Email this page
Print this page
del.icio.us
digg
yahoo!
CommentsOpus of an icon
Ruben Hernandez
Who hasn’t heard the phrase, “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.”
That famous line came from the late Jose Antonio Burciaga, a Chicano writer, muralista, actor and activist, and a seminal figure in the Chicano Movement of the 1970s.
The University of Arizona Press has just published The Last Supper of Chicano Heroes: Selected Works of Jose Antonio Burciaga, and it should be required reading for young writers, Latino and non Latino.
Like most Chicano escritores, Burciaga wrote to mobilize, educate and empower. He published his first major essay anthology, Wedee Peepo, in 1988, followed by Drink Cultura in 1992 and Spilling the Beans in 1995.
He was also a talented comic, and one of the founding members of the comedy troupe Culture Clash in San Francisco in 1984.
Edited by Mimi R. Gladstein and Daniel Chacon, Last Supper is the first and only collection of Burciaga’s work. It features 38 illustrations and reveals previously unpublished essays and drawings.
To read Burciaga is to remember the inequities that forced Chicanos to explode into cultural expressions and civic protests.
Burciaga’s writing empowered by describing cultural differences, similarities and difficulties through humor, art, and crisp, simple prose that belied the complexity of his ideas.
We need more Burciagas.
The Last Supper of Chicano Heroes: Selected Works of Jose Antonio Burciaga
The University of Arizona Press
$35 cloth; $16.95 paper
