 |
Current Issue
Past
Issues
Faculty/Staff
Notes
About
Monitor
Marketing & Communications |
|
|
|
 |
bgsu monitor |
 |
|
|
|
'Dirty
Girls' author to speak at Latino Issues Conference
Best-selling author Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez will be the
keynote speaker at BGSU’s 10th annual Latino Issues
Conference April 22. “In and Out: Making Latino
Sense” is the theme of this year’s event.
Organized by Bowling Green undergraduates, the conference
will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Lenhart
Grand Ballroom of the Bowen-Thompson Student Union. A
number of panel sessions throughout the day will focus
on contrasts in biologies, aesthetics, rhythms and histories,
featuring the perspectives of both academics and students.
Presenters include faculty members from BGSU, Bates College
and William Paterson University.
Bowling Green Mayor John Quinn will open the conference
at 9 a.m. with the unveiling of a mural honoring farmworkers
by Toledo artist Andres Orlowski. The artist will discuss
the mural project, in which he worked with area youth,
later in the day.
Valdes-Rodriguez will discuss the universal issues faced
by those wishing to realize their career and personal
dreams. She will speak during the conference luncheon,
which takes place from 11:45 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the
ballroom. Following the luncheon, she will sign copies
of her book, The Dirty Girls Social Club.
Also during the luncheon, winners of the 2004 Miguel Ornelas
Awards will be announced. These awards recognize members
of the campus community who have positively influenced
human relations on campus.
Valdes-Rodriguez’s 2002 debut novel, The Dirty Girls
Social Club, spent three months on the New York Times
bestseller list. It will be released in paperback this
May, and film rights to the story have been optioned by
Columbia Pictures. Her next book, Playing with Boys, will
be published this October, again by St. Martin’s
Press.
The daughter of a Cuban father and Irish-American mother,
Valdes-Rodriguez grew up in Albuquerque. She studied jazz
saxophone at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where
an essay she wrote on sexism in the jazz world led to
a job writing for the Boston Globe. She went on to earn
a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University,
and later covered the Spanish-language music industry
for the Los Angeles Times and taught journalism courses
at UCLA.
Leaving Los Angeles after two years, she focused on her
writing while teaching at the University of New Mexico.
During this time she produced The Dirty Girls Social Club,
a look at six upwardly mobile Latina friends in their
twenties, from varied Hispanic backgrounds.
Begun in 1994, the purpose of the annual Latino Issues
Conference is to promote cultural awareness and further
educate the BGSU campus and community about Latinos’
contributions to society. It is conducted by undergraduates
in conjunction with the Department of Romance Languages,
the Latino Student Union, Juntos (the Latino Graduate
Student Association) and the Center for Multicultural
Initiatives.
Except for lunch, which costs $7, the conference is free
and is open to all. To register, visit www.bgsu.edu/offices/sa/cmai/lic.
Tickets for the luncheon are available at 424 Saddlemire
Student Services Building. Lunch reservations are due
by tomorrow (April 20). For more information, call 2-2642
or email cmai@bgnet.bgsu.edu. |
|
|
|
