The Adventures of Don Chipote, or When Parrots Breast-Feed

by ( Venegas

Overview

Originally published in 1928, and written by journalist Daniel Venegas, Don Chipote is an unknown classic of American literature, dealing with the phenomenon that has made this nation great: immigration.  It is the bittersweet tale of a greenhorn who abandons his plot of land (and a shack full of children) in Mexico to come to the United States and sweep the gold up from the streets.  Together with his faithful companions, a tramp named Pluticarpio and a dog called Suffering Hunger, Don Chipote (whose name means “bump on the head”) stumbles from one misadventure to another.

Along the way, we learn what the Southwest was like during the 1920s: how Mexican laborers were treated like beasts of burden, and how they became targets for every shyster and lowlife looking to make a quick buck.  The author, himself a former immigrant laborer, spins his tale using the Chicano vernacular of that time.  Full of folklore and local color, Don Chipote  is a must-read for scholars, students, and all who would become acquainted with the historical and economic roots, as well as with the humor, of the Southwestern Hispanic community.  Ethriam Cash Brammer, a young poet and scholar, provides a faithful English translation, while Dr. Nicolás Kanellos offers an accessible, well-documented introduction to this important novel he discovered in 1984.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611927023
Publisher:	Arte Público
Publication date:	04/30/2000
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	397,470
File size:	252 KB

About the Author

Little is known about DANIEL VENEGAS, author of Las aventuras de Don Chipote. In the 1920s, he ran a satirical newspaper called El Malcriado (The Brat). He wrote several plays, including ¿Quién es culpable? (1924), Nuestro egoísmo (1926) and El con-su-la-do (date unknown). All of his plays received critical acclaim in the Mexican and Mexican-American newspapers of the time. Venegas is thought to have come from a laborer background similar to that of the protagonist of Don Chipote.

NICOLÁS KANELLOS is the Brown Foundation professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston and founder-director of Arte Público Press, the most accomplished publisher of U.S. Hispanic literature. He is a fellow of the Ford, Lilly and Gulbenkian Foundations and of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1988 he was awarded the White House Hispanic Heritage Award, and in 1989 the American Book Award in the Publisher/Editor category. Author of five books on U.S. Hispanic literature and theatre, Dr. Kanellos was appointed in 1994 by President Bill Clinton and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve on the National Council on the Humanities. He also directs the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, a national project to locate, study, index and commit to print and electronic media the whole of U.S. Hispanic literature from colonial times to 1960.

ETHRIAM CASH BRAMMER is a Chicano writer, born and raised in the border community of El Centro, California.

He currently lives in Detroit with his family.