Alejandro Morales is a pioneer of Chicana and Chicano literature and the author of groundbreaking works including The Brick People, The Rag Doll Plagues, and River of Angels. His work, often experimental, was one of the first to depict harsh urban realities in the barrios—a break from much of the Chicana and Chicano fiction that had been published previously. Morales’ relentless work has grown over the decades into a veritable menagerie of cultural testimonies, fantastic counter-histories, magical realism, challenging meta-narratives, and flesh-and-blood aesthetic innovation. The fourteen essays included in this compendium examine Morales’ novels and short stories. The editors also include a critical introduction; an interview between Morales, the editors, and fellow author Daniel Olivas; and a new comprehensive bibliography of Morales’ writings and works about him—books, articles, book reviews, online resources, and dissertations. A Critical Collection on Alejandro Morales: Forging an Alternative Chicano Fiction is a must-read for understanding and appreciating Morales’ work in particular and Chicana and Chicano literature in general.
THE EDITORS
Marc García-Martínez is a professor of English at Allan Hancock College and a lecturer of Chicana/o studies at UC–Santa Barbara. He is the author of The Flesh-and-Blood Aesthetics of Alejandro Morales: Disease, Sex, and Figuration.
Francisco A. Lomelí is a professor emeritus of Chicana/o studies and Spanish and Portuguese at UC–Santa Barbara. He is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of forty books, including a landmark translation of Alejandro Morales’ Barrio on the Edge and Aztlán: Essays on the Chicano Homeland (UNM Press).
ACCLAIM
“This landmark collection of critical essays analyzes Alejandro Morales’ works throughout the vast scope of his literary career and fully reveals the genius and the aesthetic and intellectual significance of his prolific contributions to US literature and culture broadly and Chicana and Chicano literature and culture more specifically. This volume gives Morales’ work the prominent place it deserves in US literary history.”
—Timothy R. Libretti,
contributor to Writer in Exile/Writer in Revolt: Critical Perspectives
on Carlos Bulosan
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In other news, I continue to explore my new literary endeavor: playwriting. I recently had the chance to discuss this topic in the podcast called Beckett’s Babies where I was interviewed about playwriting, creating Chicanx characters, becoming a writer without an MFA, and more. The hosts, Sam Collier and Sarah Cho, are accomplished playwrights who met at the Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Have a listen! Also, if you want to read my plays, they are on New Play Exchange. I am in the process of working with three theaters on two staged readings and one full-stage production of my plays…more news soon.
I'm looking forward to this, I really liked The Ragdoll Plagues.
ReplyDeleteA Critical Collection on Alejandro Morales, whilst timely and illuminating, embodies a dispiriting irony. In the same way this compilation trumpets inclusion of global views on the Mexican-American author, it simultaneously shouts from the rooftops its exclusion of scholarly voices from Mexico—in fact, from the entirety of Central and South America.
ReplyDeleteThis exclusion of Latin American voices on a Latin American subject should be a source of professional ignominy for editors García-Martínez, a Chicano literature and culture specialist, and especially for Lomelí, a veteran Latin Americanist of some distinction.
Whether this sidelining of Central and South American scholars was purposeful or an oversight remains to be seen, for the editors make no mention of it in their brazen introduction. García-Martínez’s and Lomelí’s preclusion of such scholars boggles the mind as to why they would maintain how Morales remains “influenced by the Latin American Boom writers” and “by the Mexican La Onda group” but fail to incorporate even one evidentiary Latin American or Mexican perspective to corroborate it.
It further boggles the mind as to how they emphasize that Chicano literary works “ought to readily connect with Mexico, Mexican culture, or various content- and aesthetic-based works related to that country,” yet offer no Mexican literary specialists to validate that claim. This is particularly troubling given, as also stressed in their introduction, that Morales’ “first two works were written in Spanish and published in Mexico.”
Why would the editors deem such facts noteworthy to mention but not relevant enough to develop? Asking this is not to be snide or pigeon-hole Morales, who admits in interviews how much he abhors to be restricted to (often stereotypical) categorizations. “Why are we put in a literary cubbyhole, in a niche that asks us to write only about the Chicano/Latino experience?,” he once lamented in 2019 interview with Margarita López-López. Alejandro Morales is a beyond-author, one who also writes speculative fiction, is composing a family history of his European in-laws, and has just published a new book of poetry.
Nevertheless, it is a question that haunts the reader as they flip through page after page of insightful scholarly material. Additional questions arise as to why A Critical Collection on Alejandro Morales includes three chapters on the very same Morales novel while utterly ignoring his earlier works. Or why they awkwardly try to pass-off two tired chapters that are actually re-printed segments from a flimsy collection published 17 years ago.
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