Professor, poet and youth activist Guadalupe Garcia McCall comes onto The Collective: After Dark to do a reading of her poetry book, Under the Mesquite. We discuss female empowerment for adults and youth, and why it’s important to encourage girls to ask questions. We ask why information about women is suppressed and why it is held from women.
We chat about transformation and how theater and poetry are cathartic. We look at the importance of being a Witness to other’s work, how it builds community, learning how to grow beyond the fear of witnessing others in their suffering, and the magical moment when you know your work is done.
Born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico and raised in Eagle Pass, Texas, Guadalupe García McCall is the award-winning author of several young adult novels, some short stories for adults, and many children’s poems. Guadalupe has received the Prestigious Pura Belpre Award, a Westchester Young Adult Fiction Award, the Tomás Rivera Mexican-American Children’s Book Award, and was a finalist for the William C. Morris Award and the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, among many other accolades.
Fluent in both English and Spanish, Guadalupe is a compelling speaker who has visited many middle schools, high schools, universities, festivals, conferences, and organizations all over the country. In 2016, she was invited to give a writing workshop and a keynote address at the Sirens Women In Fantasy Conference. In the spring of 2017, Guadalupe was selected as the Inaugural Artist in Residence by the Arne Nixon Center where she visited local high schools and taught courses at California State University Fresno. Also in 2017, Guadalupe gave the keynote for the National Latino Children’s Literature Conference in San Antonio, Texas. In 2018, she gave the keynote at the Texas Council of Teachers of English Language Arts Conference in Galveston, Texas. In 2021, Guadalupe had the honor of moderating the panel, Hispanic Heritage Month Authors Series, Celebrating Latino Experience, History, People, & Cultures, US Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA with the White House Initiative on Advancing Education, Equity, Excellence and Economic Opportunity (WHIAEEEE), Washington DC. However, her proudest distinction came when her alma mater, Sul Ross State University (SRSU), selected to feature her image and biography on their Living the Dream II – Cultural Pride on Campus mural outside of the Gallego Center.
As an educator, Guadalupe taught K-12 in San Antonio Texas for decades before she moved to the Pacific Northwest to teach undergraduate courses in literature, women’s studies, and creative writing at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon. She is currently a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing in the low residency MFA Creative Writing program at Antioch University in Los Angeles, CA, where she teaches graduate courses. As an educator, author, poet, and speaker, Guadalupe is an advocate for literacy, diverse books, and Own Voices. She is now a full-time author/part time educator and lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband, Jim, where she is working on two more books, Secret of the Moon Conch and Hearts of Fire and Snow, coming from Bloomsbury in 2023 & 2024.
Listen in on The Collective for poetry and more, this Sunday on @kqbhla, 3-4pm PST, on 101.5fm in Los Angeles area, world wide on kqbhla.com, or nationwide on the LPFM La app.
This episode was previously recorded and edited for live radio. You can also find all the links to KQBH, Spotify, and Substack on @byginaduran’s website at byginaduran.com. Link in bio.
We are all apart of the collective. It is not a special group or community out of anyone’s reach. The trees, the earth, the plants, the insects, the animals, and humans are all apart of the collective. We each have something to give to the world and our communities around us. It’s in knowing how to care for the ones we love, the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. It is all self-care. Community care is self-care. And together we are more than community, we are like the stars singing in the sky. We are music and our voices are the hum of the universe. Because we are of the earth and things of stars, and so is every thing on this earth.
Thank you for listening in on the conversation. I hope that we can all come together to create positive change.
How do you know when you have reached the end of your story?
Is it cathartic, magical, or both?
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