Arizona is often thought of in the context of “The West,” that is, as a frontier that needed to be tamed and populated by settlers coming from the eastern and midwestern parts of the U.S. Literarily, this has meant that many stories from and about Arizona center settlers and their relationships not only to the landscape but to the people who were already residing within that landscape when they arrived, namely Indigenous and Mexican people. This presentation focuses on two early twentieth-century Arizona authors, Refugio Savala (Yoeme-Mexican) and Mario Suárez (Chicano), and details how their respective literary works helped give voice to people not otherwise represented in literature. Ultimately, though subtle, Savala and Suárez’s early work persists in the ways they influenced future generations of Indigenous and Mexican-American authors and projects within Arizona.
About the Speaker
Oscar Mancinas is a Rarámuri-Chicano educator, poet, author, scholar, and organizer. He was born and raised in Mesa’s Washington-Escobedo neighborhood—where his family has resided since the 1950s. Oscar’s books, To Live and Die in El Valle and Des_____: Papeles, Palabras, & Poems from the Desert, have gained recognition from the Border Regional Library Association Southwest Book Awards, as well as the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards and the Mesa Book Festival. He recently completed his doctorate in Transborder Studies at Arizona State University; he teaches creative writing and literary studies at Northern Arizona University.
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This program is made possible by Arizona Humanities