Scene from the Movie GIANT

Scene from the Movie GIANT

A fourteen-year-old boy sits in the darkness of the Holiday Theater watching GIANT, the 1956 Warner Brothers extravaganza starring Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor. The film depicts the rise of newly rich oil barons as they replaced and came into conflict with the old cattle aristocracy. And yet the movie also teems with characters that depict racist stereotypes of Mexicans. One scene, this memory, is at the heart of Scene from the Movie GIANT, a remarkable book-length poem in five parts by Tino Villanueva. Villanueva excavates the meaning of this scene and in doing so grapples with urgent questions of cultural identity. At first, the movie Giant (1956) might seem like a strange symbol on which to base an entire book of poetry. But Giant is a pop culture landmark, mainly because of the larger-than-life status of stars Rock Hudson, James Dean, and Elizabeth Taylor. For Latino poet Villanueva, Giant also serves as an archetype of Anglo treatment of Mexican Americans. The scene that obsesses him, from his 14th year onward, involves the expulsion of a Mexican American family from a hamburger joint owned by a crude racist. For Villanueva, the scene is replayed "up and down the wide screen/ Of memory," revealing every ugly facet of racism and intolerance. Villanueva is a rare talent, able to combine art and politics into one powerful document where he is caught "like a still photograph." Recommended for large collections. - Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Decatur, Ill. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. "Tino's poetry reclaims the identity of every Chicano who has ever sat in the back row. The most moving poetry I've read in years!" —Rudolfo Anaya "With beauty and wisdom, he restores that sense of place within each of us, that territory within the soul so often stolen by acts of racism and hatred." —Ana Baca "All poems declare one thing: my heart aches...Villanueva's exceptional poems are evidence of poetry's redemptive powers of forgiveness and the solace people achieve through the word." —Harvard Review Poet and painter TINO VILLANUEVA was born in San Marcos, Texas in 1941 to a family of migrant workers. After serving for two years as a supply clerk in the army, Villanueva earned a BA from Southwest Texas State University, an MA from SUNY-Buffalo, and a PhD in Contemporary Spanish Poetry from Boston University. He is the author of several poetry collections in both Spanish and English; his poems have been translated into Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Greek, and Korean. Until his retirement in 2015, Villanueva served as a senior lecturer in Spanish in the Department of Romance Studies at Boston University. Used Book in Good Condition