- Michael Nava
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Michael Nava Candidate for San Francisco Superior Court Judge Personal details Born September 16, 1954
Stockton, CaliforniaNationality United States Alma mater Stanford Law School (J.D.)
Colorado College (B.A.)Occupation Lawyer Michael Angel Nava (born September 16, 1954 in Stockton, California) is an attorney and writer.
He is a third-generation Californian of Mexican descent. He was born and raised in Sacramento. He was the first member of his family to attend college, graduating with honors from the Colorado College in 1976. He received his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1981.[1]
In 2002, he was also awarded an honorary degree as a Doctor of Humane Arts from the Colorado College in recognition of his literary achievements.
He began his legal career as a trial lawyer in the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office where he prosecuted criminal cases and did approximately 50 jury trials.[1]
He was an associate at the appellate boutique firm of Horvitz and Levy before becoming a judicial staff attorney for the Honorable Arleigh Woods, the first female African-American appellate court justice in California. He served in that capacity from 1986 to 1995. Among the notable cases he worked on was Jasperson v. Jessica’s Nail Clinic,[2] the first published decision to uphold an HIV/AIDS anti-discrimination statute.[1]
After Justice Wood’s retirement, Nava returned to his native Northern California, settling in San Francisco In 1999, he joined the staff of the California Supreme Court and since 2004 he has been a judicial attorney for Justice Carlos R. Moreno, only the third Latino to sit on the California high court.[3] Justice Moreno was also recently considered for the United States Supreme Court seat that went to Justice Sonia Sotomayer.[1]
Nava began writing what would become his first novel – The Little Death – while in law school. Published in 1986, it was the first of seven novels featuring a gay Latino criminal defense lawyer named Henry Rios, based in Los Angeles. The six books that followed – Goldenboy (1988), How Town (1990), The Hidden Law (1992), The Death of Friends (1996), The Burning Plain (1998) and the final volume Rag and Bone (2000) – were published to increasing praise from mainstream publications that did not ordinarily review the works of gay and lesbian writers.[4] His novels were awarded six Lambda Literary Awards and he was ultimately awarded the Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award for Gay and Lesbian literature from the Publishing Triangle, a GLBT professional group within the publishing industry.[1]
Despite the fact that he has not published a work of fiction since 2000, his novels continue to be the subject of scholarly discussion about gay and Latino/a writers. In an interview in the Latino/a literary blog, La Bloga, he revealed that he has been at work on an historical novel set around the time of Mexican Revolution in Mexico and Arizona tentatively entitled "The Children of Eve." He is also co-author of the book "Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America."[1]
Contents
Early life and family
Michael Nava grew up in a predominantly working-class Mexican neighborhood in Sacramento, California called Gardenland. In an essay of the same title, he wrote about his neighborhood: “The best way to think of Gardenland is not as an American suburb at all, but rather as a Mexican village, transported perhaps from Guanajuato, where my grandmother's family originated, and set down lock, stock and chicken coop in the middle of California” [5][6]
His maternal family settled there in 1920 after escaping the Mexican Revolution. His maternal grandparents were the most important influence of his childhood. His maternal grandfather was a Yaqui Indian, a tribe persecuted by the Mexican government at the end of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century. He wrote about his grandfather in the essay “Abuelo” published in John Preston’s 1992 anthology, A Member of the Family: Gay Men Write About Their Families. His grandmother was an influential force whose piety and humility were highlighted by her Catholic beliefs.[6]
A precocious child, Nava was constantly reading. He was the first person in his family to attend college, where he excelled and acquired a special affinity for literature and writing. In college, he became part of a group of young poets whose members included the writer and humorist David Owen and the poet David Mason.[6]
Legal career
After graduating from Colorado College cum laude, he was awarded a Thomas Watson Fellowship to study abroad. He spent the next year in Buenos Aires and Madrid working on translations of the great Spanish American poet Rubén Darío. Returning home, he decided to go to law school after briefly contemplating a graduate degree in English or History.[6] When he graduated from Stanford Law School in 1981, he moved to Los Angeles to work as a prosecutor in the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office.[7] Most of his legal career has been spent in government service, chiefly as a staff attorney in the California appellate courts. Of this particular niche in the law Nava has said:[6]
"Judicial attorneys and law clerks can have a huge influence in shaping the direction of the law, but there are very few attorneys of color in those positions because they are mostly filled through the Old Boys Network. We need to establish our own network."[6]
In his current position at the California Supreme Court, Nava deals with complex legal issues in every area of civil and criminal law on one of the country's most active and well-respected courts.[6]
In addition to his practice, Nava is an advocate for diversity in the legal profession and the judiciary. From 2007 to 2009, he was a member of State Bar of California’s Council on Access and Fairness, who advises the state bar’s board of governor on diversity issues.[8] He has been a frequent speaker and writer on the need to open the legal profession to traditionally underrepresented groups including people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people, women and people with disabilities.[7] He put forth the case for judicial diversity in a 2009 law review article, “A Servant of All: Humility, Humanity and Judicial Diversity", published by the Golden Gate University Law Review.[6][9]
Nava ran for the position of San Francisco Superior Court, Seat 15 in 2010. He was the top recipient of votes in the June primary, but as he did not receive a majority of the votes, he was forced into a run-off with the incumbent judge and legal establishment candidate Richard Ulmer. The final official vote (www.sfelections.org/results/20101102) was Nava with 82,100 (46.66%) and Ulmer with 93,869 (53.34%).
Bibliography
By Michael Nava
- The Little Death (1986)
- Goldenboy (1988)
- How Town (1990)
- The Hidden Law (1992)
- Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America (co-author) (1994)
- The Death of Friends (1996)
- Finale: Short Stories of Mystery and Suspense (editor) (1997)
- The Burning Plain (1997)
- Rag and Bone (2001)
- "Gardenland" in Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong, John Preston (ed.) Dutton, (1991)
- "Abuelo" in A Member of the Family: Gay Men Write About Their Families, John Preston (ed.) Dutton, (1994)
About Michael Nava
- Contemporary Gay American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, Emmanuel S. Nelson, Greenwood Press (1993)
- Spilling the Beans in Chicanolandia: Conversations with Writers and Artists, Frederick Luis Aldama, University of Texas Press (2006)
- Brown Gumshoes: Detective Fiction and the Search for Chicano/a Identity, Ralph E, Rodriguez, University of Texas Press (2005)
- Chicano Detective Fiction: A Critical Study of Five Novelists, Susan Baker Sotelo, McFarland (2005)
References
- ^ a b c d e f http://labloga.blogspot.com/2006/04/spotlight-on-michael-nava.html
- ^ (1989) 216 Cal.App.3d 1099
- ^ http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-79263878.html
- ^ http://www.redroom.com/author/michael-nava
- ^ “Gardenland” in Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong, John. Preston, ed. Dutton, 1992, p. 23.
- ^ a b c d e f g h http://vlex.com/vid/spotlight-michael-nava-writing-wrongs-344073
- ^ a b http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=4272
- ^ http://www.calbar.ca.gov/state/calbar/calbar_generic.jsp?cid=13861
- ^ Golden Gate University Law Review,, vol. 28, no. 2, Winter 2008, p. 175.
Categories:- 1954 births
- Living people
- American mystery writers
- Writers from California
- Gay writers
- Lambda Literary Award winners
- LGBT writers from the United States
- People from Stockton, California
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