• 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 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 Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen
You are here: Home / Literature / LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW / LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW “REVOLT OF THE COCKROACH PEOPLE”

LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW “REVOLT OF THE COCKROACH PEOPLE”

June 24, 2012 by

“Revolt of the Cockroach People”

Written by Oscar Zeta Acosta

Vantage Books Edition published in 1989

First published by Straight Arrow Books in 1973

Reviewed by Luís Torres
__________________________________________

 

As we continue our “second looks” at landmark books of the Chicano experience, here is a renewed look at “The Revolt of the Cockroach People,” by Oscar Zeta Acosta aka “The Brown Buffalo.”

“Revolt” was the second book by Acosta, the rumpled attorney who passed the bar by the skin of his teeth and exuberantly joined in the noisy street activism of the Chicano movement in East L.A. in the late 1960s and early 1970s. And wasn’t that a time!  His first book was “Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo,” which bears as much resemblance to genuine autobiography as “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas” by Gertrude Stein. It wasn’t a conventional autobiography to say the least.

Acosta is probably best known for his friendship/partnership with the wild man of letters, Hunter S. Thompson, and for the mysterious circumstances of his death (or disappearance) in Mexico in 1974. Both Acosta and Thompson made no secret of their ardor for hallucinogenic drugs, distilled spirits and the social chaos those elements ignited. It appears that in his life Acosta might have had difficulty distinguishing reality from illusion.

And that is certainly the case with his book, “The Revolt of the Cockroach People.” Are the events he depicts “real” or are they creations of his imagination? Is the book “documentary” or is it “fiction”? With this book, it’s impossible to tell. For some readers, that’s its charm. For me, that’s its problem. Of course, writers have blended fact and fiction before with genuine success. We all remember Truman Capote’s “non-fiction novel” “In Cold Blood.” That’s an exquisitely written book, no doubt. But I’ve always had problems with its schizophrenia. In some cases Capote uses real names involved in that gruesome murder at the core of the book. In other cases, he invents characters – and scenes and dialogue and everything else, as you would in a conventional novel.

Acosta’s “The Revolt of the Cockroach People” suffers from the same problem, and to a much greater degree. The book is certainly a milepost when it comes to accounts by and about Chicanos. It was among the first generation of books that sought to tell some of our stories, from our point of view. It has its moments, that’s for sure. But it suffers from some weaknesses as well.

Its apparent attempts at a kind of stream-of-consciousness approach more closely resemble unbridled ramblings of someone not unfamiliar with a certain wacky tabacky. And there’s the big issue of “what’s real” and “what’s invented” throughout the book. Lawyers like to question witnesses who seem to have made contradictory statements by asking, “Were you lying then, or are you lying now?” Whatever the answer, the jurors are not likely to look favorably on the testimony of such a witness being grilled.

In Acosta’s case, this is an issue that detracts from the potential of the book. (And there are a few tightly written passages with some laudable satirical humor in the book.) You can’t have it both ways. Either you are documenting (and sometimes skewering) actual pivotal events of the Chicano movement, or you are just making things up. He writes the book as if it were “real,” but it is unequivocally NOT. As it happens, I was there at some of the events he describes. I knew the people he talks about, with their names changed. The minute you are emancipated from being accurate, then you have license to “make things up.” And that’s okay when it’s demonstrably fiction. But it’s not okay when it’s fiction masquerading as fact.

But let’s put that issue aside for a moment. Let’s look at other dimensions of the book. Is the book engaging? Are there characters that captivate you? Is there some sort of intriguing dramatic movement that builds in the story? Is it a story well told? Sadly, the answer is generally “no” to all of the above? So, why did we read it so eagerly when it was first published back in 1973? Partly, I think, because we as Chicano were so desperate to read anything about “us” that wasn’t written by some gringo with an anthropologist’s magnifying class in one hand and an English-Spanish dictionary in the other. Hey, one of “us” wrote a book about us, let’s read it.

Acosta “documents” his participation in the aftermath of key Chicano events such as the activism of Catolicos Por La Raza to urge the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese to spend money on the poor instead of on lavish architectural moments, the police brutality at the Chicano Moratorium of 1970, the killing of journalist Ruben Salazar by an L.A. County Sheriff’s deputy and the earth-shaking East L.A. school walkouts. But his telling of those tales suffers from that “fact” versus “fiction” dichotomy.  It gives the impression of a book cobbled with apparent haste and held together with chicle and duct tape. It’s worth reading, but when it comes to veracity about key historical events of the Chicano Movement, consider the book with a grano de sal.

____________________________________________

Luís Torres is the author of the forthcoming book

“The Children of Doña Julia: The Life and Legacy of Vahac Mardirosian.”

Filed Under: LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW, Literature

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 2.20.21 “LESSONS FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION”

February 20, 2021 By Tia Tenopia

Lessons of the Great Depression: A Latino Perspective By Ricardo Romo, PhD A New York Times front page article on Sunday [Feb. 7, 2021] titled “As Jobs Dry Up, Renters Pack in and Fall Behind” got my attention. When talking about today’s job losses, poverty, homelessness, and hunger, many commentators often cite statistics from the […]

POLITICAL SALSA Y MÁS with SALOMON BALDENEGRO 02.14.21

February 14, 2021 By Tia Tenopia

Trumpism: A Death Cult… “The (Republican) party is his. It doesn’t belong to anybody else.” QAnon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) Whom are you not allowed to criticize? Following the dynamics of the Trump Impeachment – not only the Impeachment itself but also the events that led to it – is at the same time […]

PENSAMIENTOS WITH ALFREDO SANTOS 02.07.21

February 6, 2021 By Tia Tenopia

Bienvenidos otra vez a La Voz Newspaper. Primeramente, we would like to call to your attention a number of our stories in this issue. First is the article on page 4 about what the University of California is doing to help farm workers. A lot of people say that farm workers are essential workers, but […]

BURUNDANGA BORICUA DEL ZOCOTROCO “CRISIS DE LA ESPERANZA PARTE IV”

January 31, 2021 By Tia Tenopia

Crisis de la Esperanza Parte IV Esperanza Política Si aceptamos que la inmovilidad en la condición política mas indigna imaginable por seis siglos y bajo dos naciones, se presenta como uno de esos asuntos al que no se le ha dado solución, pues hay desesperanza para llorar hasta la eternidad. Pero de la esperanza vive […]

More Posts from this Category

New On Latinopia

LATINOPIA WORD RANDY JURADO ERTLL “HOPE IN TIMES OF DARKNESS”

By Tia Tenopia on February 9, 2014

Randy Jurado Ertll is a Salvadoran American author and political activist. He and his family fled the civil war in El Salvador by coming to the United States. He grew up in violence-torn South Central Los Angeles in the 1980s but managed to avoid gang life through the intervention of the A Better Chance Scholarship […]

Category: LATINOPIA WORD, Literature

LATINOPIA MUSIC LOS FABULOCOS “UNA PURA Y DOS CON SAL”

By Tia Tenopia on January 4, 2015

Delta Groove Music recording artist Los FabuLocos is a Southern California band whose unique sound, “Cali-Mex,”is a fusion of blues, Americana and Chicano soul music. Band members include Jesús Cuevas, accordion and vocals; Rubén Guaderama, guitar,bajo sexto, tres and vocals; James Barrios, bass and vocals; Mike Molina, drums and Kid Ramos, guitar( not in this […]

Category: LATINOPIA MUSIC, Music

LATINOPIA ART SONIA ROMERO 2

By Tia Tenopia on October 20, 2013

Sonia Romero is a graphic artist,muralist and print maker. In this second profile on Sonia and her work, Latinopia explores Sonia’s public murals, in particular the “Urban Oasis” mural at the MacArthur Park Metro Station in Los Angeles, California.

Category: Art, LATINOPIA ART

© 2021 latinopia.com · Pin It - Genesis - WordPress · Admin