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When one
man walked in front of the stage, he
immediately began shaking the many hands
stretched out to him from the packed
crowd. Everyone seemed to know, or want
to know, this guy. Bud and I didn't
recognize him, but then we were new to
this world of rock en espanol. "Who is
he? Some celebrity?" we asked our
friend, let's call him Alfredo.
Alfredo shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe,
immigration?"
The movement of the people around the
world may have replaced abortion as the
hot-button issue of our time.
Immigration combines two of the U.S.'s
deepest worries: the economy and
"homeland security." It's a hornet's
nest of difficult questions that
politicians wade into only with great
reluctance, knowing no matter what they
say they're going to wind up stung.
Meanwhile, xenophobia is symbolic to
many people from other nations of
everything that's wrong with Americans:
hubris, ignorance, fear. (Not that
Americans have a corner on xenophobia:
Just ask the Africans in Paris, or the
Asian proletarian diaspora doing the
globe's dirty work.)
Hattie gossett plugs directly into the
slipstreams of this debate in the
immigrant suite: hey xenophobe! who you
calling a foreigner?, her recent
collection of poems from Seven Stories
Press. gossett, a New York-based poet of
page and stage, writes mostly in the
voice of the confused, disappointed, and
angry immigrant. There aren't a lot of
refugees from other countries' war,
oppression, or poverty delighting in the
American dream in these stanzas. Recent
newspaper stories back up gossett's
bodega-level reports: More and more
people have not found the embrace of
Lady Liberty to be all it's cooked up to
be, and have been returning home to
their countries. The Miami Herald even
profiled some Cubans who have gone back
to their communist homeland – dios mio!
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Evelyn's Bio
Evelyn
McDonnell is the author of several books and a
widely published freelance writer. She is currently
the editor at large of www.MOLI.com, where she
previously served as editorial director. Before that
she was the pop culture writer at The Miami Herald
for six years. She is the author of three books:
Mamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids and Rock 'n' Roll,
Army of She: Icelandic, Iconoclastic, Irrepressible
Bjork and Rent by Jonathan Larson. She coedited the
anthologies Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock,
Pop and Rap and Stars Don't Stand Still in the Sky:
Music and Myth. A former senior editor at The
Village Voice and associate editor at SF Weekly, her
writing on music, poetry, theater, and culture has
appeared in numerous publications and anthologies,
including Ms., Rolling Stone, The New York Times,
Spin, Travel & Leisure, Us, Billboard, and Option.
She published and edited the zines Resister and OK
Go Now. She codirected the conference Stars Don't
Stand Still in the Sky: Music and Myth at the Dia
Center for the Arts in New York in 1998.
Evelyn's 2004 Herald expose on hip-hop cops, written
with Nicole White, was awarded first place for
enterprise by the South Florida Black Journalists
Association and second place in the Society of
Professional Journalists' Sunshine State Awards.
It's included in the DaCapo anthology Best Music
Writing 2005. Evelyn also received a second-place
Sunshine State award that year for criticism. In
2003, a Herald series on changes in the music
industry received third place in the business
category of the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors
competition. Her '96 cover story for Option on PJ
Harvey was named best interview in a magazine by the
Music Journalism Awards.
Evelyn lives in Miami Beach with her husband, Bud,
her stepdaughters, Karlie and Kenda, her son, Cole,
their dog, Otis, and two cats, Paleface and Moonpie
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