Dancing with Ghosts: A Critical Biography of Arturo Islas
Dancing with Ghosts: A Critical Biography of Arturo Islas
University of California Press | December 4, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0520231880 | 218 pages | PDF | 1.09 MB
University of California Press | December 4, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0520231880 | 218 pages | PDF | 1.09 MB
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.