5th Annual Nuestras Raíces Mercado

Join us for crafts, music and dance for all ages. Book, art and food vendors will sell their wares. Batucaxé, a Tucson Percussion Ensemble inspired by the music of Brazil, will perform from 12:30-1:30.

Friday, February 29, 10am-5:30pm

Jácome Plaza, in front of Joel D Valdez Main Library

Nuestras Raíces Film Festival

An evening of film will celebrate the creativity and diversity of Tucson's Mexican American culture. Short film producers will compete for first, second and third place prizes.

Friday, February 29, 7-9

The Screening Room, 127 E. Congress Street

Trace Your Hispanic Genealogy and Research

There are many people in the City of Tucson whose family history started with the settling of the Spanish in the late 1700s. Are you from one of these families?

Tony and Lynne Urias, 7/8th generation Tucsonans, will teach you how to research Hispanic family geneology and history in Tucson. Join us for this rare opportunity to learn how to document your family history and in time create a self published book on your family heritage.

You will receive free handouts and forms as guides to help with your research. A $3 guide book to all the local repositories in Tucson where Spanish documents, baptismal, birth, marriage and property records are stored will be available for purchase at the program.

Monday, March 24, 6:30-7:30pm

Joel D Valdez Main, LL1 Meeting Room

Thursday, March 27, 6:30-7:30pm

Woods Memorial

Tucson's Early History with Living Historian Irma Juanita Moreno

In celebration of Nuestras Raíces, living historian Irma Juanita Moreno will share stories about Tucson's early history. Mrs. Moreno, a fourth-generation Tucsonan, will discuss the contributions of the Native Americans, Spanish and Mexican cultures. Her presentation includes artifacts from the different cultures and dress-up activities for students.

Monday, March 3, 4pm

Lena-South Tucson

Wednesday, March 26, 4-5pm

Joel D Valdez Main, LL1 Meeting Room

Los Mariachis Mexicanos Puppet Show

Come watch the puppet show, Los Mariachis Mexicanos performed by the superb puppeteers of the Pima County Public Library. This show is an adaptation of the popular folktale, The Brementown Musicians. The program will also include stories, songs and a craft project.

Saturday, March 8, 11am

Joel D Valdez Main, Children's Meeting Room

Monica Brown

Monica Brown, Ph.D. is the author of several award-winning bilingual books for children as well as an Associate Professor of English at Northern Arizona University, specializing in U.S. Latino Literature and Multicultural Literature. She also writes and publishes scholarly work with a Latino focus, including Gang Nation: Delinquent Citizenship in Puerto Rican and Chicano and Chicana Literature; and numerous articles on Latino literature and cultural studies. She regularly speaks at conferences and book festivals across the country, and received the prestigious Rockefeller Fellowship on Chicano Cultural Literacies from the Center for Chicano Studies at the University of California. Brown lives with her husband and two daughters in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Malín Alegria Ramirez and Quinceñera Fashion Show

Malín Alegria Ramirez was raised in San Francisco's Mission District. She's a graduate of UC Santa Barbara and received her MA in Education. She is a teacher, eco warrior, Aztec dancer, and performer. She has performed and written with Teatro Nopal & the WILL Collective. Estrella's Quinceñera was published by Simon & Schuster in 2006. Her second novel Sofi Mendoza's Guide to Getting Lost in Mexico was released May 2007. Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies "Once Upon a Cuento," and "15 Candles: 15 Tales of Taffeta, Hairspray, Drunk Uncles, and other Quinceañera Stories". Malin currently lives in California and New Mexico where she teaches, writes, and is hard at work on growing the perfect nopal.

Lalo Alcaraz

Lalo Alcaraz is the creator of the nationally syndicated and politically charged Latino comic strip La Cucaracha, featured daily in the Los Angeles Times, Denver Post, Arizona Republic, Houston Chronicle, Chicago Sun-Times, San Diego Tribune, and 75 other major newspapers. Bringing a young fearless Latino sensibility to his political and social commentary, his is a fresh voice whose unabashedly pro-immigrant, progressive stance about the need for a multicultural visibility in the media is long overdue. His latest books are La Cucaracha and Migra Mouse. Lalo co-edits the satirical magazine, POCHO.

Silviana Wood

Silviana Wood has taught Chicano/Latino Theatre, Literature, and Writing at Pima Community College, and has also conducted many workshops in collective script writing, poetry, playwriting, and creative writing at schools, libraries, and theatre companies. She has written over 20 full-length bilingual plays which have been produced in Tucson, San Antonio, and New York City.

Roni Capin Rivera-Ashford

Roni Capin Rivera-Ashford was born to a Nogales, AZ Pioneer Jewish family and grew up in the small border town where, from infancy, she embraced the people, their language and culture. She is a certified bilingual elementary schoolteacher. Through her freelance consulting business, RCA Translations and Creative Language, Roni edits, translates, interprets and presents cultural awareness and diversity appreciation workshops in connection with her writing.

Stella Pope Duarte

Inspired to become a writer through a prophetic dream of her father in 1995, Stella Pope Duarte's writing is described as lyrical and vivid, reminiscent at once of Laura Esquivel and Alice Hoffman. Her first collection of short stories, Fragile Night, (Bilingual Review Press, 1997) won a creative writing fellowship from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and was named a candidate for the prestigious, Pen West Fiction Award. In 2001, Ms. Duarte was awarded a second creative writing fellowship for her current novel, Let Their Spirits Dance, (HarperCollins, 2002). Critiques have described Duarte as a "major, new literary voice in America." Ms. Duarte's work has won awards and honors nationwide, including a nomination for the Pushcart Prize in Literature. Ms. Duarte was born and raised in the Sonorita Barrio in South Phoenix.

Norma Medina

Native Tucsonan Norma Medina is best known as an actor and singer. She was a featured soloist with Sherry Hoffman and the Tucson Pops Symphony, as well as a Borderlands Theater Company regular for 20 years. She has been seen productions such as Electricidad, Real Women Have Curves, Latins Anonymous and had a recurring role in the annual production of A Tucson Pastorela with her dear friend Albert Soto. Norma has worked with local companies as a well as Arizona Theatre Company. Her one act play Neon Lights and Red Seats was workshopped at the Arizona Theatre Company and was a finalist in a playwriting competition at the Public Theatre in New York City. Norma, a 2006 graduate of Prescott College, is currently pursuing an MFA in directing at the Actors Studio in New York City and as a student in the program is a regular participant in the television show Inside the Actors Studio with James Lipton on the Bravo Channel. Norma likes to write about Tucson because it is "the most fascinating place in the world."