Chicano Sketches: Short Stories by Mario Suárez - Softcover

Suárez, Mario

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816524041 ISBN 13: 9780816524044

Publisher: University of Arizona Press, 2004

Synopsis

Mario Suárez will tell you: Garza’s Barber Shop is more than razors, scissors, and hair. It is where men, disgruntled at the vice of the rest of the world, come to get things off their chests. The lawbreakers come in to rub elbows with the sheriff’s deputies. And when zoot-suiters come in for a trim, Garza puts on a bit of zoot talk and "hep-cats with the zootiest of them."

A key figure in the foundation of Chicano literature, Mario Suárez (1923–1998) was among the first writers to focus not only on Chicano characters but also on the multicultural space in which they live, whether a Tucson barbershop or a Manhattan boxing ring. Many of his stories have received wide acclaim through publication in periodicals and anthologies; this book presents those eleven previously published stories along with eight others from the archive of his unpublished work. It also includes a biographical introduction and a critical analysis of the stories that will broaden readers’ appreciation for his place in Chicano literature.

In most of his stories, Suárez sought to portray people he knew from Tucson’s El Hoyo barrio, a place usually thought of as urban wasteland when it is thought of at all. Suárez set out to fictionalize this place of ignored men and women because he believed their human stories were worth telling, and he hoped that through his depictions American literature would recognize their existence. By seeking to record the so-called underside of America, Suárez was inspired to pay close attention to people’s mannerisms, language, and aspirations. And by focusing on these barrio characters he also crafted a unique, mild-mannered realism overflowing with humor and pathos.

Along with Fray Angélico Chávez, Suárez stands as arguably the mid-twentieth century’s most important short story writer of Mexican descent. Chicano Sketches reclaims Suárez as a major figure of the genre and offers lovers of fine fiction a chance to rediscover this major talent.

About this title

About the Author:

Francisco A. Lomelí is a professor in the departments of Spanish and Portuguese and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States: Literature and Art. Cecilia Cota-Robles Suárez, Mario's widow, ran the early childhood program at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona for twenty years until her retirement in 1982. Juan Casillas-Núñez teaches Spanish language, Latin American literature, and U.S. Latino literature at the University of the Pacific.

Review:

"Mario Suarez represents a unique case of an early Chicano author who remained faithful to his original purpose by creating a distinctively Chicano literary space. His ultimate goal was to portray and describe the people whom he knew intimately from a barrio in Tucson called El Hoyo, generally considered an urban wasteland. This so-called underside of America inspired him to pay close attention to the people's mannerisms, their language, customs and habits, racial composition, aspirations and complexes, eccentricities, as well as normative tendencies, history, and folklore.... "Suarez's social commitment in the late 1960s and early 1970s developed into a unique brand of cultural and educational militancy while advocating for his community and the voiceless and powerless."

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0816524041
• ISBN 13: 9780816524044
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 198
• Editor: Lomelí Francisco A., Suárez Cecilia Cota-Robles, Casillas-Núñez Juan José