Dancing with ghosts : a critical biography of Arturo Islas / Frederick Luis Aldama.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Aldama, Frederick Luis, 1969-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Islas, Arturo, 1938-1991.

Islas, Arturo.

Stanford University--Faculty--Biography.

Stanford University.

Authors, American--20th century--Biography.

Authors, American.

English teachers--United States--Biography.

English teachers.

Mexican Americans--Intellectual life.

Mexican Americans.

Mexican American authors--Biography.

Mexican American authors.

Mexican Americans in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (222 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This first critical biography of Arturo Islas (1938­1991) brings to life the complex and overlapping worlds inhabited by the gay Chicano poet, novelist, scholar, and professor. Gracefully written and deeply researched, Dancing with Ghosts considers both the larger questions of Islas's life-his sexuality, racial identification, and political personality-and the events of his everyday existence, from his childhood in the borderlands of El Paso to his adulthood in San Francisco and at Stanford University. Frederick Aldama portrays the many facets of Islas's engaging and often contradictory personality. He also explores Islas's coming into the craft of poetry and fiction-his extraordinary struggle to publish his novels, The Rain God, La Mollie and the King of Tears, and Migrant Souls-as well as his pivotal role in paving the way for a new generation of Chicano/a scholars and writers. Through a skillful interweaving of life history, criticism, and literary theory, Aldama paints an unusually rich and wide-ranging portrait of both the man and the eventful times in which he lived. He describes Islas's struggle with polio as a child, his near-death experience and ileostomy as a thirty-year-old beginning to explore his queer sexuality in San Francisco in the 1970's, and his fatal struggle with AIDS in the late 1980's. Drawing from hundreds of unpublished letters, lecture notes, drafts of essays, novels, and poetry archived at Stanford University, Aldama also deals frankly with the controversies that swirled around Islas's impassioned love life, his drug addictions, and his scholarly and professional career as one of the first Chicano/a professors in the United States. He discusses the importance of Islas's pioneering role in bridging Anglo, Latin American, Chicano/a, and European storytelling styles and voices. Dancing with Ghosts succeeds brilliantly both as an account of a fascinating life that embraced many different worlds and as a chronicle of the grand historical shifts that transformed the late-twentieth-century American cultural landscape.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. "Sonny"

2. Bio-Graphé

3. Sexuality

4. Death and Rebirth

5. Being Chicano

Coda "A Dancing with Ghosts"

Chronology of Major Events

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9786612358050

9781282358058

1282358057

9781597345699

1597345695

9780520938540

0520938542

OCLC:

1096477935