Three new publications offer diverse perspectives on Texas politics, culture and life, from a fixture in San Antonio journalism, a member of an influential San Antonio family and a former San Antonio poet laureate.
More Finish Lines to Cross
Coinciding with Black History Month, Trinity University Press has released More Finish Lines to Cross: Notes on Race, Redemption, and Hope, a collection of columns by San Antonio journalist Cary Clack.
The work of a newspaper columnist is demanding, charged with the expectation of writing insightfully and weighing in cogently on issues of the day. More Finish Lines to Cross looks back on 10 years of Clack’s work during a challenging time that included the election of a divisive president, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter nationwide protests, and the mass shooting of schoolchildren in Uvalde.
In 89 columns, Clack reflects on these difficult shared moments and offers insights into personal experiences including meeting poet Maya Angelou, writing in Atlanta for Coretta Scott King and discovering an LP with the recorded voice of a treasured uncle who had died 25 years earlier.
San Antonio civic leader Aaronetta Pierce introduced Clack to Angelou at a dinner party. Journalists are not generally considered poetic, but the famous poetess’s prophetic words to Clack, “and you are a poet,” presaged his ability to quickly sketch rich, imagistic settings with a minimum of words.
“At night the sound of a distant whistle followed by the muffled rumble of boxcars along the Sunset Station tracks made a child long for places he was yet to know while already missing the places he knew so well,” Clack writes in the 2016 personal essay “Back to Denver Heights.”
In the intro paragraph to “Returning to the Paper Felt Right,” his 2019 column written on his return to the San Antonio Express-News following eight years of political work, Clack writes, “Outside my front door a gray calico cat named Orphan meows, singing lead to the background chorus of a Southern Pacific freight bellowing through downtown.”
Both images call forth the ubiquity of San Antonio’s railroads and speak to Clack’s deep rootedness in his hometown.
The book’s title derives from a 2020 column on racial equality and voter suppression against the anxious backdrop of the looming 2020 election. Clack suggests that elections are only the beginnings of action, and persistence is required to achieve lasting change.
As it is with other injustices and inequities, more work, protesting, marching and strategizing are needed before we cross the finish lines ahead.
Clack will make several public appearances to promote More Finish Lines to Cross: Notes on Race, Redemption, and Hope, the first on Feb. 20 in conversation with poet Naomi Shihab Nye at Trinity University’s Ruth Taylor Recital Hall.
Clack will also appear March 6 at the Twig Book Shop and March 20 at Nowhere Bookshop. The book is available from its publisher for $22.95 in paperback and $17.99 for the e-book edition.
Mi Carnal Frank
The name Frank Tejeda Jr. still rings out on San Antonio’s South Side. The pugilistic but well-regarded politician worked from Austin and Washington, D.C. as a state legislator and U.S. congressman, but kept his fellow South Siders in mind throughout his career.
Among the decorated Vietnam veteran’s accomplishments were fostering a grassroots political alliance of elected officials known as the “Southside Coalition” and shepherding the thriving Brooks residential and commercial development after the closing of the former Brooks Air Force Base.
Tejeda’s younger brother Juan Tejeda, well-known locally as a musician, educator and founder of the Tejano Conjunto Festival at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, realized a biography on his accomplished brother was long overdue, and wrote Mi Carnal Frank: A Family Memoir and Biography, released this month.
“Frank’s life is really interesting and deserves to be told so people can remember the important work that he did for our community,” Tejeda said in episode 41 of Robert Rivard’s bigcitysmalltown podcast.
While the biography focuses on Frank Tejeda’s educational and political accomplishments, it also delves into the more personal, familial side of this public figure.
Reproduced in the book are several handwritten letters Tejeda had sent to his parents from combat duty in Vietnam. A letter dated April 1964 barely hints at the trials he was undergoing as a U.S. Marine, “I am doing fine and everything is going well. The weather is very nice here.”
Tejeda earned the Bronze Star, Silver Star and Purple Heart for bravery in combat. Military experience set him apart from many politicians, Juan Tejeda said.
“Frank was such a buttoned-down, no-nonsense guy. Very, very different than a lot of politicals” as a teetotaler and workout fanatic, Tejeda said. “I don’t think I ever saw a pound of fat on Frank. He was just all about business and discipline.”
Publisher Flowersong Press will hold a free public book launch tardeada on Feb. 18 from 2-5 p.m. at B&N Events Center, featuring a conjunto performance by Tejeda’s primo Armando Tejeda with Flavio Longoria and free pan dulce and café y chocolate from La Familia Cortez restaurants.
Paperback copies of Mi Carnal Frank are available for $20 each on the Flowersong Press website, and the author will be on hand to sign books at the tardeada.
Texas, Being
In April, Trinity University Press will release a collection of 45 poems titled Texas, Being. Former San Antonio and Texas poet laureate Jenny Browne edited the collection of poems by familiar Texans such as Bob Ayres, Naomi Shihab Nye and Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, as well as by non-Texans including Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges who address Texas as a topic in their writing.
The title is taken from “the first poem I remember writing after arriving in the brutal and beautiful state I call home,” Browne writes in her introduction.
While her poem is “small in size,” she writes, it “drives fast from human thirst to sharpened violence, from borders to allergies, from a far horizon toward a closer look at some roadkill,” capturing essences of her adopted home state.
One poem dates from 1939 and Borges’ from 1967, though most were written in the 21st century, variously addressing the towns of Marfa, Alpine and Palestine, a lost Yanaguana, steer and egrets, German-style biergartens and summer heat, and Space X debris.
The concluding lines of Browne’s poem sum up the vastness and specificity of the Lone Star state that has inspired so many writers:
…
because we candrive ten hours and some
how still be here
Texas, Being is available for pre-order on the Trinity University Press website in hardcover and e-book editions.
