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Home > Interviews > “My wild imagination”: An Interview with Rios de la Luz
Interview by jaz papadopoulos
Rios de la Luz’s debut novella,
Itzá (Broken River Books, 2017), tells the story of a young water witch, Marisol, and explores trauma, healing, and growth.
jaz papadopoulos: First, I want to say that I loved
Itzá so much. I connected with it on a personal level as a watery witch, the child of an immigrant, and someone with a rather particular affection for my grandmothers. A friend recommended it to me years ago, and I understand why.
But first, a warm up question: Who/what inspires you? Who are the authors you turn and return to, and what other practices spur your creative world?
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The Skirball Cultural Center partially reopens this weekend with “Ai Weiwei: Trace,” the artist’s portraits of imprisoned dissidents and free-speech advocates, all crafted with Lego bricks. It’s a smaller version of Ai’s installation for his unprecedented 2014 exhibition on Alcatraz, which Times critic Christopher Knight called “an always-poignant, often-powerful meditation on soul-deadening repressions of human thought and feeling.”
The Skirball show leads our weekend list of cultural offerings for your viewing consideration. All times are Pacific.
SoCal in-person events
“Ai Weiwei: Trace”
The acclaimed artist and activist‘s Lego portraits go on view in an 8,000-square-foot gallery lined with a gold-colored wallpaper, a design by Ai’s studio that turns images of surveillance equipment into a decorative pattern. 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., L.A. Saturday through Aug. 1. $7-$12; kids under 2 are free; advance timed-entry tickets required. skirball.org
In these opening verses of
Lineage of Rain (
Haymarket Books, £7.99), Salvadoran poet and educator Janel Pineda begins her mesmerising story, one of Salvadoran migration, diaspora and the US-sponsored civil war that fuses the personal with the communal and the political with everyday life.
Each poem in this powerful pamphlet sings its own beautiful tune, taking the reader on a journey of discoveries and redemption, from El Salvador to Los Angeles and back. There are moving family narratives where women take centre stage, as in Rain, where the grandmother Tana passes down stories and memories to her granddaughter.
These female voices are weavers of stories, fighters against patriarchal authority and revolutionary in their own actions. Always survivors, they retell histories that look to the past, present and future.