From the Homeboy to the Latin Lover, America cherishes a host of images about Latino men, yet all are based on the belief in macho men, virile and brash, full of violence and testosterone. With the gender correctness of the 90s challenging all men to embrace a new masculinity, how do Latino men of today--grounded in the "macho" tradition -- define this new identity?

From today's best-known, as well as emerging, Latino writers, poet and editor Ray Gonzalez has gathered personal essays written especially for Muy Macho on machismo and masculinity. The result is a rich and exciting...

As we approach the new century, Latino poetry is in the midst of its most vital and productive period. Poetry by Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans has changed the course of contemporary American writing forever.And it has done this by emphasizing poetry as the sound of everyday life--showing readers and other writers that the most effective manner of preserving the traditions of a culture comes from the colorful language of daily experience.
Touching the Fire recognizes the excitement of this movement by focusing on a few of its major poets, presenting a...

The beauty and barrenness of the southwestern landscape naturally
lends itself to the art of storytellers. It is a land of heat and dryness, a
land of spirits, a land that is misunderstood by those living along the
coasts.
"New Stories from the Southwest" presents nineteen short stories that appeared
in North American periodicals between January and December 2006. Though
many of these stories vary by aesthetics, tone, voice, and almost any other craft
category one might wish to use, they are nevertheless bound together by at
least one factor, which is that the...

The rhythm of vision, the rhythm of dream, the rhythm of voices saturating the hot southwestern landscape. These are the rhythms of Ray Gonzalez, the haunting incantations of "Turtle Pictures." Gonzalez has forged a new Chicano manifesto, a cultural memoir that traces both his personal journey and the communal journey that Mexican Americans have traveled throughout this century, across this land. He interweaves lyrical poetry, prose poems, short fiction, and nonfiction commentary into a lush cacophony that traces the evolution of today's politically charged Chicano voices from the deafening...

The rhythm of vision, the rhythm of dream, the rhythm of voices saturating the hot southwestern landscape. These are the rhythms of Ray Gonzalez, the haunting incantations of Turtle Pictures.
Gonzalez has forged a new Chicano manifesto, a cultural memoir that traces both his personal journey and the communal journey that Mexican Americans have traveled throughout this century, across this land. He interweaves lyrical poetry, prose poems, short fiction, and nonfiction commentary into a lush cacophony that traces the evolution of today's politically charged Chicano voices...

For poet Ray Gonzalez, growing up in El Paso during the 1960s was a time of loneliness and vulnerability. He encountered discrimination in high school not only for being Latino but also for being a non-athlete in a school where sports were important. Like many young people, he found diversion in music; unlike most, he found solace in the desert.In these vignettes, Gonzalez shares memories of boyhood that tell how he discovered the natural world and his creative spirit.
Through 29 storylike essays, Gonzalez takes readers into the heart of the desert and the soul of a developing...

Returning home after a long absence is not always easy. For Ray Gonzalez, it is more than a visit; it is a journey to the underground heart. He has lived in other parts of the country for more than twenty years, but this award-winning poet now returns to the desert Southwest--a native son playing tourist--in order to unearth the hidden landscapes of family and race.

As Gonzalez drives the highways of New Mexico and west Texas, he shows us a border culture rejuvenated by tourist and trade dollars, one that will surprise readers for whom the border means only illegal immigration,...

The vast Texas borderland is a place divided, a land of legends and lies, sanctification and sinfulness, history and amnesia, haunted by the ghosts of the oppressed and the forgotten, who still stir beneath the parched fields and shimmering blacktops. It is a realm filled with scorpion eaters and mescal drinkers, cowboys and Indians, Anglos and Chicanos, spirit horses and beat-up pickups, brujos and putas, aching passion and seething rage, apparitions of the Virgin and bodies in the Rio Grande.

In his first collection of short fiction, award-winning poet, editor, and...

"A man doesn't sleep with the moon. He sleeps with his hunger, gathers bowls of avocados and wipes his lips with his sins."

The Religion of Hands does not foster sleep. Look quickly and you will catch the hint of a fox streaking in front of your car's headlights at night. Look more carefully out your bedroom window and you may see your life going by, lost loved ones waving hello.

"Who were you when the stars were misinterpreted as the fingertips of God?"

Ray Gonzalez blends symbolic play with lyrical beauty as he works from a vast and complex palette...

"Inheritance of Light" is divided into five sections, each containing poems set in a flowing sequence based on similar themes and concerns.
Part One is introductory, surreal poems about the art of poetry and the creative process--an intense opening. Part Two contains autobiographical poems about the family, growing up, and ancestors. Part Three is the political section with a number of poems about war, politics, and global matters. Part Four may have the most personal, confessional, yet universal poems about the poets' reactions to the world around them. Part Five contains poems about...