|
|
José MONTOYA es poeta y artista, de Sacramento en Califas, Aztlán. He is one of the most important and influential Chicano bilingual poets.
At the shrine de poesía try to imagine dos dioses en un diptych; a uno lado hay retrato de Octavio Paz y la palabra "CHINGA" y al otro, retrato de Montoya y la palabra "JODA".
In the preface a "In Formation: 20 Years of Joda" Montoya dice: "... joda seems better suited to describe struggle and resistance than chinga, that is if the word is used right. Watch 'em try to sound the 'J' like 'jay' which makes it joda, pronounced Jowda. Sounds too much like chora, barrio slang for phallus." This playful irreverence from the Pachuco poet comes through in his critical writing, poems, performances, and activism, trenzada, mixed, jodida, woven inextricably. Reading Montoya makes Aztlán manifest itself; his work is un terremoto de palabras.
Anger, humor and insight shine from the poetry in 20 Years of Joda. Montoya masterfully plays with ideas, tocando Spanish, English, Spanglish like musical instruments in his poetic orchestra. His poems "exemplify vividly the leap in perceptual and aesthetic power available to the bilingual poet" (Elliott 807). He is fluent in code-switching not only between languages but between dialects and literary traditions of English and Spanish, writing in academic English, quoting Cervantes, corridos and canción de protesta, British and U.S. southern dialects. Most of all, though, he has contributed to the elevation of Spanglish to a position of respect as a living, lively, beautiful language.
Hoy enterraron al Louie.
And San Pedro o san pinche
Are in for it. And those
Times of the forties
And the early fifties
Lost un vato de atolle.
(from "El Louie", 1969)
"El Louie" is probably Montoya's most famous and most often anthologized poem. With compassion and anger it tells the story of Louie, a pachuco from San Jose and California's Central Valley who is a local figure of coolness. After he comes back from the war in Korea his life disintegrates as he continues coming into conflict with the white-dominated world of California; he is a hero and a loser, hocking his combat medals for booze and drugs, and dying alone in squalid conditions. Louie is not elevated to gangster sainthood, but he is "recognized as a normative model" rather than portrayed as deviant, dangerous or insignificant (Hernandez 76).
Biographical information:
José Montoya grew up in New Mexico, California, and [Aztlán]. He was in the U.S. Navy, taught high school and at California State University, taught in the Art Department for 25 years. He is Sacramento's Poet Laureate. He has published many well-known poems in anthologies and magazines, and performs and lectures all over the world.
His publications include the following:
Montoya, José. El Sol y Los De Abajo and other R.C.A.F. poems por José Montoya. San Francisco: Ediciones Pocho-che, 1972.
Montoya, José. In Formation: 20 Years of Joda. Aztlán: Chusma House Publications, 1992.
Trio Casindio and the Royal Chicano Air Force. 20 Years of Songs by José Montoya.
Works Cited
Elliott, Emory. The Columbia Literary History of the United States. NY: Columbia UP, 1988.
Hernandez, Guillermo E. Chicano Satire. 2 Mar 2004. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/csrc/gmo/span145/articles/satirepgs52-84.html. Austin: U of TX P, 1991.
Montoya, José. In Formation: 20 Years of Joda . Aztlán: Chusma House Publications, 1992.
Related Links