Arturo Islas

American novelist and educator

• Born: May 24, 1938
• Birthplace: El Paso, Texas
• Died: February 15, 1991
• Place of death: Stanford, California

Islas wrote short stories, poems, and critical essays, but his fame rests mainly on his novels, emphasizing a gay, Chicano subjectivity that deals with issues of race, sexuality, gender, class, and religion; his fiction also is imbued with the pre-Columbian cosmology of the Aztecs. Born in Texas, he wrote about the cultural experience of the borderlands between the United States and Mexico, becoming a powerful voice for Americans of Mexican descent.

Early Life

Born in El Paso, Texas, to Arturo Islas, Sr., a police officer, and Jovita La Farga, a secretary, Arturo Islas La Farga (ahr-TEW-roh EES-lahs lah FAHR-gah) grew up as the eldest of three sons near the city’s El Segundo barrio. Since his paternal grandmother tutored him early in English, he excelled in school, but at age eight, Islas contracted polio, which left him with a limp for life. Despite his physical disability, he became very popular in high school, getting elected as the second Mexican American president of student council.

In his teenage years, Islas struggled with his homosexuality but remained closeted until he got to college. Throughout his childhood, though, he endured a dysfunctional home life-tolerating a hostile and detached father and what he perceived as an acquiescent and martyred saint of a mother. After graduating as the first Chicano valedictorian from El Paso High School (1956), Islas was admitted to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, receiving an Alfred P. Sloan scholarship. He first studied premedicine, hoping to become a neurosurgeon, but his grades suffered, so he quickly shifted major to the humanities. He was named a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and eventually earned his B.A. with honors in English in 1960. Despite enduring intestinal cancer and a colostomy that left him in discomfort and disfigured, Islas overcame his pain and suffering to persevere and finish his education at a time when he was beginning to explore his homosexuality.

Life’s Work

After leaving El Paso for college on the West Coast, Islas resided in California’s San Francisco Bay area for the rest of his life. In 1960, he entered Stanford’s graduate school, studying under the auspices of the school’s famed literary figures, such as Wallace Stegner, Hortense Calisher, and Yvor Winters. In 1963, he earned an M.A., and in 1976, his Ph.D.- becoming the first Chicano in the United States to earn a doctoral degree in English. Teaching at Stanford, he eventually earned tenure in 1976 and ten years later was promoted to full professorship there.

In the uphill battle to get his first novel in print in the mainstream press, Islas was rejected by more than thirty publishing houses until he finally was accepted by a small, local one. His publications include The Rain God: A Desert Tale (1984), its sequel Migrant Souls (1990), and two works published posthumously: a third novel, La Mollie and the King of Tears (1996), and Arturo Islas: The Uncollected Works (2003).

Islas’s awards were numerous: Stanford University’s Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award in 1976 for exceptional contributions to undergraduate education; one of the three best novels of 1984 selected by the Bay Area Reviewers Association; and the best fiction prize from the Border Regional Library Conference in 1985 and a nomination for The Los Angeles Times best fiction award for The Rain God. Islas’s first novel also won the Southwest Book Award for its literary excellence and cultural-heritage enrichment in 1986. The University of Texas at El Paso elected him to its Writers Hall of Fame in 1991.

Islas lived with his partner, Jay Spears, for many years. Suffering from poor health for most of his life, Islas died on February 15, 1991, from pneumonia related to complications of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).

Significance

In literature, Islas crafted fiction whose borderland characters reflect a Chicano ethnicity, intersecting with a gay sexuality, and immersed in symbols/icons from indigenous Aztec culture. He claimed that immigrants from Mexico to the United States should actually be viewed as “migrants,” as they mirror migration patterns that their Amerindian ancestors made throughout the Americas during the Mesoamerican era. His claim to fame is most notable: his second literary work, Migrant Souls, became in 1990 the first novel by a Chicano author to be published by an East Coast publishing house, a major feat. Celebrating the rich cultural experience of Chicanos in the United States, Islas created fiction with complexity and nuanced characters that shuns ethnic stereotyping.

Bibliography

Aldama, Frederick Luis. Dancing with Ghosts: A Critical Biography of Arturo Islas. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Provides crucial insights about Islas’s childhood and his dysfunctional family, his years at Stanford as an academic, his attempts to get published, and his sexual orientation.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. Critical Mappings of Arturo Islas’s Fictions. Tempe, Ariz.: Bilingual Review/Press, 2005.

A collection of seventeen essays and interviews on Islas’s works of fiction by scholars and critics.

Islas, Arturo. “Arturo Islas: I Don’t Like Labels and Categories.” Interview by Hector A. Torres. In Conversations with Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Writers. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007. Torres interviewed Islas eight months before the novelist died; Islas discussed his years at Stanford, experiencing racism growing up in El Paso, and expanding American literature to include the literatures of all of the Americas.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Arturo Islas: The Uncollected Works. Edited by Frederick Luis Aldama. Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 2003. Recovered from Stanford University’s archives, included in this collection are Islas’s unpublished works- short fiction, poetry, and essays.