Chicanonautica: Can a Chicano Be Mainstream?

by Ernest Hogan

Intercepted conversation from an unidentified source:

Ernest Hogan: Victor? What the fuck? It's 4:24 AM, for Tezcatlipoca’s sake! 

Victor Theremin: I'm feeling restless. Could use some writer talk. 

EH: I thought I turned my phone off . . .

VT: You know I have access to outlaw technology.

EH: What? There's video, too? I haven't downloaded any apps for that.

VT: I’ve had my hacker friends download stuff to your phone.

EH: I wish you wouldn’t do that. It’s an invasion of my privacy.

VT: Is there any such thing as privacy anymore?

EH: Uh-oh. I nearly woke up my wife. I better go to the living room . . .

(The sound of footsteps, soft impacts, profanity.)

VT: There is so much to think about right now.

EH: As usual.

VT: Actually, cabrón, there's a helluva lot more than usual.

EH: Yeah, I guess you're right, with COVID, and all that political and other pendajas going on.

VT: Precisely! This is the end/beginning of new eras! And you know what that means?

EH: What? You on a beach somewhere? Why is the sky purple?

VT: It means that us Chicano science fiction writers are gonna have to rethink everything, and reconsider what we've been working on! 

EH: I know it happened to Emily.

VT: How is your wife?

EH: Restless. Eager to get on with a new phase in her life.

VT: See? There a helluvalota that going around.

EH: Just what is a helluvalota?

VT: Quit trying to change the subject.

EH: Can't help it. You knocked me out of some heavy REM sleep.

VT: I tell you, something is happening. Something planetwide. More than the pandemic, or politics, something affecting everybody’s brains . . .

EH: There you go again, losing track of where the sci-fi ends and the reality begins.

VT: I keep telling ya, it doesn’t matter these days. 

EH: Could be. I’m thinking about pitching my next novel as mainstream.

VT: What? The one with the AIs, aliens, and a character based on me?

EH: Yeah.

VT: Uh-oh, looks like you’ve gone over the bend.

EH: I don’t know. I just realized that it’s actually a modern day retelling of Don Quijote, and what could be more mainstream than that?

VT: I always considered it to be the first psychological sci-fi novel.

EH: About senile dementia?

VT: The final frontier.

EH: The problem is when I try to come up with things to compare my stuff to in the pitch, I have a hard time coming up with recent, popular sci-fi. 

VT: You’re solidly in the tradition of Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick . . .

EH: Today’s sci-fi audience doesn’t remember them.

VT: Stick with sci-fi, Ernie. The truth will out!

EH: It might work better if I said I was like Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, and Ishmael Reed.

VT: Like the modern reader remembers them.

EH: I know the post-Twilight/Fifty Shades of Gray audience doesn’t like to think when they read, but I keep hearing that the mainstream audience is bigger than genre. And I really would like to take the chance to actually make it big before I go back to tin-cupping it in the underground.

VT: What, you think you can be the Chicano Vonnegut?

EH: Better than being the Chicano Kilgore Trout.

VT: I thought I was the Chicano Kilgore Trout!

EH: I’ve been busting my ass as a Chicanonaut in Scifiilandia, where I’m treated like the most talented leper they've ever met, and I’d like it all to amount to something.

VT: And how has the mainstream world treated you?

EH: I still have trouble convincing them I exist. And they still give me the bum’s rush. Or take off running when they see me. And this is all before the realize I’m a Chicano.

VT: Ever thought about where sci-fi ends and the mainstream begins?

EH: A lot lately. When I shelve books at the library, I keep running into books that look interesting in the General Fiction section, and when I take a look they have science fictional plots, only they don’t have the entire universe, or even multiverse in danger, like they insist on in commercial sci-fi these days.

VT: This is the age of genre meltdown, besides, genres are just marketing gimmicks, and high-brow conceits like magic realism and speculative fiction are just pretensions for readers who want to feel intellectual.

EH: In my ten years as a bookseller, not one customer ever came in asking for magic realism or speculative fiction.

VT: So, whatcha gonna do, ese?

EH: Think I’ll keep all my options open. When trying to sell the book, I’ll start at the top, go for the dough, and if that doesn’t work out, I still have one foot stuck back in the underground.

VT: Sounds quixotic as all hell. Good boy! Uh-oh, there’s an unidentified phenomenon in the sky that I need to investigate, gotta go, bro!

Ernest Hogan is the Father of Chicano Science Fiction, and Victor Theremin is a fictional character, at least in this universe.

Chicanonautica: Mexico City in Shades of Noir

by Ernest Hogan

Silvia Moreno-Garcia has all my respect. She is one of the most successful Latina writers of her generation. Her knockout novel Mexican Gothic was a New York Times bestseller, and is being developed for television. Everything I've read by her is great.

She's also prolific. Her books come out so often I can't keep up with them. Please forgive me. I live under a monumental mound of books and am easily distracted.

I deliberately tried to get ahead of the game with her new one, Velvet Was the Night. I got me an electronic ARC from NetGalley. It's not coming out until August, so this is a chance for you to pre-order it to make for a grand finale for your summer reading binge. 

Yes, it's another winner.

Charging further into bestseller/big-time territory, this one leaps out of the sci-fi/fantasy/horror megagenre into the more mainstreamy noir. It transplants the genre to Mexico City, which I suppose would make it negra (that translates to black for you Spanish-impaired out there), which creates some problems. The French started calling Hollywood crime films with dark attitude noir since the Fifties. Maybe we need a new term for what’s going on now--I suggest ultraviolet: the invisible light that makes scorpions glow in the dark.

 

Velvet Was the Night takes the noir tradition to new places besides CDMX. It takes place back in the Seventies, the time of hippies, and commies, and gangsters getting mixed up in dirty and deadly Cold War politics. But this isn’t a literary history lesson. The real-life nightmarish situation is the background for the story of two young people: a young thug who goes by El Elvis, and a thirtyish secretary who likes American pop music, movies, and Mexican romance comics.

Yes, we have a Tarantino-esque mix of old-time pop culture along with the sex and violence.

The characters are great, and a bit larger-than-life. The setting gave me Mexico City flashbacks--I could smell the streets . . .

It’s just the thing to take you away from the dwindling pandemic and current political shuffle to deal with the new situation. And not just for the Latino lit crowd. Recommend this to your Anglo friends as a page-turning beach read.

If they like it, recommend Mexican Gothic. Also, her earlier books are being rereleased.

Who knows, maybe after a few years New York publishers will stop thinking that books by and about Latinxes won’t make money.

Wouldn’t that be something?

Ernest Hogan’s work will be in two upcoming anthologies: Nuestra Realidad Creativa / Our Creative Reality and El Porvenir, Ya! Citlalzazanilli Mexicatl: A Chicano Science Fiction Anthology.

Chicanonautica: ¡Remember El Espejo!

By Ernest Hogan

I buy a lot of books at used book and thrift stores. Not only are they cheap, but I often find lost treasures. I like rescuing books before they end up in the landfill to rot, or hopefully be restored by the archeologists of the future with brave new technology.

I also like finding Chicano and Latino lit. When I saw a yellowed copy of El Espejo/The Mirror: Selected Mexican-American Literature edited by Octavio I. Romano-V. I couldn’t help but grab it.

It’s from Quinto Sol Publications, in Berkeley, California, first published in 1969. The cover and title page of this copy of the fourth printing say Selected Mexican-American Literature. Later editions and internet call it Selected Chicano Literature. I remember those days. “Chicano” was still an insult, like the N-word, and proper “Mexican-Americans” didn’t want to be confused with those vatos who were rioting and writing on walls. Even back then we were arguing amongst ourselves over who and what we are.

The works are classic Chicano literature, poetry, nonfiction, poetry, prose, Spanish, English--sometimes all at the same time, and often similar to the experimental, new wave speculative fiction I was reading at the time. The Chicano imagination is powerful.

“The mirror is the rim of illusion.” as Miguel Ponce says in the “Notes for an Anti-introduction.”

History is 

presented like time travel, cruising from preColumbian times, to the 1910 Mexican Revolution, to Sixties flashes of post-psychedelic utopias that cross borders and break them down. From Rudy Espinosa’s scenario for a screen play “Kiko’s Tale:” “Ya know since traveling I’ve understood myself more clearly and I want out! Out of the cities of Americana, and all those tinsel time machines.”

“Minority” (I don’t like the word, it makes it seem like we can be ignored) writers and science fiction writers have a common problem: presenting cultures that are often alien to your publisher and audience.

It’s all about being and dealing with aliens.

Yeah, the writers are all men. In those proto-feminist days, when it was called Women’s Lib, most Chicanas had their creativity beaten out of them or channeled into more “practical” pursuits. Women who could become writers and artists back then were a special breed.

The writers are mostly Californios from San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose,Oakland, Berkeley, Olivehurst, and Lemon Grove, with exceptions from Tucson, Arizona, and Guadalajara, Jalisco.

They also seem to have broken into print through contact with academia. I wonder if it was anything like my struggles with commercial publishing.

Ocatvio I Romano-V. founded Quinto Sol, and was no doubt the driving force behind this and other books. Sometimes if you want something published you have to do it yourself. Writers owe a lot to people like him.

And some of the other writers have gone on to other accomplishments. Miguel Méndez-M. won the Premio Nacinal de Literatura Mexicana José and is ASU’s School of Transborder Studies. Nick Vaca became an author, attorney, and journalist. The poet Alurista won the American Book Award. José Montoya was Sacramento’s Poet Laureate. Juan Garcia’s imaginative works won him the Juan Rulfo Prize. And I’m sure Silvio Villavicencio, Miguel Ponce, Estupian, and Rudy Espinosa have done amazing things that can’t be found on a Google search. We often don't get documented.

In all, a welcome addition to your Chicano literature shelf.

Ernest Hogan creates Chicano literature without even trying.

Chicanonautica: Cuca, the Monsters of Aztlán, and Me

by Ernest Hogan

Though it looks like 2020 is going to be an another pendejada of a year, but it’s starting off in a good way for me. I’ve got a new story out! Which is the sort of thing I live for.

It’s called “Cuca,” which is short for the main character’s name La Cucarachona. Yeah, I’m aware that it means “The big female cockroach,” I’m not like those tontos who have named their Mexican restaurants La Curaracha (they have existed, Emily and I used to eat at a Pancho’s Mexican Buffet across the street from one). Cuca is Chicana masked wrestler. It begins like this:

The empty highway dumped them onto a road lit only by the light of distant stars.

            'Look!' The driver jabbed a metallic brown fingernail that matched her bug-eyed, antenna’d mask and her lipstick. 'We found it.'

           'Wonder how they get electricity out here,' said the passenger, a smartly dressed, balding, green-eyed Chicano with a hint of a mustache.

            On one side of the lumpy stretch of unpaved road, a dilapidated motel was illuminated by a sputtering neon sign that had the iconic Indian and his horse hanging their heads, only the Indian was missing his head, and the horse was missing his tail.

            'I was about ready to grab the wheel, and talk you into looking for a nice, sleazy motel.' He put his hand on her thigh, 'And give you what you’ve really been needing.'

            She gave him a quick, hard elbow to the ribs.

In that mysterious motel in the middle of an Arizona desert, Cuca and her agent find themselves in a nexus of the monsters of Aztlán. She has a life-changing experience that involves the disturbing trend of corporate entities gobbling up local cultures. It’s a short piece crammed with strange creatures of this corner of the world.

This all began with me getting a message from Margrét Helgadóttir, asking me if I lived in North or South America. I guess if people are confused over that, I’m being a proper Chicanonaut, also I wasn’t sure what Scandinavian country she was from (she’s Norwegian/Icelandic). I told her I’m in North America, and she informed me that she was doing a series of anthologies about monsters from different parts of the world, and was looking for stories for the volume about South America, but she would get back to me when she did the one about North America, which she did, a year later.

The book is American Monsters Part 2 (Part1 was the volume about South America), and it’s available from Amazon and Amazon UK (it's from a UK publisher, in case you were wondering about the quotations marks in the snippet).

I couldn’t settle for just one of the monsters from my neighborhood, so I contrived a way to write a monster orgy with Chicano/Mexican pop culture for some sabor pincante.

So buy it, read it, now!

Ernest Hogan, author of High Aztech, Smoking Mirror Blues, and Cortez on Jupiter considers himself to be a monster of Aztlán.

Chicanonautica: J. J. Benítez and His Cuadernos de Campo

by Ernest Hogan

J.J.Benítez is one of the most popular and prolific authors writing in Spanish. That makes him one of the most popular writers on the planet. Still, English translations of his books seem to only exist as rumors.

Benítez has been a journalist for over fifty years, and is mostly known as a UFO (en español: OVNI--Objecto Volador No Idenificado) researcher, and in recent decades has branched out into the paranormal--ghosts, angels, afterlife manifestations, other dimensions, apocalyptic visions, etc.

I first encountered him about thirty years ago. I was reading UFO literature in Spanish from the Phoenix Public Library. OVNI lit tends to be sexier, with pulp-fictiony violence, and more bizarre than Anglophone UFO lit. Benítez stood out in this genre; he can actually write.

I checked out a thick volume, the title of which escapes me. (Looking over Benítez’s massive catalog is no help.) It read like a novel, X-Files-ish, with a touch of gonzo journalism. Benítez traveled around the world (having particular trouble getting in and out of the United States) investigating UFOs.  Something seemed to be going on . . . 

Then at the end, he came to an abrupt halt, apologizing for not tying it all together, but promising that maybe he would be able to do it in the next book . . .

If it hadn't been a library book, I would have thrown it at the nearest wall, breaking its spine.

Fans of UFO/paranormal lit are a helluvalot more patient than I am.

Like the X-Files, Benítez tended to be vague. A photo that stuck in my mind was a typical tourist shot of his bikini-clad girlfriend at a Mediterranean beach. The caption said that there was a UFO in the sky. To me it looked like speck of dust on the negative.

I had to admire him for pulling off such a scam, but how long could it last? Surely, his readers would catch on and stop buying his books.

No.

For decades, I kept seeing new books by Benítez. He’s a regular fixture in libraries here in Aztlán. When I went to work for Borders, I found myself shelving shiny new copies his latest, fat volumes.

He dropped the first person narrative, and took to reporting incidents, sometimes interviewing the witnesses, other times retelling accounts reported elsewhere--like Fidel Castro’s UFO sighting in Sólo Para Tus Ojos: Cuarenta y Cuatro Años de Investigación Ovni.

He has an easy-to-read style (I recommend his books for those who need to practice their Spanish). He keeps the reports short, and often doesn’t bother to put them in chronological order. They are also illustrated with photos, maps, and diagram-like drawings from Benítez’s “cuadernos de campo” which give the impression that he’s running all over the planet doing research rather than answering email from people who’ve seen or experienced strange things. 

He provides lots of data, but no real proof.

His audience doesn’t seem to care. When people want to believe, they don’t need to be convinced.

People used to say, “No one will believe that, this is the twentieth century.” In the twenty-first century, the Information Age, people will believe anything.

Is it just me, or is that scary?

Ernest Hogan once saw a UFO over the Superstition Mountains, but remains a skeptical science fiction writer. His novel Smoking Mirror Blues is available in a new edition.

Where In the World is Johnny Diaz?

Talented. Generous. It's a wonderful happenstance when both qualities are embodied in the same person. This is very much the case with Johnny Diaz. I first came in contact with Johnny via Ann Hagman Cardinal, one of my Sister Chicas co-authors.At that time, he was on the staff of the Boston Globe. He felt we had an interesting backstory and that the novel itself deserved attention. And so, all three of us (myself, Ann, and Jane Alberdeston Coralin) were profiled by Johnny, giving us national attention.

Did I mention his novels describe life, love and loss with a deft hand and a sense of humor? Well, they do, and so you don't miss out on them, a link is provided at the end of this interview.

From Boston Boys Club until now, do you see a larger audience for chico lit and if so, what do you think about the intersectionality of Latinx and LGBTQ?

Yes, there is a larger audience. In the last few years, I have noticed more authors of gay fiction including more Latino characters even though the authors aren’t necessarily Latino or gay.  I see that as nod to Latino gay readers looking for characters who look and sound like them . Traditionally, there haven’t been many gay Latino authors publishing their work besides Michael Nava, Richard Blanco, Alex Sanchez, Jeff Rivera, Charlie Vasquez, Rigoberto Gonzalez and others.

Tell me more about the writers you love. Why them? What stands out in their words How has it shaped your writing?

Two of my favorite authors are Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez and Nicholas Sparks.

Alisa knows how to tell a good story about friends and finding love. Her fiction and nonfiction writing is funny, chatty but also dramatic. Her first novel, The Dirty Girls Social Club, inspired me to write my first book Boston Boys Club.  All of her characters have felt real to me and I wanted to do something similar with my own writing, making characters relatable and interesting that you'd want to follow along in their lives.

I discovered Nicholas Sparks when I was also living in Boston. I saw "The Notebook'' and decided to read the book. And I was hooked. He knows how to gently pull the reader along in a romance and his descriptions of emotions are spot on. I find myself looking out each October for another one of his books. I've read them all. Although his characters are straight, the romances are universal. Who hasn't had a broken heart and yearned to fall in love again? That's how he has influenced my writing.

Where are you in the "genre fiction" vs. "literary fiction" discussion. Do the labels clarify or limit?

Re: lit fic vs. Genre fic:

I don't think labels hurt in fiction. While literary fiction may seem more seriously taken, I like the fact that there are genres and sub-genres in fiction because that helps readers find exactly what they are looking for (chica lit, m/m romance, etc) i think literary fiction is too big of an umbrella term for all types of fiction. While my novels could be labeled literary fiction, I like that they can also be found under gay fiction and romance fiction and Latin fiction.

What's the same and what's different in your writing process now, as opposed to when you were writing Boston Boys?

The writing process is pretty much the same. For each book, I sit down and write a chapter, about 2,000 words or so (akin to a long features story in the newspaper) and I always include two scenes in each chapter to move the story along.  I find that keeps the reader engaged (at least it does for me as the writer.)

I also give myself a few months, a year or so to write the first draft of a book. Then I revise it over and over again by printing out chapters and taking them with me in my daily travels to read when I have a chance. I purposely pick different places to edit (a park bench, a coffee shop, the backyard, etc) because I find the settings help provide another perspective.

Do you see the arc in a story as being similar to the arc in a love affair?

I hadn’t thought about it that way but yes, now that you mention it.  When I start writing a new book, I am usually creatively excited and enthusiastic to get the words on paper to tell the new story.  It’s like having a crush but on a story. You’re falling and running with it but then you may hit a roadblock and you have to work through it.  And by the time I’m done in writing the story, I want to move on to the next (writing) affair.

Talk about the ways your protagonists have grown in terms of love and relationships?

In each of the books, the main protagonist is single, recovering from a break up and looking for Mr. Right with the help of good friends.  So the books follow their journeys and how these men evolve romantically in their 20s and 30s. One of the main protagonists, Tommy Perez began his journey in Boston Boys Club as a new Bostonian looking for that special guy. He finds that guy but realizes he has issues with alcohol and how does one handle that in a new blossoming relationship? 

Tommy Perez returns in my third novel Beantown Cubans healing from the a broken heart when the ex returns sober and wants to try again.  And then in the last book, Six Neckties,  Tommy is all healed and ready to love again just as all his friends are getting married and he’s the best man and groomsman. So the readers may relate to the universal ups and downs in his love life over the course of ten years.

How would you compare the kind of writing you do as a journalist with that of a novelist?

I find the fiction writing liberating. I feel I can use my humor, my voice and descriptive writing more than in my daily journalism. I tend to write feature stories so those pieces are about trends, personalities, and profiles. The stories are about them, not me so I take a step back and write as a detached observer.  The fiction writing allows me to use the first-person voice and channel various characters. It’s just more fun.

Tell us something that’s not in the official bio?

I’m a huge runner. I enjoy running  two to three miles while listening to meditations by Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra.  I find the combination of running and the meditations calming even though adrenaline is pumping through my veins.  I find running as liberating as writing.

I also recently recovered from bladder cancer . I kept it quiet last fall and winter as I went through the surgeries and treatments. I am happy to say that so far, so good. I am thankful to be healthy and grateful for the wonderful doctors and the support of family and friends.

All of Johnny's books

And more info on the newest

Now that gays are getting hitched, it seems that everyone is saying I Do. Except for Tommy Perez. He's always the best man or groomsman for his friends' nuptials. And with each occasion, Tommy goes home alone with another necktie. He's already on number four. But things seem to improve for the Maine magazine writer when he suddenly meets Danny, a confident freelance photographer who shoots a friend's wedding in Provincetown. Danny is cute enough that he should be in front of the camera rather than behind it. And complicating matters is the arrival of a sexy and slightly older guest house manager named Ignacio who begins to court Tommy's heart in their small town of Ogunquit. 

But is Tommy ready for love again? As he helps his best friends Rico and Carlos prepare for their weddings, Tommy must reexamine his past relationship with his ex Mikey who had issues with the bottle in Boston. And with two potential love interests on the horizon, will it finally be Tommy's turn to walk down the aisle in his own necktie?

From the author of Boston Boys Club, Beantown Cubans, Take the Lead and Looking for Providence comes another fun, heartwarming story about the power of love and friendship.