Publishers Respond to Latino Voices

Ten years ago, author Victor Villasenor scuttled the biggest deal of his life.

G.P. Putnam’s Sons had paid $75,000 for “Rain of Gold,” the folk-voiced tale of his Mexican American parents’ lives but, Villasenor recalled, differences over the direction of the book led him and the publisher to part company. The writer mortgaged his family home in Oceanside, bought the book back and resold it to a small nonprofit publisher for $1,500. “Rain of Gold” received glowing reviews, put Villasenor and Houston’s Arte Publico Press on the literary map and sold to paperback for about $250,000.

As a respected and successful author, Villasenor ran into surprisingly similar snags last year when he tried to sell a sequel. Then, after six rejections, he learned about a new Latino imprint, Rayo, launched by HarperCollins Publishers.

“I sent it in the last days of August. In September, they said they wanted it. We closed the deal in October,” he said.

This fall, “Thirteen Senses” will become the lead offering for Rayo’s debut--part of a new surge of commercial interest in books by, for and about Latinos.

Random House Espanol, launched in December, will soon be distributing books in the U.S. from Spanish publishers. Publishers Weekly is already planning to expand Criticas from a quarterly to a bimonthly guide to Spanish-language publishing.

The nation’s largest commercial English-language houses want to enter the world of the smaller nonprofits, specializing in Latino authors because they see potential profit, said Adriana Lopez, editor of Criticas.

Latinos, the country’s largest minority, grew 58% over the last decade to 35.3 million, according to the 2000 census. Sixty-five percent of Latinos were born in the United States.

“There’s a growing awareness that if it’s going to sell in English, it’s going to sell just as well in Spanish. And vice versa,” Lopez said.

Amazon.com has revamped its Web site to take advantage of the Spanish-language growth, and this fall Time Warner and Bertelsmann will start a book club, Mosaico, in which 70% of the titles will be in Spanish, she said. “These are all big signs of what’s to come.”

Rene Alegria, Rayo’s editorial director, said his goal is not only to tap a neglected Spanish-language book market but also to cultivate the Latino voice in the U.S. Citing “a groundswell of energy and creativity” among Latinos, he said, “there are young voices, developing issues and distinct cultures that make up a larger heritage.”

The imprint will publish about 12 new titles a year, both fiction and nonfiction. “For the most part, we will acquire books written in English by Latinos and translate them into Spanish,” he said, a twist on the traditional practice of translating Spanish-language works into English for the American market. The September debut will include English and Spanish editions of “Thirteen Senses,” Elijah Wald’s “Narcocorrido” and “The Hispanic Condition” by Ilan Stavans. A Spanish-language edition of Isabel Allende’s “Portrait in Sepia” also will be published.

The winter list includes “The Republic of East L.A.,” a collection of short stories by Luis Rodriguez.

“There’s no question the number of Hispanics in this country is growing rapidly,” said Judith Doyle, co-director of Curbstone Press in Willimantic, Conn., a nonprofit specializing in English translations of Spanish-language authors. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they will all be book buyers or that publishers will find a way to reach them, she said.

Publishers said they are looking into distributing the books in botanicas and markets in communities that do not have bookstores.

Rodriguez, who is opening a cultural center with a bookstore in San Fernando, said he is pleased about the new interest but hopes it will not mirror the brief surge of interest in Latino authors in the early 1990s. “If it goes up and down, it will hurt Latino literature. People have got to see it as worthy as any other literature,” he said.

Rodriguez said that, like Villasenor, he found it hard to get published again after 1993 when Curbstone published “Always Running,” his popular book of growing up in East Los Angeles. Simon & Schuster published a version in 1994.

“You can imagine the frustration,” he said. “People loved [‘Always Running’]. I had more books. They weren’t interested. They look at us in a different way,” he said. “It’s always, ‘It’s not fitting our needs at the moment.”’

Now, he said the big publishers seem to have people who care as much about the literature as the small presses. “That’s a good sign,” he said. “If you get the right people with the right vision, the literature will be given its due.”

Alegria said, “Finally, Latino voices will be heard in an organized way that will touch more than just Latinos, but America as a whole. These are not un-American voices. They are the new American voice.”