Sergio Troncoso's Blog: Chico Lingo, by Sergio Troncoso, page 14

Winners of 2016 Troncoso Reading Prizes

Yesterday the staff of the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library
and I presented the winners of the 2016 Troncoso Reading Prizes with
certificates of achievement and gift cards from Barnes Noble.


The winners also received a signed copy of one of my books, and we read
their individual essays on their favorite books. I was so proud of all
the winners.


Here are some pictures with parents, teachers, and school administrators
who attended the event at the library. I can’t wait to do it again next
year.


Winners of 2016 Troncoso Reading Prizes:


9-12th grade category:

1st Place: Alejandra Mendoza, Del Valle High School; 2nd Place: Anais
Madrid, El Paso Academy; 3rd Place: Jasmine Saldana
Madrid, Valle Verde Early College High School.






5-8th grade category:

1st Place: Natalie Rivas, Presa Elementary School; 2nd Place: Isabel
Batista, LeBarron Elementary School; 3rd Place: Adenike Herrera,
LeBarron Elementary School.


Every year, we award prizes for students who read the most books between September 15-November 15. The
prizes are awarded only to students within the geographical area
covered by the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library. A list of eligible
schools is available at Troncoso Reading Prizes.




First
Place receives a $125.00 gift card, Second Place receives a $100.00
gift card, and Third Place receives a $75.00 gift card. All prizes are
gift cards from Barnes and Noble Booksellers. A total of six prizes are
awarded in the two categories every year.






Each student also picks a favorite book from the books read and
writes a short essay (100 word or less) on that book. We read those essays at the awards ceremony.


Librarians
at the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library register
readers during the eligible period of the prizes. The library staff
administers the prizes and makes final decisions on all the
prizewinners.


If you have any questions or to register
next year, please contact the library staff at the Sergio Troncoso
Branch Library, 9321 Alameda Avenue, El Paso, Texas, 79907. Telephone:
915-858-0905. 

Winners of 2016 Troncoso Reading Prizes

Yesterday the staff of the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library and I presented the winners of the 2016 Troncoso Reading Prizes with certificates of achievement and gift cards from Barnes Noble. The winners also received a signed copy of one of my books, and we read their individual essays on their favorite books. I was so proud of all the winners.

Here are some pictures with parents, teachers, and school administrators who attended the event at the library. I can't wait to do it again next year.

Winners of 2016 Troncoso Reading Prizes:

9-12th grade category:
1st Place: Alejandra Mendoza, Del Valle High School; 2nd Place: Anais Madrid, El Paso Academy; 3rd Place: Jasmine Saldana Madrid, Valle Verde Early College High School.

5-8th grade category:
1st Place: Natalie Rivas, Presa Elementary School; 2nd Place: Isabel Batista, LeBarron Elementary School; 3rd Place: Adenike Herrera, LeBarron Elementary School.

Every year, we award prizes for students who read the most books between September 15-November 15. The prizes are awarded only to students within the geographical area covered by the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library. A list of eligible schools is available at Troncoso Reading Prizes.

First Place receives a $125.00 gift card, Second Place receives a $100.00 gift card, and Third Place receives a $75.00 gift card. All prizes are gift cards from Barnes and Noble Booksellers. A total of six prizes are awarded in the two categories every year.

Each student also picks a favorite book from the books read and writes a short essay (100 word or less) on that book. We read those essays at the awards ceremony.

Librarians at the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library register readers during the eligible period of the prizes. The library staff administers the prizes and makes final decisions on all the prizewinners.

If you have any questions or to register next year, please contact the library staff at the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library, 9321 Alameda Avenue, El Paso, Texas, 79907. Telephone: 915-858-0905.

Texas Institute of Letters to meet in El Paso for first time

“The Texas Institute of Letters, one of the more prestigious literary
groups in the state, will have its annual meeting in El Paso next April
for the first time in its 82-year history.

’It’s not simply that El Paso is one of the most interesting and
important cities in Texas, it’s that El Paso has arguably the richest
literary heritage of any city in Texas,’ Steve Davis, president of the
Institute, said in an email….

Troncoso said in an email that he encouraged the group to come to El Paso after Davis initiated the idea.


‘This is long overdue, of course. So it’s a day to rejoice, and a day to
celebrate El Paso’s literary contribution to Texas,’ Troncoso said. ‘Without writers from El Paso, or writers who lived in El Paso for a
time, Texas letters would be unrecognizable. I think the TIL is also
making a concerted effort to change and to focus on the future and to
recognize the quality of literature that has been produced by writers
with an El Paso connection.’“

http://www.elpasotimes.com/story/entertainment/books/2016/07/02/writers-group-meet-el-paso-first-time/86469272/

I had a wonderful time at the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library for...

I had a wonderful time at the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library for Día de los Niños/Día de los Libros in El Paso, TX. I talked to dozens of families about how to create a reading culture at home, how to focus families on education to develop your voice as citizens, as writers. Exhausted by the end, but happy to have met so many people.

2016 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

James Hannaham’s Delicious Foods wins the 2016 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction:

http://www.penfaulkner.org/2016/04/05/announcing-the-2016-penfaulkner-award-winner/

Judge Sergio Troncoso calls the novel “exceptional” and
“impressive”–“it speaks to the American experience today in a variety
of ways, from the entrapment of perspective because of poverty and drug
use to the heroic perseverance of character even after the worst of
choices and atrocities. Delicious Foods
is a standout work of fiction that will surely expand a reader’s
empathy for the struggles of a variety of groups and individuals freeing
themselves from modern enslavement.”

http://www.omnivoracious.com/2016/04/pen-faulkner-award-amazon-book-review.html

Five finalists for 2016 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

Five finalists announced for the 2016 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: James Hannaham (Delicious Foods), Julie Iromuanya (Mr. and Mrs. Doctor), Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer), Elizabeth Tallent (Mendocino Fire), and Luis Alberto Urrea (The Water Museum). The judges this year are Abby Frucht, Molly McCloskey and Sergio
Troncoso. They considered almost 500 works of fiction by Americans
published in the United States during 2015.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-2016-finalists-for-the-penfaulkner-award/2016/03/07/94da16da-e492-11e5-a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html

Sergio Troncoso, “Why Read?” in Chico Lingo Blog.

Sergio Troncoso, “Why Read?” in Chico Lingo Blog.

Is Insta-responding Corrupting the American Character?

I watched President Obama and his town hall meeting tonight, with Anderson Cooper, and their discussion and debate with the audience about gun violence and Obama’s modest proposals on gun control. What struck me was perhaps something odd, but the more I thought about it, perhaps something important about modern political discourse: Obama’s speech was slow and deliberate and thoughtful, while Cooper’s speech was quick and pointed and glib.
I thought about Obama’s slow speaking as a way of talking in a seminar, when you have two or three hours to understand a point, whereas Cooper’s speech was on a timer, a fuse lit with seconds to go, zeroing in on a quick point, entertaining yet superficial. As a somewhat slow talker myself, I could listen to Obama, and I gave him the patience to make his point, and I agreed with much of what he said. I wondered if Cooper—representing the media and in a way how we communicate in our media culture—was more modern than Obama, but also at the root of why we in this country are less of a ‘we’ as years go by, why we talk past each other in political discourse, why we characterize opponents in stereotypes (or other facile categorizations) and caricatures. Has ‘media insta-responding,’ to coin a term, corrupted our ability to think carefully, to weigh, to consider, and even to empathize? When we know of a world that only ‘insta-responds,’ do we start basing our decisions on prejudices, stereotypes, and easily understood theories without tests in gritty practice?
Insta-responding is part of our world in a way that it never was for me growing up. We insta-respond on Facebook by pressing a ‘Like’ button, and that somehow demonstrates our political solidarity, or aesthetic preference, or temporary pleasure, or all of the above. We insta-respond through talk radio, with one voice reaching millions and pontificating on this or that current event, quickly, glibly, for entertainment as well as to score political points. And sometimes these are exactly the same: to score a quick political point is to entertain, even if your point is superficial, or based on a straw-man version of your opponent.

Insta-responding is the internet. The troll is a creature of responding fast, in every newspaper discussion page online, in any kind of entertainment forum online. When you are responding fast, and are kind of an ass, then of course you want the ability to be anonymous. So online responding has led to ‘discussion pages’ that are not about discussing anything, but more like pages of one-sentence hit pieces to vent, to smear, to feel good about yourself when you have little else to feel good about. Responding on these ‘discussion pages’ has never changed my mind about anything, has never illuminated me to a new perspective. It’s mostly invective.
Of course, where we see a constant river of insta-responding is on television, and its news, where anchors respond to events as they unfold, before they know who did what to whom, where reporters give preliminary (and often false) conclusions, but who cares? The point is to respond, to capture eyeballs, to entertain, to show the gut-wrenching images, and later, much, much later, to make sense of it all. If anyone tunes in for that more considered perspective or the matter-of-fact corrections the next day, that is. The TV crowd may already be on to the next disaster, or outrage, or political fiasco. And so the wheel keeps a-spinning!
One of the reasons TV has been the first and most important purveyor of insta-responding is because time is money on television. If you can’t speak (and respond quickly), then you can never be an Anderson Cooper. Every second of ‘no talking,’ of ‘no reacting,’ is a second when the viewer can turn away, change the channel. Advertisers hate that, and so do television executives. When we put a price on time, on seconds, and when we put that time on an apparatus called television, any reasonable person would have expected ‘discussions’ to be glib and quick and definitely entertaining, and with images that would also be arresting. A split-second of an image communicates more viscerally than anyone describing that same image. When we as a country have most of our political discourse filtered through television, what do you, as that reasonable person, think would happen to that discourse? ‘Discourse’ would become ‘talk,’ and ‘thinking’ would become ‘insta-responding.’
What kind of political candidate would be favored in this insta-responding world? Someone who would promise to bomb all the bad guys as ‘foreign policy.’ Someone who would say, “Trust me. Just don’t ask me too many hard questions and expect concrete answers.” Someone who would play to your prejudices and anxieties. Someone with all the answers, as long as these ‘answers’ are easy, digestible, colorful, and even outrageous. Someone arrogant who makes fun of complexity and thinking and any crap that keeps him from adulation, or as I would put it, a slavish insta-responding to him.
Imagine another world. Imagine a world where people would turn off their televisions, and debate outside, over cups of coffee, and not through any filters like talk radio hosts, but face-to-face. What would happen to empathy? Imagine if we had hours upon hours discussing such serious issues as gun control, gun violence, the Constitution, the United States becoming multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious as never before, and that these discussions would be done in town squares, or better, through lunches, and weekly meetings that would last until most of us got hungry. Then some of us would go out for a bite to eat. What would happen to how we see each other?
Imagine that many of us valued being alone, and bolstered our minds through reading, and reading literary fiction from other worlds, and imagine that we would take the time to read these long novels from other worlds, and so consider other viewpoints, other societies, characters radically different from us, yet complex characters surviving, failing, trying, loving. What would happen to who we would consider an Other?

Imagine, finally, that we would seek respect from others not because of the size of our biceps or how we could punch like Holly Holm, and not because we are in an SUV and angry and so we better goddamn get respect on the highway, and certainly not because we had a gun in our hand, nor money in the bank, nor a cutie in our arms. We might still need a gun to protect ourselves, and we most certainly would need a cutie in our arms for a variety of reasons, but we would not go to the gun because we demand insta-respect from innocents, and the cutie would be in our arms because we read, and are calm and reliable, and that cutie is like us, a reader, and maybe even a Trekkie or at least a sci-fi geek. We’re imagining, okay?
It’s not too late, America, to escape the Cave of Insta-Responding. Read. Think. Go talk to someone different from you and take him or her out to lunch. And respond to what you hear, but don’t just blab: write about it.
www.ChicoLingo.com

Winners of 2015 Troncoso Reading Prizes

This week the staff of the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library and I presented the inaugural winners of the  Troncoso Reading Prizes with certificates of achievement, gift cards from Barnes Noble, and gift bags from the El Paso Public Library.


The winners also received a signed copy of one of my books, and we read
their individual essays on their favorite books. Here are some pictures
with parents, teachers, and even principals who attended the event at
the library. I can’t wait to do it again next year.


Winners of 2015 Troncoso Reading Prizes:


9-12th grade category:
1st Place: Alejandra Mendoza, Del Valle High School, 2nd Place: Jasmine
Saldana Madrid, Valle Verde Early College High School, 3rd Place: Amber
Saldana Madrid, Valle Verde Early College High School.


5-8th
grade category: 1st Place: Galilea Rodriguez, LeBarron Elementary
School, 2nd Place: Jesus Martinez, Presa Elementary School, 3rd Place:
Victoria Alarcon, LeBarron Elementary School.

Winners of 2015 Troncoso Reading Prizes

This week the staff of the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library and I presented the inaugural winners of the Troncoso Reading Prizes with certificates of achievement, gift cards from Barnes Noble, and gift bags from the El Paso Public Library.

The winners also received a signed copy of one of my books, and we read their individual essays on their favorite books. Here are some pictures with parents, teachers, and even principals who attended the event at the library. I can't wait to do it again next year.

Winners of 2015 Troncoso Reading Prizes:

9-12th grade category: 1st Place: Alejandra Mendoza, Del Valle High School, 2nd Place: Jasmine Saldana Madrid, Valle Verde Early College High School, 3rd Place: Amber Saldana Madrid, Valle Verde Early College High School.

5-8th grade category: 1st Place: Galilea Rodriguez, LeBarron Elementary School, 2nd Place: Jesus Martinez, Presa Elementary School, 3rd Place: Victoria Alarcon, LeBarron Elementary School.

A total of 90 students signed up for the inaugural Troncoso Reading Prizes, and these students read a remarkable 1,562 books. An overwhelming majority, 71 students, read five or more books between September 15-November 15. Many students read more than twenty books.

The prizes are awarded only to students within the geographical area covered by the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library. A list of eligible schools is available at Troncoso Reading Prizes.

First Place receives a $125.00 gift card, Second Place receives a $100.00 gift card, and Third Place receives a $75.00 gift card. All prizes are gift cards from Barnes and Noble Booksellers. A total of six prizes are awarded in the two categories every year.

The prizes are given to students who read the most books from September 15 to November 15 of each year. During this time period, students read a minimum of five books. The students who read the most books are the prizewinners. Each student picks a favorite book from the books read and writes a short essay (100 word or less) on that book. Prizewinners have their essays laminated and displayed next to their favorite book in the library.

Librarians at the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library use the Evance System to register readers during the eligible period of the prizes. The library staff administers the prizes and makes final decisions on all the prizewinners.

If you have any questions or to register next year, please contact the library staff at the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library, 9321 Alameda Avenue, El Paso, Texas, 79907. Telephone: 915-858-0905.