Transcendental Train Yard is a collection of color serigraphs accompanied by bilingual poems, in Spanish and English, inspired by the artwork. Transcendental Train Yard provides the reader a glimpse of the role the railroad and the carpas (itinerant vaudeville troupes) played in the Mexican American community. Artist Marta Sanchez and poet Norma Elia Cantú collaboratively render images and words that poignantly reflect specific periods in that history. The scholarly essays by Cortez and Haney and the evocative preface by noted Chicano scholar Tomás Ybarra Frausto bring an added depth.

Transcendental Train Yard is a collection of color serigraphs accompanied by bilingual poems, in Spanish and English, inspired by the artwork. Transcendental Train Yard provides the reader a glimpse of the role the railroad and the carpas (itinerant vaudeville troupes) played in the Mexican American community. Artist Marta Sanchez and poet Norma Elia Cantú collaboratively render images and words that poignantly reflect specific periods in that history.

This book explores the cultural and historical imaginary expressed in literary works that emphasize Latina/o world views. The essays here employ critical approaches based on discourse and cultural analyses that highlight individual and collective identity. They encompass a wide spectrum of topics that deal with border newspapers published early in the twentieth century and their function as a forum for conserving memory based on cultural values and religious beliefs; life writing and fictional rewritings of memory; autobiographical texts that emphasize the diasporic experience of immigrants; and the essay and the poetic/visual literary forms that recover border memory. The discussion of alternative life views presented here will be of interest to academics involved in the recovery of print culture and genre specialists in the area of autobiography, as well as readers who wish to become more familiar with literature from the US-Mexico border region.

This innovative collection details critical biographies of twelve key Chicana writers, offering an engaging look at their work, contributions to the field, and major achievements. Portraits of the authors are each examined by a noted scholar, who delves deep into the authors' lives for details that inform their literary, artistic, feminist, and political trajectories and sensibilities. What results is a brilliant intersection of visual and literary arts that explores themes of sexism and misogyny, the fragility of life, Chicana agency, and more.

The Oval Portrait was originally published as El retrato ovalado (Ediciones Union, Havana, Cuba, 2015). Editor Soleida Ríos set a difficult task for herself and nearly three dozen other Cuban women writers, artists, and thinkers. She asked each to "choose a mask. With it she spins her story so that her own image appears in the story as well as the connection (always mysterious) and the symbol with which she has chosen to represent herself." The result, beyond being a postmodernist tour de force, was "a perfect vehicle for introspection." As Ríos herself puts it: "The game requires us to go deep.... Shall we say: Rather than a portrait, construct a mirror, through which you may touch the difficult and shared places. And then, at the end, ask yourself the question: Which are your favorite lies?" By way of example, Jamila Medina Ríos writes in her piece: "I know (I have learned it well) the fate of my grandmother and her aunts, the fate of Maria and my mother, the blossoms of mythical women and women poets, of female warriors, of weak women and of the famous. My head shaved so as not to intimidate her with my abundant hair." The Oval Portrait has been exquisitely translated into English by Margaret Randall. As she writes: "In an era of special interest media and superficial travelogues, I believe The Oval Portrait offers readers a uniquely profound glimpse of the Cuban psyche."

A Fire to Light Our Tongues: Texas Writers on Spirituality brings together the works of writers in Texas. The title is taken, with permission, from Naomi Shihab Nye’s introduction to Salting the Ocean: 100 Poems by Young Poets, where she states the role of poetry serves as “a fire to light our tongues.” This view describes the role that creative writers, encountering the challenges of this past decade, face as they grapple with shifting views of spirituality. While the project started before COVID-19, given the current worldwide pandemic, a book of creative work responding to writers’ spirituality could not be more timely. This anthology offers readers creative works by Texas writers as they wrestle with evolving systems of belief or nonbelief.

This collection of critical essays unveils for the first time Norma Elia Cantú’s contribution as a folklorist, writer, scholar, and teacher. Word Images unites two valuable ways to view and use Cantú’s work: Part 1 comprises essays that individually examine Cantú’s oeuvre through critical analysis. Part 2 is dedicated to ideas and techniques to improve the use of this literature by teachers and professors, with a particular focus on tools for using Canícula. Contributors: Steven W. Bender Aurora Chang Vanessa Fonseca Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs María Herrera-Sobek Ellen McCracken María Esther Quintana Millamoto Aldo Ulisses Reséndiz Ramírez Rose Rodríguez-Rabin Jesús Rosales Carlos Sibaja García María Socorro Tabuenca Juan Velasco