Things We Do Not Talk About: Exploring Latino/a Literature through Essays and Interviews

by Christian Benavides

Daniel Olivas, a grandson to Mexican immigrants, grew up in Los Angeles. Eventually, he went on to receive a degree in English literature at Stanford University and later, a law degree from UCLA. Now, Daniel works as an attorney with the California Department of Justice in the Public Rights Division. He writes in his free time and, in fact, has published seven books and has contributed to many publications.  In his newest venture, Daniel has put together past interviews and personal essays that put forward questions about Chicano identity and explores a writer's writing process and its relationship with the writer's life. A supplement to Latino/a literature, Things We Do Not Talk About, sets out to continue this conversation with other readers and writers whose writing is as interconnected to their lives as Daniel's is. Things We Do Not Talk About will be available May 5th, 2014! The following is a short interview with Daniel Olivas:

Interviewer: Why did you decide to title the book, “Things We Do Not Talk About”? What are some of these things you felt needed to be talked about while going through academia?

Daniel Olivas: The original manuscript that I submitted to SDSU Press not only included essays and interviews but also several short stories including one with that title. Because I liked the title of that short story so much, I decided to make it the title of the book. When I met with Harry Polkinhorn and William Nericcio to discuss my project, they said they liked the manuscript but that the press did not publish fiction. So, I removed the short stories but kept the title because it spoke to an issue—in an ironic manner—that I see with the coverage of Latino/a literature: the mainstream press doesn’t give it enough even as academia has moved towards recognizing such literature in ways that I didn’t see back in college back in the late 1970s. Since several of the interviews have already been relied upon in academic circles (i.e., scholarly books on Latino/a literature, Ph.D. dissertations, etc.), I thought that bringing them together in one volume along with my essays might be useful. I want to note that the stunning cover art is by Perry Vasquez, a San Diego artist and educator who was a classmate of mine at Stanford and who worked with me when I was the art director of the Chaparral, Stanford’s humor magazine. I think his art conveys the broad spectrum of topics covered by my essays and author interviews.

Interviewer:  How was the process in the making of this book different from previous books you’ve published? What sparked the idea of it?

Daniel Olivas: My previous six books were works of fiction so this was a departure for me—I never thought that I’d publish a non-fiction book. Yes, it’s true that I’ve been writing essays and interviewing authors for many years, but I never thought that I’d have so much material for a whole book. And when I learned that my coverage of Latino/a writers was being relied upon by professors and students alike, the idea for this project began to evolve.

Interviewer:   In the introduction, you mention a reoccurring question in the background of your essays: what does it mean to be a Chicano writer? Is this a question you continue to ask yourself?

Daniel Olivas: In a sense, yes. I am always delighted when Chicano and Chicana students attend my readings and then come up afterwards to discuss fiction. There is this beautiful connection based on some common cultural touchstones. And I am always thrilled when they say that they are inspired to become writers themselves. Yet, in the back of my mind as I’m having these interactions, I wonder if I have any responsibilities as a Chicano writer. In the end, I think that my primary responsibility is to be honest to my art and the representation of all people in my fiction, essays and poetry. I also have a responsibility to be a mentor to those who wish to express themselves through literature and to promote worthwhile books especially those written by Latino/a writers.

Interviewer:   Looking back through all the interviews you included in this book, what is a reoccurring message or experience that seems to connect all these writers that have been successful in publishing Latino/a literature? Is there anything in an interview that stands out the most and has helped your writing journey?

Daniel Olivas: None of the writers I interviewed ever gave up the dream of publishing even when faced with a society and publishing industry that is not always very understanding or hospitable to Latino/a literature. That kind of bravery is so incredibly inspiring to me. I would be hard pressed to choose one interview that stands out because, as readers of this book will learn, each of the 28 writers offers some kind of important insight on writing and culture. I think taken together, we can only be heartened by the eloquence and energy these writers.

For more information on the author, visit his website at: http://www.danielolivas.com/

SDSU Press Proud to Co-Sponsor the Wendelmoot Symposium Event of the Year! Blacktinx Queer Performance | E. Patrick Johnson and Ramon Rivera-Servera, Northwestern University

Blacktinx Queer Performance: Crossing Beyond the Crisis of Bordered Identities

  

In this presentation, E. Patrick Johnson and Ramon Rivera-Servera will discuss their ongoing research collaborations around issues of black and Latinx (“Blacktinx”) queer performance. They will pay particular attention to the history of earlier coalitions of black and latinx queers that lay the groundwork for queer artists to create work that moves beyond hard-and-fast boundaries of ethno-racial identities.

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Mark your calendars! The Wendelmoot CRISIS CRISIS Symposium Series is proud to bring E. Patrick Johnson and Ramon Rivera-Servera to SDSU!

#wendelmoot is a project of the SDSU Department of English & Comparative Literature--this event is co-sponsored by the LGBTQ Research Consortium-SDSU, the College of Arts and Letters at San Diego State University--The Official Page, M.A.L.A.S. The Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences, and San Diego State University Press.

wendlemoot.sdsu.edu

Check out more about our amazing dynamic duo from Northwestern University here and here:

https://communication.northwestern.edu/faculty/RamonRiveraServera

https://www.afam.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/e-patrick-johnson.html

The Definitive Guide to the "Southern Border" -- REFRAMING THE LATINO IMMIGRATION DEBATE by Alvaro Huerta and featuring the photography of Antonio Turok

The definitive book on what POTUS 45 calls "The Southern Border" and that we call home, mi tierra, mi alma, la frontera REFRAMING THE LATINO IMMIGRATION DEBATE by Alvaro Huerta, featuring the amazing photography of Antonio Turok #antonioturok
direct link: https://t.co/7hZwTt0Mgy pic.twitter.com/AYskVYHRAQ

— San Diego State University Press (@SDSUPress) February 13, 2019

 

Images of Revolution: Art Embraces Death, Destruction, and Humanity in Post-WWI Germany

What better time to dive into the psycho-social dilemma of an era of art that embodies the tragic longing for justice and revolution than now? In Ida Katherine Rigby's War-Revolution-Weimer: German Expressionist Prints, Drawings, Posters and Periodicals from The Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation, the author and former San Diego State University professor of Art History outlines one of the art world's most important and influential movements--not only in the sense of aesthetic style, but also (and more importantly) in the sense of a political uprising in the aftermath of the most globally devastating war in the history of mankind.

Kaethe Kollwitz, Die Freiwilligen 
(The Volunteers), 1922/1923

The selected works within War-Revolution-Weimer, generously provided by the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation based in Los Angeles, California, were created by German Expressionist artists, both well-known and obscure, between 1918 and 1925. Through a variety of printmaking techniques including woodcut, drypoint, lithography, etching, aquatint and even illustrations in crayon, these artists utilized a combination of aesthetic appeal and mass production to engage their audience into a sociopolitical dialog revolving around the fallout from WWI. As an idealistic language of revolution began to take shape following what German Expressionists viewed as the absurdity of war (i.e. death, killing and political injustice), art became a tool to express, simultaneously, one's emotive/physical reaction to war as well as ideas of political revolution.

Franz Maria Jansen, in
Der Anbruch, 1922

Along with over one hundred image panels, Ida Katherine Rigby curates an equally vivid written historical context to the German Expressionist movement:     

“These new radicals were convinced that their powerful reactions to the compelling times and their radical political sentiments could only be conveyed in an intensely emotionalized, revolutionary idiom, and they readily marshaled the prewar generation’s avant-garde, abstract style to serve a new, more political content. Theirs was often less Expressionism than that of their mentors; instead they merged Dadaist, Futurist and Expressionist elements into an explosive unity.”    

The works compiled in War-Revolution-Weimer, indeed, embody political and social sentiments that are not entirely unlike our contemporary experience. Thus, immersing oneself into the world of German Expressionist art as presented in this book is guaranteed to shed new light on shared human experiences, both new and old.

Back in Print! A Classic Memoir from the Annals of 20th Century American History: Soldier to Ambassador: From the D-Day Normandy Landing to the Persian Gulf War by Charles W. Hostler--SDSU Press

Like some fusion of James Bond and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., this fascinating memoir, Soldier to Ambassador: From the D-Day Normandy Landing to the Persian Gulf War, marks key, life-shaping moments from Charles W. Hostler's amazing odyssey--a remarkable man who began his life as a newsboy during the Great Depression, who developed himself whilst a soldier in the U.S. military, working his way up still further as an agent in the OSS and, finally, as the U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain. 

Hostler describes his 20 year residence in the Middle East, as well as his extensive world travels and dedicated public services.

Click on the book cover image to order now.

Not To Be A Total Dick Higgins… But You Should Probably Read More Dick Higgins

Siglio Press has released a wonderful paperback entitled Intermedia, Fluxus and the Something Else Press: Selected Writings by Dick Higgins. We were fortunate enough to receive a copy and it’s killer. This is a must have for all those privy to the radically far-sweeping yet methodically concentrated writings generated in and around the Fluxus movement of the middle part of the 20th century.

Intermedia Chart by Dick Higgins

To recap: Fluxus is what happens if you do your best to put a softly dotted conceptual line around everything happening throughout aural and performative art in the 20th century — and if you happen to consider painting a performance — and if art might also be an arbitrary gathering of painters intending to paint for an hour and then, afterwards, burn everything thus produced in a brazier… Okay, honestly, defining Fluxus is a bit more than we’re going to do in a single blog post.

Dick Higgins, Danger Music No.2, 1962. Performance at Fluxus Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik, Wiesbaden 1962. Photograph by Hartmut Rekort

Oh, and don’t forget Something Else Press, the brainchild of Dick Higgins. Being a forerunner in the many-hyphenated identity, Higgins, the composer, poet, printmaker, artist, and a co-founder of Fluxus, managed to publish a fascinating assemblage of theoretical, historical, philosophical and plain artful texts by authors like Gertrude Stein and William Brisbane Dick and Ray Johnson. These publications, along with a plethora of detailed photographs, are featured in the aforementioned Siglio Press title. Of note: Intermedia, Fluxus and the Something Else Press also includes a quirky list of not-quite-actualized projects. We found one incredibly poignant, the collected writings of Erik Satie, fecund mind of the Surrealist and Dadaist movements, as well as ever-so-hip-even-in-2018 minimalist composer.

Speaking of avant-garde composers who also write, we should humbly mention that SDSU Press released a collection of essays by Dick Higgins. We would encourage any John Cage fans to grab a copy of Modernism Since Postmodernism: Essays on Intermedia by Dick Higgins if only for Higgins’ brilliant contemplation on the work of this minimalist composer and tenacious art theorist. If you ever find yourself having one of those irksome days, the kind where you question: is there something inescapably wrong about being a westerner? … then fear not. John Cage investigated such quandaries by creating music seeking to negate the implied “creator” that is omnipresent in all Western fabrications, be they theoretical, practical, conceptual, or actual… Spoiler alert: Cage achieved this by employing chance and probability in his compositions. But this phenomenon might go unperceived if not for the cogent work of the scholar Dick Higgins. Wait, it would seem that Higgins could add one more hyphenated word to his list of identities… so it goes. Here. Some Erik Satie. For while we're all feeling so wonderfully un-accomplished... 

Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz's "Permanent Work: Poems 1981-1992"

Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz's Permanent Work: Poems 1981-1992 was published in 1993 by the San Diego State University Press. Interestingly, his works were organized by date, to visually demonstrate Munoz's evolution of his writing style to the reader.

I was particularly drawn to the poem “Turbulence” (Muñoz, 28). The vivid imagery feels almost jarring, reminding me somewhat of airplane turbulence, especially starting at the quote “vital signs/Dissolve into the mud”. I could almost hear the squelch of the mud described in the aforementioned quote. The collection consists of almost all poems in verse, excluding about six or so poems written in prose, demonstrating Muñoz’s range in writing skills. The back-cover of the collection states he was a “key player in the Baja California’s literary Renaissance of the 1980s”, creating context for me as I had never heard of Muñoz’s work before reading this collection. The diverse spread of poetry provides a portfolio to those who have no or little experience with this poet’s works. 

How queer? We’re the exclusive English publisher of the work of transgressive Brazilian poet Glauco Mattoso | Perversions on Parade: Brazilian Literature of Transgression and Postmodern Anti-Aesthetics in Glauco Mattoso by Steven F. Butterman

Not to massage our own feet, per se, but we’re wondering why more of you theory heads haven’t been reading Perversions on Parade: Brazilian Literature of Transgression and Postmodern Anti-Aesthetics in Glauco Mattoso.

Excuse our Portuguese, and pardon the long title, but there’s a lot packed in these critical 266 pages. Without giving away any spoilers, there’s insight provided by Georges Bataille, a fertile wizard of gory-erotic poetic imagery, into the nature of pseudonyms. For one, Glauco Mattoso is a semantic stage-name of sorts—in Portuguese, it becomes a punk rock play on words roughly translating into “one who has glaucoma.”

Perversions on Parade: Brazilian Literature of Transgression and Postmodern Anti-Aesthetics in Glauco Mattoso by Steven F. Butterman (Author), Rebecca Saraceno (Illustrator)

But the punk rock nature of Mattoso’s work goes further, actually toeing the fetishistic fixations of Quentin Tarantino: namely upon feet. But, we’re not here to be basic, to shock you into reading a book about weirdos who are turned on by toes (shrimping is a term that we highly encourage you “NOT TO GOOGLE”). No, in this serious academic text, Judith Butler shares insight into the pleasure which is derived from the troubling nature of the categorization of the binary gender performative. Mattoso, according to Perversions on Parade, manages to fetishize feet so much that he negates the categorization itself and invokes a genderless subject who is overtaken by the excessive joy of the conceived/perceived “foot.” All in a day’s worship,— sorry, a day’s work.

But don’t let us tease you any further. Pick up a copy of Steven F. Butterman's Perversions on Parade here. It turns us on. Really. And it solves one more predicament. Mattoso remains quite obscure to the English-speaking world. In fact, for those of us who don’t know Portuguese, there’s not much to read about the man, and not much of his work available. For those of us restricted to simple Google searches, few solid English translations of his poems exist. So: if you or anyone you know translates Portuguese and enjoys LGBTQ theory, poetics, performative, etc., get at us. ASAP!

Pictured: Glauco Mattoso

Have We Told You Lately, We Love Semiotics? SDSU Press's POETICS AND VISUALITY: A TRAJECTORY OF CONTEMPORARY BRAZILIAN POETRY

Yes, we’re kind of theory heads here at the SDSU Press — which means we think about how unstable the term semiotics itself is! Why does a sign mean what we think it does? And how could anyone think that a sign really means one thing? Seriously, though, for anyone’s been courted in this lifetime, is it not so trite to wonder after receiving something—a text, a note, a message, a smile—to wonder: Okay, so-and-so just conveyed “this,” but does “this” mean that they “like” me? And, if yes, then what should I do to convey “exactly” what I want them to understand, i.e. a yes or no or maybe or … ???

“Koito” (coitus) — Villari Herrmann — 1971

But we digress… Of course, love is more than mere semiotic matter… And, yes, Semiotics proves an ever-contentious field of thought. But on a more pragmatic note, have you thought about reading one of our contributions to this destabilizing theoretical field? In 1994, we published POETICS AND VISUALITY: a trajectory of contemporary Brazilian poetry by Philadelpho Menezes. While it’s no spring chicken, it is a phenomenal cognitive gateway drug to hyper-specific moments of poetic metamorphoses that occurred in Brazil through the 1960s and ‘70s. The book is worth the read if only to experience one of many contexts for examination of the quixotic and visual poetry of artists like Décio Pignatari and Pedro Xisto and Villari Herrmann, to name a few…

“terra” — Décio Pignatari — 1957

Take note, radical theory heads. In a historical sense, Brazil figured violently into the burgeoning globalized economy. While Menezes’ text remains acutely clinical, tending to gloss over the gory details and analyze the pure “poetics,” it’s worth mentioning: these relatively obscure artworks came into being in light of intense political discord. In 1968, Brazilian political leaders were outright imprisoned, tortured and even killed; the nation was violently seized by dictatorship; “Ferreira Gullar, a Concretist turned Neo-Concretist who then broke with the avant-garde camp to write agitprop poetry,” was exiled along with fellow artists who were revered by the Brazilian people! If you’re curious, LA REVIEW OF BOOKS wrote a fantastic piece about Brazil’s tumultuous history here.

“beba coca cola” — Décio Pignatari — 1956

With Menezes’ tragic death in 2000, the world was deprived of further semiotic investigations. But, fortunately, we were able to press his impressively erudite text, originally written in Portuguese, and translated by SDSU’s very own Harry Polkinhorn. A challenging read, a rewarding read. So enjoy, good readers! Hopefully, as much as we enjoyed bringing it to fruition.

“Epithalâmio III” (“Epithalamium III”) — Pedro Xisto — 1966

A Dick Higgins classic from SDSU Press: MODERNISM SINCE POSTMODERNISM ...

Modernism Since Postmodernism: Essays on Intermedia by Dick Higgins
ISBN 1-879691-43-4 (1997/2014) paper, 252 pp. US $22.95

Modernism Since Postmodernism: Essays on Intermedia completed Dick Higgins' critical trilogy that began with A Dialectic of Centuries: Notes Towards a Theory of the New Arts and continued with his Horizons: The Poetics and Theory of Intermedia. A fluxperson, artist, poet, composer, and scholar of intermedia, Higgins also authored Pattern Poetry: Guide to an Unknown Literature, among numerous other works. He died in October of 1998.

Dick Higgins, from the Foreword to Modernism Since Postmodernism:

"Of course kitsch can be fun. Already 125 years ago, Rimbaud recognized this when, in the second section of A Season in Hell, he speaks of liking dumb paintings, door panels, stage sets, backdrops for acrobats, street signs, old-time literature and such-like. Who doesn't?... 'Kitschspeak' is the term I use...for the fashionable kitsch language about the arts, sometimes delightful for a while, as with

Derrida, for instance, but ultimately locked so closely into fashion and the world of second-rate, derivative art that it is all but impossible to use with major work and thus destined to pass into academia or oblivion once its novelty has passed... There are, of course, many schools of postmodernism--and they are just that, schools--but for a preliminary discussion there is no need to identify all of them. [One sort is] pop-academic, in which the professors cite each other to build up a lattice of assumptions into a polemic that may or may not have any correspondence with the realities of the arts that lie outside what is known in their trade as 'the discussion.' The academic trades are known collectively among participants in such discussions as 'the profession,' much as prostitutes refer to 'the life.'"

The Definitive Critical Work Focused on John Steinbeck as a Native Californian! HOMER FROM SALINAS from SDSU Press

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From April to May 2007, some of the most celebrated scholars of American Literature, cultural studies, and California history joined with noted artists, performers, and photographers for a unique John Steinbeck celebration at San Diego State University. Homer from Salinas: John Steinbeck's Enduring Voice for California, edited by noted American Studies scholar William Nericcio, collects these lectures, screenings, debates, discussions, and visual artifacts into one volume. An innovative anthology, Homer from Salinas unfolds as a bracing melange of old school conference proceedings, next-generation Web 2.0 journalism, and a John Steinbeck scrapbook. The collection, with an introduction by Nericcio, includes outstanding pieces by Jeffrey Charles, Charles Wollenberg, William Deverell, Francisco X. Alarcon, Hernan Moreno-Hinojosa, Pam Munoz Ryan, Paul Wong, Fred Gardaphe, Arturo J. Aldama, Michael Harper, Joanna Brooks, Arthur Ollman, Louis Hock, and Susan Shillingslaw.

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