The Chicano/Latino Literary Prize Read Online Free Page B

of the work where intermittently “yo” will appear, or “tú” will be addressed. The verses directed to the reader in first-person singular and second-person singular responds to the central concern set up in the first entry—a view of the world where “[a]bsurdo hoy, absurdo ayer, absurdo mañana: absurdo siempre” (41). The thesis of the collection is expressed as the frustrated promise of modernity presented through the episteme of baroque Spanish literature, and contemporary Mexican literature. Supposing these particular genealogies the heritage of the Chicano voice, the voices of the speaker question the viability of the sociological enterprise of literature to represent human experience. Bernal stylizes classical figures and formal poetic registers with humor by interspersing free verse, dialogic form, and neologisms. His point is to juxtapose the modern legacy of history and high art with the social decay of not only today, but also of yesterday. The competing voices mock structures of hegemony such as the language and art, the artificial imposition of nations and nationality, the rigidity of hegemonic language, the hypocrisy of middle-class activists, and the tyrannicalnature of many political organizations, including the Chicano Movement. Bernal’s work veers on the edge of absurdism, an appropriate aesthetic to communicate the irrationality of modern life as a person of color under late capitalism.
    Chicano detective novelist Michael Nava, tied for third prize in the 1980-81 contest, intimates the inner life of homoerotic love in his collection, “Sixteen Poems.” The poetic voice emerges during silent moments of erotic tenderness. The poems “Long Distance,” “For David,” “The Lover,” and “For W.” demarcate the construction of physical, emotional, and psychological boundaries between the inside and outside. Love and sexual desire become emotive dynamics that challenge the authority of Western concepts of space and time. The poems entitled “Translations from Neruda” and “Translations from Rubén Darío” share the conjunction “from.” “Of” would have suggested Nava as linguistic translator or interpreter of the poems whereas “from” proposes something different. Nava’s own poetic sensibility concerned with chicanismo and queer loving are developed through his perspective of the work of Darío and Neruda, an interesting intertextual approach. Homoerotic love, time, and being are themes that Nava will explore again at book length such as in his 1992 detective novel,
The Hidden Law
.
    Jesús Rosales, short story winner of the 1980-81 contest, divides “Parte del proceso” into three sections: “Tal vez al hablar más con ellos,” “Imposible en el extranjero,” and “Sin duda aquí.” These titles are the first indicator of a narrative construction that challenges the formalistic notions of the genre of short story. Partial sentences that suggest conversational responses begin a dialogical narration of a young adult coming of age during his college years. For Latinos, the coordinates of this process are particular in the requirements of geographical movement, initiation rituals into the subculture as a young adult, the confrontation of the subject as Other, and in the negotiation of subjectivity in multiple spaces and registers. I argue for an understanding of a Latino Bildungsroman with this specificity.
    The first part is made up of six stories that tell the tale of Alberto’s trip to Mexico. Told in first person, the narrator changes unidentified and without contextualization. The geographical and cultural space of the mother country allows Alberto to ponder border architecture, the social structure of rural Mexico and who/how his father is Mexican. At the trip’s end, Alberto returns to the university where he encounters the