Tale of Two Espinozas: Washington, D.C./Guadalajara

John Olivares Espinoza and Alex Espinoza were in the same undergraduate creative writing class at UC Riverside years ago and graduated in the same year.
Alex and John published in Gary Soto's Chicano Chapbook Series. Alex recently published his first novel, and John recently published his first book of poems.Today, Alex was a featured writer at the Guadalajara International Book Fair in Mexico. Today, John was a featured poet at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C...

I mentioned some of these parallels as I introduced John today, and I couldn't help but marvel and celebrate the trajectories of these two Espinozas as we inhabited that gallery space, surrounded by the images, tools, and voices of those who migrated north between 1942 and 1964. Espinozas whose verse and prose tell our stories.