• Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s ELA Music Stories
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen

latinopia.com

Latino arts, history and culture

  • Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s ELA Music Stories
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen
You are here: Home / Literature / LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW / LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW “AFRO- 6 ” REVIEWED BY ERNIE HOGAN

LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW “AFRO- 6 ” REVIEWED BY ERNIE HOGAN

November 24, 2013 by

THE COLLIDING WORLDS OF AFRO-6.

Dell Books, 1969

By Hank Lopez

Reviewed by Ernest Hogan
___________________________________
Ernie HoganChicano ain’t no pure thing. Ain’t no puro Chicano. Puro Mexicano is an illusion. We are a collision of worlds, blood mixed on the crossroads.

That’s especially true when the times they are a-changing. You can find yourself being knocked from black to Chicano, not being able to tell what revolution you’re caught up in. It was true back in 1969, when Hank Lopez’s Afro-6 — that some consider to be the first science fiction novel by a Chicano — was published.

It looks more like literary blaxsploitation than Chicano lit, but Hank Lopez was a Chicano activist and lawyer as well as a writer. According the L.A. Times, he was believed the first Chicano graduate of Harvard Law School . . .

You see, outside the barrio, Chicanos — especially if they’ve grabbed themselves some education — have a chameleon-like ability to blend into different environments. Sometimes it’s a survival skill. Other times it’s the way the natives perceive you. Take it from a long-time Chicanonaut.

Afro -6Afro-6 was an influence on my novel High Aztech. It’s right there on page 1: I had once seen in the slums of Mexico City, a crumbling hole-in-the-wall saloon that was gloriously named La Conquista de Nueva York por los Aztecas en el Año 2000 . . .

But it’s not the Aztecs who conquer New York in Afro-6, but a well-organized conspiracy of black people.

And it takes place in the Sixties “present” rather than an imagined future. There is no futuristic technology. This makes it speculative fiction rather than sci-fi — What If, asked of the current, serious situation rather than the “pure” entertainment of the post-Star Wars, pre-Afrofuturist/Postcolonial era.

It’s in the African American tradition of George S. Shuyler’s Black Empire, in which a Negro mad genius leads a organization of blacks to eventually cripple Europe and liberate Africa, and Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat By the Door, about a CIA token Negro who uses his training to start a black revolution.

And there’s plenty of world building, and extrapolation — based on ideas by Che Guevera — thought out in detail, on a national scale.

Hey, kids of all colors and cultures, why not build worlds that become a better reality, instead of fantasies where you hang out untilAfro 6 some corporation decides what it’s going to do with you? Just saying.

Afro-6 doesn’t go as far as Empire’s transformed world, or Spook’s establishment of Black Nationalist state. Where it excels is in creating characters that provide a spectrum between black and white — again, something that comes out of the Chicano experience. John Ríos, the Afro/Latino hero, after struggling with living between conflicting worlds, finds a new identity as a revolutionary . . . more sinister than Dr. Fu Manchu — a character feared in the suburbs, but admired in the ghettos and barrios.

Ruben SalazarIt was reviewed by none other than Ruben Salazar, who uses it as an opportunity to report that Black Harlem is blacker than ever before, and: We who were brought up on the idea that “America is a melting pot” suddenly realize that the theory is a myth if not propaganda. The review appeared in July, 1970. Salazar was killed August 29 of the same year.

Travel between the worlds of black and white is still difficult. We are still blood mixed on the crossroads.

Ernest Hogan is often mistaken for black. He stopped correcting people about it decades ago.

_____________________________________________________

This review was first published by Ernie Hogan on October 10, 2013 in his Chicanonautica blog at http://labloga.blogspot.com. Be sure to visit this most amazing Latino literary blog site-it’s the very best!

Filed Under: LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW, Literature Tagged With: Afro - 6, Chicano science fiction, Ernie Hogan, Hank Lopez, Latino spec ficton

TALES OF TORRES 05.25.23 LETS GET RID OF ACTIVE SHOOTER DRILLS

May 26, 2023 By wpengine

Let’s get rid of the presumed need for “active-shooter drills” in our schools Desafortunadamente, we observe a horrifying anniversary this week. A year ago, this country was convulsed by the deadly mass shooting of innocent children at an elementary school in the largely Mexican American town of Uvalde, Texas. Nineteen children and two adults were […]

LATINOPIA GUEST BLOG ANGELA VALENZUELA ON UVALDE 5.26.23 (ORIGINALLY 06.03.22)

June 3, 2022 By wpengine

Reflections on Uvalde by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. Note: This article was originally published on June 3, 2022. Because of its relevance it is reprinted now, on the one-year anniversary of the Uvalde mass killings. We just got back from Uvalde, my friends. My husband, Emilio and I, took a quick, weekend trip to pay our […]

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT – CESAR MARTINEZ ART ACQUIRED BY MOMA

May 26, 2023 By wpengine

Cesar Martinez’s Art Acquired By New York Museum of Modern Art The prestigious Museum of Modern Art [MOMA] in New York City, in conjunction with the Ruiz-Healy Art Gallery of New York and San Antonio, recently announced the purchase of three paintings by San Antonio artist Cesar Martinez. Patricia Ruiz Healy noted that the MOMA […]

LATINOPIA HERO GLORIA MOLINA – A CHICANA PIONEER

May 20, 2023 By wpengine

GLORIA MOLINA: A CHICANA PIONEER. Like many, many others, I was saddened to learn of the passing of Gloria Molina. She had battled cancer for three years. Accolades poured in from public officials, civic leaders and just plain folks who admired her and her accomplishments. She was, unmistakably, a pioneer in the civic sphere. She […]

More Posts from this Category

New On Latinopia

LATINOPIA FOOD “JALAPEÑO SODA BREAD” RECIPE

By Tia Tenopia on March 14, 2011

Jalapeño Irish Soda Bread The sweetness of traditional Irish soda bread ingredients—raisins, buttermilk, some sugar—are richly complimented by jalapeño heat. Here’s a soda bread recipe from Ireland brought to the USA from Galway by Mary Patricia Reilly Murray and later transformed  with her blessing by her daughter, Bobbi Murray, who added jalapeño chile.  A real […]

Category: Cooking, Food, LATINOPIA FOOD

LATINOPIA EVENT 1966 UFW PEREGRINACIÓN (PILGRIMAGE) MARCH

By Tia Tenopia on March 19, 2013

The effort to organize farm workers under a union contract has been a long and difficult struggle. In 1965, César Chávez and Dolores Huerta created what would become the United Farm Workers Union. From the onset they  faced many obstacles, not the least of which was how to get dozens of California grape growers to […]

Category: History, LATINOPIA EVENT

LATINOPIA MUSIC ANGELA ROA “TOCO DESAFINADO”

By Tia Tenopia on June 22, 2014

Angela Roa is a Chilean singer and lyricist residing in Los Angeles, California. Her songs are about the Latino experience in the United States and in Latin America. Here she performs an original song, “Toco Desafinado” (Out of Tune). She is accompanied by Fernando Losada, Rich Silva and Thiago Winterstein..

Category: LATINOPIA MUSIC, Music

© 2023 latinopia.com · Pin It - Genesis - WordPress · Admin