Taller Arte del Amancer (Art Workshop of the New Dawn) hosts Maceo Montoya of the UC Davis faculty and Yxta Maya Murray for a program about their new novels, both centered on Latinx artists struggling to make their voices heard.
The virtual event, including readings by both authors, is scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. Thursday (May 6). Register here. Taller Arte del Amancer, or TANA, is a community workshop administered by the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies.
- Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces
- Written and illustrated by Maceo Montoya, associate professor, Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies
- University of Nevada Press (April 27, 2021)
Says the publisher: “An inventive and adventurous satirical novel about a Mexican-American artist’s efforts to fulfill his vision: to paint masterful works of art. ... Told through a combination of words and images in the tradition of classic works such as Don Quixote and Alice in Wonderland, Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces features 51 vivid black-and-white pen drawings. This complex and engaging story also doubles as literary criticism, commenting on how outsiders’ stories fit into the larger context of the Chicanx literary canon. A unique and multilayered story that embraces both contradiction and possibility, it also sheds new light on the current state of Chicanx literature while, at the same time, contributing to it.”
Murray, besides being a fiction writer and art critic, is a professor of law at Loyola Marymount University. Her new book is Art Is Everything (TriQuarterly, Jan. 15, 2021), subject of an ARTNews article titled, “In a New Novel, Critic Yxta Maya Murray Stakes a Claim for Women Artists of Color Who Get Erased From Art History.”
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