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"The stories
in The Last Tortilla vibrate with an incredible cast of characters, a
setting rich with culture, and themes that touch the heart. Troncoso is simply
one of the best young writers on the scene today."
Rudolfo
Anaya
Short Story
Collection Wins Prestigious Award
February 14, 2000
The 1999 Premio Aztlán literary prize has
been awarded to Sergio Troncoso for his collection of stories, The Last
Tortilla and Other Stories (University of Arizona Press). The short stories
were judged the outstanding collection in Chicano/Chicana fiction.
The national
literary honor includes a cash award of two thousand dollars, the highest award
in contemporary Chicano/a literature. The prize will be awarded to Troncoso
Friday, March 31, 2000 at the Zimmerman Library at the University of New
Mexico, where the author will read from his work.
Established in 1993
by Rudolfo Anaya and his wife Patricia, the Premio Aztlán honors new Chicano/a writers for literary excellence in works that reflect
Chicano culture and experience. This year nationally well-known writers Gary
Soto and Sandra Cisneros contributed to the cash award, which was established
to recognize, nurture, and encourage the efforts of emerging writers early in
their careers.
Previous winners
include Denise Chávez, Pat Mora, Alicia Gaspar de
Alba, all of whom have gone on to develop national reputations as contemporary
writers of the Chicano scene.
Troncoso's stories,
set in El Paso, take readers into the world of young men caught up in realistic
rites of passage which test their sense of identity and culture. Love, death,
and the sometimes tragic consequences of growing up provide the major themes.
But these stories
show that the barrio is also inhabited by elders trying to survive in a rapidly
changing world. One of the most sensitive stories, "The Gardener,"
explores love between a man and a woman in their sixties. It's a delightful
counterpoint to the story, "Angie Luna," in which a young man falls
in love with a woman from Juárez. He is seeking the
American Dream via an Amherst education, and she is bound by tradition, thus
making their love affair tragic.
The stories are
strong in character development, realistic in presenting the images of the
barrio, and wonderfully intense in the variety of themes developed. Like other
contemporary Chicano literature, the ambivalence between choosing the
mainstream lifestyle and a more traditional Mexicano
way of life creates a tension in these stories that Troncoso explores to the
core.
In the
introduction, Ilan Stavans
praises Troncoso as "an American writer of the oddest kind: he tells the
truth. He is as near the center of things as artists are allowed to be."
Troncoso teaches
fiction writing at Yale University during the summer. He has published stories
and essays in Hadassah Magazine, Other Voices, T-Zero Writers'
Annual, New World: Young Latino Writers (Dell), Electric Mercado,
American Way, Blue Mesa Review, and Río Grande Review. The
Last Tortilla is his first book.
For more details,
contact Teresa Marquez at the Center for Southwest Research at the University
of New Mexico, 505-277-0582 or 505-277-6451.
Short stories: Angie Luna, The Snake, A Rock Trying to be a
Stone, and Espíritu Santo.
Essays: Latinos Find an
America on the Border of Acceptance and Beyond Aztlán: Chicanos in the Ivy League.