I wanted to find analytical books about Chicana/o authors. Easy enough, I thought. Chicana/o Lit is an accepted literary category, right? A credible topic for a university course? That may be, but I quickly learned that there is a sobering lack of biographical and academic studies of Mexican American authors. There must be several reasons for this, which I don't want to get into here in this short piece for La Bloga. I will point out that I could not find a definitive biography or serious critique of Tomás Rivera, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, Denise Chávez, Michael Nava, etc., etc. Maybe I looked in the wrong places? Maybe I didn't go deep enough? Please point me in the right direction. I'll be happy to list any books about Chicana/o authors that you recommend. I'm not looking for autobiographical works or reviews of specific titles. Meanwhile, here's what I've got so far.
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Alfredo Véa’s Narrative Trilogy: Studies on La Maravilla, The Silver Cloud Café, and Gods Go Begging
Roberto Cantú
Cambridge Scholars Publishing - 2023
[from the publisher]
With the publication of La Maravilla (1993), Alfredo Véa entered the world of letters in full possession of his craft as a novelist, blending narrative fiction and engaging anecdotes with allusions to art (music, paintings, poetry) and autobiography (e.g., his tour of duty in Vietnam), written in the poetry and prose of the world with penetrating reflections on America (as an ideal), and the United States (as a country). Véa’s narrative trilogy was recognized for its attention to language, ingenious conception at the level of plot and theme, and broad reflections on American society, its history (politics, art, religion, the entertainment industry), and its role as a world power in the twentieth century, specifically during the Vietnam war. Although recognized as a writer of great intuition and exceptional creativity, until now, no book-length study has been written on Alfredo Véa as a novelist. In this book, each one of the novels in the trilogy is analyzed and interpreted from an interdisciplinary perspective and with the general reader in mind, as well as college and university professors and students of US and world literatures.
Roberto Cantú is Professor Emeritus of English, and jointly Professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. For more than forty years, he taught courses on world and Latin American literature, including Chicana/o, Mexican, and Mesoamerican literatures. He is the translator (from English to Spanish) of José Antonio Villarreal’s novel Pocho (1994), and the author of José Antonio Villarreal and Pocho: A Mexican American Novel and its Tragic Plot (2022). He has edited several books, including An Insatiable Dialectic: Essays on Critique, Modernity, and Humanism (2013); The Willow and the Spiral: Essays on Octavio Paz and the Poetic Imagination (2014); The Forked Juniper: Critical Perspectives on Rudolfo Anaya (2016); and Mexican Mural Art: Critical Essays on a Belligerent Aesthetic (2021). In 1990, Cantú received Cal State LA’s Outstanding Professor Award. In 2010, he was recognized at his campus with the President’s Distinguished Professor Award.
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The Forked Juniper: Critical Perspectives on Rudolfo Anaya
Roberto Cantú, ed.
University of Oklahoma Press - 2016
[from the publisher]
Widely acclaimed as the founder of Chicano literature, Rudolfo Anaya is one of America’s most compelling and prolific authors. A recipient of a National Humanities Medal and best known for his debut novel, Bless Me, Ultima, his writings span multiple genres, from novels and essays to plays, poems, and children’s stories. Despite his prominence, critical studies of Anaya’s writings have appeared almost solely in journals, and the last book-length collection of essays on his work is now more than twenty-five years old. The Forked Juniper remedies this gap by offering new critical evaluations of Anaya’s ever-evolving artistry.
Edited by distinguished Chicano studies scholar Roberto Cantú, The Forked Juniper presents thirteen essays written by U.S., Mexican, and German critics and academics. The essayists employ a range of critical methods in their analyses of such major works as Bless Me, Ultima (1972), Jalamanta: A Message from the Desert (1996), and the Sonny Baca narrative quartet (1995–2005). Through the lens of cultural studies, the essayists also discuss intriguing themes in Anaya’s writings, such as witchcraft in colonial New Mexico, the reconceptualization of Aztlán, and the aesthetics of the New World Baroque. The volume concludes with an interview with renowned filmmaker David Ellis, who produced the 2014 film Rudolfo Anaya: The Magic of Words.
The symbol of the forked juniper tree—venerated as an emblem of healing and peace in some spiritual traditions and a compelling image in Bless Me, Ultima—is open to multiple interpretations. It echoes the manifold meanings the contributors to this volume reveal in Anaya’s boundlessly imaginative literature.
The Forked Juniper illuminates both the artistry of Anaya’s writings and the culture, history, and diverse religious traditions of his beloved Nuevo Mexico. It is an essential reference for any reader seeking greater understanding of Anaya’s world-embracing work.
Rolando Hinojosa's Klail City Death Trip Series: A Retrospective, New Directions
Stephen Miller & Jose Villalobos, eds.
Widely acclaimed as the founder of Chicano literature, Rudolfo Anaya is one of America’s most compelling and prolific authors. A recipient of a National Humanities Medal and best known for his debut novel, Bless Me, Ultima, his writings span multiple genres, from novels and essays to plays, poems, and children’s stories. Despite his prominence, critical studies of Anaya’s writings have appeared almost solely in journals, and the last book-length collection of essays on his work is now more than twenty-five years old. The Forked Juniper remedies this gap by offering new critical evaluations of Anaya’s ever-evolving artistry.
Edited by distinguished Chicano studies scholar Roberto Cantú, The Forked Juniper presents thirteen essays written by U.S., Mexican, and German critics and academics. The essayists employ a range of critical methods in their analyses of such major works as Bless Me, Ultima (1972), Jalamanta: A Message from the Desert (1996), and the Sonny Baca narrative quartet (1995–2005). Through the lens of cultural studies, the essayists also discuss intriguing themes in Anaya’s writings, such as witchcraft in colonial New Mexico, the reconceptualization of Aztlán, and the aesthetics of the New World Baroque. The volume concludes with an interview with renowned filmmaker David Ellis, who produced the 2014 film Rudolfo Anaya: The Magic of Words.
The symbol of the forked juniper tree—venerated as an emblem of healing and peace in some spiritual traditions and a compelling image in Bless Me, Ultima—is open to multiple interpretations. It echoes the manifold meanings the contributors to this volume reveal in Anaya’s boundlessly imaginative literature.
The Forked Juniper illuminates both the artistry of Anaya’s writings and the culture, history, and diverse religious traditions of his beloved Nuevo Mexico. It is an essential reference for any reader seeking greater understanding of Anaya’s world-embracing work.
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Stephen Miller & Jose Villalobos, eds.
Arte Público Press - 2013
[from the publisher]
Mirroring the linguistic and cultural evolution of those living on the Texas-Mexico border, Rolando Hinojosa’s Klail City Death Trip Series examines relations between Mexican-Americans and Anglo-Americans born and raised in the fictional Rio Grande Valley town of Klail City, Texas. Depicting the transformation of a place and its people “from a sleepy agricultural and ranching backwater of Mexican and American society and history” over a 30-year period, the series comprises fifteen books—published between 1973 and 2006—and reflects the importance of the growing Hispanic population in the U.S.
The people of Hinojosa’s Klail City, which has been compared to William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County and Gabriel García Márquez’s Macondo, have dealt with the same issues as their real-life counterparts living along the border, including discrimination, generational change, drug violence and the quest for women’s rights. The editors of this scholarly volume assert in their introduction that the series, with volumes in English, Spanish and a mix of both languages, “may well be the most innovative and complex project of literary creation ever conceived and realized by a writer based in the United States.”
The eleven essays in this volume consider both broad and specialized aspects of the Klail City Death Trip Series. Divided into two sections, the chapters in the first half examine the series as a whole and look at general topics such as cultural hybridity, the individual’s needs versus those of society and the influence of Hispanic literary tradition on Hinojosa’s work. The essays in the second half explore more specific aspects, including Klail City youth going to war, women’s search for autonomy in the face of societal and familial tradition and a comparison of Hinojosa’s The Valley with Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show as examples of Hispanic and Anglo literary traditions that developed in the same region.
Also included is an interview with Rolando Hinojosa, the Ellen Clayton Garwood Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the most prestigious prize in Latin American fiction, Casa de las Américas, for the best Spanish American novel in 1976 and the Premio Quinto Sol, the National Award for Chicano Literature, in 1972. This collection is an essential tool for scholars and students alike in understanding the work of Rolando Hinojosa and the people living a bilingual, bicultural life along the Texas-Mexico border.
Mirroring the linguistic and cultural evolution of those living on the Texas-Mexico border, Rolando Hinojosa’s Klail City Death Trip Series examines relations between Mexican-Americans and Anglo-Americans born and raised in the fictional Rio Grande Valley town of Klail City, Texas. Depicting the transformation of a place and its people “from a sleepy agricultural and ranching backwater of Mexican and American society and history” over a 30-year period, the series comprises fifteen books—published between 1973 and 2006—and reflects the importance of the growing Hispanic population in the U.S.
The people of Hinojosa’s Klail City, which has been compared to William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County and Gabriel García Márquez’s Macondo, have dealt with the same issues as their real-life counterparts living along the border, including discrimination, generational change, drug violence and the quest for women’s rights. The editors of this scholarly volume assert in their introduction that the series, with volumes in English, Spanish and a mix of both languages, “may well be the most innovative and complex project of literary creation ever conceived and realized by a writer based in the United States.”
The eleven essays in this volume consider both broad and specialized aspects of the Klail City Death Trip Series. Divided into two sections, the chapters in the first half examine the series as a whole and look at general topics such as cultural hybridity, the individual’s needs versus those of society and the influence of Hispanic literary tradition on Hinojosa’s work. The essays in the second half explore more specific aspects, including Klail City youth going to war, women’s search for autonomy in the face of societal and familial tradition and a comparison of Hinojosa’s The Valley with Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show as examples of Hispanic and Anglo literary traditions that developed in the same region.
Also included is an interview with Rolando Hinojosa, the Ellen Clayton Garwood Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the most prestigious prize in Latin American fiction, Casa de las Américas, for the best Spanish American novel in 1976 and the Premio Quinto Sol, the National Award for Chicano Literature, in 1972. This collection is an essential tool for scholars and students alike in understanding the work of Rolando Hinojosa and the people living a bilingual, bicultural life along the Texas-Mexico border.
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Ilan Stavans
Northwestern University Press - 2003
[from the publisher]
The Hispanic Malcolm X. Writer. Activist. Civil rights attorney. Obese, dark-skinned, and angry. Man with a surplus of personality. Man of vision. All the above describe Oscar "Zeta" Acosta. El Paso-born, Acosta became a leading figure in the Chicano rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, winning landmark decisions in civil rights cases as an attorney. As a tireless writer and activist, he had a profound influence on his contemporaries. He seemed to be everywhere at once, knowing everyone in "el movimiento" and involving himself in many of its key moments. Tumultuous and prone to excess, he is the Samoan in Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In 1974, after a last phone call to his son, Acosta disappeared in the Mexican state of Mazatlán.
Hailed as "a fine, learned homage" (Kirkus), "a kaleidoscopic portrait" (Booklist), and "a game of mirrors" (The Washington Post), Bandido is a veritable tour de force. Through interviews and Acosta's writings (published and unpublished), Ilan Stavans reconstructs—even reinvents—the man behind the myth. Part biographical appraisal, part reflection on the legacy of the Civil Rights era, Bandido is an opportunity to understand the challenges and pitfalls Latinos face in finding a place of their own in America.
The Hispanic Malcolm X. Writer. Activist. Civil rights attorney. Obese, dark-skinned, and angry. Man with a surplus of personality. Man of vision. All the above describe Oscar "Zeta" Acosta. El Paso-born, Acosta became a leading figure in the Chicano rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, winning landmark decisions in civil rights cases as an attorney. As a tireless writer and activist, he had a profound influence on his contemporaries. He seemed to be everywhere at once, knowing everyone in "el movimiento" and involving himself in many of its key moments. Tumultuous and prone to excess, he is the Samoan in Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In 1974, after a last phone call to his son, Acosta disappeared in the Mexican state of Mazatlán.
Hailed as "a fine, learned homage" (Kirkus), "a kaleidoscopic portrait" (Booklist), and "a game of mirrors" (The Washington Post), Bandido is a veritable tour de force. Through interviews and Acosta's writings (published and unpublished), Ilan Stavans reconstructs—even reinvents—the man behind the myth. Part biographical appraisal, part reflection on the legacy of the Civil Rights era, Bandido is an opportunity to understand the challenges and pitfalls Latinos face in finding a place of their own in America.
Later.
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Manuel Ramos writes crime fiction. Read his latest story, Northside Nocturne, in the award-winning anthology Denver Noir, edited by Cynthia Swanson, published by Akashic Books.
Manuel Ramos writes crime fiction. Read his latest story, Northside Nocturne, in the award-winning anthology Denver Noir, edited by Cynthia Swanson, published by Akashic Books.
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