The English Department is proud to announce this year’s Patricia Eliet Memorial Lecture, featuring writer, visual artist, and activist Jaime Cortez, on Monday, February 24, in Ballroom B of the Student Union at 5:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
Mr. Cortez’s debut collection of short stories, GORDO, is a semi-autobiographical depiction of the lives of migrant farm workers in and around Watsonville, California in the 1970s. The book, full of humor and family drama, asks from many different directions the question: “Who belongs to America and how are they treated?”
Mr. Cortez also wrote and illustrated the bilingual graphic novel SEXILE, published in 2004 by the Institute for Gay Men's Health, which tells the true story of transgender Cuban immigrant, HIV prevention activist, and artist Adela Vasquez, and was nominated as the National Association of Public Libraries' Queer Book of the Year. Mr. Cortez himself has worked for decades in HIV/AIDS prevention and as an LGBTQ+ rights activist in the Bay Area.
His fiction, essays, and drawings have appeared in diverse publications that include Kindergarde: Experimental Writing For Children (edited 2013 by Dana Teen Lomax for Black Radish Press), No Straight Lines, a 40-year compendium of LGBT comics (edited 2012 by Justin Hall for Fantagraphics Press), Street Art San Francisco (edited 2009 by Annice Jacoby for Abrams Press), and Infinite Cities, an experimental atlas of San Francisco (edited 2010 by Rebecca Solnit for UC Berkeley Press).
Mr. Cortez’ drawings, sculptures, and mixed media art have been exhibited across Northern California at the Oakland Museum of California, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Galería de la Raza, and Southern Exposure.
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