Introduction to Focus: The Latino West

I live in Northern California, more than a thousand miles from El Paso, Texas, where I grew up. People here are constantly annoyed by the fact that my ears perk up at even the smallest mention of my hometown in a magazine or newspaper. Did you realize that parts of the movie Lolita (1962) were filmed at my high school, and some scenes in Kill Bill (2003–2004) are even set in El Paso? My friends are sick of me pointing out that Bobby Fuller, famous for singing "I Fought the Law," was an El Pasoan, and that when the two young lovers of Steve Miller Band's hit song take their money and run, they're in El Chuco.

Never mind that many of El Paso's pop-culture cameos are of a lawless old Western town that is unrecognizable to anyone who lives there. Once you start to get used to the rest of the country ignoring you, it's easy to get excited about any kind of attention. You turn on the television and all you hear about is the big cities, New York and Boston and San Francisco, and for contrast, you hear about old-fashioned types from "The Heartland" of America. You get so used to hearing about all these other places that you start to believe that maybe your life really is less important because you're not from Manhattan. And then you see the words "El Paso" on an enchilada maker at Target, and you think, "Well, at least it's something."

Out in California, I may be alone in my concern for El Paso, but I think that many, maybe most, Chicanos around the country can relate to this feeling. We are constantly on the lookout for bits of recognition that tell us someone has noticed that we really do exist, not just as a backdrop for immigration policy discussion, or as another of the tourist attractions of the Southwest, but as an active part of American culture. It's so rare to hear the voice of a Chicano on the news or in any television show that our ears perk us excitedly when it does happen. We're shocked when we discover stories or books with recognizable characters from our own neighborhood.

Too often, though, that excitement can even turn into a kind of augury, where everything that happens to any Chicano voice must be a good or bad omen. When we do actually do get to hear one of ours, we're intent to figure out what it means for us, whether it means our golden age is coming, or if our best years are behind us. We monitor how Chicano politicians are doing, how Chicano authors are doing, how many albums Chicano musicians are selling. We get distracted from our appreciation and get caught up thinking about a future that exists only in our imagination.

It is tempting to look at this whole collection—essays by Mexican American writers at various stages of their careers, a whole issue of ABR devoted to our own literature and culture—and ask that easy question: What does this mean for us and for the future? Though I found myself instinctively asking this at times, it is the wrong question.

Running through the essays in this issue of ABR, you will find a heightened sensitivity, just like mine, to our position in the mainstream culture, as though we all have one eye always glancing at the reflection we see in the media or in the movies. But that position is never as simple enough to be called good or bad. It is complicated, and it is full of contradictions. It will always be this way, and no one should reduce it to a point on a line headed towards a simpler future, terrible or wonderful, for Mexican Americans.

This issue of ABR is important not as an omen but as a celebration of Mexican American writing as it exists right now. Some show the achievements of Mexican American writers; others show the wide range of perspectives found within the Mexican American community...