By Manivone Sayasone
Maceo Montoya's next book is a visual-textual collaboration with Fresno poet David Campos. Forthcoming from Red Hen Press, "American Quasars" combines Campos's poetry and eighteen of Montoya's monoprints, which he created by digging into and wiping away ink on plexiglass. Far from an ekphrastic exercise, both poet and artist responded to each other’s imagery, organically building their own poetic space. What began as an exploration of the precipice of violence evolved into an excavation of self, a deep meditation on how country, family, and trauma affect the ability to love.
In his 2016 graphic nonfiction book, Chicano Movement for Beginners, Maceo Montoya invites his readers to learn how Mexican American activists in the ‘60s and ‘70s shed light on the nation’s educational disadvantage, endemic poverty, social bias, and political exclusion. His book features accessible language and lively illustrations that introduces readers to many key figures including César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, Reies López Tijerina, and Gloria Anzaldúa.
Manivone Sayasone: As I was reading Chicano Movement for Beginners, I kept in mind that the book was released in 2016, which is around the time when anti-immigrant rhetoric began to have an augmented presence in the national media and across the country. Did the anti-immigrant rhetoric influence your writing of the book in any way?
Maceo Montoya: I wrote and illustrated most of the book in 2015 and was fine tuning it right around the time Donald Trump announced his candidacy. His rhetoric seemed almost cartoonish, and yet it made my job easier, especially as I moved toward the book’s conclusion, to state the obvious: racism and xenophobic language are alive and well. I didn’t expect Trump to win, but his popularity also didn’t surprise me. When you live in a place like Woodland (where I call home), or anywhere up and down the Central Valley, you already know the country is divided, and that’s in a so-called blue state. Following Obama’s election in 2008, it was maddening to hear that the country had entered a post-racial era. For artists, educators, and activists struggling to bring attention to persistent racism and anti-immigrant policies, Trump just blatantly confirmed what we already knew. I wanted my book to show that the Chicano Movement was still relevant and that the issues facing the Mexican American community in the 1960s and 70s—economic and educational disparities, political disenfranchisement—remained the same. I also hoped that it could show readers, particularly budding activists angered by the current climate, that they didn’t have to invent the resistance from scratch.
Sayasone: Do you feel that being a writer, artist, and professor of Chicano studies who has been exposed to “countless political rallies and cultural events” growing up helped you write the book in a way that is accessible to a general audience--in particular, readers who aren’t familiar with the Chicano Movement or readers who shy away from history books?
Montoya: The moment I received the email asking if I’d be interested in writing and illustrating the book, I knew that I had to do it. The project felt personal. My uncle, the Chicano poet José Montoya, had passed away in 2013, and I saw how my cousins struggled to cope with his loss while also navigating how best to preserve his legacy. It was heart-wrenching to observe, especially because I couldn’t help but think of my own father, Malaquias, who’s now eighty-one. I can’t even begin to describe the deep love and admiration that I have for my dad. He drives me crazy, too, and we debate and disagree all the time, and my siblings and I walk around with our fair share of complexes that we owe to him, but none of that takes away from my desire to hold him close, to hold onto him forever, and not just the man, but everything he worked for. His life, just as my uncle’s, is inextricable from the Chicano Movement. When I began the research for this book, I knew that I couldn’t hold myself at a scholarly distance. I was reading about my family, and I don’t just mean my uncle and my father’s involvement. I grew up surrounded by the history, by the names and the events, as well as the ideas. As with family, there is love but there are also hurts, and I often found myself frustrated or disappointed in the Movement, sometimes even with a desire to distance myself or look away. But I kept returning to the feeling I describe above, a desire to hold this history close to me forever. I don’t know if in the end that makes the book more accessible, but it’s definitely the spirit from which it emerged.
Sayasone: One of my favorite illustrations in the book is found on page 139 where a group of people are balancing a rectangular base that serves as a foundation for the little houses and people on top of it. I just love the way you use art to create visual metaphors that enhance your audience’s reading of the book. Were there any artists or art pieces that influenced the way you drew those illustrations as they are seen in the page?
Montoya: When I was in middle school, I used to draw from baseball cards, trying to copy them exactly. My father discouraged me from this habit. He told me that the most wonderful thing about being an artist is to be able to draw from your imagination. He knew a lot of technically proficient artists who couldn’t create if they didn’t have a photo in front of them. He was right, of course. It’s always exciting to just put your pencil to paper and see what emerges and that was my process for this book. That being said, there are many influences on my drawing style—my father’s work, for one, my uncle’s pachuco illustrations, Daumier, Goya, Los Tres Grandes, George Grosz, William Kentridge, David Gonzales’s “Homies,” a good New Yorker cartoon, Mad Magazine. I was a very serious kid, but my parents figured I was okay because every morning, as I ate my cereal, I would pore over the comics. I even used to save the Sunday comics because they were in color and I was convinced that someday they’d be collectibles.
I like that you interpreted the images in the book as visual metaphors. I didn’t want the illustrations to be too cartoonish or silly, although I’m not opposed to silliness. Rather, I saw an opportunity to approach this very serious history from a different angle. I wanted the humor in the drawings to be layered, subtle, maybe even unexpected. As a result, whenever I use the illustrations in a class lecture no one laughs. Sometimes I make the mistake of explaining what I intended to be funny, but that makes the silence even worse. You’d think I’d remove the slides, but I keep showing them, hoping there’s at least one student out there mildly amused.
Sayasone: Another thing I love about the book is how it includes information about lesser-known figures in the Chicano Movement like Larry Itliong, Jesse de la Cruz, Betita Martínez, and Enriqueta Vasquez. In doing so, the book shows readers that a Filipino man and many other women have also contributed to the movement, which fascinates me as a reader who is a Southeastern Asian woman. So, I guess my question is why do you think these lesser-known figures are so obscured in history?
Montoya: They are obscured because the history as a whole is obscured. When you teach marginalized histories and cultures you realize your class might be the only course a student takes in the subject. It places an inordinate amount of pressure on your curriculum to satisfy everything. I teach a class on the Chicano novel and we have time to read four maybe five books. In an ideal world, I’d teach four classes alone on the subject. Instead, I’m forced to make hard decisions. It might seem inconsequential—it’s just one class, after all—but as you point out, the stakes are high: lesser known books aren’t taught in favor of the same canonical, quintessential works over and over, and lesser known figures risk being written out of history. I’m glad to hear you appreciated reading about these overlooked activists because I tried hard to find ways to include them. But I was often torn: how could I not write about the giant figures of the Movement in a primer about the Movement? I’m sensitive to this issue because the last thing I want to do is contribute to further obscuring these already ignored contributions.
Sayasone: On the topic of history, you mentioned in an interview conducted in February 2017 by María Fernanda Snellings of Kweli that you weren’t sure how the election results of 2016 and the political climate it fosters will emerge in your fiction or visual work. Now that some time has passed, has the political climate influenced any of your work?
Montoya: Like most people, I’m still very much processing our political climate. I’ve yet to overtly situate a work in the Trump era, but that’s not to say I’m avoiding it. As horrible as Trump might be, he’s momentary. What he represents has always been with us. On June 26, we saw a horrifying photo of a young father from El Salvador, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, and his baby daughter, Valeria, who both drowned attempting to cross the border. Are their deaths connected to Trump’s policies? Absolutely. But just recently, I came across a short film I made in graduate school in 2005 that used charcoal drawings to tell the story of a fieldworker waiting for his family to arrive and the fear he experiences when he learns that a dozen migrants have asphyxiated to death in an abandoned tractor-trailer. I based it on a true story. Then, in researching new material for my Chicanx Culture course I watched Jesus Salvador Treviño’s 1979 film Raíces de Sangre, which also begins with the discovery of a tractor-trailer full of dead migrants. I guess what I’m trying to say is that we can pretend to be shocked by what we’re seeing, but I see more continuity than disruption or even escalation. Yes, it’s hard to watch, it’s frustrating to hear, especially on a daily basis, but as necessary as it is to stay informed, I’m also aware that information becomes a kind of addiction, a distraction from what’s really essential. What the artist seeks is the exact opposite of headlines or click-bait. I should speak for myself: I seek something deeper, more elusive, even if at times I feel out of step.
Sayasone: As Rigoberto González mentioned in his 2015 NBC interview with you, you’ve published four books in less than five years. What keeps you inspired to write and create art all while teaching Chicano Literature and a Chicana/o Mural Workshop at a university?
Montoya: I’m constantly working on multiple projects across mediums, often to the point of exhaustion or exasperation. There are a number of reasons why I can’t stop working, some of them relating to vanity—wanting to make my mark, fearing that I won’t, that kind of thing. But on a more philosophical level, I keep working to stave off doubt, the overriding idea that to make art is absurd. So is getting a job, but at least that pays the bills. Don’t get me wrong, I also feel that making art is fundamental to our humanity. But the reason why it can be so easy to set aside, or placed low on one’s to-do list, is that creating the work can often feel so abstract or futile. For instance, I’ve been working on a novel for nine years now. It has obsessed me. For almost a decade it has been nothing but a Word document on my laptop and there’s a good chance it always will be. I’d be delusional to think that the world needs my novel. Yet I spend countless hours plugging away, believing in the work. You know what actually needs to be done? The lawn. It needs to be mowed every week. There’s nothing abstract or absurd about that task, as inconsequential as it might be. My fear is that if I stop making and creating then the nagging questions about my work will creep in—why I do it, why it matters, what it all means—and those questions can be crippling. It’s good to ponder these questions, just do it while in the studio or at your desk. Don’t quote me on any of this, it’s more of a working theory.
Sayasone: You were also the keynote speaker of Fresno State’s Young Writers’ Conference and a workshop leader for the high school teachers who attended the conference. Do you have any memorable moments from the conference you would like to share?
Montoya: It’s always very special to engage with the Fresno State writing community. My late brother, the poet Andrés Montoya, attended Fresno State in the 90s. It took him forever to graduate, so long that the family thought he might never leave. He was very active on campus and was even student body president. For that reason, I associate the place with him and think about him a lot every time I visit Fresno and Fresno State in particular. I picture Andrés walking across campus with his best friend, the author Daniel Chacón. At one point, before I was introduced on stage, my photo was projected on the large screen behind the podium. Andrés was not only my older brother, he was also much bigger than me, so he was always calling me “little shit” or “little punk” or “little chump,” always something with little. So here I was, a keynote speaker at a conference on his campus, and I couldn’t help but think what he would say. He might tell someone else that he was proud, but not me. In fact, he’d probably call me a “little capitalist” for taking the honorarium and not sharing it with the people. He’d have worn me down until I at least paid for dinner.
Sayasone: Are you currently working on any books or art pieces?
Montoya: I’m working on a novel called “The Second Coming of Octavio Paz,” as well as a novel with illustrations entitled “Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces.” In the studio, I’ve been working on a series of monochromatic paintings and some charcoal drawings depicting everyday scenes from Woodland. I’m also trying my hand at yet another medium and working on a short film with my cousin Tomás called “Pete Hates the Dodgers,” which I cowrote with Javier O. Huerta. If I had critics, I imagine they would say that I’m spreading myself too thin, which is probably true. But I’m always thinking about the next project.
Sayasone: What advice would you give to students who aspire to blend art and writing?
Montoya: I think for anyone trying to create hybrid works, or any form that breaks or pushes conventions, it’s important not to feel the need to categorize the work. For a long time, I hesitated to combine my writing and artwork because I didn’t know what to call it. I know that seems trivial, but we’re trained to “fit” our work into a genre, whether that’s poetry, fiction and nonfiction, or printmaking, painting and sculpture, and it’s hard not to internalize that. Even graphic novels and comic books have their conventions. Just because you don’t see the form out there doesn’t mean that you can’t be the one to create it.
Maceo Montoya grew up in Elmira, California. His father is Malaquias Montoya, a renowned artist, activist, and educator, and his late brother is Andrés Montoya, a poet and Fresno State alumnus. He graduated from Yale University in 2002 and received his Master of Fine Arts in painting from Columbia University in 2006. He is a writer, artist, and a tenured professor at UC Davis who teaches Chicano Literature and the Chicana/o Mural Workshop. He is the author of fiction and nonfiction books including The Scoundrel and the Optimist (2010) which won the 2011 International Latino Book Award for “Best First Book”, The Deportation of Wopper Barraza: A Novel (2014), Letters to the Poet from His Brother (2014), and You Must Fight Them: A Novella and Stories (2015) which was a finalist for Foreword Review’s INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award. His paintings, drawings, and prints have been exhibited and published across the nation and worldwide.
Manivone Sayasone is a third-year fiction candidate in Fresno State’s M.F.A program in creative writing. She is a writing consultant at the Graduate Study Center in the Henry Madden Library.