Mirrors and other Reflections: Selected Poems

Sanderson, Delta A.

Estuary Press

During the 1960's and 1970's, Harvey Richards worked as a documentary film maker for social activist movements in California and elsewhere. While photographing,editing and producing 22 documentary films for a variety of movement organizations, Richards also took still photographs. Critical Focus exhibits his photography of California's agribusiness, the peace and civil rights movements, the environmental movement and the devastation wreaked by the logging industry on the forests of the west coast.

Critical Focus: The Black and White Photographs of Harvey Wilson Richards

Arts & Photography

Paul Richards

Photography & Video

<p>Nicaragua Way tells the story of Lorna Almendros, a San Francisco Nicaraguan-American poet, passionately engaged in supporting revolutionary struggles in Latin America and the Sandinista solidarity movement in the U.S. Lorna is a mature single woman living in San Francisco, California, raising a teen daughter, searching for her Latino roots among a cast of fascinating characters in culturally diverse San Francisco’s Mission District. Lorna’s memories of her Nicaraguan grandfather sweep her and her daughter, Rini, into the inspiring revolutionary fever of the era’s Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution. San Francisco’s barrio comes alive as the brutal Somoza dynasty falls opening a new era of social justice for all of Central America. This feminist tale is a coming of age story of an older woman. Set in San Francisco and Managua between 1975 and 1989, the novel portrays a rich cast of characters, including Rini, Lorna’s daughter; Eddie, an organizer and revolutionary guerrilla fighter; Helen, her best friend, and a city politician; and Maria Rosa, a Nicaraguan-exiled immigrant. They move between San Francisco’s activist-arts community and Nicaragua, building support for change in the shadow of the U.S. undeclared wars in Central America.Nicaragua Way is a story of a woman in the resistance movement from before the 1979 revolutionary triumph to the end of the revolutionary project with the 1989 election defeat. Along the way the protagonist raises a daughter, falls in love, fears menopause and empty nest blues, faces deaths, intrigue, passions, and never stops writing poems. It is Lorna’s life as an activist and writer, (or “artivist” as some call it) that propelled her forward, As it has been for me. The writing of Nicaragua Way was a 23-year experience spanning the years from 1993 to 2016, fictionalizing the road I myself traveled in the cause of peace, social justice, international friendship, and solidarity. My two decades as the writer began as my protagonist’s story ended. The dividing line was the 1990 electoral defeat of the Sandinista government, an event with the same kind of impact as Trump victory in the USA. I began writing the novel to find a way out of my personal despair due to that election loss. The creation of Lorna’s journey was my own path to rekindling hope and inspiration. With every rewrite, Lorna became stronger, standing up for herself as she faced ever-increasing political and personal challenges in the Nicaragua solidarity movement within the US. My portrayal of Lorna and Rini’s ever deepening involvement in social issues facing Nicaragua during the ten years of transformation is shadowed by the electoral defeat of the revolutionaries in 1990. When the Nicaragua revolution collapsed under the weight of the Contra War led by Ronald Reagan and the Iran-Contra gang, my spirits spiraled downward. I had to understand what happened on a personal level. For me, the political is personal. I had to re-examine my own intimate journey through Nicaragua’s revolutionary years and the international Central American solidarity movement. My inspiration slowly returned as I wrote the story of Lorna’s life in the pages of my novel. I overcame writer’s block, disillusionment, and all the rest of the negativity that keeps us from being our best most creative and resilient selves. I learned that writing is a healing and creative journey.Nicaragua Way can lead readers back to hope and inspiration. It opens a path for readers to find their own strength and creativity to help foster change.</p>

Nicaragua Way: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Serrano, Ms Nina

Literary

<p>From Introduction by Anuar Murrar: More than three and half decades have passed since the publication of the Economic Recovery Plan for the Benefit of the People, 1980. Much has happened since I first laid eyes on a small, somewhat official looking, blue paperback book that was meant for popular consumption by the almost illiterate masses of Nicaragua, an unassuming and dignified people just scarcely liberated months back from a half a century of brutal military dictatorship of the Somoza family dynasty. I participated in all three carefully planned insurrections carried out by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) from 1977 to 1979, but in the end the uprisings exploded ahead of schedule, one per year, until our victorious revolutionary forces marched triumphantly into Managua.Now, suddenly, there was an immediate and urgent need to synthesize the sociopolitical and economic situation of Nicaragua as we prepared to initiate a new decade of revolutionary transformations while the reconstruction of our war-torn economy got underway.The Program that emerged assumed that we would have a peacetime economy, where socioeconomic objectives could be established, benchmarks set and implemented, and where evaluation, analysis and revision could take place. The counter-revolutionary war, also known as the Contra War in the US, changed all of that. Instead of analyzing indicators and formal economic variables, we had to deal with the destruction and how to make ends meet in the non-conflict zones.Achieving our economic goals took second place to the primary objective of surviving and defeating the Contras. That is what happened in Nicaragua during the decade of the 80s: the Contra War aborted the possibility of implementing the Program you are about to read. Nowadays, the Program is an historic document containing a clear statistical picture of what we faced at the moment of transformation from the Somoza dictatorship to a post insurrection economy.From the Program Introduction: This Program was not the fruit of some abstract, theoretical exercise, but the shared effort of some two hundred state technicians, consultants and representatives of people's organizations besides discussions with the private sector. What resulted was a new style of work and education on the State's part.We want to say that the Program covers all our country's and our people's economic topics, yet has a focus of attention: the masses historically exploited by Somocismo who involved themselves in a just war without quarter. Revolutionary goals, therefore, rest on the revolution's trust in the workers, generators of wealth and principal protagonists in reconstruction. There are parameters of duty that the workers are going to have to assume in their work, their norms and their salaries. We want to thank especially the members of the Cabinet and the two hundred state technicians who worked jointly on the Program for carrying through to the end the preparation of the Program of Economic Reactivation for the People's Benefit: 1980. We also thank the representatives of the people's organizations for their participation. In addition, we gratefully acknowledge the collaboration by the representatives of private enterprise in this first experience of theirs with planning in Nicaragua.</p>

Program of Economic Reactivation for the Benefit of the People, 1980: Programa de Reactivacion Economica en Beneficio del Pueblo para 1980

Business & Money

Nicaraguan Ministry of Planning

Economics

The Story of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg: A Court Room and Prison Drama

Richards, Paul

Serrano, Nina

Binder, Judith

Dramas & Plays

An easy visual key to over 400 of the most common plants and wildlife found in Olympic National Park and Washington's Olympic Peninsula

Olympic National Park: Nature Guide

Larry and Nancy Eipert

World Out of Order: Selected Cartoons by Joe Serrano

Comics & Graphic Novels

Serrano, Joe

Comic Strips

Private Property and the Goddess

Biographies & Memoirs

Richards PhD, Paul David

Community & Culture

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Books by Estuary Press