Herencia: The Anthology of Hispanic Literature of the United States / Edition 1

by Nicolas Kanellos

Overview

Herencia (meaning "inheritance" or "heritage") is the first anthology to bring together literature from the entire history of Hispanic writing in the United States, from the age of exploration to the present. The product of a ten-year project involving hundreds of scholars nationwide, Herencia is the most comprehensive literary collection available, spanning over three centuries and including writers from all the major Hispanic ethnic communities, and writing from diverse genres.

Here is the voice of the conqueror and the conquered, the revolutionary and the reactionary, the native and the uprooted or landless. Of course, readers will find pieces by such leading writers as Piri Thomas, Luis Valdez, Isabel Allende, Oscar Hijuelos, and Reinaldo Arenas. But what really distinguishes this anthology is its historical depth and its rich, complex portrait of Hispanic literature in the United States. Beginning with Cabeza de Vaca's account of his explorations in the New World, the anthology includes a passage from La Florida, a narrative historical poem of 22,000 verses, written by Franciscan friar Alonso de Escobedo; an attack on Mexican stereotypes in the nascent movie industry, written by Nicasio Idar, editor of Laredo's La Cronica; and an essay about Coney Island written by revolutionary Jose Marti.

Embracing Chicano, Nuyorican, Cuban American, and Latino writings, the voices of immigrants and the voices of exiles, Herencia makes a vital contribution to our understanding not only of Hispanic writing in the United States, but also of the great contribution Hispanics have made to the United States.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195138245
Publisher:	Oxford University Press, USA
Publication date:	08/28/2003
Pages:	656
Product dimensions:	9.56(w) x 6.88(h) x 1.91(d)

About the Author

Nicolas Kanellos is the Brown Foundation Professor of Hispanic Literature at the University of Houston and the Director of Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage, a major national research program. He is also founding publisher of the noted Hispanic literary journal The Americas Review and founder of the nation's oldest and most esteemed Hispanic publishing house, Arte Público Press.

Table of Contents

	An Overview of Hispanic Literature of the United States	1
Part I.	The Literature of Exploration and Colonization	33
	The Account (excerpt)	35
	Discovery of the Seven Cities of Cibola (excerpt)	39
	La Florida (excerpt)	46
	History of New Mexico (excerpt)	47
	The Account (excerpt)	56
	Lord, if the shepherd does not hear the sheep's complaint ...	58
Part II.	Native Literature	65
Chapter 1.	Toward a Mestizo Culture	67
	By This Divine Light ...	67
	The Comanches	69
	Little Indian Ballad of Placida Romero	86
	The Contest of Coffee and Corn Gruel	89
Chapter 2.	Memories of Things Past	92
	Testimony Recounted by Jose Francisco Palomares	92
	A Glimpse of Domestic Life in 1827	94
	Occurrences in Hispanic California	95
	Letter to William Heath Davis	100
	"The Old Guide": Surveyor, Scout, Hunter, Indian Fighter, Ranchman, Preacher: His Life in His Own Words	102
Chapter 3.	Roots of Resistance	106
	Personal Memoirs of John N. Seguin, from the Year 1834 to the Retreat of General Woll from the City of San Antonio 1842	106
	Editorials	109
	The Californios	111
	Proclamation	112
	Joaquin Murieta; The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez	115
	The Real Billy the Kid (excerpt)	120
	The Squatter and the Don	123
Chapter 4.	Defending Cultural and Civil Rights	130
	A Protest Rally, 1901	130
	Plea for the Spanish Language	135
	The Spanish Language: A Plea to the Hispanic Legislators	139
	For Our Race: Preservation of Nationalism; We Should Work	142
	Greetings and Aims (editorial)	144
	Open Letter to a Libelist	145
	Ignorance: The Cause of Racial Discrimination; The Evolution of Mexican-Americans	152
	The Mexican Question in the Southwest	156
	Step-Children of a Nation	162
	The Mexico-Texan; The Hammon and the Beans	170
Chapter 5.	Preserving Cultural Traditions	176
	The Courteous and Kindly Child and the "Good People" on the Underground Passageway	176
	The Phantoms at San Luis Rey	178
	Samuel's Christmas Eve	183
	The First Cactus Blossom	184
	Midwife	186
	The Clown of San Cristobal	188
	The Fiddler and the Angelito	191
Chapter 6.	Militant Aesthetics	195
	I Am Joaquin	195
	Pilgrims in Aztlan (excerpt)	199
	Must be the season of the witch; mis ojos hinchados	205
	Dear Rafe	207
	Puerto Rican Obituary	212
	Saliendo; Light after Blackout	220
	Los Vendidos	222
Chapter 7.	Contemporary Reflections on Identity	231
	The Truth about Them (excerpt)	231
	Down These Mean Streets (excerpt)	234
	A Lower East Side Poem	238
	Uncle Claudio	241
	My graduation speech; the africa in pedro morejon	244
	La Guera	247
	How to Tame a Wild Tongue	254
	Above All, a Family Man	262
	My Name Is Maria Christina; Anonymous Apartheid	266
	Ending Poem	269
	Our House in the Last World (excerpt)	271
	Day of the Moon (excerpt)	280
	Anything but Love (excerpt)	285
Chapter 8.	Rites of Passage	291
	Going Up North	291
	My Wonder Horse	296
	First Communion	301
	The Moths	304
	Amanda	308
	Volar; Maria Elena; Exile	314
Chapter 9.	New Directions in Poetry	319
	Day Laborer; Strange City	319
	The Latest Latin Dance Craze; today is a day of great joy; Loisaida; energy	320
	Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway	326
	Legal Alien; Curandera	329
	Mi abuelo; Wet Camp; Nani	331
Part III.	The Literature of Immigration	335
Chapter 10.	Encounters with the Modern City	337
	Two Views of Coney Island (excerpt)	337
	New York from Within: One Aspect of Its Bohemian Life	341
	Fourth Missive	344
	Lucas Guevara (excerpt)	348
	A Song for Wall Street; The Secret	352
	The Hispanic Barrio	353
	Tropics in Manhattan (excerpt)	356
Chapter 11.	Negotiating New Realities	360
	My Valise	360
	The Factory (excerpt)	361
	The Texas Sun (excerpt)	364
	The Adventures of Don Chipote or, When Parrots Breast Feed (excerpt)	367
	Easy Jobs	372
	Memoirs of Bernardo Vega (excerpt)	374
	The Dishwasher; The Deportee	379
	A Jibaro's Lament; A Jibaro in New York	385
	Prayer to Home Relief	387
	Take the Dead Man Away (excerpt)	389
	El Coyote/The Rebel (excerpt)	391
	The Oxcart (excerpt)	394
	Scribbles	399
	The Night We Became People Again	403
	El Super (excerpt)	411
	Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant (excerpt)	414
	No Face	417
	Odyssey to the North (excerpt)	421
Chapter 12.	Early Perspectives on Class and Gender	425
	The Rebel Is a Girl	425
	The Emotions of Maria Concepcion	429
	How Poor Women Prostitute Themselves	432
	The Intelligent Woman	434
	The Stenographer	436
	I'm Going to Mexico	438
	The Flapper	441
	Women and Puerto Rican Identity	442
Chapter 13.	Editorial Discontent	444
	Speech Read by the Author on the Evening That the "Society of Workers" Celebrated the Twenty-Fourth Anniversary of Its Founding	444
	The Castilian Language and Puerto Rico	445
	Editorial, August 7, 1927	447
	How to Unite the Puerto Rican Colony	448
	Those Who Return	451
	Open Lettter to Don Luis Munoz Marin, President of the Puerto Rican Senate; United States	453
Chapter 14.	Cultural (Dis) Junctures	458
	The Key West Rose (excerpt)	458
	A Prayer in the Snow	462
	Barrio Boy (excerpt)	465
	Kipling and I	470
	Miracle on Eighth and Twelfth	473
	Chronicles; Self-Portrait	475
	The Herb Shop	476
	The Argonauts	483
Chapter 15.	Reflections on the Dislocated Self	488
	I Was My Own Route; Farewell in Welfare Island	488
	Horizons; Five-Pointed Stars	491
	Mexico; Dark Romance; Marina Mother	493
	Spared Angola; Going Under (excerpt)	496
	The Greatest Performance	499
	A Matrix Light	503
Part IV.	The Literature of Exile	509
Chapter 16.	Struggle for Spanish-American Independence	511
	On Behalf of Mankind: To All the Inhabitants of the Islands and the Vast Continent of Spanish America	511
	Mexicans: Signaled by Providence ...	517
	Necessary Ideas for All Independent People of the Americas Who Want to Be Free	521
	Essay on Slavery; Jicotencal	522
	To the People of Cuba	533
	With All, for the Good of All	536
Chapter 17.	Hymn of the Exile	545
	Hymn of the Exile	545
	Always; Song of the Cuban Women	549
	To Spain	551
	In Greenwood	557
	My Flag	558
	Ode to October 10	560
	A Statistic; Fragments	563
	Hatuey	566
	Simple Verses	575
Chapter 18.	Against Tyranny	578
	Why Are You Still Here, Mexican Men? Fly to the Battlefield	578
	Revolutionary Hymn	580
	Letter	583
	The Underdogs	584
	The Aching Soul	586
	Blood	588
	Postcard	591
	Emmaus; Stuck to the Wall	592
	I Also Accuse! By Way of a Prologue	595
Chapter 19.	Contemporary Exiles	599
	The Cow on the Rooftop: A Story of the Cuban Revolution	599
	It is dark ...; This senor don Gringo ...	605
	Before Night Falls (excerpt)	607
	I'm Your Horse in the Night	611
	I Grew Accustomed; Here Am I Now	614
	Exile (excerpt)	616
Part V.	Epilogue: Sin Fronteras, Beyond Boundaries	623
	Danger Zone: Cultural Relations between Chicanos and Mexicans at the End of the Century	625
	The Flying Bus	631
	List of Editors, Contributors, and Translators	639
	Source Notes	643

Editorial Reviews

Ten years in the making, this anthology is an unprecedented collection of writing in North America from the age of the Spanish explorers in the 16th century to the present. Kanellos is most famous for founding Arte P blico Press, the oldest Hispanic publishing house in the United States. As he states in his lengthy introduction, while most people think American letters began with the English Colonies, Spanish had been spoken and written in North America since the early 1500s. From the writings of explorers like Alvar N ez Cabeza de Vaca, who wandered from Florida to the Southwest for eight years, to the early political defense of Hispanic culture in 19th-century Texas, to the classic verse of the Nuyorican poets of urban postwar America, Herencia comprehensively collects an underacknowledged literature. The anthology is divided into sometimes questionable sections, as when the categorization is based on a writer's birthplace rather than the content of his or her work. This is especially evident in the placement of Junot D az, whose work epitomizes U.S. Latino writing, in the "immigrant" section. Still, the difficulty of categorizing the Latino experience excuses this problem, and since so many essential works from Pedro Pietri, Cherrie Moraga, Reinaldo Arenas, Julia de Burgos, Rodolfo "Corky" Gonz lez, and Jos Mart are included, Herencia is absolutely indispensable. Recommended for all academic and public libraries. Adriana Lopez, "Cr ticas" Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

"The publication of Herencia marks the formal birth in the academy of an entire genre of literature. For an apt comparison, we would have to turn to comparable anthologies of American literature first published in the nineteenth century. Nicolas Kanellos has made a major contribution to redefining even what it means to speak of 'American' literature." —Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

"0nce in a while, a book comes along which topples institutional thinking and set beliefs. Herencia is such a book! Nicolas Kanellos's brilliant introduction is more than that. It is a manifesto. A turning-point document of American literary history."—Ishmael Reed

"Finally a major, out-reaching, reliable map of the Hispanic experience in the U.S. With impressive range, texture, and resonance, Herencia illuminates the history, emotions, and meaning of Hispanic-American life. Because of his long-standing devotion to this literature, only Nicolas Kanellos could have been able to accomplish this task with such authority and care. As a living memory, this magnificent book opens its pages to the cross-cultural language of our best future."—Julio Ortega, Professor of Hispanic Studies, Brown University

"Libraries should own a copy of Herencia; teachers should incorporate it into classes on American and U.S. Hispanic literature, history, politics, or cultural diversity; students should turn to it for authoritative excerpts of Hispanic writing; and general readers should browse Herencia for its sheer insight into the literary and historical legacy of contemporary Hispanic culture."—Hispanic Outlook

"Ten years in the making, this anthology is an unprecedented collection of writing in North America from the age of the Spanish explorers in the 16th century to the present.... Herencia is absolutely indispensable."—Library Journal

From the Publisher