Juan Bruce-Novoa

Costa Rican-born scholar, educator, and writer

• Born: June 20, 1944
• Birthplace: San José, Costa Rica
• Died: June 11, 2010
• Place of death: Newport Beach, California

Bruce-Novoa was a pioneering Chicano scholar and prolific writer who argued for an eclectic approach to Chicano studies that some labeled neoformalist. His numerous essays and books sought to introduce, explicate, or recover the work of Chicano authors, painters, photographers, and filmmakers and to expand the international canon.

Early Life

Juan David Bruce-Novoa (brews-noh-VOH-ah) was born in San José, Costa Rica, where his father, James H. Bruce, worked as an accountant for Otis McAllister coffee importers. His mother, Dolores “Lola” Novoa; older sisters, Patsy and Lillian; older brother, Jim; and his father returned to the United States in 1945, after James was drafted into the United States Army near the end of World War II. Three years later, the family reunited when they moved from San Antonio, Texas, to Denver, Colorado.

Bruce-Novoa attended Holy Family High School, where he was especially influenced by Sister Agnes Regina, who asked him to substitute teach history and Spanish while he was still a student. While attending Regis College in Denver, he was particularly influenced by a Jesuit priest, Father Edward L. Maginnis, who encouraged an interdisciplinary approach to study. Bruce-Novoa majored in European history and minored in psychology, graduating cum laude in 1966. He earned his master’s degree in twentieth-century Spanish literature in 1968 and his Ph.D. in Latin American literature in 1974 at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Growing up, Bruce-Novoa was athletic and musical: a high school All-American as a football player, catcher on his high school baseball team, and bass player in a band called the Star Tones (later called Dr. Who and the Daleks). An avid reader from an early age, he was unhindered by dyslexia, which was discovered when he was in the fifth grade. Mexico also factored heavily in his youth, as he visited his uncle, a director of the Bank of Mexico, in Mexico City during the summers. Later, he would take intensive Spanish classes there so that he could become fluent in Spanish and qualify for the master’s program at the University of Colorado. All his life, Bruce-Novoa was a renowned fabulist, telling audiences that he could read a book while riding his bicycle or while playing bass at live concerts, that he was descended from Robert the Bruce of Scotland, and that he could count Rasputin (whom he called “Uncle Raspy”) as a member of his family tree.

Life’s Work

Bruce-Novoa’s professional career was notable for its energy, breadth, and impact on literary, cultural, interdisciplinary, and Chicano studies. He especially is known for his articulation of what he called a “topological space” of Chicano and other Latino literatures—the term, borrowed from mathematics, refers to the study of texts’ and events’ relationships to one another and how these relationships form and affect meaning. In his book RetroSpace: Collected Essays on Chicano Literature (1990), he wrote that art “functions as a spiritual, moral force in the world, far beyond its prosaic, informational function.”

Bruce-Novoa served as an instructor of Spanish and Mexican American studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1967 to 1974. His first position after earning his doctorate was at Yale University as associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Latin American studies; he broke ground as a pioneer in Chicano studies. During this time, he wrote his seminal essay, “The Space of Chicano Literature,” which was published in 1975.

Bruce-Novoa was a Fulbright Scholar in Germany at the University Mainz, then was named a full professor in the Foreign Languages Department at Trinity University in 1985. After two more Fulbright appointments (both at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg) and visiting professorships in English at Harvard University and in Berlin and Dusseldorf, Germany, he finished his career at the University of California at Irvine as a full professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, critical theory, film studies, screenwriting, and Chicano-Latino studies.

Bruce-Novoa was prolific in his scholarly and creative output. He published six books, including Inocencia perversa/Perverse Innocence (1977), a collection of largely autobiographical poetry; Chicano Authors: Inquiry by Interview (1980), the first book-length study of Chicano criticism, which includes extensive interviews with fourteen important Chicano writers; Chicano Poetry: A Response to Chaos (1982), the first book-length critical study of Chicano poetry; an experimental novel, Only the Good Times (1995); and Manuscrito de origen (1995), a collection of short stories. He also edited three anthologies and wrote more than one hundred articles and interviews.

Bruce-Novoa won numerous awards during his lifetime, including the National Chicano Council for Higher Education Fellowship (1977); Rockefeller Foundation Grant (1979-1980); José Fuentes Mares National Prize for Literature (Mexico, 1989); and the Critica Nueva Award for distinguished writing in literary theory (University of New Mexico, 1997). He married Mary Ann Giroux in 1969, and they had a son, Juan Carlos. Bruce-Novoa died on June 11, 2010, in Newport Beach, California.

Significance

In addition to his influence on academia, particularly in the field of Chicano studies, Bruce-Novoa founded the Conference on Mexican Literature and Art at the University of California at Irvine; Biennial European Conference on Latinos of North America; the literary magazine, Cambios phideo; and the Chicano library, poster art collection, and Chicano theater group at Yale. He also contributed to and consulted on many scholarly journals. He helped introduce Chicano authors and artists such as Cecile Pineda, Kathy Vargas, John Rechy, Sheila Ortiz Taylor, and Tino Villanueva to larger audiences. Ultimately, he defined and reshaped cultural studies, and, in contrast to dialectical-historical and poststructural approaches to literary theory, constantly challenged the reader to let the “text itself, and not the critic’s interpretation, remain the central point of the reading encounter.”

Bibliography

Bruce-Novoa, Juan. Juan Bruce-Novoa Papers. Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin. An eight-box collection of original manuscripts, including an unpublished scathing poem aimed at Yale University and a published short story called “Autobiowishfulography,” in which the protagonist introduces a live grenade to a group of lackadaisical students at the end of their final exam.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. RetroSpace: Collected Essays on Chicano Literature. Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 1990. Important work in which Bruce-Novoa explains his approach to art and literature.

Lawhn, Juanita Luna. “Juan Bruce-Novoa.” In Chicano Writers: First Series. Vol. 82 in Dictionary of Literary Biography, edited by Francisco A. Lomelí and Carl R. Shirley. Detroit, Mich.: Gale, 1989. Written by one of Bruce-Novoa’s colleagues, this brief biography details his career and gives special attention to the reception of his most important works.

Wood, Jamie Martinez. Latino Writers and Journalists. New York: Facts On File, 2007. An anthology of entries about important Latino writers, with a detailed entry on Bruce-Novoa.