RARA-AVIS: Chicano / Chicana Historical crime writers

From: Msedano@aol.com
Date: 10 Jan 2002


Speaking of Latino, Chicano detectives, anent Mosely's historical setting, Rudolfo Anaya takes his character, Sonny Baca, great grand nephew of the historical Elfego Baca, into historical events in Anaya's _Shaman Winter_, a novel about the past.

Manuel Ramos' _Blues for the Buffalo_ refers to a Los Angeles Chicano lawyer and writer, Oscar Acosta, "the Brown Buffalo," a novel set in the present that uses the past (Acosta, left, at http://hometown.aol.com/msedano/mvsfoto/roll2.htm). Ramos' character, Luis Montez, is worth knowing if you can get all the novels, and, more than Sonny Baca, more closely meets the standards of this list.

Lucha Corpi's _Elegy for a Brown Angel_ starts off on an historical date for Chicanismo, August 29, 1970. Following a murderous police riot, the woman dick stumbles across a horrible crime in a noir Chicana detective novel you might enjoy.

I have enjoyed Chicana and Chicano detective work and look forward to your views, once you've taken the opportunity. Manuel Ramos' list. Not on Ramos' list is Guy Garcia's _Skin Deep_, which is just a bit noir. Garcia uses history, Laguna Park on August 29, as a place to write about, in a beautiful scene that alone makes reading the book worthwhile. If you're interested in Chicano culture or LA fiction, _Skin Deep_ will involve you as it moves back and forth between East Coast and West coast, West LA to East LA.

regards, mvs

--
# To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
# majordomo@icomm.ca.  This will not work for the digest version.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 10 Jan 2002 EST