Transcendental Train Yard: A Collaborative Suite of Serigraphs

Transcendental Train Yard is a collection of color serigraphs accompanied by bilingual poems, in Spanish and English, inspired by the artwork. Transcendental Train Yard provides the reader a glimpse of the role the railroad and the carpas (itinerant vaudeville troupes) played in the Mexican American community. Artist Marta Sanchez and poet Norma Elia Cantú collaboratively render images and words that poignantly reflect specific periods in that history. The scholarly essays by Cortez and Haney and the evocative preface by noted Chicano scholar Tomás Ybarra Frausto bring an added depth.

Norma E Cantú was born in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and grew up in Laredo, Texas. Her novel Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera received the Aztlán Prize in 1996. Other projects include co-edited and edited work such as Moctezuma’s Table: Rolando Briseño’s Chicano and Mexicano Tablescapes, and Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change. Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Chicana painter Marta Sánchez is deeply inspired by traditional Mexican folk art expressions. Marta Sánchez is recognized primarily for her Retablos paintings,an offspring of traditional Mexican prayer paintings.