20 quotes from US Latino Lit
I’m hoping if you’re into reading junk that you guys check out my favorite 20 quotes from the stuff I’ve read in the US Latino Lit class I took this semester. I had to do this for class, but figured I’d share it. Hopefully some of them will inspire you to pick up one of these books. We read most of these from a book called “The Latino Reader” from Mariner Books. 1. Unknown Author The Comanches I shall tell him Cuerno Verde, 2. José Martí A Vindication of Cuba …because our half-breeds and city-bread young men are generally of delicate, physique, of suave courtesy, and ready words, hiding under the glove that polices the poem in the hand that fells the foe – are we to be considered, as the Manufacturer does consider us, an “effeminate” people? 3. Pachín Marín In the Album of an Unknown Woman On Paper I set my unpolished lines 4. Unknown Author The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez When the sherrifs got there Gregorio gave himself up to go: “You can take me because I’m willing. If you force me, the answer’s no.” 5. William Carlos Williams All the Fancy Things Or what? a clean air, high up, unoffended by gross ordors 6. Bernardo Vega Memoirs of Bernardo Vega He dedicated the morning session to current news and events of the day, which he received from the latest wireless information bulletins. The afternoon sessions were devoted to more substantial readings of a political and literary nature. A Committee on Reading suggested the books to be read, and their recommendations were voted on by all the workers in the shop. 7. Julia de Burgos Returning There’s no longer a voice, or tears, or distant sprigs of grain. No more shipwrecks, or echos, not even anguish;silience itself is dead! What say you, my soul, should I flee? Where could I go where I would not be shadowning my own shadow? 8. Julia de Burgos Farewell to Welfare Island Where is the voice of freedom? freedom to laugh, to move without the heavy phantom of despair? Where is the form of beauty unshaken in its veil simple and pure? Where is the warmth of heaven pouring its dreams of love in broken spirits? 9. John Rechy City of Night (I would stare at it sometimes, in explicably racked with excitement, thinking: If I get a stick miles long and stand on a mountain, I’ll puncture Heaven – which I thought of then as an island somewhere in the vast sky – and then Heaven will come tumbling down to earth…) 10. Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzáles I am Joaquín And now! I must choose between the paradox ofvictory of the spirit, despite physical hunger, or to exist in the grasp of American social neurosis, sterilization of the soul And a full stomach. 11. Alurista must be the season of the witchP must be the season of the witch la bruja la lloronashe lost her children and she cries en las barrancas of industry her children devoured by computersand the gears 12. Alurista to be fathers once again Chicanos have been born to find a desert for an orchard 13. Rudolfo Anaya Bless me, Ultima And they smashed the fruits and vegetables that surrounded the bed and replaced them with a saddle, horse blankets, bottles of whiskey, a new rope, bridles, chapas, and an old guitar. And they rubbed the stain of the earth from the baby’s forehead because man was not to be tied to the earth by free upon it. 14. Oscar “Zeta” Acosta The Revolt of the Cockroach People She charges down the aisle in a black satin dancing dress that shows her beautiful knockers and she carries a golf club in her pretty hands. I am aghast! The Faithful are petrified. No one makes a move for her. Her big zoftig ass shakes as she rushes up to the alter, turn to the pie-eyed man in the red cape, and shouts: ¡QUÉ VIVA LA RAZA! 15. Dolores Prida Beautiful Señoritas Allá en el rancho grande Alla donde vivía Yo era un falca morenita Que triste se quejaba Que trista se quejaabaaa No tengo ni un par de calzones Ni sin remiendos de cuero Ni does ghuevos racheros Y las tortillas quemadas 16. Luis Valdez Los Vendidos MEXICAN-AMERICAN: Mr. Congressman, Mr. Chairman, memers of the board, honored gustes, ladies and gentlement. (SANCHO and SECRETARY applaud.) Please, please, I come before you an a Mexican-American to tell you abouthe problems of the Mexican. The problems of the Mexican stem form one thing and one thing alon: e’s stupid. He’s undeducated. He needs to stay in school. He needs to be ambitionus, forward-looking, harder-working. He needs o think American, American, America, AMERICAN, AMERICAN, AMERICAN, GOD BLESS AMERICA! GOD BLESS AMERICA!! 17. Luis Valdez Zoot Suit PACHUCO: You don’t deserve it, ese, but you’re going to get it anyway. 18. Helena María Viramontes The Moths There comes a time when the sun is defiant. Just about the time when moods change, inevitable seasons of the day, transitions from one color to another, that hour or minute or second when the sun is finally defeated, finally sinks into the realization that it cannot, with all it power to heal or burn, exist forever, there comes an illumination where the sun and earth meet, a final burst of burning red-orange fury reminding us that although ending are inevitable, they are necessary for rebirths, and when that time came, just when I switched on the light in the kitchen to open Abuelita’s can of soup, it was probably then that she died. 19. Judith Ortiz Cofer The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica …all wanting the comfortof spoken Spanish, to gaze upon the family portaitof her plain wide face, her ample bosomresting on her plump arms, her look of maternal interestas they speak to her and each otherof their dreams and their disillusions –how she miles, understanding,when they walk down the narrow aisles of her storereading the labels of packages aloud, as ifthey were names of lost lovers: Suspiros,Merengues, the stale candy of everyone’s childhood. 20. Rosario Morales and Aurora Levins Morales Ending Poem I am not Taína. I am a late leaf of that ancient tree, And my roots reach into the soil of two Americas. Taína is in me, but there is no way back.
With his numerous warrior band,
Have come to meet the Spaniard,
And drive him from this land.
That I come from the Napeiste,
Bringing him these tidings true,
That Oso Pardo and Cabeza Negra,
And here to give him battle too.
as a firebrand on a carpet.
Poor page this that was a flash of light
bathed by my poetry, a shadow.
