A
writer does a lot of waiting. In the old days it was for
old-fashioned physical mail; now it's email and other innovations, but
it's still the same thing: waiting for editors and publishers to get
back to you. It can take longer than people not involved in this
bizarre human activity can imagine.
I'm
talking years.
Sometimes
projects, books, magazines, even publishers simply cease to exist and
never get back to you. Being
able to deal with this is a prerequisite for being a writer.
I
am happy to report that I got some good news. My story, "Flying
Under the Texas Radar with Paco and Los Freetails" --the origin
story of my character, Paco Cohen, Mariachi of Mars--will be
available again. It originally appeared in an anthology called Latin@
Rising,
edited by Mathew David Goodwin, the new edition, scheduled for June
2020, will be called Latinx Rising (pre-order now). When it was being put together, it was called Latino/a
Rising.
We
are living in volatile times. Passions run high, and that’s a good
thing. Things are changing fast, especially in arenas like the
ethnic literature/studies/activism crowd, and it causes confusion
with the outside world.
Some
people told me they were impressed with the LatinA
anthology
I was in. How do you pronounce @? It’s “at,” as in email
addresses. So it should be “Latinat.” Also, some writing software
wants to change anything with an @ into an email address . . .
People
tend to pronounce Latinx, Latin-X, which unfortunately sounds like a
laxitive. And that’s the English
pronunciation,
in Spanish x in can be x, but it can also be j (y in English), g, a
silent h, or even x. In Nahuatl and other pre-Columbian languages it's
sh . . .
The
funny thing is, none of this has anything to do with backlash against
Latinx we’ve been seeing lately.
I’m
a Chicano. It lets folks in on where and when I come from, and even
my gender, which is all okay by me. I
don’t mind being called a Latino (or whatever suffix you want to
nail onto it), because not everybody knows what a Chicano is.
Once
down in Mexico, a guide to some Zapotec ruins, confused by my SoCal
accent, asked where I was from. I told him I was a Chicano. He had
never heard the word. More confusion. He ended up thinking I was from
Chicago.
I
have no problem with appearing in “Latino” publications. There
are more of them than strict “Chicano” ventures. A lot of
Latinos, especially on the East Coast, have infiltrated publishing
and academia, and I don’t mind being published by them. I’m a
writer. I like getting published. It’s kind of what my life is all
about.
I
also don’t have any problem with being the only one of my kind in
the room (or whatever). In the first few decades of my life, in
pursuing my interest, I was often the only Chicano in the room. Often
I was the only person of color in the room.
I
really am a Chicanonaut, an explorer, venturing out where no Chicano
has gone before, creating new ways of life and new civilizations
along the way . . . I’m
expanding my territory. I’m not one of those vatos (vatxes?) who is
afraid of crossing the borders of their native barrios, which are
usually just a few blocks wide. My barrio is global, with ambitions
of going interplanetary, galactic, intergalactic . . .
Besides,
when a Latina author’s books are burned, I take it personally. As
Benjamin Franklin said, “Either we all hang together, or we will
all hang separately.”
And
I’m proud to announce that there will be a sequel to Latinx
Rising,
and it will include another, brand new story from me. The anthology
will be called The
Latinx Archive,
and my story is titled, “Those Rumors of Cannibalism and Human
Sacrifice Have Been Greatly Exaggerated.”
It’s
a futuristic tale about new kinds of Latinoids (to use the term I
keep suggesting).
Chicanonautica
forever!
And
everywhere!
Ernest Hogan is the author of
High Aztech,
Cortez on Jupiter,
and the Chicano cyberpunk Día de los Muertos novel, Smoking Mirror Blues.
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