17 min
Nonfiction: Corridos and Tragedias: I Will No Longer Erase Us, Or Let You Erase Us by Kase Jonstun LatinX Audio Lit Mag
-
- Arts
"By the time I was old enough to know, they only spoke in Spanish when they fought or when they swore. Then he would lift his hand and spin his finger around, directing me to dance while the first chords of La Cucaracha sang from his guitar. “La cucaracha y no puedo caminar.”
And he always sang the version that included “marijuana que fumar,” and he would get another side glance and laugh from grandma. Growing up, I thought this was the original and only version of the song. I had to look it up years later to learn that it has been around for decades but it’s not the version most grandfathers teach their grandchildren.
With this, for my grandpa Cordova, was par for the course on just about everything he taught us. If there was a dirty version of a song or a joke, that’s the one we heard."
Kase Johnston is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and memoirist. He lives in Ogden, Utah, with his small family, and is on the board of Label Me Latina/o literary journal — just a writer who has been grappling with identity his whole life.
Author: 'Cast Away' (forthcoming from Torrey House Press, 2024). You can buy the new book now! https://www.torreyhouse.org/let-the-wild-grasses-grow
'Let the Wild Grasses Grow' (Torrey House Press, 2021), Finalist High Plains Book Award, Fiction, 2022, Women’s National Book Association Great Group Read 2022
And 'Beyond the Grip of Craniosynostosis (McFarland & Co, 2015), Winner of the 2015 Gold Quill, League of Utah Writers
Co author/editor: Utah Reflections: Stories from the Wasatch Front (History Press, 2014)Host, The LITerally Podcast - http://www.thebanyancollective.com/literally/
"By the time I was old enough to know, they only spoke in Spanish when they fought or when they swore. Then he would lift his hand and spin his finger around, directing me to dance while the first chords of La Cucaracha sang from his guitar. “La cucaracha y no puedo caminar.”
And he always sang the version that included “marijuana que fumar,” and he would get another side glance and laugh from grandma. Growing up, I thought this was the original and only version of the song. I had to look it up years later to learn that it has been around for decades but it’s not the version most grandfathers teach their grandchildren.
With this, for my grandpa Cordova, was par for the course on just about everything he taught us. If there was a dirty version of a song or a joke, that’s the one we heard."
Kase Johnston is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and memoirist. He lives in Ogden, Utah, with his small family, and is on the board of Label Me Latina/o literary journal — just a writer who has been grappling with identity his whole life.
Author: 'Cast Away' (forthcoming from Torrey House Press, 2024). You can buy the new book now! https://www.torreyhouse.org/let-the-wild-grasses-grow
'Let the Wild Grasses Grow' (Torrey House Press, 2021), Finalist High Plains Book Award, Fiction, 2022, Women’s National Book Association Great Group Read 2022
And 'Beyond the Grip of Craniosynostosis (McFarland & Co, 2015), Winner of the 2015 Gold Quill, League of Utah Writers
Co author/editor: Utah Reflections: Stories from the Wasatch Front (History Press, 2014)Host, The LITerally Podcast - http://www.thebanyancollective.com/literally/
17 min