Tia Chucha Press started twenty-five years ago in Chicago with the publication of Luis J. Rodriguez’s first book, Poems Across the Pavement. As founder/editor of the Press, Rodriguez has since published more than fifty poetry collections of quality crosscultural U.S. poets, as well as anthologies, chapbooks, and a CD. Tia Chucha Press is now a project of Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural &amp; Bookstore in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles, which Rodriguez helped create in 2001 with his wife Trini. We are honored to announce the 25th Anniversary Edition of Poems Across the Pavement—close to twenty poems of an emerging poet that began a prolific writing career.

Poems across the Pavement

Literature & Fiction

Rodríguez, Luis J.

Poetry

Tia Chucha

From Soweto to Chicago, the Middle Passage to the Final Solution, from intimate letters to scathing parodies, Dreams in Soy Sauce bristles and bubbles with verve, wit, intellect and honesty. In linguistically deft but accessible poetry, Preston singes the soul in his quest for wholeness.

Dreams in Soy Sauce

Preston, Rohan B.

"Marvin Tate's Schoolyard of Broken Dreams reaches out, punches, grabs, wrestles to the ground, rises and stomps in an original manner. His is a voice in contemporary poetry which dares to pry from beneath the concrete places over it by history and sing." --Sterling D. Plumpp, author of Blues Narrative

Schoolyard of Broken Dreams

Tate, Marvin

This first book of poems powerfully illustrates the power of place in shaping our histories and perceptions. Moving from the prairie to the city and back again, Walden draws the reader through the living rooms and main streets of a past in constant flux. Each poem is a canvas saturated with graceful images echoeing of myth, a moving set of reflections on the universal which provides us with an enigmatic journey into our collective past.

Same Blue Chevy

Walden, Gale Renee

The Loves of Ricardo

Poetry. As Yevgeny Yevtushenko recounts, Ricardo Sanchez was one of the creators of la poesia chicana and his voice was the concentrate of many silent voices. His written poetry was ambassador of the non-written sufferings of so many chicanos, whose barefoot feet were in the USA, but whose barefoot soul was endlessly walking sobre la tierra seca mexicana, muriendo de la sed.

Sánchez, Ricardo

Poetry. As Yevgeny Yevtushenko recounts, Ricardo Sanchez was one of the creators of la poesia chicana and his voice was the concentrate of many silent voices. His written poetry was ambassador of the non-written sufferings of so many chicanos, whose barefoot feet were in the USA, but whose barefoot soul was endlessly walking sobre la tierra seca mexicana, muriendo de la sed. Ricardo Sanchez (1941-1995) is considered one of the fathers of the Chicano literary genre and is one of the most published and widely anthologized Chicano writers. His family had roots in New Mexico for five generations, but he was raised in El Paso, Texas. Sanchez earned a PhD in American studies and cultural linguistic theory from the Union Graduate School in Cincinatti, Ohio, and taught in several schools throughout the US. He traveled continuously, lecturing and reading. The Loves of Ricardo is published posthumously. Sanchez's papers are archived at the University of Texas, Austin, and at Stanford University.

Rooted in the social activism of Vatican II, the civil rights and anti-war movements of the sixties, the poetry of John Sheehan is filled with keen observations of place, people and time, where steel mills and sand dunes intersect with schoolchildren, overhead remarks, blues and jazz, where pumpkins sit beneath TV sets blaring the evening news. Leaving Gary confronts issues of race and class, religion and landscape, memory and media, chronicling places which changed and places we wish would change.

Leaving Gary

Sheehan, John

Black male/female relationships, and women and their significant place in the life of poet Afaa M. Weaver, make up the terrain of Talisman. The poems in this collection attempt to understand and recover the love that was there and which will always remain in the spiritual sense, long after the doors have slammed shut.

Talisman

Weaver, Afaa M.

Plumpp's new poems show his extraordinary sense of the movement of speech and the poetic line, his dazzling metaphors, and his ability to turn language inside out and upside down by looking within the words and rhythms of what we commonly say without thinking. In his poetic versions of the blues, he brings something new into American poetry both technically and spiritually. Plumpp's blues narratives are a poetic form and a dialogue between poet and subject--they are unlike anything else in American poetry: a vital, passionate, haunting poetry meant to be read and spoken and sung.

Blues Narratives

Plumpp, Sterling D.

Poetry. African American Studies. "Reading theses poems, you'll think the stereo is on--their music is that sure and rich, exuberant and sorrowful in turns, full of a sexual sway. Terrance Hayes takes us through a living library of cultural icons, from Shaft and Fat Albert to Coltrane and Miles Davis, but we always end up at the heart, where damage and tenderness mix, where lonliness becomes a blood tie. His generous vision finds beauty in our most flawed gestures"--Betsy Sholl, author of THE RED LINE and DON'T EXPLAIN. Terrance Hayes is a native of South Carolina. He received his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh in 1997 and has published in a range of literary journals and anthologies. MUSCULAR MUSIC is his first book.

Muscular Music

Hayes, Terrance

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Books by Tia Chucha

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Tia Chucha publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Poems across the Pavement

Dreams in Soy Sauce

Schoolyard of Broken Dreams

Same Blue Chevy

The Loves of Ricardo

The Loves of Ricardo

Leaving Gary

Talisman

Blues Narratives

Muscular Music