NATIVE AND AMERICAN: WHISKEY TENDER with DEBORAH JACKSON TAFFA

3:45 pm - 4:30 pm
| Location of Session: Swartz Room
Adult Sessions

Start of Signing: 4:45 pm
| Signing Location: Festival Marketplace

My Schedule

About the Event

Born on the California Yuma reservation and raised in Navajo territory in New Mexico, Deborah Jackson Taffa comes to her own interpretation of identity in her memoir Whiskey Tender. Caught between many worlds – native versus Hispanic heritage, reservation life versus relocalization into cities – Taffa blends the personal with the historical to write an essential story of place, culture, and hope.

About the Author

Photo Credit: Simone Taffa

Deborah Jackson Taffa

Deborah Jackson Taffa is a citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo. She earned her MFA at the Iowa Writers Workshop, and is the Director of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, A Public Space, Salon, Huffington Post, Prairie Schooner, The Best Travel Writing, and other outlets. Her latest book is Whiskey Tender: A Memoir.

Moderator

Dr. Eric Castillo

Dr. Eric Castillo (he/him/él) is a second-generation Xicano from Yanaguana/San Antonio, Tejas, a social justice practitioner, and scholar helping to create a just, compassionate, and liberated world. Committed to the lifelong practice of solidarity and peacemaking, he co-leads and co-creates opportunities where people can collectively flourish and work towards positive and sustainable social change. His community organizing background focuses on immigration, education equity, and racial justice and he facilitates community healing circles, truth, healing, and transformation programs, along with various community-based projects such as the First Peoples Project, CompassionateUSA, and the Westside Black History Project. Dr. Castillo received his Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico and was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship and Middle Eastern Studies Faculty Fellowship recipient. He currently holds a Racial Healing Practitioner Fellowship with the National Compadres Network, funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.