Joe Hayes is one of America’s premier storytellers, a nationally recognized teller of tales from the Hispanic, Native American and Anglo cultures. His bilingual Spanish-English tellings have earned him a distinctive place among America’s storytellers.
Joe grew up in a small town in southern Arizona. His schoolmates and friends, many of whom were Mexican-American, taught him how to speak Spanish. As Joe got older, he began reading the work of folklorists and anthropologists and gathering the old stories from the region that he calls home, the Southwestern United States. When his own children were young, Joe enjoyed telling them stories. He decided that this would be the way he would earn a living. He also decided to use both Spanish and English when telling his stories to children so that they could learn and love both languages, just like he did when he was a child.
Joe’s tales are a combination of the traditional lore of the American Southwest and his own imagination. The traditional part is based on things people have told him and on what he has learned from reading the work of folklorists and anthropologists. Joe’s own contribution is based on his instincts as a storyteller and what his experience tells him listeners need in order to feel satisfied with a story.
For many years, Joe has been the resident storyteller at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe. He has told stories at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN, and is featured in the book Best Loved Stories Told at the National Storytelling Festival. In 2005, Joe received the Talking Leaves Literary Award from the National Storytelling Network, an award given to members of the storytelling community who have made considerable, serious and influential contributions to the literature of storytelling. Joe has taught storytelling to teachers at the University of New Mexico and been a guest lecturer at many colleges and universities, delivering the commencement address for the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at U.C.L.A. He was designated a New Mexico Eminent Scholar by the New Mexico Commission on Higher Education, and in 1995 he received the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence.
Joe began sharing his stories in print in 1982. His books have received the Arizona Young Readers Award, two Land of Enchantment Children’s Book Awards, four IPPY Awards, a Southwest Book Award and an Aesop Accolade Award. His book The Day It Snowed Tortillas was chosen by the editors of The Bloomsbury Review as one of their 15 favorite children’s books published in the past 15 years. His books have been on the Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List twice. In 2007, his book Ghost Fever won the Texas Bluebonnet Award, the first bilingual book to win the award.
Learn how to schedule Joe Hayes. If you would like to have Joe Hayes participate as a keynote speaker at a conference or tell stories at your school, you can contact via e-mail at: joehayes@newmexico.com
Click here to listen to an interview with Joe Hayes on the Santa Fe Radio Cafe from Friday, July 18, 2008.
"Here in the Southwest Joe Hayes is a folk hero: everybody's favorite teller of tales from our own favorite part of the world." —Byrd Baylor
"You told me stories in Carrizozo, NM (Lincoln County). I think I was in the second grade, maybe fourth. I am currently an 8th grade Civics teacher in Franklin Township, New Jersey. If you ever come to New York City, please get in contact with me. I'd love to hear you weave your magical web of words into a memory that will last a lifetime!"—Shena Samora
Antonio Ramírez was born in 1944 in México City, the youngest of nine children in a working class family. He quit school to work, but at age 14 he enrolled in the National School of Painting and Sculpture (“La Esmeralda”), where he studied at night. From then on, for a period of more than 25 years, he combined the work of making a living with the work of painting.
In 1961, when he turned 17, he left home and traveled toward the southeast of Mexico, working in the village of Arroyo León, in Veracrúz, teaching children and adults to read and write. There he saw with his own eyes the injustices and humiliation suffered by poor campesinos and native peoples. The people of Arroyo León went shopping each week in a nearby village named Nuevo Ixcatlán, an indigenous Mazatecan community. That’s where Antonio met Domitilia, whom he married.
In 1964 they moved to Mexico City, working in factories and workshops, and painting at night. Then they immigrated to Yucatán, where Antonio worked two years for the National Indigenous Institute taking film shows and folk theater to the Mayas of the region.
In 1967, they were back again in México City where they witnessed and participated in the marches and meetings that led up to the populist Student Movement. The feeling of frustration and impotency that seized the youth of that generation didn’t escape them.
In the 70s Antonio and Domi moved from place to place, piecing together a living. Throughout this time, they worked intensely with a leftist group. They participated actively in supporting tenants’ and squatters’ organizations in Mexico City. Among other activities, the group (either as a collective or as individuals) painted numerous political street murals and also published anti-capitalist pamphlets which criticized the compromising left.
In 1983 Antonio, Domi and their four children moved to Guadalajara where they now live. This time in Guadalajara has been very important for the development of Domi and Antonio’s artistic work. Antonio has lived exclusively on his work as an artist and no longer has had to divide his time between art and the other activities required for the livelihood of his family.
In 1985, in Mexico City, a group of friends (Antonio and Domi among them) conceived the idea of creating a collective portfolio of serigraphs with the city being the unifying theme. They discussed the necessity that the images that they created would reach out to everyday men and women, people on the street. They agreed that the political propaganda of the left suffered from the absence of a hugely important ingredient: the artistic element.
In 1986, the Colectivo Callejero (“the streetwise collective”) established residence in the city of Guadalajara where they opened an alternative cultural center which they named “Crack.” Its brief life was the focus of intense artistic and intellectual activity. The purpose of the center was not to advertise the work of its founders, but to promote an alternative art scene which had political and aesthetic principles similar to those of the Colectivo Callejero.
When the EZLN marched out of the Lancondon Jungle on the first of January 1994, the Colectivo Callejero immediately identified themselves with the Indian rebels’ struggle. Since then the Colectivo has centered its activities almost totally on supporting the words of the Zapatistas with artistic images. This stage began with publishing a 1996 calendar, but as time passed, the Colectivo looked for projects more complex and ambitious. Thus they decided upon an editorial project: a series of books that illustrated the words of el subcomandante Marcos, in particular the stories of el viejo Antonio.
In 2000, working on a large commission from the University of Guadalajara, Antonio completed a mural al fresco in the Jalisco city of Zapotlán el Grande. The work measures 135 square meters and is titled “The Dream and Nightmare of Power.” The fresco pays artistic homage to the Zapatista movement in Chiapas.
