América, Issue #11, May 2020

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AMÉRICA | | REVISTA REACTIVACIÓN - CENTRAL FLORIDA AMÉRICA MAGAZINE

LIFESTYLE | CULTURE | INSPIRATION

Gods of Jade and Shadow: A mate during isolation Latinx poetry: poetry: Miami bred, Orlando bloomed

| WELCOME |

| BIENVENIDOS |

NOTA EDITORIAL ¡Y comenzó la reactivación!

El doloroso freno económico impuesto por la llegada del Covid-19 ha dejado más de 38 millones de desempleados a lo largo y ancho de los Estados Unidos, más o menos 14.7% de la población censada.

Comparada a la Gran Depresión de 1929, la Covid-Depresión aún no la supera en términos porcentuales pues aquella alcanzó el 25% de desempleo en 1933, pero en número de personas casi la triplicó, ya que la población del '33 era de 125 millones, mientras que ahora es de 331 millones, es decir, 15 millones versus 38 millones de desempleados.

A pesar de todo, el ánimo ciudadano está enfocado en reabrir la economía para evitar que continúe el colapso de las finanzas nacionales, estatales y privadas. Con ímpetu heróico los restauranteros prenden los fogones para seguir alimentando a sus comensales en la nueva onda contactless, los barberos y estilistas se ponen su Equipo de Protección Personal en busca de proveer la seguridad y confianza a sus clientes para que se acicalen después de la cuarentena. Los abogados sólo atienden por cita y en la medida de lo posible a través de Zoom y Skype. Así mismo, ya se puede acceder a un doctor de manera casi inmediata a través de una consulta virtual. Los oficinistas han aumentado su productividad trabajando desde casa, quizá porque ya no tienen que lidiar con el tráfico o porque la veeduría de parte de la jefatura se ha agudizado y no es momento para darse el lujo de perder el trabajo.

Cualquiera que sea el caso, a la hora de retomar las actividades comerciales lo importante es protegerse al igual que proteger a los demás, sobre todo por aquella particularidad del virus de propagarse a través de personas que no demuestran síntomas. Este es sin duda el factor más horroroso del microscópico monstruo, ya que está dispuesto a sacrificarse en personas donde no puede proliferar con el fin de esparcirse hacia personas donde sí pueda desarrollarse.

De modo que mantenga una distancia de mínimo dos metros con las personas que entre en contacto, pues a pesar de que ambos aparenten estar bien, pueden estar contagiados sin saberlo. Y en caso de que se sienta un tanto enfermo, lo mejor es que se quede en casa y consulte a un médico, no sólo para que usted se alivie, sino por simple y llana consideración hacia los demás. Lávese las manos cada vez que pueda y evite tocarse ojos, nariz y boca.

El panorama que se avecina es todo menos agradable en términos de la interacción social —sólo imagínese como será de ahora en adelante la conquista de un nuevo amor—.

En pocas palabras, la confianza hacia el otro está minada, pues no es posible determinar quién tiene o no el virus…

Sin embargo, esto traerá un cambio radical y pintoresco para la moda, pues el uso de guantes y tapabocas pasará a sus manos y surgirán máscaras de tendencia, guantes personalizados y trajes de cuerpo entero pegados a la piel, por lo que ya nos pareceremos más a Sub-Zero, Darth Vader, Aeon Flux y al Chapulín Colorado.

Cabe preguntarse qué pasará con la empatía puesto que las sonrisas quedarán sepultadas bajo los respiradores. ¿Qué

Lifestyle. Culture. Inspiration.

May 2020 - 11th Edition CO-FOUNDERS AND PUBLISHERS Felipe Robayo Chacón Marisol Medina Galindo EDITOR Felipe Robayo Chacón MARKETING STRATEGIST Marisol Medina Galindo CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Tyler Fisher | Allison Mercer | Gabriel X. Hendrix | Marisol Medina | Felipe Robayo

CIELO SALAZAR Notario Público

COVER PHOTO Proceed with Caution - Collage by Felipe Robayo América Magazine is published monthly by Somos América Media Group, LLC. Send Submissions to somos.revista.america@gmail.com Visit our Website at www.americamagazineorlando.com For Advertising Call (407) 460-0432 or visit www.americamagazineorlando.com/advertise For Sponsorship call (407) 460-0432 Our main goal is to build a strong Hispanic-American community in Central Florida, and become a fundamental piece in the growth of Hispanic-American owned businesess. We are commited to the production of high quality editorial and advertising content for the Hispanic-American Community in Orange and Osceola Counties. In the near future we intend to reach Central Florida, home to millions of Hispanic-Americans who contribute to the welfare of Florida’s economy through a robust network of business owners and consumers. We intend to provide entertaining, educational and informative content about our Cultural contributions and backgrounds, promote the Lifestyles of our historical heroes and how the United States has shaped our current way of living, and finally, we wish to bring forth stories of Inspiration from our ancestors as well as members of the community who work every day for the improvement of our society.

We reserve the right to reject or edit advertising and editorial copy. América is a free distribution magazine published by Somos America Media Group, LLC. © Copyright 2020 in the United States of America, all rights reserved.

pasará con la educación de los niños? ¿Qué pasará con las reuniones familiares y entre amigos? ¿Quedará todo relegado a una insulsa interacción digital? ¿Qué pasará con el contacto, tan necesario para el calor, la amistad y el amor? No se sabe, sólo nos queda reactivarnos, volver a comenzar y descubrirlo. ¡A cuidar a América!

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| CULTURE | INSPIRATION

Cross-Border Gods: Fantastic Escapism in a Season of Lockdowns A review of Silvia Moreno-García’s Gods of Jade and Shadow.

Del Rey, Penguin Random House, 2019. 338 pages.

This young adult novel refracts Mayan mythology through more widely familiar Mediterranean traditions to create an exhilarating modern hybrid of folklore, romance, road-trip quest, and comingof-age story. Silvia Moreno-García draws on her own Mexican heritage to reimagine the Jazz Age south of the border in the 1920s, which roar and glitter even more with irruptions of underworld deities who are vying to reclaim the powers they used to wield in pre-colonial times. The book’s heroine, Casiopea, a self-aware teenager who recognizes her own role as a Cinderella-like subaltern and Pandora-like instigator, unexpectedly escapes servitude to her grandfather by joining forces with Hun-Kamé, a Mayan god of death. Together, these two protagonists, girl and god, encounter a varied cast of demons, witches, ghosts, and other gods, whom they battle on an episodic tour across Mexican geography with a brief foray into Texas. The novel’s complex overlay of historical settings, pre-Colombian lore, and contemporary concerns yields an enthralling mosaic of fantasy and cultural commentary.

Introducing gods into any story raises a fundamental set of problems. A god’s powers offer an all-too easy solution to any problem, problems that could otherwise contribute to a story’s interest. It is the old problem of the deus ex machina writ large: a story might effortlessly resolve a dilemma or obstacle via divine intervention, but such resolution is hardly satisfying. What’s more, a god’s involvement can readily eclipse the ordinary, human elements of a story, monopolizing interest that mundane characters might otherwise command. To overcome these problems, the tried and true method is for stories to assign anthropomorphic limitations to the gods, while granting their human counterparts some measure of uncommon godlike ability.

(Thus Gilgamesh is neither fully divine nor fully human, Superman has his kryptonite, and unremarkable Bella Swan becomes a vampire.) This is the driving strategy for Gods of Jade and Shadow.

To generate and sustain interest, Moreno-García depicts flawed, fickle, and vulnerable Mayan gods, able to foresee possible futures only dimly and embroiled in internecine rivalries, while her human characters gain supernatural powers by allying themselves with rival gods by accident or artful bargaining. When Casiopea opens a forbidden chest in her grandfather’s bedroom, she collides with the bones of Hun-Kamé, a slumbering god. A splinter of bone lodges in her finger, and her blood awakens and rehabilitates Hun-Kamé. The physical interchange initiates a gradually evolving interrelationship between these main characters: the once unfeeling god becomes more human, more susceptible to a fuller range of human

by Tyler Fisher and Allison Mercer

emotions; the once small-minded girl awakens to preternatural perceptions, access to supernatural realms, and capacity for self-restraint and sacrificial heroism.

Moreno-García’s writing is at its strongest when the dark dreamscapes of the Xibalba underworld or the frenzy of a Veracruz carnival give free rein to her vivid, imaginative expression. Owls in Gods of Jade and Shadow carry fragments of human laughter in seashells, a god rides a caiman through shape-shifting swamps, and costumed revelers turn out to be weather gods in disguise. The descriptions of such settings and characters often achieve a fresh, invigorating, highly poetic style. The novel is less satisfying when it hews too closely to its most apparent precedent, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. Both books share basic premises and patterns: gods are attached to particular geographies or ethnicities, and wax or wane in accordance with the devotion they garner. In both, an episodic tour introduces a succession of supernatural eccentrics dwelling among the mundane. Moreno-García’s debts to Gaiman include a detrimental tendency at times for the novel’s plot and descriptions to lean on the supernatural backdrop as something of a crutch, an excuse to leave certain points unresolved, intrigues unanswered, key explanations incomplete, because supernatural…

Nevertheless, this derivative shortcoming should not obscure the novel’s real accomplishment. Gods of Jade and Shadow is an ambitious book. It defies simplistic categorization by the old labels of either “high fantasy” or “intrusion fantasy,” because it incorporates aspects of both.

Moreno-García constructs an entire theology, piece by piece, through a series of revelations regarding backstories, underworld hierarchies, and the interdependence of ritual religion and spiritual realities. The novel’s fusion of Mayan and Greco-Roman mythologies allows it to surpass ethnic interests and transcend the strictures of stereotypes. In this it reflects the amalgam of creeds and mercurial traditions that make up North America in the twenty-first century. Young adult readers, especially those from a Hispanic American context, may recognize echoes of half-remembered tales from older generations. Others will relish the sense of unfamiliarity, the novel’s air of mysterious immanence that unsettles assumptions, blurs borders, and beckons readers to imagine unseen forces behind the seemingly ordinary. This is fantasy for our time — an especially delightful rendering of fantastic escapism in the midst of lockdowns, curfews, quarantines, and closed borders. Casiopea not only escapes her grandfather’s patriarchal, parochial provincialism but escapes to far more transcendent planes.

Gods of Jade and Shadow beckons readers to accompany its humanized god and extraordinary heroine on vicarious flights of fancy.

4 | América Magazine | May 2020 | www.americamagazineorlando.com

Poetry Corner

| CULTURA |

My temper

Redefine/ Rename/ To see

My temper does not understand me.

I do not want to erupt like a volcano that picks when to explode.

Nothing is working for my temples; it feels like shards are to break and cover the marble floor.

It comes close to when buildings are smashed, and the spirit of the house is let go.

Jungle music does not help with loud animals in the background, the lion that feasts but only in nighttime because the daytime is scorching hot, birds whose wings are all dried up, the people that scream off their lung’s moments when footsteps are in the library, popping gum, gossiping, and slamming books like missiles in a war.

It is time to let go of certain things in the vines, through the cracks of walls, through the canals of water that have flourished through Spain, through the cells and rings in the jungles of the Amazon.

It is time to see from the gigantic lens that hails from the sky, it is time to self-reflect on those that came before us.

A boy is constantly told that he is a soldier, he protects those he loves most.

Why burden that love and bury it far and deep below a house?

He is expected to stand guard for his most precious bliss, In suppressing his emotions from the public, he has lost the battle; he fails to understand that his roots are to be celebrated.

That the single tear should not shatter the mirror.

He is to be told to never mask his own eyes, to have to rename its body or its purpose.

It is a shame that one is expected but never given permission to embody love, to hold, but to never be held.

My mind is the atomic bomb and steams like the trains heading south.

Any moment a migraine will appear, it feels as if birds are pecking away at my head, the frustration, the agony.

I plead then curse to the night sky, on a star that looks at me and I ask for medicine.

The next day a visit to the doctor, then an x-ray, nothing bad is showing not even a thunderstorm.

Unfixable, more tests, discussions between each medical profession, as if they’d never seen sickness crawl on its own, the flashlight stings an eye, a pill for pain, but it dissolves in the same manner as quicksand.

The cells in organs erupt and the blood resists this remedy, believing that I was on the wrong side of the sidewalk.

I held my head down as an anchor, while a cloud of voices hovers over.

I am not interested in what the medical people have to say, breaking focus from their big words, their knowledge of uncertainty.

My temper whines and complains every second of the day, I give up raising my arms high like a ladder. There is no hope, my skin burns against the sun’s rays, dried and worn-out to the point that I can no longer wrap my arms around my body.

I grew frustrated like putting a thread through a hook, I waved the white flag in the air letting the neighbors know that I cannot beat the noise in a race.

Visiting a friend, he tells me he is studying herbalism, the smell of lavender is soaked within his walls from every corner.

He grabs my palm and smashes his against mine. “Pressure points” he says, I would yell but before I could, he places his ear to my head.

He listens inside and tells me there is a burning building going on.

He places me on the ground and tells me to not move a single inch, he begins to whisper “to love, forgive, accept” over and over.

I begin to think this is a chant or a game to turn me into a bug.

To hypnotize me into spilling secrets like a revolve door, as he begins to raise his voice that sound like bells in a church, my ears begin to ring like a bicycle bell.

My mouth shocked with electricity, my eyes gleam at this miracle.

I hear nothing of oil sizzling on a greasy stove, the alarm of the paramedics, the cry of a baby, or a piano breaking into a million pieces.

Bio Gabriel X. Hendrix is a poet & writer, born in Miami FL and currently attending University of Central Florida. Hendrix will earn his B.A. in English Creative Writing. Hendrix explores the layers of grief and the struggles of identity through his writing.

A man of his Word When a word drips and saunters out from the O-gap out comes honey, moist turning raw and bitter What needs to be said, how it is said, speaks volumes of a man left open and bares no bones The man who is clean-shaven, suited, polished pulls out his tongue and looks into the distance of an eye that knows The word is to be saturated in truth, of an early morning to the sun, the children that are to be fed the word is supposed to be truthful even when the judgment is not fully established of the oath on the good book the man who waits for approval must stand tall; ears point towards north, posture like a stem in cold weather His shell turns dark brown, withers off like a single word that dances softly it bleeds and cuts because it demands obedience it must travel and withstand heavy breaking concrete The man —El Hombre— must be wise, must be able to control even when not in control Words are supposed to have a life of their own, the man’s excuses, beliefs, then to be left in the wild.

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