9 Questions about Latino Authors

• 20^th-Century Immigration Patterns in the United States change from the pre-WWII reality of predominantly white European settlers (Irish, German, Scandinavian, Italian, French, etc.) to a much more varied geographical and racial range in the post-war era (Middle Eastern, Japanese, Chinese, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Haitians).

  This increase in “Third World” immigration exacerbated racial and ethnic prejudices in the U.S. and is clearly being exposed and reacted to by the Latino writers of the post-war era (1940s+), particularly the writers we’ll look at in this unit.

• On the West Coast, at least, the Zoot Suit Riots of the 1940s and the institution of the Bracero program during and after WWII (1954-1964) to bring in cheap, immigrant Latino labor—which usually faced poor wages, poor living conditions, brief seasonal employment, and overwhelming local prejudice—lead to simmering discontent among both suspicious Anglos and aggrieved Mexicans.

• More generally though, the rise of Chicanismo (Mexican-American Rights & Reclaimation) can be seen in line with other contemporary 1960s-inspired revolutionary movements (Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Sexual Revolution, etc…) Chicano movements of the era (La Raza, El Movimiento) sought equal treatment for Mexicans as well as sought to recapture a mythical Mexican past and nationhood (Aztlán,etc…)
• César Chavéz (1927-1993) is perhaps the best-known activist and writer associated with Chicano social protest of the 1960s. A migrant laborer himself, Chavez knew of what he spoke when he began organizing Mexican farm workers in 1952. Eventually Chavéz would become one of the best-known labor organizers ever: an inspiration to the left, a hero to Latinos, and a legend worthy of a state holiday in California.

• Chavéz speaks truth to power (p. 761). Chavéz’s class politics is still one of the underlying tenets of the far left in this country, Democrat or otherwise.

Chavéz’s revolutionary sentiments went so far as to indict the Church itself, a traditional bastion of Latino culture and identity (p.763).

Chavéz’s union of migrant farm workers become known as the United Farm Workers (UFW), and their slogan, Sí se Puede! (Yes, We Can!) became so influential, it was adopted by Obama for his history-changing 2008 presidential run.

Chavéz’s deeply religious and spiritual nature is obvious in all of his writings. He has been honored by the Pope, and his message of non-violent resistance echoes that of Martin Luther King, and Ghandi before him. (p. 764)

• Chavéz as a young organizer in Oakland (p.768)
• On the realities of union members (769)
• On his childhood (774)
• On non-violence (775)
• On the death of Rufino Contreras (774-5)
• On immigration, hypocrisy, and the U.S. (776)
• On multiculturalism in the U.S. (777)
• On increasing participation in U.S. democracy (778-9)
• Rudolfo Anaya (b. 1937) is probably the second most famous Chicano writer of the post-war era, and is often considered the father of Chicano literature in the U.S. As opposed to Chavez’s openly political and revolutionary style, however, Anaya is almost sentimental and nostalgic in his style, depicting the precarious, if touching and heartfelt, struggle for existence of he and his family on the eastern plains (llanos) of New Mexico.
  

• His best-known and breakthrough novel, Bless Me Ultima (1972), is a classic example of the difficulties once faced by Latino writers in getting published. Six years to write, and two years to find a publisher, after numerous rejections Anaya’s first novel was finally published by a small, independent (ethnic) publisher, Quinto Sol. Immediately popular, it won the prestigious Quinto Sol prize for 1972 and played a big role in bringing Chicano literature into the cultural mainstream of the U.S.
• –“I felt something behind me and I turned and there is this old woman dressed in black and she asked me what I am doing. ‘ Well I’m trying to write about my childhood, you know, about growing up in that small town.’ And she said, ‘ Well, you will never get it right until you put me in it.’ I said, ‘ well who are you? ‘ and she said, ‘ Ultima.‘”
• –“What I’ve wanted to do is compose the Chicano worldview — the synthesis that shows our true mestizo identity — and clarify it for my community and myself. Writing for me is a way of knowledge, and what I find illuminates my life.”

• “The Apple Orchard” is typical of Anaya’s early style, as well as the style of many later Latino authors: warm, nostalgic, and focused on the intersection of cultures, genders, and ages (the conflict between the sensuous adult gringa, Miss Brighton, and her oversexed, naïve pachuco students, Pico, Chueco, and the narrator, leads to a coming-of-age experience that transcends ethnicity: last paragraph of the story, p. 1169)
• Bless Me, Ultima is a strongly autobiographical account of Anaya’s own upbringing on the llanos of New Mexico in the post-war years.
  • The conflict between two distinct ways of life: the vaquero (cowboy/macho/father) and the farmer (feminine/mother) (1170) is extended to the son/narrator of the novel
  • The integration of dream/fantasy sequences in the novel is characteristic of 60s Chicano/Latino literature, which to an extent, was influenced by the magical realist style of Latin American authors such as Marquez as well as the hippy shamanism of authors such Carlos Castenada. (1172).
  • Ultima’s owl and the proto-environmentalist tone of Anaya’s work (1177). Ultima’s deep, spiritual connection to nature and the land (llanos) (1178).
  • The crisis at the bridge with Lupito interjects cold, brutal social reality into the sentimental, supernatural tone of the first chapter, and is representative of the division in a lot of Latino literature: between the sentimentalized and ‘serious’/socially realistic styles of depicting (Latino) life in general (1181).
  • The novel’s persistent allusions to Antonio’s three older brothers in the war (II) also calls attention to the world outside of the llano; the modernizing U.S. of the second half of the 20^th-century, of which Antonio’s Latino family is only a small part. His brothers will return, but ultimately they cannot reconcile what they’ve seen abroad with the peaceful, rural existence they knew before: la generacíon perdido (The Lost Generation)
  • The allusion to La Llorona is also common to the Chicano literary style, evoking the mythological past of the Chicano people, here in the form of a classic Latino legend (1185).

• Piri Thomas (1928-2011), on the other hand, is on the opposite pole from someone like Rudolf Anaya in the field of 1960s-era Latino literature; He is much more from the tough guy, “urban ghetto” school of autobiographies from minority writers stemming back to at least T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan (1930s), Malcolm X’s autobiography, and even classic shady “pimp life” writers like Iceberg Slim (Pimp: Story of My Life).

• A black Puerto-Rican from New York’s Spanish Harlem, where he grew up during the Great Depression, Thomas’s autobiography, Down These Mean Streets (1967), is a classic of the urban ghetto genre: “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean” (813).

• “Alien Turf” is characteristic of the urban ghetto literary style:
  • The geographic and ethnic battles over neighborhood “turf” (814-5)
  • The tortured quest for ethnic, macho, and racial self-identity (819)
  • The conflicted relationship with family, particularly fathers and other male (absent) figures: Papa was a Rollin’ Stone… (822)
  • “The Konk” chapter comes almost verbatim from a similar episode in Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) and bears witness to the similarities in the genre, as well as the nascent racial and ethnic pride the narratives amply display (Latino pride, Black pride, etc…)
  • So popular was the “conk awakening” story in the literature of the 60s era that similar artificial hairstyles continue to be the stuff of scorn and satire in ethnic/minority narratives—ie…low budget Hollywood comedy classics like The Hollywood Shuffle, for example: (Gimme my Activator, Man!)