Coyolxauqui’s Bent Heart
An Interview with Richard Villegas, Jr
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11271907 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Audrey Harris Fernández (University of California, Los Angeles, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 178-201 |
| Publication date | 2024-12-31 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | MELUS Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0163-755X • E-ISSN: 1946-3170 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/melus/mlae040 |
| OpenAlex | W4401630612 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 2 |
This article is an interview with Richard Villegas, Jr. about his self-published short story collection, I (Heart) Babylon, Tenochtitlán, and Ysteléi (2011) and the hit Starz series it inspired, Vida (2018-20) about two sisters struggling to save their mother’s lesbian bar in the gentrifying Boyle Heights district of Los Angeles. The interview discusses Villegas’s education in the pioneering César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies at UCLA in the activist 90s; the Los Angeles public school system in which he taught for twenty years; East LA as literary landscape and Mexico City/Tenochtitlán as creative inspiration; Indigenous iconography and revisionist mythmaking; Latinx representation in Hollywood, including the pressure to stereotype and the struggle to tell authentic stories; family struggles; humor as a life strategy, and solidarities between the queer and feminist Chicano/a sensibilities. The interview also discusses Vida in the context of current debates around gente-fication, or the movement of middle-class Latinos home to revitalize the barrio
Bent molecular geometry · Structural engineering · Computer Science · Engineering · Environmental and Cultural Studies in Latin America and Beyond
| Highly cited | No |
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