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Hope College
English Department Celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, Prof. Jesse Montano and Prof. Pablo Peschiera share some of their favorite books and authors originating from the Pan-Hispano tradition. Prof. Monatno's Must-Read List (in full) Prof. Monatno's Must-Read List Rosario Ferré, The House on the Lagoon. Architecture and Puerto Rican freedom fighters, but mostly I like it because Ferré reminds me that Puerto Rico is part of the US. And that Ferré would like it to stay that way. Her first novel in English. Junot Diaz, The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. If you are into, like really, really into, The Lord of the Rings, the Watchmen series, or other works by Alan Moore or Frank Miller, this is your book. Also, it is really about Dominican experience. John Rolling Ridge, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta. Wait, he’s Native American and his people were asked to leave the American South and walk to Oklahoma? What the hell, I hate Oklahoma too. In any case, he wrote the seminal text that has a direct lineage to the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. Tomas Rivera, Y no se lo trago la tierra/And the Earth Did Not Part. Traces Mexican-American experience along the Midwest corridor. A couple of years ago, I drove from Texas to Minnesota, following the same route. Every Mexicano in the Midwest thinks Rivera wrote the book about him. I certainly do. Ana Castillo, So Far from God. Curanderismo, brujeria, ghosts, women on road trips, this novel has it all. The Chicana experience, especially in New Mexico. If you ever take a road trip through New Mexico (with the obvious inference being, what the hell is keeping you?), take this book with you. You will never see pueblos, missions, or pilgrimages in the same way. Isabel Allende, Daughter of Fortune. I know Allede is Chilean, but that was ages ago. So far ago that most people do not remember that September 11th used to mean American imperialism. This is a historical novel, estrogen laden as well. At the end of the day (as well as other clichés), the novel does a very good job of painting 19th century California. Maria Amparo Escandon, Gonzales and Daughter Trucking. This is a novel about storytelling and intertextuality. The narrator, herself incarcerated, begins what she believes is a way to improve the lives of the other inmates, reading them books from the library. As she begins to read, however, what comes out of her mouth is her young life as an immigrant in the US. Sandra Cisneros, Caramelo. Road trips, road trips, women on road trips. Is there a theme here? Actually, there is a paper. Much of the time is spent in Chicago and San Antonio. While those two cities do not seemed to be tied in any particular way, they fit harmoniously in Mexican consciousness. Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate. Okay so this is a Mexican novel; however, it is set on the border, and so included in this list. This novel probably has the best sex scene. Is this a theme as well? Not exactly, although the title does imply it. Cristina Garcia, Dreaming in Cuban. Three generations of Cuban women, separated by a war and by ideology. The novel is a good example of magical realism in American literature. Probably the best painted novel. Is that right? Painted? Colors ooze out of the novel. How is that? Pam Muñoz Ryan, Esperanza Rising. One for the little children. It is a young adult novel about a girl who moves from riches to rags, as well as from Mexico to the US. Great border crossing scene. I am reminded of it every time I walk into DeWitt. Victor Martinez, A Parrot in the Oven. El pilon. Baker’s dozen,
in Mexican parlance. Also for the children. The best “history” lesson
on Chicano experience. 1) Miguel Algarin: Algarin is the author of more than ten published books of poetry (Time’s Now; Body Bee Calling), the editor of several anthologies, and an accomplished writer for television and theater. He has received three American Book Awards and was presented with the Larry Leon Hamlin Producer's Award at the 2001 National Black Theater Festival. Algarin is also the sole translator of the Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda's Songs of Protest. In his best-selling, critically acclaimed book Love is Hard Work, Algarin shares his own struggle with being HIV positive. 2) Alurista: Born in Mexico City and attended primary school in Morelos. He went to the United States when he was thirteen, settling with his family in the border city of San Diego, California. He graduated from high school in 1965 and began studying business administration at Chapman University in Orange County, California. He disliked the field, however, and transferred to San Diego State University (SDSU) to study religion. He changed his major several times before earning a B.A. in psychology in 1970. He went on to earn an M.A. from SDSU in 1978. He doctoral thesis, accepted by the University of California, San Diego in 1983, was on the fiction of Chicano lawyer and author Oscar Zeta Acosta. He has taught at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, Escuela Tlatelolco in Denver, Colorado, and at the University of Texas at Austin. He has also lectured and read his poetry in venues throughout the world. Urista's first experience writing poetry was as a student in Mexico, when he began writing love poems for his classmates as a way to earn money. He began writing poetry for publication in 1966. In 1967, he co-founded the SDSU chapter of MEChA, the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, ("Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán") and organized students in favor of the United Farm Workers grape boycott. He held several jobs, including working for the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program, part of the Lyndon B. Johnson administration's War on Poverty. In 1969, he attended the First National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference, hosted by Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales's Crusade for Justice, and read a poem to the attendees. The poem so moved the youth present that they adopted it as the preamble of the Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, the political manifesto of the Chicano Movement. Upon returning to San Diego, he helped to establish the Chicano Studies department at SDSU. As an active member of the San Diego-area Chicano Movement, Urista was instrumental in the 1970 takeover of Chicano Park and in the foundation of the Centro Cultural de la Raza, a cultural center. It was at this time that he began using the name "Alurista". The assumption of a pen name was as much for anonymity as it was for artistry. According to Urista, "My apartment was shot up by the Minutemen. I didn't want these people to be able to associate my last name with my family, so I changed it."[1] However, the name change was also a reflection of his Marxist philosophy: "The notion was to synthesize--to bring things together. So I tried to do that with my name."[1] In the 1970s, Alurista organized the Festival Floricanto, an annual event that convened Chicano writers and critics to share and critique their work. In addition to his own poetry, Alurista has written works of non-fiction, literary criticism, and many essays on Chicano culture and history. He is credited with popularizing the Chicano Movement-era concept of "Aztlán" and imbuing it with a spiritual dimension through his poetry. His Spanish-language writings were among the first by an American to be taken seriously by critics from hispanophone countries. In the United States, he was one of the first critically-acclaimed poets to mix the Spanish and English languages. His books include: Nationchild plumaroja 1969-1972 (1972), Cantares arrullos (1975), Festival de flor y Canto: an anthology of Chicano literature (editor)( 1976), Timespace huracan : poems, 1972-1975 (1976), Spik in Glyph? (1981), Return: Poems Collected and New (1982), Chicanos : the second largest minority in the USA (with R. Müller-Kind)(1988), Z Eros (1995), Et Tu... Raza? (1996), As our barrio turns: who the yoke b on (2000) 3) Ana Castillo: Born and raised in an inner city barrio of Chicago, Illinois. After completing undergraduate studies, she immediately began teaching college courses. She earned her Master's degree in Latin American and Caribbean studies from the University of Chicago with a thesis entitled "The Idealization and Reality of the Mexican Indian Woman". She received her doctorate from the University of Bremen, Germany, in American studies in 1991. In lieu of a traditional dissertation, she submitted the essays later collected in her highly acclaimed work Massacre of the Dreamers. Her books of poetry include: Otro Canto (1977), The Invitation (1979), Women Are Not Roses (1984), My Father Was a Toltec and selected poems, (1973-1988), I Ask the Impossible (2000). She writes about Chicana feminism, which she dubs "Xicanisma", and her work centers on issues of identity, racism, and classism. Many of her protagonists are fiercely independent, sometimes lesbian, women. Her "imaginative fiction" shows the influence of magical realism. For example, the novel Sapogonia is about a fictional country that is the home to all mestizos. Much of her work has been translated into Spanish. She has also contributed articles and essays to such publications as the Los Angeles Times and Salon. 4) Lorna Dee Cervantes: was born in 1954. Emplumada (1981) won an American Book Award In 1995. From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (Arte Público Press, 1991), Drive: the First Quartet (2006). She received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. 5) Victor Hernández Cruz: In 1966, chapbook Papo Got His Gun, followed by his first full-length collection of poetry, Snaps, published by Random House in 1969 when Cruz was twenty. About Snaps, Allen Ginsberg wrote: "Poesy news from space anxiety police age inner city, spontaneous urban American language as Williams wished, high school street consciousness transparent, original soul looking out intelligent Bronx windows." Cruz is the author of numerous collections of poetry, most recently: The Mountain in the Sea (Coffee House Press, 2006) and Maraca: New and Selected Poems 1965-2000 (2001), which was selected for the shortlist of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the International Griffin Poetry Prize. His earlier works include: Panaramas(1997), Red Beans (1991), and Tropicalization (1976). He is also the editor of the anthology Paper Dance: 55 Latino Poets. His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was elected as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2008. 6) Martín Espada: Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1957. He is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently, The Republic of Poetry (W. W. Norton, 2006), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and Alabanza: New and Selected Poems (1982-2002) (2003), which received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was named an American Library Association Notable Book of the year. An earlier collection, Imagine the Angels of Bread (1996), won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other volumes include A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen (2000), City of Coughing and Dead Radiators (1993), and Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover’s Hands(1990). He has also published a collection of essays, Zapata’s Disciple(South End, 1998); edited two anthologies, Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination from Curbstone Press (Curbstone, 1994) and El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry (1997); and released a CD of poetry called Now the Dead will Dance the Mambo (Leapfrog, 2004). He has received numerous awards, including the Robert Creeley Award, the Antonia Pantoja Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, a Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, the PEN/Revson Fellowship and two NEA Fellowships. Espada is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he teaches creative writing, Latino poetry, and the work of Pablo Neruda. 7) Judith Ortiz Cofer: is the author of A Love Story Beginning in Spanish: Poems (2005); Call Me Maria(2006), a young adult novel; The Meaning of Consuelo (2003), a novel; Woman in Front of the Sun: On Becoming a Writer (2000), a collection of essays; An Island Like You: Stories of the Barrio (1995), a collection of short stories; The Line of the Sun (1989), a novel; Silent Dancing (1990), a collection of essays and poetry; two books of poetry, Terms of Survival (1987) and Reaching for the Mainland(1987); and The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry (1993). Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Glamour and other journals. Her work has been included in numerous textbooks and anthologies including: Best American Essays 1991, The Norton Book of Women's Lives, The Norton Introduction to Literature, The Norton Introduction to Poetry, The Heath Anthology of American Literature, The Pushcart Prize, and the O. Henry Prize Stories. Most recently, The Latin Deli was selected for the Georgia Center for the Book’s Georgia Top 25 Reading List, a reading list composed of books set in Georgia or written by a resident or former resident of the state. Also in 2005, Call Me Maria was selected as one of two texts to receive Honorable Mention for the Américas Award. Sponsored by the National Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs, The Américas Award is awarded to U.S. published titles that authentically and engagingly portray Latin America, the Caribbean, or Latinos in the United States. The Meaning of Consuelo was selected as one of two winners of the Américas Award in 2003. This novel was also included on the New York Public Library's "Books for the Teen Age 2004 List." Her Young Adult short story collection, An Island Like You, received the inaugural Pura Belpré Prize from the American Library Association in 1996, as well as several other awards in Young Adult literature. In addition, Professor Cofer has received over 30 fellowships and grants, including awards from the University of Georgia Research Foundation, the University of Georgia Center for the Humanities and Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Lehman University, New York, in 2007. She is currently the Regents' and Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia. 8) Ricardo Pau-Llosa: Pulitzer-nominated third book of poems, Cuba (Carnegie Mellon U Press, 1993). Pau-Llosa’s previous books of poetry, Sorting Metaphors (Anhinga Press and winner of the first national Anhinga Prize, 1983) and Bread of the Imagined (Bilingual Press, 1992), reflect his passionate interest in how metaphor, metonymy and other tropes evoke in readers vivid states of awareness. After Cuba, Pau-Llosa would employ trope-rich language to write poems about Cuban music and cultural survival in exile, as in Vereda Tropical (Carnegie Mellon, 1999), and other poems which explore the links between sexuality, imagination and parable-making, as in his latest collections: Mastery Impulse (2003) and Parable Hunter (2008), both from Carnegie Mellon. Pau-Llosa’s poetry has been published in American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, Kayak, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ontario Review, Partisan Review, Southern Review, TriQuarterly, and in numerous anthologies. He was a senior editor of Art International (Lugano, later Paris) from 1982 to 1994, North American editor for Southward Art (Buenos Aires), and a contributor and advisor to the encyclopedic Dictionary of Art (London: Macmillan, 1996). A frequent lecturer at major art venues, his art criticism has appeared frequently in Sculpture, Drawing, Arte al Día and other magazines, and he has served as a juror and curator in various international biennials and group exhibitions. 9) Alberto Rios: Born in 1952 in Nogales, Arizona, a town straddling the U.S.-Mexican border. Ríos spoke both Spanish and English as a child. His father was born in Mexico and his mother in England. Alberto Ríos' poems echo this multicultural upbringing. As a child, teachers punished him for speaking Spanish in school. He and other bilingual classmates wrote notes in Spanish and left them in the trashcan for each other to find. It was considered "bad" and he forgot how to speak the language for a time. His poem Nani describes an encounter with his Spanish speaking grandmother and his inability to communicate with her. They find other ways to identify with each other, through body language and food. Ríos started writing in the third grade, although he referred to it as "daydreaming". It was a secret act, like speaking Spanish. He did not think his friends or family would understand him, so he kept his writings hidden in the backs of his school notebooks. He did not share his poems with anyone until high school, where a teacher recognized his talent and introduced him to writers like Lawrence Ferlinghetti. It was also around this time that Ríos recovered his lost Spanish tongue, although the stigma of speaking it remained with him, memories of being "swatted" by his teacher. He would go on to study literature at the University of Arizona, where he graduated in 1974 with his BA and again a year later with a degree in psychology. He studied law for a brief period, but he returned to the University of Arizona to pursue creative writing, where he received his MFA in 1979. That same year he married Lupita Barron. He and his wife currently reside in Chandler, Arizona. They have a son, Joaquin, who is a student activist at Arizona State University. Ríos is author of several books of poetry and prose. He started teaching creative writing at Arizona State University in 1981, where he is Regents' Professor of English. poetry has a noticeable emphasis on the role of strong female characters, possible due to his close relationship with his aunt. A bigger influence on his writings however, was that of his relearning Spanish and the accompanying alternate view of his world. His books of poems include: The Theater of Night (Copper Canyon Press, 2006), The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body( Copper Canyon Press, 2002) which was nominated for the National Book Award, Teodoro Luna's Two Kisses, The Lime Orchard Woman, The Warrington Poems, Five Indiscretions, Whispering to Fool the Wind, Elk Heads on the Wall (privately printed chapbook). 10) Gary Soto: Born in Fresno, California, in April, 1952, to working-class Mexican-American parents. He attended Fresno City college and California State University at Fresno while working toward an undergraduate degree, and later studied poetry at the University of California, Irvine, where he earned his MFA in 1976. His first collection of poems, The Elements of San Joaquin, won the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum in 1976 and was published in 1977. The New York Times Book Review honored the book by reprinting six of the poems. Since then, he has published numerous books of poetry, including A Simple Plan (Chronicle Books, 2007), One Kind of Faith (2003), and Junior College (1997). Soto's New and Selected Poems (1995) was a National Book Award finalist. Other early titles include Canto Familiar/Familiar Song (1994); Neighborhood Odes (1992); Home Course in Religion (1991); Who Will Know Us? (1990); Black Hair (1985); Where Sparrows Work Hard (1981); The Tale of Sunlight (1978). He has also written three novels, Amnesia in a Republican County, (University of New Mexico, 2003); Poetry Lover(2001) and Nickel and Dime (2000); a memoir Living Up the Street (1985), for which he received the Before Columbus 1985 American Book Award; numerous young adult and children's books; and edited three anthologies: Pieces of Heart (1993), California Childhood (1988), and Entrance: Four Latino Poets (1976). His honors include the Andrew Carnegie Medal, the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum, The Nation/"Discovery" Prize, and the Bess Hokin Prize and the Levinson Award from Poetry magazine. He has also received fellowships from the California Arts Council, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. 11) Virgil Suárez: Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1962, and moved to the United States in 1974. He received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing in 1987 from Louisiana State University. His books of poetry include: Guide to the Blue Tongue (University of Illinois Press, 2002); Banyan (2001), for which he won the Book Expo America/Latino Literature Hall of Fame Poetry Prize; In the Republic of Longing (1999); Garabato Poems (1999); and You Come Singing (1998). He is also a novelist, and has written about his experience as a Cuban refugee and a Cuban-American in his memoirs Infinite Refuge (Arte Público Press, 2002) and Spared Angola: Memories from a Cuban-American Childhood (1997). His work has been included in many anthologies, such as Paper Dance: 55 Latino Poets (2002). Suárez has achieved such distinctions as the Florida State Individual Artist Grant, a G. MacCarthur Poetry Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. He has acted as a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Panelist in 2000 and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Panel/Judge in 1999. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where he is an associate professor of creative writing at Florida State University, Tallahassee. |
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