation. Beyond that, let me just say that Brooklyn & Boyle exists to give young writers a voice and the opportunity to grow, whether it be in a formal strategic setting or an informal outdoor classroom under a tree. Brooklyn & Boyle is, by design, a home for good writing or writers who would like to improve their chops in addition to, profiles and stories that truly reflect the reality of our histories and lives.
Freddy:
What motivated you to start the magazine?
Abel:
I started Brooklyn & Boyle with $80 dollars to my name and a borrowed laptop. I had put publications together before but always for someone else… It had never occurred to me that I could actually own a business myself, work out of anywhere with just a mobile device. In 2008, I was already a pretty seasoned freelance writer and had written for The Austin Chronicle, The Austin American-Statesman, The San Antonio Current, Hispanic Magazine, The Houston Press, Los Angeles Times Magazine and scores of others.
By October of that year, I had suffered the loss of my two most important literary mentors: Cecilia Bustamante, the only woman to have ever won the National Prize for poetry in Peru; and Raúl Salinas, an OG ex-pinto who had written UN TRIP THROUGH THE MIND JAIL Y OTRAS EXCURSIONS and was part of the early national American Indian Movement leadership toward the tail end of serving time in various penal institutions where he became politicized. His posthumous memoir, edited by Dr. Louis Mendoza (Red Salmon Press, 2018), was just released and includes an essay I wrote as one of several contributions by those who knew him in the new book’s ‘Afterword’ section. I’d also broken up with someone and was being more than a little self-destructive as a consequence. The newspaper project grew out of a “Literotica Chicana” presentation of erotic Chicano poetry that I helped plan alongside Gloria Enedina Alvarez and the legendary musician and cultural arts ambassador Rubén “Funkahuatl” Guevara, who provided us a title for the reading.
“Literotica Chicana: Love, Lust & Light” was held at Eastside Luv and drew a standing room-only crowd on a Wednesday night when the night spot was usually closed. Owner Willie Uribe had to call in extra bartenders and remove the large, plastic covered chairs from the bar area to make more room. I realized then and there that if that many people were willing to come down to Boyle Heights from all over L.A., there was certainly a readership for a paper that focused on the arts in “Boyle Heights y beyond.” Before I finally got extra RAM loaded onto my desktop, I would arrive at Eastside Luv at 2am, closing time on Sunday nights to pick up the Mac laptop which was used to run the music on days when there was no live band. I had quite a bit of initial support from playwright Josefina Lopez, founder and artistic director of Casa 0101, the revered community playhouse located a short three blocks away from where we staged the wildly successful erotic poetry event.
Freddy:
What does Brooklyn & Boyle do that mainstream media doesn’t?
Abel:
Brooklyn & Boyle is an unapologetic Eastside media project that, as a result of its lean one-man machine character, can easily tap into individual narratives as well as the collective memory of an entire community. A fluent Spanish-speaker, I have traveled extensively in Mexico and know the Lincoln Heights Church where the 1968 Student Walkouts were organized and where the earliest Chicana/o newspapers were produced, specifically for that first season of student protests and marches that called for better educational facilities and college prep courses instead of vocational training for Latina/o high school students. As a long time student and direct product of the “Movimiento,” I think I was drawn to Los Angeles and the Eastside of L.A. because I knew what had happened to Ruben Salazar and understood L.A. to be ground zero in the struggle to develop consciousness around the arts and cultural practices that would counter long held beliefs among too many people that Mexican Americans are not intellectually equipped for brilliance or genius or vanguard thought.
Freddy:
What advice do you have for artists who are struggling to find a vision and/or voice?
Abel:
Even as I come to the realization that I was destined to teach and figure out a way to get back and finally finish a university degree, I would counsel young people who are serious about finding their own voices or are interested in exploring futures in media, communications, or creative writing to read as much about as many subjects as they possibly can. Reading avidly, even voraciously, from an early age is the best way to absorb grammar and usage while learning what readable, expressive syntax sounds like. I would also suggest that the kind of curiosity that leads to late nights and long discussions with one’s peers over particular works of fiction and non-fiction is not at all a character flaw but a sign that knowledge and learning feed a particularly poignant need or craving that, at its core, will allow you to determine your own, unmistakable style and tone, two aspects of written expression that carry as much weight as actual genre or form or mechanical technique.