Fishrap kicks off Big Read with Fiesta

Published 2:55 pm Sunday, January 11, 2015

Fishtrap kicked off 2015’s Big Read with a fiesta celebration held at the Joseph Community Center the night of Thursday, Jan. 8. This year’s big read features the book “Into the Beautiful North” by celebrated author Luis Alberto Urrea. The book details the journeys of children from a small Mexican town who venture into the U.S. to reclaim the men who have left the village in search of work.

Dozens of people, ranging in age from toddler to senior citizen, crowded into the Joseph Community Center to celebrate by partaking in Hispanic cuisine, participating in a number of Hispanic-flavored games and activities, including the virtual obliteration of a piñata, and listening to various speakers.

Ann Powers, Fishtrap’s executive director, expressed satisfaction at the evening’s activities. “Part of our goal is to get a community together around great literature, and the evening was a big success,” Powers said.

After the festivities wound down somewhat, attendees listened to Fishtrap board chair, Rose Caslar, explain the purpose of the Big Read and the reasons behind the selection of Urrea’s book. Mike Midlow, Fishtrap program manager, then thanked the various donors whose contributions helped fund the program.

Powers gave the final presentation, a 10-minute introduction to the book.

“Most of our Big read events are free, but they’re not free to put on. We can offer them for free because we get a lot of support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Oregon Arts Commission, not to mention from a lot of individual donors,” Powers said later in an interview. She also explained how Fishtrap chose the various activities included in the evening.

“We wanted to do something celebratory as a kickoff. The book is really fun and whimsical, but it’s also dealing with serious subjects such as immigration, international relations, economics and the drug wars. (Urrea) just writes it in a fun way and we wanted to make it a fun and whimsical opening.”

Fishtrap members asked around for input on possible activities and the organization chose the ones it could pull off with its resources. “The kids really seemed to gobble them up,” Powers said.

During the Kickoff, Powers invited the public to the next Big Read event, the showing of “The Magnificent Seven” at the OK Theatre on Jan 15. “We challenged people to start reading the book and why we’re showing this movie, and what the link is between the movie and the book. Come with the answer and we’ll put it in a drawing, and someone will get a prize,” Powers said.