Chronicle of a famous protest

Mario T. García discusses his book “Blowout! Sal Castro & the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice” at noon Wednesday, Sept. 12, in Mitchell Hall, Room 120, on the University of New Mexico main campus.

The book relates how in March 1968, thousands of Chicano students walked out of their high schools and middle schools in East Los Angeles to protest decades of inferior and discriminatory education.

Castro, a Mexican-American teacher, led the student walkouts, or “blowouts.” Castro encouraged the students to go public with their grievances after school administrators and school board members refused to listen to them. The blowouts sparked the urban Chicano Movement that began in the late 1960s and extended in the 1970s.

García will discuss the book with Felipe Gonzales, a University of New Mexico sociology professor, and Irene Vásquez, the director of UNM’s Chicano and Chicana Studies program.

García, a professor of history and Chicano studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, co-wrote the book with Castro.

AT BOOKWORKS: Pueblo artist Michael Naranjo discusses the new book “Inner Vision — The Sculpture of Michael Naranjo” at 3 p.m. today at Bookworks, 4022 Rio Grande NW. The book presents 164 images and a text that tells the story of a man who has succeeded as a sculptor after being blinded by a grenade explosion while serving in the Army in Vietnam.

AT MAIN PUBLIC LIBRARY: An animated “Hobbit” movie, as well as storytelling and music by Música Antigua de Albuquerque, will be presented from 3-5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 15, at the main Albuquerque Bernalillo County Library, Second and Copper NW. It kicks off a series of events at various public libraries in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the publication of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again.”

AT PAGE ONE: The bookstore at 11018 Montgomery NE hosts these two events this week. … Don McIver of Albuquerque is the featured poet at Open Mike Night at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 11. … Melinda Snodgrass, writing as Phillipa Bornikova, will talk about her new urban fantasy novel, “This Case Is Gonna Kill Me,” at 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 15. It is the first book in a new series set in a vampire law firm.

Snodgrass, of Santa Fe, is a well-known fantasy writer under her own name.

IN OLD TOWN: Ezequiel Ortiz and James A. McClure sign copies of their book “Don Jose: An American Soldier’s Courage and Faith in Japanese Captivity” from 1-4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 15, at Treasure House Books & Gifts, 2012 South Plaza NW.

It tells the World War II story of Army Cpl. Joseph O. Quintero, who manned a machine gun in defense of Corregidor and survived a razor-blade appendectomy as a prisoner of war. He also cared for his fellow prisoners as a medic in a prison camp in Japan.

AT BARNES & NOBLE: Albuquerque’s Bonnie K. Rucobo reads from “King Pachuco and Princess Marisol,” her novel for middle-graders, at 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 15, at Barnes & Noble in Coronado Shopping Center. The program is part of the store’s celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.

IN JEMEZ SPRINGS: A Storytelling Jamboree will be held from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 15, in the Civic Center. $10 general public, $5 children 6-18, free for those under age 6. $25 for family of four.