Gilb on the state of literature — 12 years later by Ann Friou

28 hillviews spring/summer 08 Gilb on the state of Texas literature — 13 years later

Gilb on the state of Texas literature — 12 years later by Ann Friou

riter Dagoberto Gilb of Texas the publication of his anthology of Texas After a decade of struggling to find a State’s creative writing faculty Mexican literature, Hecho en Tejas (Univer- publisher, in 1995 Gilb was finally becoming Wreceived the Texas Book Festival’s sity of Press). He had been known as a significant American writer. Bookend Award in November, honoring asked by Texas State’s Southwestern Writers While working construction in El Paso and him for his lifetime of contributions to Collection to compile the anthology Los Angeles, he published two collections Texas literature. because no such compilation existed. Gilb’s of short stories — Winners on the Pass Line resulting 522-page volume is considered a (1985) and the PEN/Hemingway Award- He joins a list of other well-known writers monumental achievement, comprehensive winner The Magic of Blood (1993) — and whose literary contributions have helped in its inclusion of more than 100 letters, a well-received first novel, The Last Known to form Texas’ literary heritage: Sandra songs, poems, stories, artworks and photos Residence of Mickey Acuña (1994). Cisneros, Larry L. King, T.R. Fehrenbach, by Mexican-, many of whom are Horton Foote, John Graves, A.C. Greene, well known. Beginning with Alvar Nuñez His newfound acclaim drew him an Shelby Hearon, , Stanley Cabeza de Vaca’s 16th-century account invitation in 1995 to speak on a panel at Marcus, Cormac McCarthy, Américo of his exploration of Texas, Gilb’s collec- the opening session of the first Texas Book Paredes, Louis Sachar, Edwin “Bud” Shrake tion spans almost 500 years of Mexican- Festival on the topic of “The State of Texas and Bill Wittliff. American literary history in Texas, bringing Literature.” Gilb recounts in an essay in his writers such as Américo Paredes, Rolando book Gritos (2003) that while other panelists Gilb’s prize-winning body of work, Hinojosa-Smith and Tomás Rivera — three discussed the history, landscape and rugged produced over more than 25 years, includes writers to whom Gilb points as models for individualism that characterize Texas litera- two novels, three short-story collections, a his own writing — together with poets and ture, his own comments took a different volume of essays, an anthology and dozens of songwriters such as Angela de Hoyos, Tino tack, and they didn’t go over well. magazine articles and radio commentaries. Villanueva, Lydia Mendoza, Tish Hinojosa, All of his work — fiction and non-fiction — Selena and Grupo Fantasma, and writers He pointed out that writers like himself describes the lives of working-class Mexican- new to the literary scene such as Christine — working-class Mexican-Americans — Americans like himself. Before joining the Granados, Erasmo Guerra and Tonantzín are nearly invisible in the Texas literary Texas State University creative writing faculty Canestaro-García. To Gilb, these artists tradition, which, he said, has been domi- in 2001, Gilb had spent 16 years as a carpenter, comprise “all the voices that might form one nated by “a triumvirate of white men” building skyscrapers to support himself as a story, one family’s history.” (Roy Bedichek, J. Frank Dobie and Walter writer, and his gritty storytelling, which has Prescott Webb, and more recently Larry been compared to that of Raymond Carver Upon its publication in 2006, Hecho en McMurtry). He has strengthened this view and Anton Chekov, is fueled by his full-lived Tejas was acclaimed as a groundbreaking over the years, lamenting that few Amer- personal experience. He has won top literary historical accomplishment, and the Texas ican writers of Mexican descent are being prizes such as the PEN/Hemingway Award Legislature declared a day in February 2007 taught in university literature courses. If and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He’s been a as Hecho en Tejas Day. Then, in November, Mexican-American work is good, he says, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Gilb received the Bookend Award from the it is considered charming but unimportant, Award, and he’s attended a White House Texas Book Festival. The award presenta- fascinating but foreign. He emphasizes the dinner as an award-winning author. tion, in the Texas Capitol’s House Chamber, “absurdity” of dismissing the literature of was an ironic and fitting conclusion to a people who were in Texas before Anglos, Gilb made a particularly important events that Gilb had set in motion in the who helped Texas to win its independence contribution to Texas letters in 2006 with same chamber 12 years earlier. from Mexico and who will soon comprise

www.txstate.edu hillviews 29 “I am proud to have received the Bookend Award, but I see it more as a small payment in recognition of the virtually ignored Mexican-American community in Texas.”

the largest population group in Texas and are still and forever immigrants, that our collar men and women of varying ethnici- the Southwest. English language skills, like our relationship ties — Mexican-Americans from Southern to this country, are … weak and secondary California, Mexicans from Mexico, blacks Gilb writes that his statement at the 1995 … that [our poverty] is innate, a character from Watts, Anglos from , immi- Texas Book Festival was made in the House trait, never socially caused.” grants from Poland, and so on. They live Chamber to a “jury attached to coastered in cities such as El Paso and Los Angeles executive chairs” and to “a red velvet and Further, Gilb writes, even after all and struggle to make ends meet as drivers polished horseshoe gallery for observers” his years of struggle to get publishers to of beer and delivery trucks; as butchers and and that “every face was very silently not understand the Mexican-American experi- clerks; as construction workers, plumbers, smiling or winking.” Afterward, friends ence as a profoundly American experience, repairmen, secretaries, busboys, mechanics, who were embarrassed for him asked him if “ … people like me are unseen, patronized, taxi drivers and girlfriends of drug dealers. he had misunderstood what sort of presen- so out of the portrait of American litera- Gilb’s characters are built on his famil- tation he was supposed to make. ture. It seems impossible that so many of iarity with straddling Anglo and Mexican- the writers I have known — and yes, me, American culture and from his firsthand If the audience was uncomfortable with too — with a decent record of publica- knowledge of the uncertainties, demands, Gilb’s statements, his complaint was valid tions by usual standards, still fight a battle conflicts, desires, failures and rewards that nevertheless. For hundreds of years Texas for acceptance.” working-class people experience in their had supported a thriving Mexican-Amer- everyday lives. ican literary tradition, and Gilb’s belief “I really don’t understand,” he told Hill- that it deserved to be brought into the views, “why we don’t want to understand Gilb is consistent in expressing the mainstream eventually led him to produce each other. After all, we live surrounded by tension that results from misunderstand- Hecho en Tejas, establishing the canon of Mexican culture. It’s in our food, our archi- ings between different groups of people. Mexican- in Texas. tecture, our clothing, our language — it is In his essay “Dream Comes True” (Gritos), within us and it is inevitable.” he writes about the culture clash he experi- “I am proud to have received the enced in winning his first literary prize in Bookend Award, but I see it more as a small Gilb’s interest in raising awareness about 1984 — the James D. Phelan Award, given payment in recognition of the virtually the contributions of Mexican-Americans is by the San Francisco Foundation to prom- ignored Mexican-American community in consistent with how he sees himself, not as ising young California writers. Texas,” Gilb told Hillviews. As he writes in an ethnic writer but as an American writer Hecho en Tejas, “There is so much misun- seeking his place in the American canon. When he won the award, he was building derstanding about who we are, where we Gilb’s fictional characters, whose depic- a high-rise in Los Angeles, living paycheck are from . . . Even in Texas, [there is the tions have been called “pitch perfect” by to paycheck and writing when he could. He misconception that] Mexican-Americans critics, represent the experience of blue- recounts his hopefulness that, despite the

30 hillviews spring/summer 08 more than 100 rejections he’s received from tion of Morgan Entrekin, the publisher of recently when Gilb read publicly from his editors, the prize portends his future success Grove Press who published most of Gilb’s latest novel, The Flowers (2008). He read as a published writer. But the prize, which subsequent books. a passage in which the main character, a provides Gilb with his first entrée to the elite Mexican-American teenager named Sonny social and intellectual environment of the At last November’s Texas Book Festival, Bravo, narrates an attack on him by his literary world, also causes him to feel disori- Entrekin presented Gilb with the Bookend mother’s drunk boyfriend. In the scene, ented and uncomfortable. At the award Award, saying that he first encountered Sonny progresses from vague awareness of ceremony, he feels self-conscious about his Gilb’s work in the stories collected in The a knock at the door to startled realization cheap clothes. A Mexican waiter calls atten- Magic of Blood. that the drunk boyfriend is going to kick tion to Gilb’s racial difference by speaking the door down, to terror mixed with anger to him in Spanish. His hostess insults him “It was a revelation,” Entrekin said. and hatred when he is attacked and injured by insisting that Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat “The authority of his voice, the precision by the big man. Gilb gave precise imper- — whose Mexican characters are dissolute of his craft, the beauty of the writing and sonations of his characters as he read the pleasure-seekers — is the country’s best the compassion for his characters and their scene, switching easily between the lilting, writing about Mexican-Americans. Gilb lives — you knew that you were in the barrio-accented English of a Mexican- realizes with resignation that his economic presence of a real writer, one destined to American youth and the surly threats of a background and ethnicity create a barrier win prizes and to be read for many years to drunk redneck. between him and the literary world he is come. I immediately made an offer for the glimpsing, and he knows that he will return paperback rights for The Magic of Blood and Following the reading, a woman in the after the ceremony to his impoverished life for his first novel,The Last Known Residence audience told Gilb that she had grown of construction work. of Mickey Acuña. up among people whose voices sounded like those in Gilb’s stories, but that, until For more than 15 years after receiving “Dagoberto has won praise for his she had read Gilb’s work, she had never the Phelan award, Gilb continued working portrayal of the lives of working-class encountered those voices in literature. construction and struggling to write. The people,” Entrekin continued, “particularly publication of some short stories in 1982 Chicano, in Texas and the Southwest and “She gets what I’m trying to do,” Gilb in The Threepenny Review had given Gilb southern California. But like any great said, adding, “We’re looking at a new time, his first national exposure and won him writer, his fiction transcends a specific class not too far in the future, when the social the Phelan Award, but it didn’t win him or place or ethnic group to offer truths structure will reflect the ethnic mix of a publishing contract. Then, the publica- about the way we all live. I’m honored to the community. It’s already happening in tion of his short story collection The Magic be his publisher.” some places: I do readings at colleges where of Blood (1993), which won the PEN/ the mixture of faces looks like the one in Hemingway Foundation Award for best The transcendent nature of Gilb’s the neighborhood where I grew up. It’s first fiction, brought him to the atten- writing was brought home to Texas State thrilling; it’s a relief.”

“I really don’t understand why we don’t want to understand each other. After all, we live surrounded by Mexican culture. It’s in our food, our architecture, our clothing, our language — it is among us and it is inevitable.”

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