Friday, February 3, 2023, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Co-presented by the UCR Department of Creative Writing / the Tomás Rivera Lecture Series and The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, please join us for a joint reading and conversation with Dr. Ricky Rodríguez, author of A Kiss Across the Ocean, and Kid Congo Powers, author of Some New Kind of Kick. Audience Q&A, reception, and book signing to follow.
Hosted by Professor Alex Espinoza and moderated by author and professor Michael Jaime-Becerra, this event will showcase these memoirs and the affinity shared by both Rodríguez and Powers as pioneering Chicanx figures.
Rodríguez’s book is a genre-melding work that is a part academic text, part memoir about growing up immersed in the 1980s British New Wave music. The book transcends the usual conversations about Latinx punk and post-punk fandom by showing how, across space and time, Latinx culture actually helped shape the work of artists such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Soft Cell, and Bauhaus, among many other influential groups.
For the last four decades, Kid Congo Powers has been widely known in underground music circles as a musician in bands such as The Gun Club, The Cramps, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, as well as for leading his own group, The Pink Monkey Birds. His long-awaited memoir tells a story of acceptance and community through his experiences as a young, queer Chicano in Los Angeles’s nascent glam and punk rock scenes.
Doors open at 6:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public. Advance registration is required.