Internationally-acclaimed Chicano poet, artist and scholar Tino Villanueva came to campus on Monday to give a reading of his work and speak about poetry's connection to the Chicano experience.
Born into a family of migrant workers in Texas, Villanueva was drafted into the United States Army in 1963 and spent two years in the Panama Canal Zone where he became immersed in Hispanic literature.
Thanks to the G.I. Bill, Villanueva graduated from Texas State University-San Marcos. There, Villanueva was introduced to 20th-century poetry, particularly that of the Beat Generation, after being told by his teacher he needed to learn the modern idiom to be a contemporary poet. He was especially influenced by the work of Dylan Thomas.
"I had never seen language like that," said Villanueva of Thomas' poetry. "Twentieth-century poets don't rhyme; they rely on fresh imagery and construction to captivate the ear."
Villanueva began to publish his poetry in the early 1970s, just around the end of the Chicano Movement.Themes of cultural awareness, struggle for socio-political emancipation, and self-redemption have persisted as hall marks of his work.
Associate Professor of Romance Languages Enrique Yepes described Villanueva's work as telling the story of "belonging to and being rejected from two cultures...this journey speaks from two universes, Spanish and English."
Using multiple languages has allowed Villanueva more freedom in how he expresses himself, turning his personal memories into art.
"In English you can do something that you can't do with any romance language," said Villanueva. "English can string along monosyllabic words and have it made sense...you could create adjectives using hyphens, in Spanish you cannot do that. English is very creative that way."
The first two collections Villanueva published included poems in Spanish, poems in English, and also hybrid poems that stitched the two languages together.
After those publications he decided to no longer mix languages, writing his third book completely in Spanish and his fourth completely in English.
Villanueva's book-length poem, "Scene from the Movie Giant" won the American Book Award and focused on his childhood in San Marcos, especially his experience watching the interracial interactions in the 1956 film "Giant."
The scene that influenced him the most was "about race, power, good and evil" and it was in this moment he realized that "with the moral fight, that we all should be involved in, even if you lose the physical fight, you win."
Yepes organized the visit in connection to his course Poetry and Activism in Spanish America, which "considers aesthetic and thematic problems posed by socially committed poetry during the last 100 years in Spanish America."
In addition to writing, Villanueva teaches, lectures, researches and paints.
He is currently a senior lecturer in the Department of Romance Studies at Boston University, and was a Tallman Scholar at Bowdoin College.