Life in Search of Readers: Reading (in) Chicano/a Literature

4. Querido Reader: Linguistic and Marketing Strategies for Addressing a Multicultural Readership

107   Querido Reader: Linguistic and Marketing Strategies for Addressing a Multicultural Readership Quiero fer una prosa en romanz paladino en qual suele el pueblo fablar con so vezino, ca non só tan letrado por fer otro latino, bien valdrá, como creo, un vaso de bon vino. —Gonzalo de Berceo1 The previous three chapters have dealt with issues that pertain to a readeroriented literary history of Chicano/a literature by analyzing some of the most influential books by Chicanos/as in recent decades, as well as by exploring the diachronic problematics of audience formation. With that context in mind,this chapter sets out to accomplish a double mission: first,it will examine an array of linguistic and literary strategies employed by Chicano/a authors in order to evaluate the diverse ways their texts succeed in addressing their monolingual and/or multilingual/ multicultural readers; then I will analyze extratextual mechanisms that likewise work toward expanding the audience for Chicano/a literature, most important among them marketing and distribution techniques that have catapulted Chicano/a literature to new sales records in the past decade or so. As my epigraph (taken from thirteenth-century Spanish poet Gonzalo de Berceo) suggests, emerging literatures—as well as those that are on the verge of a major change in direction—face the immediate task of defining the linguistic parameters of interaction with their envisioned readers. Berceo, who wrote in a Latin-dominant literary tradition, embraced the nascent vernacular Castilian (“romanz paladino”) in which—as he said—people talked to each other. Strategically, he also embraced the rhetorical position of the vernacular oral tradition of juglares, as his anticipated compensation of a glass of good wine indicates. 107 108 The impact that Berceo had on medieval Spain in his reclamation of the vernacular for literary purposes is certainly comparable to that of the early contemporary Chicano/a writers in their assumption of a populist discourse and (rather frequently) a colloquial speech. Much as the Spanish friar did, authors such as Tomás Rivera, Rolando Hinojosa, Abelardo Delgado, Ricardo Sánchez, Carmen Tafolla, and José Montoya are to be credited for their literary vindication of the language “en qual suele el pueblo / fablar con so vezino.” In doing so, they contributed to creating a sense of national unity among Chicano/a readers from different parts of the country, as analyzed in chapter . Likewise, the rhetorical assumption by Berceo of the role of a juglar is not unlike the reclamation of the oral tradition by contemporary Chicano/a authors, as seen, for instance, in Tomás Rivera’s inclusion of the troubadour Bartolo in his . . . y no se lo tragó la tierra. Of course, there are significant differences between the case of Berceo and that of contemporary Chicano/a literature. Perhaps the most significant one with which this chapter is concerned is that Chicanos/as used either one or two different languages (Spanish and English, with varying degrees of other languages and Caló interspersed) to speak with their neighbors. In that sense, the relationship between English (as the mainstream language of institutions, etc.) and Spanish in the contemporary United States,while still hierarchically unbalanced, is dissimilar from that between Latin and early Castilian in medieval Spain. The contemporary Chicano/a writer who sat down, then, to compose a “prosa” in the language of his/her neighbor was first and foremost faced with deciding which of the several linguistic possibilities (including the bilingual text) to use. The first part of my analysis in this chapter will deal with aspects pertaining to the linguistic evolution of Chicano/a literature as it relates to the ceaseless transformation of its readership. I am interested in exploring the ways language, marketing, and readership are interrelated and in how the choice of certain language registers reflects a desire to connect with a particular segment of the potential audience and/or a reaction to changed or changing marketing strategies. For this, I will elaborate on previous work of mine, as well as on later studies by others, not available when that earlier work of mine was published. A clear indication of the importance given since early on to the choice of language in contemporary Chicano/a literature is found in Juan BruceNovoa ’s book of interviews Chicano Authors, one of the first printed collections to allow readers an insight into the Chicano/a authors’   109 opinions on the literary process. Two of...