{"id":22365,"date":"2015-11-03T12:09:21","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T19:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/krtnradio.com\/?p=22365"},"modified":"2015-11-03T18:10:24","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T01:10:24","slug":"dr-irene-blea-book-signing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/2015\/11\/03\/dr-irene-blea-book-signing\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Irene Blea book signing"},"content":{"rendered":"
by Sherry Goodyear<\/div>\n
\n
\"WJ<\/a>SPRINGER, NM \u2014 \u201cMy own daughter was every mother\u2019s worst nightmare, when she was growing up,\u201d Irene Blea, PhD said during her book signing Friday evening at Luna Community College in Springer. \u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
\u201cI used to dream the phone was ringing, or there was knocking at my front door, and I was told by an officer my daughter was dead. \u00a0It is knowing that kind of fear that drove me to write the book.\u201d The book she refers to is her recently released novel, Daughters of the West Mesa, a fictional account of the mass grave discovered in 2009 on Albuquerque\u2019s West Mesa containing the bones of eleven young Hispanic women involved in drugs and prostitution who were brutally murdered and dumped there.\u00a0<\/div>\n
Blea, born in 1946, lived with her family in Miami, NM until 1954 when a drought forced her family to relocate to Pueblo, Colorado. \u00a0<\/div>\n
Upon arriving in Pueblo, Irene was enrolled in school for the first time. \u00a0She spoke only Spanish and had no idea \u201csquiggly lines could make letters, letters could make words, and words could make sentences. \u00a0It was like magic.\u201d She learned to speak English within two months, and education became a door that opened a new and better life for her.<\/div>\n
Blea became a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. \u00a0In those days there weren\u2019t textbooks written on Chicano and Women\u2019s studies, and Blea and her colleagues found themselves scrounging for material to teach their students. \u00a0Every semester a representative from the book company the college used would ask what books she wanted for next semester\u2019s classes. \u00a0She would inquire about books on Women\u2019s and Chicano Studies, and every time was told there were none. \u00a0One day the rep came by asking her what books she needed, and upon meeting the usual dead end, she shot off, saying \u201cI guess I need to just write books on these subjects myself.\u201d \u00a0He responded, \u201cand what would you put in those books?\u201d She promptly listed a variety of chapters on topics she had taught over the years. \u00a0To her surprise, the book rep asked her to send him a letter with all she had told him, and in a few weeks she was under contract to write textbooks about her subjects. \u00a0She went on to author eight texts and became a definitive experts in the area.\u00a0<\/div>\n
Blea\u2019s dream of returning to New Mexico was realized thirty-five years after she left, when she moved to Albuquerque to become a Professor of Sociology in both Chicano and Women\u2019s Studies at the University of New Mexico. \u00a0 The last part of her teaching career was spent as Chair of Chicano Studies at California State University in Los Angeles.<\/div>\n
In retirement, Blea turned her hand to writing fiction based on the history of New Mexico. \u00a0Her first book was called Susanna, based on her Aunt Susanna\u2019s life as a child bride married off to an older man whom she did not love. \u00a0Her next book, Poor People\u2019s Flowers, was the second book in the Susanna trilogy. \u00a0<\/div>\n
Blea was beginning the final book in the trilogy when the West Mesa murders story broke. \u00a0She decided to write the story and began researching. \u00a0She went to the dig site, visited with parents of the victims, attended five of the girls\u2019 funerals, went to rallies, potlucks, and biker bars, walked the streets where the prostitutes worked, and did research at the Albuquerque Police Department crime lab in order to accurately and fairly portray the story.\u00a0<\/div>\n
Daughters of the West Mesa is from the perspective of a fictional woman, Dora, whose daughter Luna is based on Blea\u2019s own daughter during her troubled early years. \u00a0Blea says, \u201cPeople are calling me a mystery writer now. \u00a0The mystery is whether or not Dora\u2019s missing daughter is one of the girls whose remains have been found on the West Mesa.\u201d \u00a0Blea is pleased with the reception her book has received since its release in July. \u00a0She notes, \u201cI was careful not to malign any of the women in the story \u2013 that has been done enough,\u201d and says feedback from the girls\u2019 parents has been positive, grateful she is keeping the story alive, especially since no one has ever been charged with the crime. \u00a0<\/div>\n
The craziest part of Blea\u2019s part in the story may be that those dreams she had about a police officer telling her that her daughter was found dead stopped once the book was written. \u00a0 When asked if there would be a sequel to the West Mesa book, Blea responded, \u201cAt first, I didn\u2019t think so, but now I am thinking there might be.\u201d For those held spell-bound by Blea\u2019s books, that is good news.<\/div>\n
\"Pictured<\/a>
Pictured at left, author Irene Blea, PhD, with Anna Phillips, President of the Springer Chamber of Commerce, which sponsored the book signing event. Photo by Sherry Goodyear.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Sherry Goodyear SPRINGER, NM \u2014 \u201cMy own daughter was every mother\u2019s worst nightmare, when she was growing up,\u201d Irene Blea, PhD said during her book signing Friday evening at Luna Community College in Springer. \u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI used to dream the phone was ringing, or there was knocking at my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","entry","rows-excerpt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}