Author Virtual Talk: Benjamin Bac Sierra & Luis Rodriguez (Latino Heritage Month SFPL)

Submitted by the Event Organizer

In conjunction with iVIVA!: Latino Heritage Month SFPL is honored to host Benjamin Bac Sierra as our On the Same Page author. We will celebrate this local author, educator, poet, activist and Mission District native. Bac Sierra’s new book Pura Neta, the long awaited sequel to Barrio Bushido is due out in mid September Pochino Press. Benjamin Bac Sierra will be interviewed by Luis Rodriguez, author of Always Running: La Vida Loca and most recently From Our Land to Our Land Essays, Journeys, and Imaginings From A Native Xicanx Writer.

Set in the San Francisco Mission varrio from 2012 to 2014, Pura Neta explores the creative struggle of Homeboys and Homegirls fighting against gentrification, police brutality, racism and economic and educational injustice.

Benjamin Bac Sierra was raised by a widowed mother and the streets of San Francisco’s Mission District. After serving as a grunt in the Marine Corps, where he participated in front-line combat during the first Gulf War, Ben completed his B.A. in English at U.C. Berkeley, earned a teaching credential and a Master’s in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and merited a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Currently, he is a professor at City College of San Francisco and a community innovator and keynote speaker throughout the Bay Area. Ben’s essays and stories have been published in newspapers and literary magazines His first novel Barrio Bushido was presented a Best of the Bay Award and an International Latino Book Award.

Luis Rodriguez is a former Los Angeles Poet Laureate. He has 16 books, is founding editor of Tia Chucha Press and co-founder Tia Chucha’s Cultural Center & Bookstore. Rodriguez has two autobiographical accounts of his experiences with gang violence and addiction, It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing (Touchstone, 2012), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, and a mandatory read, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. (Curbstone Books, 1993), winner of the Carl Sandburg Award of the Friends of the Chicago Public Library. His latest book, From Our Land to Our Land Essays, Journeys, and Imaginings From A Native Xicanx Writer, explores race, culture, identity and belonging and what these all mean and should mean (but often fail to) in the volatile climate of our nation.

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