He discovers chicano literature

Before Huizache: El Grito

Michael Sedano

Between 1963 and 1967 I became a Bachelor of Arts-level expert in British Literature with a dabble of United Statesian writing, such as it was. Those qualifiers, “dabble” and “such as it was”, meant a sizeable gap in my literary education that couldn’t be filled by Random House, nor  Grove Press, nor upper-division courses in U.S. fiction. It wasn’t until my return from the US Army in 1970 that absence found its satisfaction in output from a Berkeley, California press, Quinto Sol.

For half a year, I lived part-time atop Mae Bong, the world’s highest missile site. Duty was three days and two nights on the mountain, two days and a night in base camp.

I always took the overnight turn. The troops slept through the night giving me eight hours to read, interrupted only by hourly commo checks. 

Down in base camp, the USO had installed a library featuring books I wanted to read, titles chosen right off the shelves of City Lights Bookstore. Thanks to that unknown USO librarian, I was never short on good stuff to read, from Brautigan to Vonnegut, free.

I had been back from Korea only a few weeks when my Barbara, who taught English at San Gabriel High School, told me she’d learned of a nearby bookstore selling Chicano Literature. I immediately knew what those two words meant but I’d never seen them put together like that. I whip out my Thomas Bros map book to locate this bookstore selling this unknown commodity, chicano literature.

I entered the Army in January 1969 and didn’t come up for air until August 1970 when I walked away from Ft. Lewis with an Honorable Discharge in hand and travel money to Temple City, California. Without having a name for it, chicano literature, that's what was missing from my literary experience and in a few weeks I'd hold it in my hands.

While I was overseas high atop mighty Mae Bong, Quinto Sol Publications of Berkeley, California, had published a collection of Mexican-American Literature then revised it in 1969 with a new title, El Espejo: The Mirror. Selected Chicano Literature. It was the first book in Unitedstatesian literature called “chicano literature.”

My recollection of holding Quinto Sol’s El Espejo in my hands the first time, in that tiny bookstore that sold chicano literature, sprang to mind as I received a wondrous gift from Thelma T. Reyna, who holds down alternate Fridays at La Bloga. Thelma gave me a copy of El Grito V:3 Spring 1972, subtitled Prosa Chicana Contemporánea Contemporary Chicano Prose. The collection treats readers today to work from notable writers still early in their careers.

Reyna’s short fiction, “The Grapevine”, has the antepenultimate position in the edition. Leading off the collection is Rudolfo Anaya with an excerpt from Bless Me, Ultima. Tomas Rivera, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Octavio Ignacio Romano-V, and Estela Portillo de Trambley, round out the opening selections. Romano is editor-publisher of Quinto Sol and El Grito.

Anaya prefaces the excerpt saying, “I have a very good feeling about where the course of Chicano Literature is headed.” El Grito V:3 offers eighty pages of contemporary chicano prose, with illustrations by Ramses Noriega, illustrating Rudolfo Anaya's confidence in where Chicanas and Chicanos are heading in 1972.

El Grito is Ur-Huizache. Huizache (link), recently located to El Paso Texas from California, offers a definitive snapshot of contemporary raza writing in journal form. While rare copies of El Grito might be obtained from internet sellers at a premium, you can buy Huizache's entire collection now (link to publisher) and wait fifty years for the collection to be sure-fire treasure.