Josue Rojas
Editor’s Note: Every Monday is dedicated to young writers on www.BiscayneWriters.com.
Josue Rojas is a Salvadoran-American Mission Native who travels the world, documenting the “weird and cutty” beautiful bits of life. This scoundrel may be spotted painting murals in San Francisco, at a local calamity with a news camera on his shoulder or somewhere in Latin America on a hammock, dreaming and scheming. He’s a founding member of the CEIBA Project, a transnational art collaborative that works promoting art as non-violence.
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YO! Youth Outlook is an award-winning literary journal of youth life in the Bay Area. Featuring in-depth reporting pieces and first-person essays, comic strips and poetry pages, YO! is the communication outlet for youth who feel their voice and visions need to be seen and heard. YO! is a bridge to the world of youth expression. YO! chronicles the world through the eyes and voice of young people – between the ages of 14 and 25. From reporting pieces on Palestinian American youth in the Bay Area to interviews with gospel hip hop bands; from photo essays by homeless youth to journal entries from temp workers in Silicon Valley, YO! offers a unique window into California’s youth subcultures. YO! has a national distribution of 10,000 glossy magazines printed quarterly, a national TV show on LinkTV and MHZ Networks, numerous partnerships with local and national radio broadcasts including San Francisco’s own KMEL, and an annual expo of youth communicators – from graffiti artists to filmmakers to incarcerated youth. YO! stories also run nationally and internationally over the New America Media wire. |
Why are we profiling him on Biscayne Writers, an online resource for South Florida writers? Cuz he’s an artist/writer making a decent living (without going into the advertising industry), and young people in Miami need more conscious role models. It’s our effort to bridge the 5,000 miles between Biscayne Bay and the San Francisco Bay (oh, and coincidentally, another Salvy doing similar work is RE Sanchez, graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute and current Art Director for Life Is Art, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and supporting the artistic and creative communities in Miami and beyond).
Anywayzzzzzz…Josue got his start at Youth Outlook Magazine (if you haven’t noticed, we’re helping them raise funds for their next 4 magazine issues!), while he was a student at the California College of the Arts. He teamed up with bad boy Russell Morse to create Publick, a “gritty urban surrealist” comic strip that appeared every month on the back of the magazine.
Stay tuned for the online version of the comics!
One of the biggest dilemmas for an artist is learning how to tread the line between the creation process and survival (i.e., making money) – some are purists and call artists who work for the advertising industry “sell-outs,” while others have no problem writing copy or designing graphics for corporations.
BW: Josue, is it possible to have your cake and eat it too?
Josue: “Yeah, if you’re a politician,†he says with a knee-jerk.
He cites a 1986 film called, “Salvador,†about a Pacific News Service (the old name of New America Media, which incubates Youth Outlook Magazine) journalist who goes to El Salvador to report about the civil war and make a little money.
And the sum of the film is this – a journalist, whose solemn oath is to pursue truth and protect the First Amendment, accumulates wealth not in gold, but in experiences. So, in this case, yes, you can have your cake and eat it too.
Words by Melanie Feliciano. What do you think of this post? Informational? Sux? Too short? Too long? I’m a writer who could use feedback, so feel free to post your comments below. ;-D
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