Michelle Gachelin / Thresher
By Michelle Gachelin 9/21/22 12:04 PM
Arte Público Press, the oldest and largest Latino publishing house in the country, has never taken things from books. Instead, they have promoted Latino writing and culture despite national opposition. Press celebrated their 40th anniversary on the first day of Hispanic Heritage Month with a performing arts gala held at the University of Houston’s Moores Opera House, featuring performances by Solero Flamenco, Brazilian dance company Sambabom, Grand Opera and Houston and more.
Juliet K. Stipeche (’96) said Arte Público is a local treasure, and she credits the press for allowing more people to discover the rich history of Hispanic, Latino and indigenous communities. Stipeche, the daughter of immigrant parents from Argentina and Mexico and the first lawyer in her family, said she was unaware of her heritage when she came to Rice.
“If we don’t have the opportunity to celebrate our history, culture and art, where will we go? So to have Arte Público Press locally to be able to help support and empower all the communities with that rich history is tremendous,” said Stipeche, now director of human services at the Houston-Galveston Area Council “I tell people, ‘I have a world-class education,’ but I didn’t even know much about my history and culture. It’s thanks to leaders and institutions like Arte Público Press that we can celebrate the rich history that exists and the future.” that we have together.”
Often, these historical narratives are not represented in our education systems. Arte Público founder Nicolás Kanellos created the press in 1979 from a literary magazine, Revista Chicano-Riqueña, which grew in popularity during the Chicano Movement. According to Canello, there was such a need for Latin history to be told that university classes were using special issues of the magazine as textbooks. 40 years later, the press is still wary of opposition.
“We have suffered the slings and arrows of conservative culture in the United States, of white nationalism and Christian nationalism,” Kanellos said. “Our books have been censored, they have been removed from the curricula, they have been removed from the libraries. Some of our books have even been set on fire… And now, of course, there are these lists going around since the legislature started in Texas that have some of our books that have been targeted. … We’re always looking over our shoulder to see who wants to censor us.”
In 1992, the publishing house began the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Recovery Project, which is the first nationally coordinated effort to recover, index and publish lost Latin writings. According to Canello, discovering and making available narratives left outside history books, museums and cultural institutions transforms national history from a Eurocentric perspective to a multicultural and multilingual one.
“At this particular moment in history, where Latinos form the primary enrollments in the nation’s largest school systems, it is so important that we have materials that students can relate to and call their own, and not forever t ‘they’re told that they’re the aliens, that they’re foreigners, that they didn’t contribute anything, and they just learn about a few boatloads of Europeans that landed in Plymouth and defined what the United States would be,” Kanellos said. absolutely a yellow picture of what the country is.”
Richard Tapia, a Rice mathematics professor whose forthcoming book, “The Loss of Precious Minorities: How America Fails to Educate Its Minorities in Science and Engineering,” will be published through Arte Público, said he had experienced people who told him he was inferior as a Mexican. -American raised in the barrios of Los Angeles. For Tapia, representation of American minorities ensures a healthy nation.
“We want to improve the representation of underrepresented Indigenous minorities for the health of the nation, not the health of the discipline,” Tapia said. “In other words, you can’t have a country where a significant and growing population is not represented in the backbone activity. And the main activity in this country is science, technology and engineering.”
Tapia said he wanted Arte Público to publicize his title for their advocacy work around Hispanic issues.
“Arte Publico has done a great job of trying to promote that history and trying to promote anything related to Hispanic issues,” Tapia said. “So I naturally felt, when I started writing my book, to think about Arte Público because they are progressive. [and] because Kanellos has done great things.”
Stipeche, who worked with Tapia, said he empowered minorities and underrepresented women in his program by building community, and that this includes celebrating culture, art, music and literature.
“That’s part of what Rice celebrates: unconventional wisdom. And unconventional wisdom requires us to take the time to sit back and look at what’s around us—to seek wisdom beyond what’s in traditional settings,” Stipeche said. “Arte Público Press opens up a world of possibilities that to be able to embrace a more holistic perspective of the community and the world around us.”
For some, that world includes space exploration. Former astronaut and author José M. Hernández, who organized the gala, has written three books through Arte Público about his journey to NASA from a family of Mexican migrant farmers. Hernández will be played by Michael Peña in an upcoming Amazon Prime movie about his life, which will be released in 2023. He said his books inspire children to make their dreams come true.
“It’s important because it’s a process of empowerment,” Hernández said. “People look at me and see [that I’m] similar to them and with similar socio-economic background. And because of this, it has a kind of empowering effect. [They say,] “Hey, if he was able to do it, why can’t I?” That’s why I like to tell my story.”
Houston author, translator, and educator Jasminne Mendez has also written stories for young readers with the goal of sharing diverse and empowering stories. Mendez’s second coming-of-age memoir, “Islands Apart: Becoming Dominican American,” was published by Arte Público last week and details her life as a black Latina growing up in the South.
“One of the things that has always appealed to me is that they focus only on publishing Latino and Hispanic writers and amplifying those voices,” Mendez told Arte Público, which selects 25 to 30 texts to publish each year. “They’re very specific to the kinds of stories from Latino writers that they publish, which really focus on exposing the culture and amplifying those unique and individual experiences and opportunities found within specific Latino subgroups, cities, and nationalities.”
