August Reflections On the State of Literatura Chicana
Michael Sedano
Chicano Literature is the only world literature we can point to and say this is its first day.
In 1969, Quinto Sol Press published the first book, a literary collection, with the word “Chicano” in the title. It is the fifth printing of El Espejo: The Mirror.
Initially subtitled as Selected Mexican-American Literature, the 1969 edition tosses numerous writers, adds a pantheon of soon-to-be household names, and now calls itself Selected CHICANO Literature, and just like that, Chicano Literature comes into existence.
This foundational publisher selects Tomas Rivera, Rudolfo Anaya, Rolando Hinojosa, and Estela Portillo-Trambley the first four Premio Quinto Sol honorees. The honored works, along with El Espejo’s table of contents, and the ongoing intellectual ferment of the journal, set standards for writing defining itself as Chicano Literature and Chicano Scholarship.
Then there was pedo. People felt left out by left coast raza.
Scholars and creative writers said Quinto Sol and its enthusiasts are a bunch of cultural nationalists and they’re excluding everything else not Mexican. They formed a rival enterprise to publish their own journal.
Quinto Sol dissolved in 1974 while Revista Chicana-Riqueña would die and get reborn under different titles and lasted years. Eventually an outstanding anthology comes of that multi-named journal, The Floating Borderlands: Twenty-Five Years of U.S. Hispanic Literature. (1988)
Those were the good old days of Chicano Literature. So many stakeholders risking time, money, and pedo to bring product to market. There was a need for those voices, even if they couldn’t all just get along.
This nutshell history is the ongoing subject of academic inquiry and journal publications. For example, a quick Google search turns up a 2010 piece in MELUS (Multi-ethnic Literature in the US) “Good-Bye Revolution—Hello Cultural Mystique: Quinto Sol Publications and Chicano Literary Nationalism.” Literature historians will recognize Juan Bruce-Nova’s 1986 “Canonical and Non-Canonical Texts” as the first intellectual to challenge Quinto Sol’s universe. Bruce-Novoa started the pedo.
Thankfully, raza’s cultural rivalries settled down in favor of accommodation and a worldview based upon inclusion. The east coast tipos had a point, even if they can live with calling themselves “Hispanic.” Hijole.
Technology has also played an important role by making individual publishing more democratic—i.e., less expensive—enabling small publishers to reach a market that has always existed across a widespread geography, where access to booksellers, and distribution of product, add expense and nearly-insurmountable logistics hassles that a mass publisher handles in stride.
Small, entrepreneurial enterprises like Aztlán Libre Press, FlowerSong Books, and Golden Foothills Press, publish ever-growing catalogs without needing warehouses filled with unsold books and fat advances. Publishing becomes a matter of selling the book first. Marketing, getting out the word, becomes a publisher and author's only avenue to sales. A corollary of all capitalist enterprise takes hold: books won't sell themselves.
Any publisher, not just small enterprises, can advertise, market, and use print-on-demand to control inventory/consignment headaches. Readers no longer struggle seeking titles hard-to-find owing to a publisher’s small run of a few hundred books; any independent bookseller can order a POD title and deliver it as fast as the post office can run. Remember the frustration of going through Books In Print and lamenting the impossibility of getting a particular title?
El Grito and Revista aside, Chicano Literature’s two best literary magazines emerged in recent years. Sadly, Más Tequila Review and Huizache, have not published in years, perhaps won’t. The driving spirits behind the projects, Richard Vargas and Dagoberto Gilb, maintain their busy literary lives so their reluctance to put on their Editor/Publisher’s hat is understood.
That’s why it’s time for you to step up to the print-on-demand plate. I know the web offers a potpourri of raza-flavored places to visit, like La Bloga, que no? November 28th marks our eighteenth birthday.
But I'm thinking of Print.
For all I know, there’s already a successor to El Grito, Revista Chicana-Riqueña, Más Tequila Review, Huizache, out there but it hasn’t crossed my eyes yet. If you know of such a resource, fix my eyes, por favor.
I nominate The Cheech in Riverside, California, to be the cultural centro that takes on a literary dimension. Imagine a monthly journal—print--a hybrid bringing original art and literature combining informed art history and literary criticism, serious stuff but written for general and YA readers.
Is Print dead?
*** LA BLOGA INBOX *** JUST RECEIVED ***
Note: La Bloga-Tuesday usually doesn’t “rip and read” political copy, but this exceptional opportunity both to celebrate Pat Paulsen’s memorable 1968 presidential campaign, and to fix what’s wrong with LA, is too juicy to ignore, so with a sense of public service and not ignoring it, here's the release
Pat Paulsen Commemorative Write-In Mayoral Campaign Announces Candidate, Platform
**immediate release**
Credit: Campaign Portavoz. Contact: Rusty Cuchillo, Benjamin Dejo.
(Los Angeles, Aug2, 2022) Following weeks of intensive closed-door negotiations, the Pat Paulsen Commemorative Write-In Mayoral Campaign, PPCW-IMC, narrowed its choice to Galardonada García, a retired elementary schoolteacher, and the overwhelming choice, Michael Sedano, retired Vernon warehouse worker and United States Army Veteran.
Sedano, who declares, “I’d rather be right, than Mayor”,when scoffers call the platform absurd, expects bruising criticism from the real estate developer and the career politician on the Ballot and supposedly the only choices in the race.
"That’s why there’s a Write-In," Sedano reminds.
García, calling for unity and jamas sera vencido politics, endorses Sedano wholeheartedly.
The single issue the PPCW-IMC runs on relates to the city’s new Sixth Street Viaduct, a bridge across the cemented channel of the Los Angeles river.
Cuchillo and the campaign already released the Platform, now tweaked by write-in candidate Sedano:
PPCW-IMC Campaign to Write-In Michael Sedano and Elect Him Mayor and Make the Bridge the People’s Puente Promises Your Write-In Vote for Sedano means
•Weekend closure to vehicles.
•Free puestos for community vendors
•Thursday night drag races for troubled youth versus clean-cut youth.
•Saturday night all-comers quarter-mile championships
•Sunday menudo competition climaxing in a 4th of July cook-off. Red only.
•Dam the LA River at 7th Street. Fill the channel with water from Frogtown to 7th.
•Divert funds from LAPD and eliminate other armed agencies to pay for the dam, water purification, lifeguards, and trout.
The Pat Paulsen Commemorative Write-In Mayoral Campaign urges voters eligible to vote in the Los Angeles Mayoral election to Register Today.
In lieu of campaign donations, which are refused, PPCW-IMC urges people support Planned Parenthood and GOTV, never vote R.
**Append**
Rusty Cuchillo apologizes for some reporters’ misimpression that Sedano disrespects LAPD handling of the first days of the new bridge, when police closed the bridge rather than shoot drag racers and vehicular hobbyists. “I credit their restraint,” Sedano says, “and you can quote me,” adding his platform reduces the department’s budget to pay for converting the Sixth Street Bridge into the people’s Puente with weeknight drag races and Sunday menudo sales, "but you gotta write-in Sedano" or it's S O S.
6 comments:
Michael, an insightful essay, for sure. Maybe the next question should be, where have all the Chicana(o) writers gone? And, for those still out there, where do they go to publish? Bottom line, publishing is a business, even non-profit publishers exist because of the books they publish and sell. My guess is that's why the children's book and YA market is so strong. Publishers want to get their books into kids' hands, and into schools for the bigger bucks. The word on the "publishing" street is even NY big-time publishers are struggling and publishing books that will bring in a profit. Does all this once again get back to the sticky question of "literary standards" and the quality of good writing and storytelling? You are right, though. With technology a published work is just a key stroke away. Getting readers is another story.
I'm here. I've published Chicano poetry and on my 2nd full length book. I'm working on a novel that might be the best work ever written on Raza/gente. You wont see me on bloga other than comment section.
Here's part of my essay which has been reprinted a few times since it was FIRST published in the LA-based print journal RATTLE: " Carlos Cumpián
WITHOUT RESERVATION OR PASSPORT, THE NEXT ROUND IS OURS.
"...Are not remarks such as 'the poet has few readers' or 'who understands poetry?' merely profane, let us say technical? There is nothing contemptible in them. But who could confuse book promotion with the communitarian duty of poetry?"
Paul Chamberland, The Courage of Poetry
I volunteer with a small but dedicated non-profit group, MARCH, Inc. that has helped dozens of Latino, Chicana/o and Native Americans get their first poetry books published in the past 20 years. Most of our books are sold at readings or through "special order." Outside of Illinois, we have Small Press Distribution in California and the major book jobbers (Baker & Taylor, etc.) to handle our titles. I suspect most of the small press poets sell their work pretty much in the same manner.
As a novice editor in 1981, I worked with the late William Oandasan, Native American (Ukono'um /Yuki) poet on our first three poetry chapbooks: Beside the Wichita for Comanche poet and artist Lonnie Poco, Akewa is a Woman for Argentinian immigrant Beatrice Badikian and Saturn Calling for second-generation Chicano Ken Serritos. Each chapbook had printed quantity runs of 1,000. Shortly after the books' completion, Oandasan moved to California. I knew if we were going to continue publishing poetry, I would have to start examining how others made a go at it.
None of our members had experience as part of an academic literary project, cultural arm of a political group or private commercial endeavor. We learned about publishing "by the seat of our pants." Fortunately, I kept in direct correspondence with a cadre of Chicano small press publisher/writers such as Maize editors Alurista and Xelina at el Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego; poets Mia and Cecilio Garcia-Camarillo of San Antonio, Texas, who published a monthly cultural tabloid Caracol; Denver-area Abelardo "Lalo" Delgado, a pioneer performance poet and self-publishing master who used a typewriter, photocopier and stapler to print his instant barrio collectibles; and San José, California-based poet/publisher Lorna Dee Cervantes with her Mango Press. Legend has it that Cervantes started publishing on July 4th, 1976 in a former farmworker's camp kitchen with help from her co-editors, Orlando Ramirez, Adrian Rocha and Chicano Chapbook Series' heavy-hitter Gary Soto.
The work those creative individuals had done inspired me to join MARCH, Inc. (el movimiento artistico chicano) as its poetry editor. In 1989, I organized our chapbook anthology Emergency Tacos: Seven Poets Con Picante which was released after group members Beatrice Badikian, Sandra Cisneros, Carlos Cortez, Cynthia Gallaher, Margarita Lopez-Castro, Raúl Niño and myself (Carlos Cumpian) had performed five years' worth of live readings at our monthly venues around Chicago. In less than a year, most copies were sold and my desire to build a small press was vitalized. ".... (it goes on for a few pages--BUT we have had numerous journals exploring Chicano poetry in the MODWEST over the past 40 years).
Dear anonY poet: Title of your libro?
Thanks, Michael, for your thoughtful overview of Chicano/Latino/Latinx literature over the years. (Our ethnic labels seem to change as often as the names of the journals and periodicals we enjoyed but are now gone.) I agree, also, with Daniel Cano's comments above. As a small indie lit press (thanks for mentioning my Golden Foothills Press), I can attest to the very real obstacles that insufficient staffing and other resources cause us as we strive to publish more good authors and to do them justice with publicity, etc. There are many, many outstanding Latino/a authors today, but each book, each journal, requires a lot of specialized skills if we want our publications to be very high-quality...and of course we do want that. And a lot of energy. So small press owners often have to do most, if not all, the work themselves. We need a paradigm shift, I believe, for the situation to improve.
Hola Ms. Reyna: when did you start your Golden Foothills Press and who have you published? Are you a California-based press?
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