Decade II: A Twentieth Anniversary Anthology ed. by Julián Olivares, Evangelina Vigil Piñón, and: Short Fiction by Hispanic Writers of the United States ed. by Nicolás Kanellos (review)

174 WesternAmerican Literature joyous final poem titled “Hoop Dancer,”this is a somber, yet solid, first section. The final of the four subsections contains lighter poems on contemporary subjects such as tractor pulls and wheat farming. Johnson is an insightful observer and a poet keenly aware of other’s predicaments. In ten of the poems he adopts the voice of various western characters to provide a particular slant on specific subjects. The titles give some idea of their charm: “T. C. Henry Tells the Story of Abilene, Kansas” or “J. L. Mahoney Finally Cuts Loose on a California Yuppie Feminist”or even “Johnny Logo speaks of Troubled Times in Buck Naked, Texas.” Adopting different voices provides poetic license for capturing scattered and quirky scenarios; consequently, the book does not read like a single author’swork. However, the poems are consistently well crafted and range from prickly to truly funny. Most of the poems in this book are short and punchy, and though there is sufficient violence, the grace is less evident. Johnson writes in a boundary area between the historical-romantic western caricature and the sometimes harsh realities ofwestern life, crossing freely between the two. This is a subject served well by poetry because readers will likely augmentJohnson’s terse insights with their individual experiences. Myonly regret is that there is not more material in the book. A. LEE FOOTE Lafayette, Louisiana Decade II: A Twentieth Anniversary Anthology. Edited by Julián Olivares and Evangelina Vigil Piñón. (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1993. 256 pages, $12.00.) Short Fiction by Hispanic Writers of the United States. Edited by Nicolás Kanellos. (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1993. 285 pages, $15.00.) True to form, Arte Público Press has done it again. The oldest and largest publisher ofHispanic literature in the United States has recently added to its list of accomplishments two new anthologies, Decade II: A Twentieth Anniversary Anthologyand ShortFiction byHispanic Writers ofthe UnitedStates. Both anthologies reflect the complexities of Chicana, Chicano, and Hispanic subject identity born where cultures and languages clash. What the reader finds in these collections are works by authors whose experiences are the wellspring of artistic production and political commitment. These works are bicultural and bilingual spaces where centuries of oral traditions mingle with contemporary realities. DecadeII divides its pages almost equally between prose and poetry, and of the thirty-seven writers represented, twenty-three are among the new and younger voices in Hispanic literature. Elias Miguel Muñoz, Arturo Mantecón, and Rane Arroyo are just a few of the writers who appear alongside the likes of Reviews 175 Ed Vega, Helena MaríaViramontes, Ricardo Sánchez andJimmy Santiago Baca. Among the most memorable stories in DecadeIIis Alberto Rios’ “The Birthday of Mrs. Piñeda,” a beautifully subtle portrait of the heart. It is a perceptive and lyrical portrayal of the inner life of an older married couple in which the everyday things of their world take on cultural, historical, and spiritual signifi­ cance. It is a story about telling stories, about history, and about reclaiming the past. While several works in the collection tend toward a didacticism that weakens their aesthetic dimension, Rios combines art and politics in a powerful and moving representation of people whose lives and stories, we are sure by the end, “count” as much as, if not more than, the lives and stories of “popes” and “presidents.” The second halfofDecade//contains the poetry ofwriters well-known in the Hispanic literary community such as EvangelinaVigil Piñón,Judith Ortiz Cofer, Leo Romero, and Lucha Corpi. It also contains poems by a new voice, Rane Arroyo, that stand out not only for their prosaic appearance on the page, but also for their animated and humorous approaches to the question of identity. In “Blonde as a Bat,”Arroyo deals with the ill and sometimes funny effects that stereotypic representations of Hispanics in American media have on subject formation. Arroyo’s resistance to dominantAmerican ideologies manifests itself in laughter as he negotiates the tricky terrain of cultural identity. Short Fiction presents the work of twenty-one Mexican-American, CubanAmerican and Puerto Rican writers in this country, eight of whom are repre­ sented...