Join HMH for an evening with Dr. Christopher Carmona in the first lecture of the Spring 2018 Lecture Series, Intergenerational Trauma & Memory: History Carried Through Generations, in correlation with the South Texas Human Rights Art Exhibition and Holocaust Museum Houston’s Latino Initiatives Advisory Committee (LIAC).
Dr. Carmona is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and the coordinator of Mexican American Studies for the Brownsville Campus of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He is a member of the Ad Hoc Committee for the TX State Board of Education for Mexican American Studies. Currently, he serves as the Chair of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) Tejas Foco Committee on Implementing Mexican American Studies (MAS) in PreK-12 Education in Texas.
Dr. Carmona will discuss writing about trauma passed down through oral stories and how he was able to create a superhero story that not only challenges the narrative of ‘American Exceptionalism,’ but also questions how we think about memory and reality. Currently, he is working on a series of YA novellas reimagining the “Lone Ranger” story as a Chicanx superhero fighting Texas Rangers in the Rio Grande Valley from 1905-1920. In the writing of “El Rinche: The Ghost Ranger of Rio Grande,” Carmona “flips the script” on the Lone Ranger story by creating a Chicano superhero that disguises himself as a Texas Ranger (rinche) and fights the injustices of the rinches. Rinche is a Spanish slang word used to describe a Texas Ranger.
Dr. Carmona’s new bilingual book of poetry entitled “140: Twitter Poems” was published by Jade Press in 2017. Book One of “El Rinche: The Ghost Ranger of the Rio Grande” will be published in late 2018.
This event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited, and advance registration is requested. To RSVP online, visit www.hmh.org/RegisterEvent.aspx.
