Isabel Meyers

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Santurce, un libro mural / Santurce: A Mural Book

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Art, Studio, Translation

Images by RAFAEL TRELLES

Santurce, originalmente llamado Cangrejos, fue municipio desde el siglo XVIII, aunque luego fuera anexado como barrio de San Juan. Fue también el primer pueblo fundado por negros en Puerto Rico en 1773, cien años antes de la abolición de la esclavitud en el país. A partir de la construcción del trolley (primero a vapor en el último cuarto del siglo XIX, luego eléctrico a partir del 1901), se cambió el nombre de San Mateo de Cangrejos al de Santurce, en homenaje a Pablo Ubarri, Conde de Santurzi, encargado de la instalación del tren. Durante el siglo XX, en especial durante la modernización del país a partir de los años 40, Santurce se convirtió en el centro económico y cultural del país. Llegó a tener una población de 195,000 personas en 1950. Luego del proceso de suburbanización del país y la construcción de los centros comerciales a partir de finales de los años 60, la importancia de Santurce decayó notablemente. En la actualidad su población ronda los 82,000. Aun así, sigue siendo el barrio más poblado del país.

Los textos que siguen están narrados por Santurce/Cangrejos mismo. Las imágenes son de los murales tal como se reprodujeron e instalaron por todo el barrio. En todos los murales hay una imagen, un texto, el título del libro, un mapa y unas instrucciones para el peatón.

Para más información puedes ver nuestra página web: www.santurceunlibromural.com.

Although it was later annexed as a neighborhood of San Juan, Santurce—originally called Cangrejos—has been a municipality since the eighteenth century. It was also the first town founded by blacks in Puerto Rico, in 1773, one hundred years before the abolition of slavery in the country. Since the construction of the trolley (first the steam model in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, then the electric one in 1901), San Mateo de Cangrejos was renamed Santurce in homage to Pablo Ubarri, Count of Santurtzi, responsible for building the commuter railroad system. Throughout the twentieth century, particularly during the modernization of the country which began in the 1940s, Santurce became the island’s economic and cultural center, with a population of 195,000 people in 1950. After the suburbanization of the country and the construction of malls at the end of the 1960s, Santurce’s importance declined significantly. Its population now stands at approximately 82,000. Even so, it remains Puerto Rico’s most populous district.

The texts that follow are narrated by Santurce/Cangrejos itself. The images are of the murals just as they were reproduced and installed throughout the neighborhood. Each mural includes an image, a text, the title of the book, a map, and instructions for pedestrians.

For more information, visit our website: www.santurceunlibromural.com.

Natal Promise, Natal Debt: On the Recent Poetry of Mara Pastor

October 29, 2018 Essays, Issue 16, Issue 16 Essays

By CARINA DEL VALLE SCHORSKE

A Spanish translation follows the English.

Se acabaron las promesas, / decían nuestros carteles.
[The promises have run out, / our signs said.]

So many perfectly good words have been ruined: Promise. Paradise. Free. Even: Like. Love. Friend. We know that the task of the poet is to renovate ruined words, to make language livable again. To make sure the mouth doesn’t hang off its hinges. To make sure the flame of the tongue stays lit in the storm of speech. But what happens when the poet tires of her labor? In English, this word for work is the same as the word for what a woman must do to push a baby out of her body and into the world. Mara Pastor’s new book of poems, Falsa heladería (False Ice Cream Shop) emerges from a double exhaustion and takes a big breath—then lets loose a current of sound—from the other side.

Francois Villon Begins His Journey

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry

By DAVID LEHMAN

[in memory of Paul Violi]

In this my thirtieth year,
Drunk and no stranger to disgrace,
I grin like a fool from ear to ear
Despite the trickle of tears on my face,
Clown that I am, condemned
By Thibauld d’Assole’s command,
Threatened and even damned
By the faker with the crozier in his hand.

Put-in-Bay

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction

By SHIRA ELMALICH

“Could you take a picture?” the girls ask, and I jump up from the bench outside the candy store and check they are all here, all thirteen. I am pleased they want a picture together, considering their history, which is fraught and filled with ugliness.

This is their Senior Trip. We’ve only been off the ferry for two hours, and the girls have spent most of that time weaving in and out of the gift shops on Main Street, finally emerging with a concerning excess of commemorative merchandise.

For the picture, they dress in their loot, rummaging through shopping bags to pull off tags and tug new items over their regular clothes—ball caps and sweatshirts and long-sleeved T’s, Put-in-Bay scrawled over the front in block letters or cursive or cartoon fonts, accompanied by graphics of anchors and lifesavers and compasses, in theme with this Lake Eerie Island off the coast of Sandusky, Ohio. The clothing is boxy and not particularly attractive, but the girls sell it because they are masters at posing. “Smile!” I say, and they throw up their arms and jut out their shoulders and squeeze at their waists. They embrace. They grin with their whole faces, which are fresh and round with youth. Posing, they look happy, and this makes me happy. I tell myself that I am seeing their true selves. “Another one!” I say. “Another!”

Little Wonder

October 3, 2018 Fiction

By KAT GARDINER

Sunlight and Shadows

The sunlight filtered through the window of our cafe. Golden sweet, it wove around the trees, the garden, over the stage, through the window and onto the railroad tie floor. I didn’t mind sweeping, because I got to dip my feet in it.

There was music on, and in the late spring air, it sounded perfect. Gram Parson’s Brass Buttons. Like it was made for right there right then, even though we all knew it was made a long time ago, back when parents were young and happy and we were only a microscopic part of them.

The Common Welcomes New Editors!

September 13, 2018 News and Events

The Common is excited to announce four new additions to the editorial staff: Translations Editor Curtis Bauer, Contributing Editor W. Ralph Eubanks, Arabic Fiction Editor Hisham Bustani, and Dispatches Editor Nina Sudhakar.

Non-Native

June 20, 2018 Dispatches

By CATE LYCURGUS

Tolowa Dunes State Park, California

Sandy showed us how. She placed the shovel’s tip a few inches from a tuft’s base. Angled the handle back a bit, just enough to loosen the grass before she lowered, hand-pulling. This way, she explained, down to the source. Awards went to the biggest pile, longest root (you cannot burn grass off the dunes; the network just shoots back again), cleanest area too. Tawny tips waved in small breeze from the lagoon, off the lip of sea. But the grass is pretty, C said, and somebody murmured, agreeing. He traced the rake in arcs, looking down, but couldn’t swirl it far. European beachgrass (Ammophila arenaria) grows in clumps from rhizomes that spread four meters each year, so it’s no surprise beachgrass defines large stretches of Pacific coast. Pretty till you get a spine in your glove, E admitted, wincing. Until you get down close.

Join Us for Weekly Writes, Volume I

June 8, 2018 News and Events

Weekly Writes is a ten-week program designed to help you create original place-based fiction and nonfiction.

Volume I launched on July 1, 2018. Volume II coming soon!

Sign up for Volume 1 is now closed. The $15 fee includes one free, expedited submission after program completion.

The Cloak Room

June 6, 2018 Dispatches

By MARIA TERRONE

St. Joan of Arc classroom and cloakroom revisited, 2018

Queens, New York

The very sound of it was foreign to our ears. Who wore cloaks? Vampires. Stealthy spies with hidden daggers. And men in top hats who appeared in movies and old-fashioned story books. Certainly no one we knew as first-graders at St. Joan of Arc—except, perhaps, for the nuns whose sleeveless black capes swirled in their hurried winter walks through the schoolyard to the convent. But their habits covered every inch of skin up to their necks; even their brows were partially obscured by fabric stiff as cardboard and white as their bony hands—the only other flesh exposed. So, on second thought, we couldn’t really say we “knew” the nuns when their very bodies were concealed and their lives outside the classroom a mystery.

The Common @ the National Book Foundation’s Why Reading Matters Conference

May 25, 2018 News and Events

Are you an educator? Do you work with students? Join us as The Common editors present at The National Book Foundation’s third annual Why Reading Matters conference on June 7 at St. Francis College in Brooklyn.

Editor in Chief Jennifer Acker and Associate Editor and Director of The Common in the Classroom Elizabeth Witte will be joined by Katherine Hill, a TC contributor and Assistant Professor of English at Adelphi University, for a panel discussion: Reaching from There to Here: broadening student perspectives through place-focused literature.

Check out more details on the conference here. TC readers receive a 15% discount on registration with the code: NBFFRIEND

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