"Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry" by Rudolfo Anaya

The first book I remember reading was my catechism book.

I remember the questions and the answers I had to learn, and I remember the well-thumbed, frayed book that was sacred to me.

Censorship has affected me directly, and I have formed some ideas on this insidious activity, but first, I want to give an example of censorship which recently affected a friend of mine.

For some time I have been encouraging Chicano writers to apply for literary fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

A number of poets who use Spanish and English in their poetry applied but did not receive fellowships; they were so discouraged they did not reapply.

He also knew what we all knew: that many of the panels that judged the manuscripts did not have readers who could read Spanish or bilingual manuscripts. In other words, the judges could not read the poetic language that expresses our reality. My friend rightfully deduced that his poetry was not receiving a fair reading.

How he coped with the problem has tremendous cultural implications. It has implications that we may call self-imposed censorship.

My friend was censoring his creativity in order to fit the imposed criteria.

He took out his native language, the poetic patois of our reality, the rich mixture of Spanish, English, pachuco, and street talk that we know so well.

I do not believe we should have to leave out the crucial elements of our language and culture to contribute to American literature, but, unfortunately, this is a conclusion I am forced to reach.

We struggled to change the way the world looks at Mexican Americans by reflecting our reality in literature, and many eagerly sought our works, but the iron curtain of censorship was still there.

What are the methods of commission or omission that censorship employs?

At a time when multicultural diversity is challenging the literary canon of this country, the major publishers still are barely now responding to the literary output of Chicano writers.

After twenty-five years of contemporary Chicano literature, there are still only a few Chicano writers who publish with the big trade publishers.

The views of ethnic writers, gay and lesbian writers, and women writers had been consistently censored out of the literary canon.

The arbiters of literary acceptance instantly branded our works as too political.

Censorship is fear clothed in the guise of misguided righteousness.

Of course, our poetry and literature reflected to our communities our history and our right to exist as a distinct culture.

Even my "nonpolitical" novel, Bless Me, Ultima, has moved people to explore the roots of their agrarian, Mexicano way of life.

And the healing work of Ultima, a curandera, illustrated to my generation some of our holistic, Native American inheritance.

A few years ago, the editor of a major publishing firm asked me to submit a story for a middle school reader. Those readers have the power to shape how thousands of children think about Mexican Americans. The criteria were: "It can't have religion in it, it can't be mystical, it can't have Spanish in it."

Using a technique censors often use, they zoomed in on one detail of the novel, the so-called bad words in Spanish, and they used that excuse.

I wrote about old healing remedies used by the folk to cure physiological illness.

Poverty and suffering did not overwhelm us, they made us stronger.

Fifteen million Chicanos were clamoring at the door, insisting that the schools also belonged to us, that we had a right to our literature in the schools, and the conservative opposition in power fought back by burning our books.

Fifteen million Chicanos were clamoring at the door, insisting that the schools also belonged to us, that we had a right to our literature in the schools, and the conservative opposition in power fought back by burning our books.

These narrow-minded reactionaries are still fighting us.

Every Chicano community in this country has a story of murals being attacked or erased, poets banned from schools, books being inaccessible to our students because they are systematically kept out of the accepted textbook lists.

The 1990 attack on the NEA by fundamentalist censors has created a national furor and discussion.

The 1990 attack on the NEA by fundamentalist censors has created a national furor and discussion.

Those of us who believe in the freedom of expression have spoken out against this infringement on our right to know.

But as Chicanos who belong to a culture still existing on the margin of the mainstream society, and as a community that has struggled to be heard in this country, censorship is not new to us.

Your view is a multicultural view of this country, and the status quo doesn't like that. We will not share our power.

The threat to keep us subservient did not abate.

The threat to keep us subservient did not abate. The English-Only movement continued the old censorship we had felt on the school playgrounds, but now the game had moved into the state legislatures.

This summer a magazine from New York advertised for subscriptions. Here are quotes from their solicitation letter: "There is only one magazine that tells you what is right and what is wrong with our cultural life today."

And, finally, "Are you apprehensive about what the politics of 'multiculturalism' is going to mean to the future of civilization?"

Art is a very human endeavor, and it contains within its process and the objects it produces a road to liberation.

The liberation is significant not only to the individual artist, it is a revelation for the community, it is not we who are the barbarians, it is those who have one narrow view that, they are convinced, is the only right view.

Censorship imposes itself in my path of knowledge, and that activity can be justified by no one.