The Chicano/Latino Literary Prize Read online

  The Chicano/Latino Literary Prize

  An Anthology of Prize-Winning Fiction, Poetry, and Drama

  EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION,

  BY STEPHANIE FETTA

  The Chicano/Latino Literary Prize. An Anthology of Prize-Winning Fiction, Poetry, and Drama is made possible in part from grants from the city of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, the University of California at Irvine Chicano/Latino Literary Prize, and by the Exemplar Program, a program of Americans for the Arts in Collaboration with the LarsonAllen Public Services Group, funded by the Ford Foundation.

  Recovering the past, creating the future

  Arte Público Press

  University of Houston

  452 Cullen Performance Hall

  Houston, Texas 77204-2004

  Cover art by Alfredo Arreguín, “Los muertitos, 2004”

  Cover design by Exact Type

  The Chicano/Latino Literary Prize: An Anthology of Prize-Winning Fiction, Poetry, and Drama / Edited, with an introduction, by Stephanie Fetta.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index

  ISBN: 978-155885-511-3 (alk. paper)

  1. American literature—Hispanic American authors. 2. American literature—Mexican American authors. 3. American literature—20th century. 4. Hispanic Americans—Literary collections. 5. Mexican Americans—Literary collections. I. Fetta, Stephanie.

  PS508.H57C47 2008

  810.8′0868—dc22

  2007047389

  CIP

  The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

  © 2008 Arte Público Press

  Printed in the United States of America

  8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This book is dedicated to Juan Villegas,

  founder and consistent supporter of the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Preface

  Introduction: From a Poetics of Contestation to an Aesthetic of Agency

  1974-75

  Ron Arias The Wetback

  1975–76

  Rosaura Sánchez Transparencias

  1976–77

  Alma Luz Villanueva Poems

  1977–78

  Nedra Ruíz Poems

  1978–79

  Juan Felipe Herrera Antiteatro y Poemas

  Helena María Viramontes Birthday

  1979-80

  David Nava Monreal A Pastoral Tale

  Rubén Medina Báilame este viento, Marián

  1980–81

  Juan Manuel Bernal Confesiones de un seudopoeta …

  Michael Nava Sixteen Poems

  Jesús Rosales Parte del proceso

  1981–82

  Mary Helen Ponce Recuerdo: When Rito Died

  1982–83

  Wilfredo Q. Castaño Bone Games

  Jack López The Boy Who Swam With Dolphins

  Luis J. Rodríguez, Sometimes You Dance With a Watermelon

  1983–84

  Francisco X. Alarcón Tattoos

  Lucha Corpi Shadows On Ebbing Water

  Gary D. Keller, El Huitlacoche The Raza Who Scored Big in Anáhuac

  1984–85

  Deborah Fernández Badillo Poems

  Juan Felipe Herrera Memoir: Checker-Piece

  Margarita Luna Robles Urbano: Letters of the Horseshoe Murder

  Gloria Velásquez Sunland

  1985–86

  Gustavo Segade Poems

  1986–87

  David Nava Monreal Cellmates

  Carlos Morton Johnny Tenorio

  Carmen Tafolla Poems

  Alfred Arteaga Cantos

  Reymundo Gamboa 50/50 Chance

  1987–88

  Demetria Martínez Poems

  Silviana Wood And Where Was Pancho Villa …

  1988–89

  Silviana Wood Una vez, en un barrio de sueños …

  Josefina López Simply María or America’s Dream

  Alberto Ledesma Poetry for Homeboys on the Foul Line

  Liliana Valenzuela Zurcidos invisibles

  Benjamín Alire Saénz Alligator Park

  1989–90

  David Meléndez No Flag

  Rubén Benjamín Martínez Plaza Mayor

  Carlos Nicolás Flores Cantina del Gusanito

  Graciela Limón Concha’s Husband

  1990–91

  Manuel Ramos The Ballad of Rocky Ruíz

  Graciela Limón A Voice in Ramah

  1991–92

  Terri de la Peña Territories

  1993–94

  Elaine Romero Walking Home

  1994–95

  Evangeline Blanco Caribe

  1995–96

  Mike Padilla Hard Language

  1996–97

  Andrés Montoya The Iceworker Sings

  1997–98

  Angelo Parra Song of the Coquí

  1998–99

  Patricia Santana Motorcycle Ride On the Sea of Tranquility

  Author Index of Prize-Winners

  Chronological Index of Prize-Winners

  Author Biographies

  PREFACE

  The problem with being given a project like this one is no one is quite sure what to expect really. It took me a while to figure out how I was going to edit an anthology with an incomplete set of winning entries. And how to navigate without access to full texts. Or that I’d play sleuth to hunt down texts and authors, some of whom were never to be found, and others who sadly decided not to include their important works in the anthology after all. Then the technical challenges emerged. There was the scanning mess, yellowed texts filled with difficult-to-identify computer language garble that had to be standardized, letter by letter, space by space. By necessity, this project taught me a bit about the work of literary historians, and gave me a new level of appreciation for the tedious technical work of producing a book. The anthology turned into an enterprise, but was well worth the effort.

  The experience as a literary critic was different than I had imagined. Once I amassed the texts that I was to evaluate, initially some of the texts seemed somewhat dated to me. At times I found it challenging to work through my own biases in order to identify and appreciate the cultural work done by each piece in this book. Later, I realized I had underestimated the complexity of these works, and many times became inspired by them. I began to understand my field much more deeply and I grew humbled. For this too, I am grateful. During this period, I bore two children in addition to the wonderful son I already had. My family grew. What a long road. The events of my life gave me time to think the texts through, and to make more thoughtful decisions. It became important to me to rethink standard editing criteria. As a result, I chose selections that would showcase the author’s talent, or I selected the passage from which I gained insight into the real work of the piece, rather than follow convention. What I realized in the process is that each text of the anthology contributed to the bigger project of founding of an ethnic literature—a fascinating process to discern. Through all the twists and turns, I really appreciate how the project unfolded.

  I would like to thank all those authors who were kind enough to allow their work to be reprinted here without economic compensation. In funding this project, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese of the University of California, Irvine, continues to demonstrate its commitment to the Chicana/o Latina/o community and I thank the department for this commitment and for entrusting me with this project. Likewise, the commitment of Nicolás Kane-llos and Arte Público Press to these literatures goes without saying. Arte Públi
co Press is a critical arm of dissemination of Chicana/o and Latina/o letters, but their work also gives our cultures a very rich and beautiful national face. I thank Arte Público’s Marina Tristán for her vision of the anthology, and Gabriela Baeza Ventura for her work to make this into a book. My friends and colleagues have also been generous with their time and attention to this project. I received the extensive assistance of Fabio Chee who helped locate, copy, and scan most of the documents included. Saúl Jiménez who was originally appointed co-editor was really helpful in selecting many of the early entries. I appreciate the help of Ignacio López Calvo, José Guillermo Pastrano, Michelle Conboy, Lisa Pizula, and Xóchitl Morales, all of whom proofread parts of the manuscript. I thank all of them for their friendship and collegiality. I thank Fortunato Strumbo for his efforts, time, and spirit on this project which has redefined my definition of friendship. I thank the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize’s founder Juan Villegas for commenting on the manuscript, and Jacobo Sefamí and María Herrera Sobek, for their support and long-standing belief in me. Alejandro Morales is the person to whom I am most grateful for recognizing what I have to offer and accepting my self-styled career. My love goes out to my three elf-size sages, my children, Max Emiliano, Leonardo, and Helena Rose, and to Farrokh, for loving me no matter what.

  INTRODUCTION

  FROM A POETICS OF CONTESTATION TO AN AESTHETIC OF AGENCY

  The early Chicano Movement produced literary texts that tended to respond to issues of social and political oppression, of the reality of poverty, and of the desire to assert the paradigm of Chicano as a modality of social rehabilitation. Over the twenty-five years included in the anthology, we read of these concerns that have come to characterize what is thought of as Chicana/o and Latina/o (hereafter C/L) literatures, but we will also read something more. The texts anthologized here will show the reader that the scope of C/L literatures has always been broader, deeper, richer than what is often thought. The politicism of early works becomes more nuanced over time evolving from a “poetics of contestation” to an “aesthetic of agency.” Nuanced, but not necessarily more subtle or effaced. The expression of contestation was often emphatically critical in tone and a declarative style fueled by outrage molded a poetics that characterized this type of writing. The move from a poetics to an aesthetic becomes evident when contrasting poetry like 1974-75 winner Rita Mendoza’s “Ahí venimos”1 with Alma Luz Villanueva’s poetry of 1976-77, where political concerns move from the declarative form of indictment to an aesthetic that explores the political through the interior state of the Chicana subject. Mendoza’s poem expresses clear political concerns of the movement era that become a call to action:

  Hey Chicano, ¿qué no miran que tienen que trabajar?

  A unirnos en el pleito para el saco no arrastrar.

  A juntarnos todo el bonche y peliar con el patrón.

  Sean trucha, no pendejos, no les den ya su pulmón!

  A enseñarle, que cabeza también nosotros tenemos.

  Hey, patrón, mucho cuidado, los Chicanos—ahí venimos. (1-6)

  In contast, the speaking voice’s will to agency in Villanueva’s poetry no longer bases itself in power relations between institutions and the community. Here, Villanueva develops an aesthetic that situates the poetic voice through its relation to the universe and simultaneously, through its earthy feminine body, uncovers political agency from within itself. Both poets respond to the real constraints of their historical moment but respond with a different literary approach. The anthology provides a good diachronic data set to witness how the literatures move from a political poetic to an agential aesthetic. However, a diachronic analysis will resist facile conclusions as the work of Mendoza and Villanueva evidence. Those social and political issues that motivated the Chicano Movement and its letters are still with us, and therefore consistently present in the writings over the twenty-five year span of the anthology.

  The project of this anthology was to collect and present the winning entries of the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize (hereafter CLLP) from the year of its inception, 1974, to its twenty-fifth anniversary, 1999. While the first-prize winners were to be the foundation of the anthology, the second- and third-prize winners as well as those texts that won honorable mention were also considered for inclusion. Selections were based on the aesthetic merit of the entry, and/or the history of the writer in question. The remarks below are written as a critical introduction to this anthology. For each text, the reader is given a synthesis, rather than a summary, of the complete text of which s/he will find an excerpt in the anthology. A critical perspective is also proposed as a way to understand how deeper arguments emerge of significant social and political significance through each text.

  The beginnings of the anthology show an aesthetic and range of thematic concerns as evidenced by its first winner, Ron Arias’s “The Wetback,” and again, in the fifth year, with Helena María Viramontes’s “Birthday.” The variety of themes engaged challenges the assumption of C/L letters as simply a minor literature bound to political aims. Its aesthetic breadth trumps the position of literary critics who minimize, if not infantilize, Chicana/o and Latina/o writing as unsophisticated.2 A picture forms from the anthology of a more complex and dynamic literature than the one sometimes thought of.

  The anthology presents a diverse and thoughtful literature, a compendium of texts written by novices as well as some of the best-known Chicana/o and Latina/o writers. In fact, many of the pieces included here have been published as books, becoming foundational texts of the Chicana/o Latina/o canon, reprinted many times in as many venues. The contest has drawn texts what have become instant classics like Manuel Ramos’s The Ballad of Rocky Ruíz, and the late Andrés Montoya’s The Iceworker Sings and Other Poems. The anthology also presents texts of lesser-known authors that merit scholarly study. In this introduction, the texts are presented in chronological order and, where appropriate, are contextualized within the body of the author’s work. The introduction gives particular critical attention to those texts that may only appear here,3 and so their corresponding analyses are deliberately more extensive than those better-known texts that already enjoy significant bodies of critical study. It should be noted that most, but not all, of the winning entries are included in this anthology. Certain authors did not grant permission to reprint their entries or could not be located4 which has sadly resulted in no entries for 1992-93.

  GENRES

  The selection chosen from each work depended upon the availability of original manuscripts. In the case of poetry, few complete manuscripts were available. Where collections were complete, a limit of four to five pages of poetry was put in place as a measure of consistency. In some instances, the type of poetry, like Juan Felipe Herrera’s poems of 1978-79, where the rant stylizes the form, or in the case of Andrés Montoya’s work that, to adequately convey its essence as a collection, the editor felt compelled to break the previously imposed limit and to extend the number of poems or pages included. In many cases, poems previously selected and printed in the contest’s yearly publication were the only poems available for consideration, so they, by default, are again printed here. As an editor, this is not to suggest any disappointment. On the contrary, their original selection infers their merit. Collections of poetry are indicated by title whereas untitled poetry collections are simply referred to as “Poems.”

  The case of selecting excerpts from dramatic work was more strategic. Often in anthologies, the first act of a play is selected as standard to anthologize. Rather than take the conventional route of a comfortable read of introducing the plot and characters provided by the first scene or act while the brilliance of the writing goes un- or under-noted, here, I choose an excerpt that best demonstrates the author’s talent.5 The reader should therefore allow a moment to orient his/herself as the excerpt sometimes begins in medias res.

  Short stories presented their own challenge given the condensed nature of the genre and the difficulty of extracting a section from
a work that tends to explore a single aspect of the human condition in just a few pages. Among them, “shorter” short stories are printed in full while an excerpt from longer short stories was sufficient to demonstrate the writer’s ability. For novels, this intention was easily achieved with the selection of a single chapter.

  LANGUAGE

  As the following will show, the CLLP has drawn writings that run the linguistic gamut. A critical study could be done on the range of multilingual expression alone found in the anthology. Most entries are written primarily in English, some exclusively in Spanish. Others code-switch between English and Spanish, while others insert sporadic Spanish phrases in an English text, and still others use some English phrases in a Spanish text. These works demonstrate multilingualism as a valuable aesthetic tool for these writers and shows the richness of our lived experience from which writers draw their literary sensibility. I object to graphically separating Spanish and Chicano words from English by conventions that would suggest a foreign quality to the experience expressed by these writers. As such, monolingual readers should expect to elaborate a context for themselves from which to gloss the meaning of certains words. It should be noted that those texts written exclusively in English or Spanish most likely will not be accessible to monolingual readers.

  THE IMPORTANCE OF LITERARY CONTESTS

  Even though some of the prominent C/L writers chose not to include their work in this anthology, the CLLP has helped promote a significant percentage of writers whose work has become part of the C/L canon. That is to say, the anthology demonstrates the importance of prizes and university backing in the authorization of marginalized voices. The Quinto Sol prize has proven this point well but the contests at the University of California, University of Notre Dame, University of New Mexico, and others have also laid significant groundwork in creating literary and intellectual space for these writings to develop into literatures. An appendix of all the CLLP’s winners shows the extent of well-known C/L writers recognized by the University of California’s contest.