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hopeykatt's review
5.0
A great and important read. I felt a sense of pride, inspiration, and appreciation when reading many of these works
delightsofdecay's review
5.0
I read this for a class and I was so impressed. We had to do this for a class... so I'll just post my favorite quotes.
1. Unknown Author The Comanches
I shall tell him Cuerno Verde,
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.
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
as a firebrand on a carpet.
Poor page this that was a flash of light
bathed by my poetry, a shadow.
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 of
victory 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 witch
must be the season of the witch
la bruja
la llorona
she 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
NOT IN THE LATINO READER! 16. Luis Valdez Los Vendidos
MEXICAN-AMERICAN: Mr. Congressman, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen. (SANCHO and SECRETARY applaud.) Please, please, I come before you an a Mexican-American to tell you about the problems of the Mexican. The problems of the Mexican stem from one thing and one thing alone: He’s stupid. He’s undeducated. He needs to stay in school. He needs to be ambitious, forward-looking, harder-working. He needs to 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.
NOT IN THE LATINO READER! 19. Judith Ortiz Cofer The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica
…all wanting the comfort
of spoken Spanish, to gaze upon the family portait
of her plain wide face, her ample bosom
resting on her plump arms, her look of maternal interest
as they speak to her and each other
of their dreams and their disillusions –
how she smiles, understanding,
when they walk down the narrow aisles of her store
reading the labels of packages aloud, as if
they 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.
1. Unknown Author The Comanches
I shall tell him Cuerno Verde,
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.
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
as a firebrand on a carpet.
Poor page this that was a flash of light
bathed by my poetry, a shadow.
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 of
victory 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 witch
must be the season of the witch
la bruja
la llorona
she 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
NOT IN THE LATINO READER! 16. Luis Valdez Los Vendidos
MEXICAN-AMERICAN: Mr. Congressman, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen. (SANCHO and SECRETARY applaud.) Please, please, I come before you an a Mexican-American to tell you about the problems of the Mexican. The problems of the Mexican stem from one thing and one thing alone: He’s stupid. He’s undeducated. He needs to stay in school. He needs to be ambitious, forward-looking, harder-working. He needs to 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.
NOT IN THE LATINO READER! 19. Judith Ortiz Cofer The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica
…all wanting the comfort
of spoken Spanish, to gaze upon the family portait
of her plain wide face, her ample bosom
resting on her plump arms, her look of maternal interest
as they speak to her and each other
of their dreams and their disillusions –
how she smiles, understanding,
when they walk down the narrow aisles of her store
reading the labels of packages aloud, as if
they 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.
hopeykat's review
5.0
A great and important read. I felt a sense of pride, inspiration, and appreciation when reading many of these works
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