Angela de Hoyos

Mexican-born poet and activist

  • Born: January 23, 1940
  • Birthplace: Coahuila, Mexico
  • Died: September 24, 2009
  • Place of death: San Antonio, Texas

The “grande dame of Chicano literature,” de Hoyos devoted her life to the arts, writing poetry and promoting awareness of the contributions of Chicano artists to the cultural wealth of the United States. Her political activism encompassed both the Chicano and the women’s movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Early Life

Angela de Hoyos (AHN-heel-ah day OY-os) was born in Coahuila, Mexico, on January 23, but the year remains in dispute, reported variously as 1923, 1924, 1940, and 1945. She began writing at the age of four, endowed with, as she herself described it, an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Encouraged by her mother, a talented artist and strong presence in her life, de Hoyos began her literary career reciting an interior monologue of rhymes and verses. As a child her family moved to San Antonio, Texas, where prejudice against her Mexican heritage lay in wait. The wide-ranging variety of her interests, including fine arts and writing, drove her to take various courses at the University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio College, Witt Museum, and San Antonio Art Institute. De Hoyos’s extensive and diverse list of influences included Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Rudolfo Anaya, Rolando Hinojosa, Mireya Robles, Rosario Castellanos, Walt Whitman, Jim Sagel, and Simone de Beauvoir. Even before her first book of poetry was published in 1975, her work found a place in various journals, and she had received awards, including those from the National Association of Chicano Studies in 1973 and the San Antonio Poetry Festival in 1974.

Life’s Work

De Hoyos did not plan to become a writer per se and was reluctant to consider herself one. She preferred to say that she loved words and needed them to articulate her thoughts, and she remained endlessly surprised at the success and attention her writing received. De Hoyos’s first major book publication came in 1975, with Arise, Chicano! And Other Poems. Representing strong Chicano-nationalist “protest” verse, Arise, Chicano! established the leading edge of Chicano literary political output. The collection gives voice to multiple perspectives, including that of the migrant worker caught under “the shrewd heel of exploit” and ensnared by the English language, along with audaciously sarcastic treatment of the issues of assimilation and the attendant loss of cultural pride.

Chicano Poems: For the Barrio (1975) followed shortly thereafter, and in it de Hoyos demonstrated an expanding range, with bilingual poems exalting Chicano heritage and incisive treatments of such issues as losing chicanismo underneath “Anglo” nationalism. Later work demonstrates de Hoyos’s widening areas of concern, reflecting the more universal issues of life and death. Selecciones (1976) includes new metaphysical forms and themes, and Woman, Woman (1985) offers considered distress at the loss of a close female friendship.

De Hoyos’s mode of reader address was often jocular, or as she put it,” rogue-ish.” In the 1970’s, a letter to the editor appeared in a San Antonio newspaper, suggesting that all “Mes’kins” should go home. De Hoyos, in her inimitable spirit, wrote back a letter of her own suggesting she should resurrect the Pinta, the Niña and the Santa María, so everyone can sail back to where they came from. Her roguish poem in a similar vein, “To Walt Whitman,” remains one of her most quoted pieces.

De Hoyos and her husband Moises Sandoval established the publishing house M&A Editions, which has published, promoted, and mentored writers like Evangelina Vigil-Piñón, Carmen Tafolla, and Inés Hernández-Ávila. Some of the company’s publications have been in the spirit of de Hoyos’s concerns, such as Mi’ja, Never Lend Your Mop . . . and Other Poems (2000) by Brigid Aileen Milligan. De Hoyos also served as editor of Huehuetitlan, a journal of Chicano culture and poetry.

Significance

Inspired by the Texas farm workers’ struggle in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, de Hoyos’s work represents the early literary fruits of the Chicano political movement. In poems like “To Walt Whitman,” de Hoyos engages the pillars of the American literary canon, challenging the assumption that writers such as Whitman effectively represented the breadth and depth of literary production in the United States; however, she freely admitted the influence of such authors on her own writing. Internationally renowned, her work has been translated into fifteen languages and continues to be lauded in her hometown of San Antonio.

Bibliography

Corpi, Lucha, ed. Mascaras. Berkeley, Calif.: Third Woman Press, 1997. A collection of essays by contemporary women writers, including de Hoyos, illuminating their challenges as both Latinas or Chicanas and as Americans.

De Hoyos, Angela. Arise Chicano! And Other Poems. Rev. and enlarged ed. San Antonio: M&A Editions, 1980. Probably de Hoyos’s most representative and well-known work.

Fernandez, Roberta. In Other Words: Literature by Latinas of the United States. Houston: Arte Público Press, 1994. Includes a section devoted to de Hoyos, contextualized within Latin American literature.

Hogeland, Lisa Maria, and Mary Klages. The Aunt Lute Anthology of U.S. Women Writers. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2004. Contains several pages of de Hoyos’s work, contextualized more broadly within the spectrum of U.S. women writers.

Milligan, Bryce, and Mary Guerrero Milligan. Daughters of the Fifth Sun: A Collection of Latina Fiction and Poetry. New York: Riverhead Books, 1996. Includes work by de Hoyos, referred to within as a godmother of U.S. Latina writing.

Milligan, Bryce, Mary Guerrero Milligan, and Angela De Hoyos, eds. Floricanto Si! A Collection of Latina Poetry. New York : Penguin Books, 1998. Contains poems by de Hoyos, contextualized among a broad range of Latina poetry.