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131 Rig­ o­ berto ­ González Iwill refer to my lit­ er­ ary fore­ fathers as ante­ pa­ sa­ dos, ac­ knowl­ edg­ ing the cul­ tural con­ nec­ tion of our ­ shared Mex­ i­ can (south of the bor­ der) and Chi­ cano (north of the bor­ der) her­ i­ tage. But I’d like to take it a step fur­ ther, and rec­ og­ nize an­ other im­ por­ tant com­ mo­ nal­ ity: our queer iden­ tity. I will refer to my lit­ er­ ary fore­ fathers, then, as jot­ o­ ra­ nos—my vet­ e­ ran gay god­ par­ ents. These are the peo­ ple who came be­ fore and who­ fought first, who ­ braved the pub­ lic ­ stages and ­ weathered the ­ stormy au­ di­ ences so that my own jour­ ney would be a lit­ tle less ter­ rify­ ing and a lot more re­ ward­ ing. In the era where terms such as “post-racial” and “post-gay” are eras­ ing and dis­ re­ spect­ ing the scars and ­ stretch marks of our ­ ancestors’ pasts, I felt es­ pe­ cially com­ pelled to thank these in­ cred­ ible teach­ ers, men­ tors, and role mod­ els, ­ through the act of love I ­ learned from them. The seven thumb­ nail por­ traits that fol­ low are only ­ glimpses into the queer Chi­ cano con­ scious­ ness that has ­ fueled my pas­ sion for the ar­ tistry and ac­ ti­ vism of lan­ guage. With­ out it, there would be no me. Or ­ rather, there would be a dif­ fer­ ent me, less ful­ filled and less ­ skilled than the per­ son who, ­ through the works of these be­ loved jot­ o­ ra­ nos, has ­ learned the pain of re­ mem­ ber­ ing, the pleas­ ure of read­ ing, and the re­ spon­ sibil­ ity of writ­ ing. Be­ loved Jot­ o­ ra­ nos Rigoberto González 132 Ar­ turo Islas Ar­ turo Islas died one day after ­ Valentine’s Day in 1991, al­ most a year after the re­ lease of his sec­ ond novel, Mi­ grant Souls. News of his death was a par­ tic­ u­ larly dis­ ap­ point­ ing mo­ ment for me be­ cause I had re­ solved to at­ tend Stan­ ford ­ University’s grad­ u­ ate pro­ gram just to work with him. I was only a jun­ ior at the Uni­ ver­ sity of Cal­ i­ for­ nia, River­ side, but I al­ ready had as­ pi­ ra­ tions to be­ come a ­ writer. I had been read­ ing Chi­ cano lit­ er­ a­ ture vo­ ra­ ciously, and one of the books that had moved me had been The Rain God (1984). The se­ quel to the Angel fam­ ily saga, it had just been re­ leased to wide ac­ claim, and I spent the next ­ twelve ­ months fan­ ta­ siz­ ing about tell­ ing Islas all about me. You see, the other thing I knew about him was that he was gay. A gay Chi­ cano ­ writer. Who knew there were two of us? Mi­ guel Chico, the col­ lege stu­ dent who was hid­ ing from his fam­ ily by mov­ ing away, was some­ one I could re­ late to. I under­ stood his bit­ ter­ ness over his in­ vis­ ibil­ ity, his dis­ may with the fam­ ily dra­ mas, and his heart­ break at the death of Uncle Felix, a cau­ tion­ ary tale of the dan­ gers of homo­ sex­ u­ al­ ity. And ­ though Mi­ guel Chico took a step back from the pri­ mary plot lines of Mi­ grant Souls, he was still there, ob­ serv­ ing from a dis­ tance and try­ ing to find a pur­ pose for all of the knowl­ edge he had ac­ quired in ­ school. I knew Mi­ guel ­ Chico’s af­ flic­ tion, a mel­ an­ choly that comes from lone­ li­ ness and iso­ la­ tion, from breath­ ing the same stale air in­ side the ­ closet. When I found out that Islas had died from com­ pli­ ca­ tions re­ lated to AIDS I was dev­ as­ tated. This was not the nar­ ra­ tive I ­ wanted to fol­ low— de­ feated by the very sex­ u­ al­ ity that was al­ ready mak­ ing us foreign­ ers in our com­ mu­ nities. This was not sup­ posed to be Mi­ guel ­ Chico’s fate. Cer­ tainly not mine...

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