sin cesar literary and art magazine #13, the climate issue, is finally out!

sin cesar is the only literary journal from South Central Los Ángeles and has been in production since 2015, featuring poetry, fiction, art, interviews, books reviews, essays, and translations founded and edited by Viva Padilla @anotchka.

This newest issue showcases the art of legendary Argentinean Sergio Camporeale, painter, illustrator, and collagist, who worked alongside writers and artists like Julio Cortázar, Eduardo Galeano, and Delia Cugat.

#13 features poets and writers, local and beyond, like @basurababushka from Santa Ana, @felipebdelarosa from Paramount, and Fernando Trejo from Chiapas.

The copies themselves were designed, printed and handbound in-house with @libroabiertopress founded and lead by Editor in chief Viva Padilla @anotchka.

For many queer and trans People of Color, the paths to uncovering our ancestry and cultural healing practices are filled with Google searches, conversations with family members, elders, and library loans. For most queer and trans People of Color who reclaim severed connections to cultural healing practices, access to spaces which encourage deconstructing colonial, capitalist ways of navigating the world are crucial. It is through community and access to radical knowledge that QTPOC are able to rebirth ourselves spiritually and energetically. This allows for our unapologetic QTPOC self love to continue to grow and honors our ancestors seven generations forward and backwards.

EagleCon blasted into its 10th Anniversary Convention focused on Speculative Fiction and Futurisms at Cal State LA from October 18, 2023 to October 20, 2023. Taking off in the University Student Union, numerous panels with students filling halls awaiting new world possibilities and real world opportunities. EagleCon attendees were able to meet professionals working within the industry, scholars, and student presenters who are often underrepresented in scholastic representation. From women, LGBTQ+ peoples and People of Color, to professionals and professors, the panelists at EagleCon deliberately embodied the opportunities that Cal State LA students need to see represented in the speculative fiction industry.

Currently on view at the exhibit is Pearls of Wisdom, made in 2011. A work that uses mixed media such as mylar paper, yarn and threads, plaster gauze, photography and the subject's words to emphasize the issues of domestic violence. Within this work, Abeles takes photos of the hands of women and survivors, moving beyond domestic violence they hand make interpretations of oyster pearls. Photographs taken of hands covered in plaster, holding yarn with messages to viewers of their experience as domestic violence survivors. One message read, “I could run or I could look to myself, to my stronger core. My story is worthwhile if it helps others avoid the traps and the violence”. These images and quotes are combined with a wall-sized, shelf display of handmade pearls linked together by red thread, made by the family and supporters of those who are survivors of domestic violence. It’s important to note that the images of pearls are used within Abele’s work to emphasize the ways that “ … pearls formed inside oysters in response to harmful irritants,” similarly, these participants who are domestic violence survivors “... transformed memories of domestic pain into objects and shared texts”.

Cal State Los Angeles faculty and students discuss the box office hit, Barbie movie, as it relates to various waves of feminisms. Offering critiques and insights into the state(s) of feminism in 2023.

As covid-19 seared through the lives of countless people in 2020, writer, poet and activist, Jaime Rodriguez was asked by Nina St. Pierre, “How do you still find hope in these times?’

Remember that we are not entitled to people’s energy or responses. But we can alleviate anxiety triggers through direct communication. Really, that’s all I’m advocating for: good communication. If you’re not into it, whatever it is, say it. Saving one or more parties a panic attack or two. That way people aren’t strung along and that way people can move on with their lives.

So when I look for support from other folks who claim to decolonize their thoughts around (me)dicine, meaning that herbs, limpias, and sweat lodge ceremonies are the go-to I wonder why they hold up the very same oppressive themes of Spiritual elitism by undermining my need to use (me)dication?

Remember that we are not entitled to people’s energy or responses. But we can alleviate anxiety triggers through direct communication. Really, that’s all I’m advocating for: good communication. If you’re not into it, whatever it is, say it. Saving one or more parties a panic attack or two. That way people aren’t strung along and that way people can move on with their lives.

Among Latinos with a mental disorder, fewer than one in 11 contact a mental health specialist, and fewer than one in five contact a general health care provider, according to the American Psychiatric Association's Office of Minority and National Affairs. Furthermore, less than 55 percent of Hispanic adults — and only 30 percent of adolescents — with a major depressive episode in receive treatment for depression.

She finds healing and power when she speaks about her intersectional struggles as a Black trans woman with lived experiences with homelessness. She has been able to transform these experiences into advocacy through her work with True Colors Fund, an organization that works with mostly LGBTQ People of Color. For Phoebe, organizing around homelessness as a visible Black Trans Woman, “means [her] experiences are valued without having to revisit trauma.”It is through her lived experience, that Phoebe is able to uplift a narrative often spoken for as opposed to spoken about through one’s own experiences. Phoebe feels that reclaiming her narrative gives her “quite a bit of power and responsibility” to not only herself, but her communities as well.

The prison system and capitalism are America’s legal slave plantations, where police forces take on the duty of the Master and send the insubordinate to prison so they can ‘reflect’ on their behavior; so they can’t run when the master needs them to bow down and work. The police do the exact job that slave owners and catchers did. Through racial profiling and gender policing, they enter communities, turn people against each other, break up families, and ship children and parents to prisons.