El Coro
A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry
Edited by Martin Espada
University of Massachusetts Press
This is an anthology of compelling new work by more than forty Latino and Latina poets, including Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, Julia Alvarez, Luis Rodriguez, Rosario Ferre, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Gary Soto, and Clemente Soto Velez. El Coro offers proof that Latino/a poetry today is more complex and diverse, more beautiful and powerful, than had been previously acknowledged.
Here we find the open expression of anger and grief, self-mocking humor, the music of protest, the quiet assertion of dignity, and the raucous celebration of survival. There are poems about stoop labor and welfare offices and housing projects, but also poems about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Minotaur.
Among the poets are former farm workers and gang members, a practicing physician, an ex-tenant lawyer, two professional chefs, and a Vietnam veteran. One poet was a political prisoner for six years; another staged a famous hunger strike; still another was indicted for her work with Central American refugees. In many ways this collection of poets comprises a chorus. Their song humanizes in the face of dehumanization.
Here we find the open expression of anger and grief, self-mocking humor, the music of protest, the quiet assertion of dignity, and the raucous celebration of survival. There are poems about stoop labor and welfare offices and housing projects, but also poems about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Minotaur.
Among the poets are former farm workers and gang members, a practicing physician, an ex-tenant lawyer, two professional chefs, and a Vietnam veteran. One poet was a political prisoner for six years; another staged a famous hunger strike; still another was indicted for her work with Central American refugees. In many ways this collection of poets comprises a chorus. Their song humanizes in the face of dehumanization.
Naming this one of the Outstanding Books of the Year, the Gustavus Myers Center wrote in its award citation: The cultural arts play a major role in sustaining a people's dignity, and in strengthening their abilities to combat bigotry. The poems selected by Martin Espada demonstrate this well. The Myers tribute is to the numerous Latino/a writers living and/or working in New England whose poems are shared. Espada introduces the historical, sociopolitical, and literary context in which to read the poems. A near equal number of women and men poets from at least ten countries of origin are included in this collection. Some writing is intensely personal; some overtly political; and some provocatively combine the two. The Myers Review Panel found the collection aesthetically, politically, linguistically, and otherwise outstanding.''—Gustavus Myers Center
'Forty-three poets are represented in this new anthology of Latino verse...Concern with racism, nature, feminism, anger, roots, cultural identity, family, and sexuality sour out of these poems, which reward the reader with their diversity, lyrical strength and richness.'—Virginia Quarterly Review
'The widest window on some of the liveliest poetry being written in this country today. Martin Espada has chosen not just poets but individual poems that prove there is no such thing as a single Latino/a manner or outlook -- poems that delight and bite and exhilarate from start to finish.'—Paul Jenkins, editor, Massachusetts Review
Martin Espada's Imagine the Angels of Bread was awarded the American Book Award by the Before Columbus Foundation and was nominated earlier for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Espada has published five books of poetry and also edited Poetry Like Break: Poets of the Political Imagination from Curbstone Press. He is professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
