Empower House Radio KXEP-LP

Platica Y Poetics S4E9: Erika Prosper

Season 4, Episode 9: Erika Prosper Some mujeres you meet become instant friends; others step naturally into a role of cariño y  cuidado — a comadre. As the mics went live, I was engulfed by La Erika’s powerful presence,  one that could be immediately recognized and held in reverence. Our culturally rooted plática felt like the kind that has unfolded at sobremesas across the world. Conversations about the  elevation of la mujer en su poder. In San Antonio’s former First Lady, Erika Prosper ‘la mera  jefa’ in embodied action y palabra, I encountered not simply a civic leader, but a mujer deeply  anchored in el campo, memoria, and community. I opened with the question, “Who is Erika  Prosper?” From that moment, the room shifted — a comida laid out before us, homemade  picadillo y tortillas on the table. What unfolded was not a formal interview, but mera plática. We  journeyed back to her beginnings in the fields of South Texas, where el campo first shaped her  hands, her ganas, and her understanding of dignity in labor. She spoke of migrant roots not as  hardship alone, but as a living archive of resilience carried in the body and spirit. El mero campo  ‘el mero maestro’ guiding her toward becoming a cultural steward of San Antonio de Béjar.  Our conversation moved through the layered soul of Yanaguana, San Antonio as sacred ground,  indigenous inheritance, migrant corridor, artistic sanctuary. We reflected on literacy as  liberation, not merely the reading of books, but the expansion of self, culture, and empowerment.  The ability to reclaim one’s story. To shape destiny. La Erika, una mujerona. Throughout our sitdown, she honored and elevated women, reminding us that resilience is not accidental; it is  cultivated through conviction y comunidad. Her tenure as First Lady was not mere duty, but  stewardship. For the people, by the people. I walked away from our conversation feeling  empowered in comunidad and reaffirmed in palabra. Our exchange was a reminder that cultural  conviction, when paired with literacy, cariño, and persistent labor, becomes un legado, living  legacy en acción y palabra viva.

Platica Y Poetics S4E7 Carmen Gray

The only items missing from our space were an incense slowly burning, and perhaps green tea.  What began as a carefully outlined interview was dissolved almost immediately. My physical  questions — printed, prepared, structured — disintegrated into space the moment Carmen Gray  began to speak. Instead of a formal exchange, what unfolded was something far more sacred: a  plática of intuition. An esoteric current entered the room. We spoke less about genre and more  about destination. Less about craft and more about what calls to us. When I asked, “Who is  Carmen Gray?” the answer did not arrive as biography, it arrived as presence. Tejana. Mexicana.  Teacher. Storyteller. Woman attuned to the mystical undercurrent of language. Her roots are not  decorative; they are ‘tierra’ soil. Culture and lineage do not simply influence her fiction and  poetry; they animate within characters and settings. In her worlds of horror, magical realism,  historical fiction, dark romance, and verse, the supernatural is not spectacle but inheritance. I  realized Carmen does not shift, she acutely listens to lineage, what whispers to a mystics’ ear. Our conversation deepened when we entered the terrain of language. As an educator Spanish for  over two decades, she lives in the liminal space where meaning shapes and reforms. We reflected  on how bilingualism reshapes rhythm, and how code-switching is not fragmentation but  expansion. My question about sound, scent, texture gifted a sweet pause and breath. My  Aquarius air gifted the body remembrance before the response. We spoke about how writing is  less about invention and more about excavation, the difficult unearthing of what has always lived  beneath the surface. This plática led to speaking about what we hope readers feel in their bodies  long after the final page. The lingering scent, tremor in the chest, recognition. Our space, the  plática became poetry

Platica Y Poetics S4E7 : Eduardo “Eddie” Vega

Season 4, Episode 7 : Eduardo “Eddie” Vega If we both had shown up with a bag of tacos in hand, our platica would have run for hours. Where we would have forgotten the whole interview and entered a taco platica, where we would  have talked in the language of taquito, and painted a culinary picture in the studio where like a  ‘Water for Chocolate’ aroma fumes would have peeked and emerged out of our mics. Eddie  being a taco connoisseur and myself a cocinera estilo revolución would have perfected the  perfect taco. One that exist in the sanctity of our mothers and abuelas kitchens. I counter that  with the perfect puesto on the side of a windy dirt road in México, señoras greeting, slapping  masa on comals, filling with el guiso del día. Eduardo “Eddie” Vega, San Antonio’s current Poet  Laureate, storyteller, spoken word artist, and educator, is rooted in laughter, chistes, memory,  tacos, and verdades. Eddie reflected on how poetry first entered his life not as an academic  exercise, but as a necessity born from lived experience, barrio rhythms, and familia wisdom. We  traced the cultural roots that shaped his voice, the poets who opened caminos to him open, and  the urgencies that compelled him to write ‘Somos Nopales,’ a collection grounded in survival,  nourishment, and collective memory. Our conversation weaved between the sacred and the  everyday, from the responsibility of being Poet Laureate to poetry as a tool for community  healing, resistance, and preservation. Along the way, we detoured into taco theology (yes, carne  guisada and chorizo con huevo get their moment). Eddie offered powerful readings that embody  the spirit of Somos Nopales: about our gente rooted in resilience, rooted in orgullo, and  unapologetically ours. Todo se puede, somos nopales. (P.S.: so hungry after the interview, we  forgot to take the photo. Ya ni modo.

Platica Y Poetics S4E6- Octavio Quintanilla

Episode 6, Season 4: Dr. Octavio Quintanilla Grey cumulus clouds hung low like a soft, familiar plush blanket, as an heirloom passed down to  keep us warm through dark days. In this intimate plática, poetic creation stories were bestowed  as a gift by Texas Poet Laureate Dr. Octavio Quintanilla as he reflected on who he is as an artist,  tracing the ways poems emerge from image, ritual, and lived experience. A fluid space unfolded  between visual art and language as Quintanilla spoke of his interdisciplinary practice, where  FRONTEXTOS ‘arte fronteriza,’ art born from the in-between and the border, and wordplay  become entry points for poetry to exist through shape, color, and form. He shared how poems  often arrive through acts of looking, how journals hold the first raw gestures of language, and  how art and text converse and transform into a living manifestation on both canvas and page. Our conversation turned to his acclaimed book Las Horas Imposibles, a work that holds grief,  love, memory, and bilingual intimacy as artistic necessity, reflecting on “impossible hours”,  those unspeakable moments poetry is called into action, and on the lessons found in darkness,  vulnerability, and shedding. As both former San Antonio Poet Laureate and current Texas Poet  Laureate, he spoke of poetry as an essential lifeline for survival, community-building, and  cultural resistance. Our plática closed with a shared acknowledgment that all is in constant  evolution—thoughts, responses, beginnings, endings. We are the evolution, the internal  revolution. The future of poetics is a camino unknown, an uncharted lyrical and prose territory.  What remains constant is the irreplaceable power of human connection and observation.  Darkness, he reminds us, is one of our greatest teachers; the light exists and always will, but only  if we are willing to sit, listen, and observe what darkness has to say

The Empower Hour w/ Armando Estrada - Patricia Jimenez, The Raul Jimenez Thanksgiving Dinner

The Raul Jimenez Thanksgiving Dinner was started 46 years ago with the intention to serve the elderly community of San Antonio. Today we talk to Patricia Jimenez, Rauls daughter, about the event, the history and the importance of community.