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		Sightings: Selected Works By Shin Yu Pai Published by 913 Press Sightings: Selected Works (2000–2005) gathers together my visual and poetic texts from several artistic collaborations with various artists. Divided into 4 sections, each section is comprised of writings from individual projects. The Love Hotel Poems is a series of poems written in response to the work of documentary photographer Misty Keasler. Visual and narrative texts examine the role and culture of Japanese love hotels, subverting and expanding upon the authoritarian narrative of the documentarian/social critic obsessed with Japan's sex fetishes and who critiques the culture as outsider. The text series gives insight into the culture and economy of love hotels, examining the experiences of teens, married couples, single men and behind-the-scenes workers in these artificial environments created to give pleasure and comfort. Taking its title from the language of sports, Unnecessary Roughness examines issues such as the socialization of violence through game playing and sports, the development of adolescent identity and sexuality, pain thresholds, and gender issues. Poetic texts incorporate the imagery and vocabulary of various sports, (dodge ball, baseball, cheerleading, body building, hockey, professional wrestling, etc.) Building upon the work of artists such as Brian Finke, Collier Schorr and James Cullinane, the author is concerned with exploring the role of sports in creating and reinforcing power structures and social function within this series. Concave is the Opposite of Convex is a play in verse composed from phrases in a Chinese-English phrasebook. In the 1800s, the Chinese learned English through rote memorization and repetition of essential phrases which allowed them to assimilate into Western society. Influenced by the language plays of Gertrude Stein, phrases from a vintage Chinese-English phrase book were collaged and rearranged into a narrative poet's play composed as part of an interdisciplinary collaboration for the Print + Mass exhibition at Gallery 2 in Chicago which included aspects of sound, text, video, and installation. Nutritional Feed is a series of poems written after the work of New York painter David Lukowski. Mr. Lukowski's images are abstract narratives informed by the works of such artists as Jasper Johns and Jean-Michel Basquiat, drawing heavily upon popular culture and reflective of childhood and the American identity. My poetic texts engage the paintings in a dialogue concerning artistic process and treat the works as ekphrastic objects, tracking the process of eye, mind, and heart. Though the texts gathered together in Sightings : Selected Works (2000–2005) draw on various sources and employ a range of literary strategies, the texts here continue to build on my interests as a writer exploring themes of cultural identity and the experience of socialization, which is a concern within each of these bodies of work.		La Gringa By Pedro Martínez Published by Floricanto Press La Gringa is a strangely different narrative of the American dream.  It is told in new voices, and it crosses forbidden lines.  The narrative revolves around Jade Stewart, the first woman elected President of the U.S. and, at thirty-five, the youngest. Narrated mostly by Joe Garcia, a Marine Colonel and childhood friend devoted to the President, La Gringa is also told from multiple points of view that push at the edges of literary tradition. The deciphering of the Da Vinci Code discovers Jade Stewart as the descendent of the Davidic Dynasty.  Her existence threatens the legitimacy of Christian orthodoxy, and she is anathema to the Christian fundamentalists.  Beautiful, brilliant and single, she is a controversial and charismatic President at a time of great change in America, including a schism between the American Catholic Church and the Vatican, the admission of English-speaking Canada into the United States, and the political emergence of the Mexican-American community. Her election to the Presidency in 2008 is carried on the brown backs of Chicanos in Texas and California. By the age of fifteen Jade Stewart is uncontrollable, and her wealthy, widowed father, David Stewart, takes her from the family estate in New York to his ranch in South Texas. In Laredo Jade Stewart becomes involved with Beto Guerra, a Chicano mix of Elvis and James Dean.  At the age of seventeen, Jade Stewart has a child out of wedlock by Beto Guerra, who has enlisted in the Marines and not returned from the wars of the Middle East.  The day after the child's birth, David Stewart tells Jade that her baby boy has died.  After her election eighteen years later, President Stewart's enemies, the terrorist Christian Militias, steal the records of her child's birth and presumed death. Threatening to charge that the President had had an abortion, they attempt to blackmail her.  The President sends Joe Garcia to Laredo to recover the evidence that her child died the day after birth. Embedded with compelling characters from across the spectrum of the American narrative, La Gringa is an imaginative and disturbing vision of what the future may bring. Sprung tightly by metaphor at the beginning, the plot springs to a violent conclusion, as Joe Garcia follows a trail that skirts taboo, tests his loyalty to the Anglo America of Jade Stewart, and careens towards Monarchy. This website: Copyright © 2007 Dream World Media, LLC. / Urban Mozaik Magazine. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed in Urban Mozaik Magazine are not necessarily those of Urban Mozaik Magazine and the publisher cannot be held responsible for them. This website/publication, in whole or in part, may not be reproduced without written permission from the publisher.