"Expanding the Circle: Hispanic Voices in American Literature," Patricia Ann Romero and Don Zancanella

"It's hard to question a mountain." This sentence stayed with me throughout my reading of the article, and I'm sure it will be with me for a long time. But the thing about mountains is that they do evolve. Slowly with the weather, faster with prodding.

Romero and Zancanella advocate the inclusion of minority (specifically Hispanic) authors in classroom canons, offer guidelines (book choice, indigenous authors and settings), discuss specific authors and their works (and why they're not as well known as they should be). The authors do little to discuss how to advocate inclusion if you meet an administrative roadblock, but that's not really their primary concern, so I don't necessarily see it as a downfall of the article. Their goal, I think, is to convince us that Hispanic literature does have a place in our classrooms and in our students' lives, and then to help us get started by sharing some authors with us and helping us figure out where to look to find more hispanic authors.

One of the Authors Romero and Zancanella talk about is Gary Soto. Here is the full text of "Oranges" (referenced in the article), and the following is a Soto poem I have been enjoying for years:

Mission Tire Factory, 1969

All through lunch Peter pinched at his crotch,

And Jesús talked about his tattoos,

And I let the flies crawl my arm, undisturbed,

Thinking it was wrong, a buck sixty five,

The wash of rubber in our lungs,

The oven we would enter, squinting---

because earlier in the day Manny fell

From his machine, and when we carried him

To the workshed (blood from

Under his shirt, in his pants)

All he could manage, in an ignorance

Outdone only by pain, was to take three dollars

From his wallet, and say:

"Buy some sandwiches.

You guys saved my life."

This poem reminds me of Steinbeck or Sinclair. It's so short, yet it addresses so much and is beautifully written, even in the "plain" language people like to give exceptional poets a hard time for.

I've personally always been a fan of the poet Pablo Neruda (Chilean poet, 1904-1973, F.K.A. Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto).

Romero and Zancanella give us an important and helpful place to start, and they do much to show the importance of Hispanic (nonwhite generally) literature to our students. The literature provides a personal connection, a cultural tool, and dynamic language and device for analysis.