News, Other Stuff

The news and culture site Flavorwire has named our newest book MAY WE SHED THESE HUMAN BODIES by Washington DC author Amber Sparks as one of their TOP TEN books to read coming out here in October, standing it against literary giants such as Tom Wolfe.  Go Sparks go!  MAY WE SHED is now available at most anywhere books are sold.

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"Sometimes all it takes is a few sentences to knock you off your rocker. Or at least that’s the case in Sparks’s debut collection, which packs 30 short short stories, each its own modern fable, whimsical and wicked in equal measure, into one handsome book." -- Flavorwire

This is part VII of an VIII part series by Portland author Aaron Gilbreath consisting of his interviews with members of Portland's homeless population.  Stay tuned for Part VIII next week.  See Part VI here.

Aaron Gilbreath is a burrito-obsessed essayist, journalist, and housesitter. He resides in Portland and his work can be found all over the place.  Click here to learn more about him. 

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Introduction

Like all interesting people and places, Portland, Oregon is a multifaceted character. There is Portland the socially progressive utopia of artists, food carts and environmentally conscious urbanism. And there is the Portland of pretension, heroin addiction, racial separation and rampant homelessness. The city occupies a county that has over 15,000 homeless people. That figure includes not only people who sleep on the street and in shelters, but those who sleep on friends’ couches and in cars and in transitional housing. In 2009, Oregon ranked first in the nation for homelessness per capita.

Those of us who have lived here long enough to have watched the city change from a sleepy little low-rent secret to a globally hyped mecca of gastronomy and marketable eccentricity know that no matter how empathetic your constitution, the sheer scale of homelessness here means that you can easily became immune to the presence of it. Two soiled feet sticking out from under a blanket, a body curled in a doorway atop cardboard slabs – to Portlanders, these sights can become as unexceptional as a sign at a coffee shop advertising gluten-free muffins. I don’t like growing accustomed to human suffering. Empathy should never grow callouses. Yet overly accustomed is what I’d become. Here I was, surrounded by the homeless, yet I knew close to nothing about them or their lives. So I spent the summer of 2011 speaking to them on the street.

My mother is from Michoacán, Mexico, which is west of Mexico City before the ocean, where the country curves.  Most people know the areas as where the Monarch butterflies from Canada migrate to every winter.  The land there is mountainous, rich, known for its food as is most any other part of the country, but here it especially is.  My uncle says it’s the land where Las Viejas son cabronas y los hombres comen chignon!  (where the men eat like kings and the women are badasses). 

I grew up in Logan Square, Chicago until my parents moved us out to Des Plaines, a suburb by O’Hare, in hopes of realizing the American Dream.  I didn’t learn English while we lived in Logan Square as there was no need to.  Everyone around us spoke Spanish.  Nowadays I can still speak Spanish ok though I’m much more fluent in English.  As I like to tell people, I now think white, talk white, and have dated primarily white girls.  And now with kids I don’t travel to Mexico like I used to as a 20-something bachelor.  Now when we go there for vacation we’re more interested in finding a resort that has a playground and swim-up bar.

Of my ethnic roots, though, the one thing I’ve fully retained is my love for Mexican food.  I was born with a jalapeño on my fucking forehead.  I can’t eat a single meal without it being doused in some kind of hot sauce or accompanied by hot peppers.  On the weekends for breakfast I typically eat bagels with cream cheese, but I splatter Louisiana hot sauce all over them.  My favorite way to drink beer is Michelada style, with lime juice, salt, and hot pepper.  I can eat canned jalapenos like they were fucking pickles.  I’ve tried to put hot sauce in coffee but that shit didn’t turn out so well.

My favorite part of traveling to Mexico to visit family is being invited to their house for dinner at 3pm, and arriving to find the house consumed in cooking, being served a tequila or two to sip on before the meal.  Before my two boys I used to even try to cook it myself.  I love tacos, quesadilla, chiles reyenos; all the things Americans typically think of when it comes to Mexican food.  But one of my favorite things about Mexican food has got to be the soups.  Mexicans make such rich, complex, and yes spicy, soups. 

My favorite Mexican soup is Pozole.  It comes in the colors of the Mexican flag for crying out loud:  red, white, and green.  And each region in Mexico makes it differently.  My favorite is the red, in the style of Michoacán.   The soup is pork-based, takes all day to make, and the best

Author Amber Sparks, whose debut short story collection we've just released MAY WE SHED THESE HUMAN BODIES, was a guest on Los Angeles-based author Brad Listi's Other People Podcast.  Listen for a crazy indepth discussion on prose, politics, and Amber's drive for wanting to write.

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Other People Podcast with Brad Listi

This is part VI of an VIII part series by Portland author Aaron Gilbreath consisting of his interviews with members of Portland's homeless population.  Stay tuned for Part VII next week.  See Part V here.

Aaron Gilbreath is a burrito-obsessed essayist, journalist, and housesitter. He resides in Portland and his work can be found all over the place.  Click here to learn more about him. 

Tweet

Introduction

Like all interesting people and places, Portland, Oregon is a multifaceted character. There is Portland the socially progressive utopia of artists, food carts and environmentally conscious urbanism. And there is the Portland of pretension, heroin addiction, racial separation and rampant homelessness. The city occupies a county that has over 15,000 homeless people. That figure includes not only people who sleep on the street and in shelters, but those who sleep on friends’ couches and in cars and in transitional housing. In 2009, Oregon ranked first in the nation for homelessness per capita.

Those of us who have lived here long enough to have watched the city change from a sleepy little low-rent secret to a globally hyped mecca of gastronomy and marketable eccentricity know that no matter how empathetic your constitution, the sheer scale of homelessness here means that you can easily became immune to the presence of it. Two soiled feet sticking out from under a blanket, a body curled in a doorway atop cardboard slabs – to Portlanders, these sights can become as unexceptional as a sign at a coffee shop advertising gluten-free muffins. I don’t like growing accustomed to human suffering. Empathy should never grow callouses. Yet overly accustomed is what I’d become. Here I was, surrounded by the homeless, yet I knew close to nothing about them or their lives. So I spent the summer of 2011 speaking to them on the street.