ARISE CHICANO!
AND OTHER POEMS
By Angela de Hoyos
Bilingual Edition
Spainsh translation by Mireya Robles
40pp

1st. edition 1975 by Backstage Books
2nd edition 1980 by M&A Editions
Centerfold drawing "CAMPESINA" by
Ramón Vásquez y Sánchez ©1979

ACERCA DE LITERATURA
(Diálogo Con 3 Autores Chicanos)
by JAVIER VAZQUEZ-CASTR0
Introducción de Luis Arturo Ramos
Spanish text
M&A Editions 1979
58pp

 
TOC (5 OF 15) WOMAN, WOMAN and LINKING ROOTS

8888ARISE CHICANO
8888Introduction by Teresinka Pereira

8888WITH HEAD ERECT

Angela de Hoyos is a bilingual writer and artist with a bifrontal culture. She was born in Mexico, but she is a Chicana who lives in San Antonio, Texas. Her painting is Mexican, it is full of Aztec symbols and forms, and a Mexican sensibility inhabits the lines of her drawings just as Latin blood inhabits her veins. Nonetheless, in her poetry, her Iyrics a bit ironic, agile and resentful are those of a typical Chicana: her Latin sensitivity is expressed in the English Ianguage—but in an English capable of engaging in dialogue with the Anglo—full of sarcasm and irony, as one who speaks from above, without bowing the head:

888888888888What do the entrails know
888888888888about the necessity of being white
888888888888—the advisability of mail-order parents?

The theme of her poetry is between the lightly philosophical- universal and the social, deeply rooted within the existence of the Chicano. The first struggle that the theme offers begins in being born with or without color:

  


888888888888Or this wearing in mock defiance
888888888888the thin rag of ethnic pride... `

When Angela de Hoyos ironically allows herself in her verse to feign acceptance of the status quo and to get used to the social and economic exploitation by the boss (who is always the Anglo, the white North American of European blood) saying "Perhaps someday I shall accustom myself/ to this: my hand held out/ in eternal supplication, being content with the left-overs of a greedy establishment" it is only to illustrate the total absurd of a situation of slavehood which can no longer be endured, and following she
unleashes her lines of rebellion, inciting the Chicano to a change in his wretched existence:

888888888888Or—who knows?—perhaps tomorrow
888888888888I shall burst these shackles
888888888888and rising to my natural full height
888888888888fling the final parting laugh
888888888888O gluttonous omnipotent alien white world.

The social protest in the poetry of Angela de Hoyos encompasses many problems and different aspects of the

 


Chicano anguish. In the poem Gracias, Mees-ter she focuses on the language, and suggests that the foreign accent, considered to be so elegant and sophisticated in certain social classes, when assuming the Spanish tonality and coming from the Chicano voice, becomes a handicap and accentuates the condition of humble lowliness and servility. What is remarkable in the focusing of Angela de Hoyos is that, though her verse may present the scene of the teen-age Chicano who shines the Mees-ter's shoes in front of the Hilton, she compares at the same time, and from the economic and social viewpoint, because of course this 'mees-ter' is a gentleman who belongs to the world of the Hiltons and color TV's, with an intellectual difference clearly visible, since relaxing in his 'comfortable recliner', all he can do as a pastime is watch 'cops and robbers' on his color TV. Thus abides the ironic trait that dominates most of the poems in ARISE, CHICANO.

The best poem of the collection is without doubt 'The Missing Ingredient' which won second prize in the International Poetry Competition in Rome (CSSI) in 1974. This indeed is a poem in which the poet departs from Chicano surroundings and problems without totally

 
abandoning them; to the contrary, she carries them with her and integrates them with the international heap, where the universal anxiety, man to man, is communicated. The edition is bilingual. We then owe a word of praise to the excellent translation of Mireya Robles, a sensitive poet who was able to dig out the substance of these Chicano poems without herself being Chicana, yet identifying with the living-condition of the immigrant, of the Latin in Anglo territory, of the distance that exists between a 'Mees-ter' and a 'Mister'. To translate into pure Spanish a poetry written in an English enriched by the Chicano as well as the Gallic and the classical, as is the language of Angela de Hoyos, is no small task. There are problems, almost insoluble, for which Mireya Robles found a solution: How to separate the languages in the poems, when the English mingles with the Spanish, without depriving them of their 'Chicanismo'? Another problem Iies in the words which have no corresponding equivalent, such as the line 'Geared to the sterility' There are instances where the translating of a phrase was almost like rewriting it entirely, and only a poet of the caliber and standing of Mireya Robles could have achieved such a faithful translation.
—DR. TERESINKA PEREIRA
University of Colorado

8888ACERCA DE LITERATURA (Diálogo Con 3 Autores 8888Chicanos)

El encuentro de dos culturas provoca fenómenos complejos y ofrece un cuadro de situaciones peculiares que alimentan la capacidad creativa del méxico­ americano. Acercarse a ellos es tarea inmediata y necesaria si entendemos cabalmente el impacto que estos fenómenos significan para nuestros países. Así, empujados por esa convicción, intentamos en estas páginas rastrear los criterios de tres autores chicanos respecto a una extensa gama de problemas­tanto sociales como literarios­a manera de introducción para estudios más profundos y especializados. JAVIER VAZQUEZ CASTRO Seccion de Español Escuela Permanente de Extensión en San Antonio Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México

  

8888JAVIER VAZQUEZ-CASTRO

nacío en Córdoba, Mexico. Estudió en la Universidad Veracruzana, donde se familiarizó con los más destacados escritores de lengua española. En Estados Unidos, hizo estudios de postgrado en Educación Bilingüe en Antioch University. Ha trabajado enseñando en varies partes de la república mexicana y actualmente es profesor en la Escuela Permanente de Extensión de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico en San Antonio, Texas. Durante su estancia en Estados Unidos se ha interesado profundamente por la realidad chicana y ha estudiado con cuidado sus poetas y narradores más notables.