The Making of Latino Literature

The publishing industry has discovered hispanic power

By Ilan Stavans

Approximately decade ago, I embarked on a project whose implications I knew at the time would be far-reaching: editing The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature. Now, after a titanic effort by a cadre of five period editors, the almost 5,000 manuscript pages are at the publisher, being made ready for publication in 2009.

Putting together such a mammoth effort entails attentive research into a number of areas. Organized chronologically as well as by national background, the antology includes almost 300 authors in some 2,300 pages. In other words, readers will be able to peruse it to understand the entire Latino literary experience in the United States, from the colonial period to the present, with a focus on groups such as Mexicans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, etc. The volume has a section on oral traditions: chistes, proverbs, canciones, and famous songs like En mi Viejo San Juan. It also has a comprehensive historical chronology and an up-to-date bibliography.

The project is a response to the emergence of a new constituency: an avid readership interested in Latino topics. Decades ago, books about Mexicans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans for the most part attracted a minuscule audience. They were released by small ethnic presses. But in the early 90s a dramatic change was evident: the New York publishing industry discovered the Hispanic power. Imprints were established by major houses like Harper-Collins and Penguin. Some of them manufactured books not only in English but in Spanish, too. This double effort had never happened in American publishing, at least not with the same impetus. Although Walt Whitman’s language is our lengua franca, Hispanics have established their immigrant tongue as quintessential.

The story wasn’t always happy. There was a thirst to find out more about Latinos. But a sizable Latino audience was—it still is—evasive. And elusive, too. Do Hispanics read at the same ration of other ethnic groups? Studies are inconclusive but the New York publishing business isn’t. While Latinos are entering the middle class in larger numbers than ever, reading habits are established over long stretches of time.

Storytelling is at the heart of the Hispanic family. It might even be said to be the glue holding it together. Parents tell their children stories before they go to bed. The passing of knowledge from the older to the younger generation also takes place through stories delivered at the

dinning-room table. And adolescents use storytelling as a tool to shape their identity. But from the oral to the written word there’s a gap. While cuentos might be the currency at home, books (other than Bibles) are frequently absent.

In any case, from the 90s on, non-Latinos, especially of college age, have all but compensated for the absence of a Latino readership. Consequently, a new type of Latino writer has emerged, one becoming an asset for publishers that organize popular appearances in schools, community centers, and literary festivals. The autographing of books by Hispanic authors is a lively activity these days across the country.

Only a handful of them actually make their living from writing alone. The majority are teachers in universities. Some work as editors in New York City. Others are lawyers, doctors, accountants, and activists. This, in my view, is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, making a living exclusively from literature is a sign of success. Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, and John Updike do it. But the effort means that, with few exceptions, authors need to produce constantly, at a rate of a book a year. On the other hand, the daily immersion in an academic environment frequently brings along a solipsistic style, hyper-intellectual, minimalistic, disconnected from the so-called world. What’s worse?

The average printing of a Latino book released by a mainstream publisher is 7,500 copies. A handful of bestsellers are an exception. Sandra Cisneros’ adolescent tale The House on Mango Street, originally brought out by Arte Público Press in Houston and reacquired by Random, has been made curriculum in high schools and colleges, resulting in far more than a million copies in print. Equally successful is Rudolfo Anaya’s mystical novel Bless Me, Ultima House, also brought out by a small regional house and relaunched by Warner in the 90s.

In spite of the stress by the U.S. media that Latinos are a relatively recent immigrant minority, the community dates its roots to Spanish explorers and missionaries like Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and Fray Junípero Serra. Their journals of discovery are filled with wonderful anecdotes of estrangement and reconsideration. The territories that today constitute the Southwestern states are infused with rich, diverse mestizo roots that came about from the hybridization of Iberian and pre-Columbian cultures. Only in recent times has that past begun to be connected with the heterogeneousness of Latinos north of the Río Grande today.

The 19th century was defined by nationalistic unrest. Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros, Ramón Emeterio Betances, José Martí, and Luis Muñoz Rivera orchestrated, in Florida, New York, and elsewhere in the U.S., stratagems for the independence of their republics. But the acquisition of two thirds of Mexico (land from Colorado and Arizona to Nevada and Utah), by Washington

for $15 million dollars as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which came immediately after the Mexican-American War, also defined a collectivity that, from one day to the next, modeled a double identity: Hispanic and American.

The literature produced by Latinos in the first half of the 20th century was marked by a process of acculturation. In the work of Arthur Schomburg, William Carlos Williams, María Cristina Mena, Jesús Colón, and Jospehina Niggli, the reader senses the desire to build a bridge between at times incompatible sides. Where do we belong? Why is it that the U.S. refuses to acknowledge our unique heritage?

These questions brought along a dissatisfaction that joined forces with that of other marginalized minorities, notably Blacks, during the Civil Rights era. Nowadays the picture students get in school of that moment in American history is reductive. They hear about Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks, but are unacquainted with Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Reies López Tijerina, and Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzáles, leaders of the Chicano Movement whose influence during the late 60s and 70s is crucial in the shaping of who we are at present.

The Hispanic literary tradition in the U.S. blissfully reaches across genres. It has extraordinary examples of playwrights like Luis Valdez (Zoot Suit), José Rivera (The House of Ramón Iglesia), and Nilo Cruz (Anna in the Tropics). It has a lineup of provocative poets such as Victor Hernández Cruz, Alberto Alvaro Ríos, and Ricardo Pau-Llosa. And there are also eloquent speakers like Cesar Chavez. Those speeches have a unique power on the printed page, as is proved in the compilation An Organizer’s Tale. Plus, the graphic novel and its subsidiaries play an important role. For instance, Guillermo Gómez Peña, a Chicano performance artist, co-produced an admirable illustrated book called Codex Espangliensis.

Arguably, Latino fiction exploded into the mainstream in the late 80s. Among the highlights was the awarding of the Pulitzer in 1989 to Oscar Hijuelos, a Cuban-American, for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, the first novel by a Hispanic to receive such a prize. The third took place just last year to Junot Díaz, a Dominican-American, for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. (Nilo Cruz also won the award.) In the interim, luscious, polyphonic narratives, a vast quantity of them made by female authors such as Julia Alvarez, Ana Castillo, and Cristina García, have expanded the shelf and reinvigorated a self.

If I could magically gather in a single stage the fictional characters in this literary tradition that have emerged in the last couple of decades and ask them about their personal dilemma, their response would be about acceptance and rejection of what it means to be an American. No

doubt the astonishing growth of the Hispanic minority has made us more visible at the national level, but that doesn’t mean all doors are open.

On the contrary, the ordeal of immigrants and native-born is defined by incessant xenophobia. Among the recurrent themes in Latino literature (and, for that matter, of ethnic books in general) is the concept of home. From Piri Thomas’s memoir Down These Mean Streets to Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory and Luis Alberto Urrea’s reportage on the perils of immigration The Devil’s Highway, the questions are similar: ¿Dónde está el hogar? ¿Y cómo es esa casa? In short, what’s the difference between the ideas of casa and hogar? This search for home isn’t only present in plotlines. The language of recent Latino writing is elastic, unexpected, and unsettling. A portion of the books are written in Spanish, a majority in English, and a decisive number appear in Spanglish, entirely or in parts. This verbal game is rewarding. The sounds heard in the kitchen, park, classroom, church, athletic facility, and political arena, are echoed on the page.

Be that as it may, this explosion is being seen as an overall renewal of American letters. Where it has created discomfort is south of the border. It used to be that a fair number of books in Spanish by authors from Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, and Cuba, to name the four most prominent Latin American countries where literature is, in actual and metaphorical terms, an institution, would be brought out in English translations in the U.S. by important houses. But that river is almost dry now. The mentality of New York publishers is organized around quotas. If they bring a novel by a Cuban-American, it is needless to do another one by a Cuban because the market, in their view, is small. But is it? It’s a chicken-and-egg paradigm, of course: Is the readership of Latin American titles small because less than a dozen of them are released annually, or is the fact that there are such limited number of titles what makes the readership small?

Among my own concerns regarding the development of Hispanic literature in the U.S. from colonial times onward is the emphasis on fiction and poetry but the relative quiet in the area of nonfiction. There is, to be sure, a plethora of autobiographies. Indeed, the memoir is a favorite genre. Hispanics, just like everyone else in the U.S., love to transform their experience into a performance. What I’m talking about is something different: nonacademic critical explorations about gangs, drugs, bilingual education, and affirmative action. Scholarly volumes are regularly published on these subjects but they are destined for a tiny readership. I’m talking about well-crafted meditations that draw a larger readership and that have a critical tone.

By critical I don’t mean negative. To have a critical eye is to appreciate the world not as it is but as it should be. Fine fiction achieves that: it challenges the reader to rethink the immediate

surroundings. Nonfiction ought to do the same. Its absence, it seems to me, strives from the fact that Hispanics are known as voracious dreamers and not as thinkers.

Having read widely—and wildly— to select the content of The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, I’ve learned one thing: authors are surveyors who help us figure out where we come from, why we’re here, and what we want. Needless to say, the art of editing such an ambitious anthology comes at a cost. To be in charge of establishing a literary canon is a responsibility. Obviously, editing is about selection. The hope is that what makes it in is far superior—each and every one of the contributions and the composite as a whole—to what is left out.

Needless to say, the tradition encompasses it all: the good, the bad, and the unexpected.

MIAMI BOOK FAIR

Mitch Kaplan, owner of the independent bookstore Books & Books, is one of the founders of the Miami Book Fair International. This year the fair, which is sponsored by Miami Dade College and is celebrating its 25TH anniversary, runs from november 9-16.

[ILAN STAVANS] To what extent are the two tracks taking place simultaneously at the Miami Book Fair, one in Spanish and the other in English, a wise strategy?

[MITCH KAPLAN] One of the reasons for the success of the fair is our acknowledgement of Miami’s cultural diversity. From the outset we wanted to produce a fair that had “something for everyone.” The Spanish programming has been an extremely important reflection of this, and its growth is a testament to how receptive our audiences have been. We’ve gone from a few programs in Spanish to now presenting extensive offerings throughout the eight days of the Book Fair.

[IS] As a bookseller, have you noticed a change in reading habits as a result of the Book Fair?

[MK] Yes, I have. The fair has helped develop audiences for the visiting authors. Our sales often spike after the fair with fairgoers wanting to buy books by authors they’ve discovered there. The nurturing of literary culture that the Book Fair has been engaged in has, similarly, had a

profound affect on Books & Books, from developing audiences for readings to helping to make Miami a hospitable place for a vibrant community of writers.

[IS] In the age of depersonalized mega-stores, what is the role of the small independent bookstore?

[MK] At a difficult time like now, independent bookstores provide the sense of community that people need. “Great, good places” provide a comforting refuge from home and work spaces, giving people an opportunity to feel a sense of belonging in what are often very impersonal public places. Also, as disseminators of information, it’s incumbent on us to present a wide range of books reflecting local concerns and interests, while at the same time providing programming which is relevant and provocative. In this very competitive retail environment, we need to show why we have value, and that value should not only be measured by price. If we can articulate all of this to our customers, independent bookstores will continue to have an important role.

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