CULTURE COUNTS READING SERIES

CULTURE COUNTS READING SERIES

By Annie Abundiz, Alberto Camacho, Jonathan Gomez

The Culture Counts Reading Series (CCRS) is a poetry workshop and network of transformative relationships grounded in care and creative action across San José, CA. 

Jonathan D. Gomez, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies at SJSU 

CCRS was founded at San José State University (SJSU) in the Fall of 2018 as a response to the hurt caused by a developer’s whitewashing of the Mural de la Raza earlier in the summer. Painted in 1985 by Jose Meza Velasquez, Frank Torres, and a local youth group, the mural depicted signs and symbols of Chicano struggles for social justice, peace, and dignity. A group of students at SJSU saw the whitewashing, along with the city’s inaction to restore it, as a dismissal of their Chicanx heritage—reinforcing the feeling that it is too often overlooked by public officials. The collective came together to discuss how to respond, leading to the founding of CCRS as a space to study the histories and explore the cultural marvelousness of Chicanx, Black, Asian American, and Indigenous communities through the spoken and written word. Over the years, CCRS has been shaped by SJSU students, alumni, community members, artists, and activists throughout the Bay Area and beyond. 

Alberto Camacho, Poet, Educator, and a member of CCRS since 2019: 

As an educator within the East Side of San José, I’ve sought out the use of poesia as a means to challenge the academic and institutional inequities East Side youth face within systemic institutions like schools while simultaneously using it as a means of resistance and empowerment to disrupt those very same systems. Through CCRS I’ve seen them undergo an incredible self journey that’s helped them develop into lideres - donde ya no pelean con los puños, si no, defienden con sus palabras y levantan a su comunidad con su espiritu luchador. Within CCRS, I learn more about their experiences and themselves. Here, their hopes and dreams become reality, and they’re seen as someone who will become something. Here, they are valued and appreciated – revered street-losophers whose presence is noted and makes an impact. CCRS has helped cultivate a reinvigoration of young Chicanx scholars, who by all means necessary are the future leaders of their comunidades and CCRS… 

Annie Abundiz, Poet, Educator, and a member of CCRS since 2021: 

While Eastside San José has undergone changes to its landscape, arte y cultura remains the heartbeat of our people. As with Mural De la Raza, oral stories and archives outlive city developments and whitewashing. By bringing together poets of all ages and backgrounds, CCRS has become a space of cultural exchange to pass down wisdom and reflect on the history of our people’s movement. In the heart of the Mayfair community, the Mexican Heritage Plaza has been home to our 2023 end-of-year celebration and a collaboration with Teatro Vision’s production of La Muerte Baila. Community members crafted poems speaking to their joy, healing, and remembrance - a collaborative offering to mend and listen to our needs. Chicanx activists and poets, including Luis J. Rodriguez, Carlos Muñoz, and Lorna Dee Cervantes, have engaged with CCRS for writing workshops, readings, and open mics. Weaving the past and present, a new generation of writers and activists emerges. Third spaces of liberation and regeneration grow out of our imagination for a more just and abundant future. Here, our culture counts, and we write our own medicine - porque aqui la cultura cura.

---