Chicano Timespace: The Poetry and Politics of Ricardo Sanchez

The premature death of Ricardo Sanchez in 1995 marked the passing of an almost legendary figure in Chicano literature and in the Chicano political movement. A troubadour of Chicano Movement poetry, he established an anti-aesthetic that became the norm. Sanchez’s autobiographical poetry forges a link between genres of the past and present and establishes him as the first great tragic figure of contemporary Chicano literature.In a body of work that spanned spatial, temporal, and cultural boundaries, Sanchez dealt with issues of power and of linguistic and cultural barriers between Anglo, Native American, and Mexican American peoples in the United States.While he lived, critics showed reluctance to engage Sanchez’s work fully, perhaps in part because of his reputation as a confrontational, even outrageous individual. Focusing on Canto y grito mi liberacion and Hechizospells, Miguel R. Lopez examines Sanchez’s work and places him in the context of the past, present, and future of Chicano literature. Lopez explains clearly the relation of time and space in Sanchez’s prolific work and shows him as a writer committed to his craft as well as to his political stance.In the end, the portrait that emerges is of a poet whose work was linguistically and thematically complex and one who was more passionate, controversial, and forthright in his expression than any other contemporary Chicano writer.