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Alfredo V
- University of Texas Press
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277 Alfredo Véa Jr. n 1950 Alfredo Véa was born to a teenage mother at the edge of Phoenix , Arizona. Raised by his grandparents and by the Filipino and Mexicano migrants that made up this community, Véa learned early about the power of language and the Yaqui worldview that would allow him to find a sense of belonging in a world filled with flux. While his grandparents’ admixture of Moorish, Yaqui, and ancient Olmec stories and beliefs mesmerized Véa, it would be years before he would find come to identify himself as a storyteller and writer of fiction. In the intervening years, Véa served in Vietnam as a radiotelephone operator, finished a B.S. in physics from the University of California at Berkeley (1975), and received a J.D. from Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law (1978). Practicing as a lawyer and representing those at the racial and social fringes of society provided Véa with a sense of purpose through the 1980s. But he continued to feel a deep sense of lack: that somehow there must be another way to explore and represent U.S. ethnic experiences, a way that was more attuned to those shades of gray that were disallowed by judicial courts and legal theory. In response, Véa wrote and published his first novel, La Maravilla (1993), which follows the early life of Beto as he comes to terms with his mixed Yaqui and Spanish heritage. Following the success of La Maravilla, Véa published The Silver Cloud Café (1996), in which he delved deeply into the archives of Mexican and U.S. history to bring to life the bloody Cristero Wars and the invasion of the Philippines within the framework of a story set in contemporary San Francisco. Véa used the murder mystery genre to extend his narrative scope to include characters who bridge different times and national spaces: from the Philippines to Mexico to San Francisco and California’s Central Valley. In 1999 Véa published Gods Go Begging, a story about Vietnam, but one that does not focus merely on victories and losses. Instead, it powerfully portrays the pains and pleasures that his multiracial characters learn to share within and across the wires of a prison fence. As he interweaves the destinies of characters such as an Army chaplain, a high-ranking North Vietnamese infantry officer, and an African American sergeant, Véa imagines alternatives to war. Alfredo Véa’s novels are deeply learned and wide in historical and literary scope. His beautifully wrought, complexly organized imagined worlds, brimming with multifaceted characters, powerfully enrich Chicano-penned fictional forms and contents. Frederick Luis Aldama: You’re a practicing criminal defense lawyer and a novelist? Alfredo Véa: I’d never written anything—not even a short story—before La Maravilla. In fact, it was this death penalty case in the Central Valley that inspired me to write La Maravilla. The courtroom, the jury, the judge, and the two defense lawyers were all so incredibly racist toward my Mexican client, and the trial such a sham, that I started writing the novel. At first I thought it was going to be an angry novel, but it really didn’t turn out that way. During the writing process, I learned how to omit a European presence and archetypes from this little town, Buckeye, to see how a story would work with a bunch of Mexican, African American, Anglo Oklahoma, and Filipino characters. The writing was so engaging that it was also like I’d finally found an instrument I could play. When I finished writing the book, I actually didn’t intend to do anything with it. For me it was more of an exercise—a way to exorcise those racist demons I’d encountered in the courtroom, like Coltrane on the sax or something. But a friend sent it to the agent Sandra Dijkstra without telling me. Next thing you know, I have an agent that wants to represent me and a contract in the mail. After finishing La Maravilla I wanted to write more specifically about the racism and anti-miscegenation towards Filipino and Mexicano farmworkers in California’s Central Valley. After César Chávez and the United Farm Workers’ strikes, I kept waiting for an aggressive turnaround that 278 Spilling the Beans in Chicanolandia [34.201.16.34] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:20 GMT) would give field-workers labor rights...