Alfred Arteaga (1950 – July 4, 2008) was a Mexican-American poet, writer, and scholar. He was noted as an important poet of the

Chicano Movement The Chicano Movement, also referred to as El Movimiento, was a social and political movement in the United States inspired by prior acts of resistance among people of Mexican descent, especially of Pachucos in the 1940s and 1950s, and the Black ...

, who also contributed to the foundations

postcolonial Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a ...

and

ethnic studies Ethnic studies, in the United States, is the interdisciplinary study of difference—chiefly race, ethnicity, and nation, but also sexuality, gender, and other such markings—and power, as expressed by the state, by civil society, and by indivi ...

Themes

He envisioned

Chicano Chicano or Chicana is a chosen identity for many Mexican Americans in the United States. The label ''Chicano'' is sometimes used interchangeably with ''Mexican American'', although the terms have different meanings. While Mexican-American ident ...

identity as a product of hybridity. For Arteaga, part of the Chicano worldview is seeing the world beyond binaries, or as speaking from spaces of overlapping nature that are more ambiguous than the nation state.

Biography

Arteaga was born in

East Los Angeles East Los Angeles ( es, Este de Los Ángeles), or East L.A., is an unincorporated area in Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2020 census it had a population of 118,786, a drop of 6.1% from 2010, when it was 126,496. For statistical purpo ...

and raised in

Whittier, California Whittier () is a city in Southern California in Los Angeles County, part of the Gateway Cities. The city had 87,306 residents as of the 2020 United States census, an increase of 1,975 from the 2010 census figure. Whittier was incorporated in ...

. He attended Monte Vista High School, which has since been converted to a Los Angeles County Sheriff's academy. He received a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in 1974, and a master's degree and doctorate in literature from the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...

, in 1984 and 1987, respectively. He won the Chicano Literary Prize in 1975. From 1977 to 1987, Arteaga taught as an instructor of Mexican American Studies and English at San José City College. He served as an assistant professor of English at the

University of Houston The University of Houston (UH) is a public research university in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1927, UH is a member of the University of Houston System and the university in Texas with over 47,000 students. Its campus, which is primarily in s ...

from 1987 to 1990. Arteaga originally joined the faculty of the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, in 1990 as an assistant professor of English and was tenured in the Department of Ethnic Studies in 1998. He became a Professor in 2008. His studies and teaching focused on the contributions of contemporary Chicano literature and music to American culture. He drew attention to the hybrid culture of Chicano writers by focusing on their hybrid use of language. He is the recipient of a

Rockefeller Fellowship The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Ca ...

(1993–94), a

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry (1995), and the

PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award The PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award is for U.S. multicultural writers, to "promote works of excellence by writers of all cultural and racial backgrounds and to educate both the public and the media as to the nature of multicultural work. ...

(1998).

Bibliography

Poetry

* ''Cantos'' (Chusma House Publications, 1991) * ''Love in the Time of Aftershocks'' (Chusma House and Moving Parts Press, 1998) * ''Red'' ( Bilingual Review Press, 2000) * ''Frøzen Accident'' (Tia Chucha, 2006) * ''Xicancuicatl: Collected Poems'' (Wesleyan University Press, 2020)

Creative Non-Fiction

* ''House with the Blue Bed'' (Mercury House, 1997)

Essays

* ''An Other Tongue: Nation and Ethnicity in the Linguistic Borderlands'' (

Duke University Press Duke University Press is an academic publisher and university press affiliated with Duke University. It was founded in 1921 by William T. Laprade as The Trinity College Press. (Duke University was initially called Trinity College). In 1926 D ...

, 1994) * ''Chicano Poetics: Heterotexts and Hybridities'' (

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pre ...

, 1997)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Arteaga, Alfred Poets from California American poets of Mexican descent 2008 deaths 1950 births Columbia University School of the Arts alumni University of California, Santa Cruz alumni University of Houston faculty University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Writers from Los Angeles 20th-century American poets People from East Los Angeles, California People from Whittier, California PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award winners