Discussion-History
casey7677
CordovaCary_PortableMurals201709Print.pdf
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=gvir20
Download by: [University of Texas Libraries] Date: 18 September 2017, At: 13:50
Visual Resources an international journal on images and their uses
ISSN: 0197-3762 (Print) 1477-2809 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gvir20
Portable Murals: Children’s Book Press and the Circulation of Latino Art
Cary Cordova
To cite this article: Cary Cordova (2017) Portable Murals: Children’s Book Press and the Circulation of Latino Art, Visual Resources, 33:3-4, 332-362, DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2017.1277096
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2017.1277096
Published online: 26 May 2017.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 43
View related articles
View Crossmark data
Portable Murals: Children’s Book Press and the Circulation of Latino Art
Cary Cordova
Harriet Rohmer (b. 1938) created an independent publishing organization, Children’s Book Press, in 1975 to challenge the whiteness of mainstream children’s literature and to give inner city children alternative narratives to foster ethnic awareness and pride. The first 10 books, published between 1975 and 1978, entitled “Fifth World Tales,” became key to the non-profit’s growth into a major publisher of equitable children’s literature. This article shows how these first 10 books, ostensibly built on indigenous folklore of the Americas, also drew inspiration from the Latino communities of San Francisco, California. Most obviously, all 10 books featured the art of Latina and Latino muralists based in San Francisco’s Mission District, at the height of a flourishing community mural movement. Few street murals survived the flux of urban change, such that these children’s books represent an alternate, physically accessible illustration of this arts community, not unlike portable murals. Less obviously, it also reveals how the narratives of these books stemmed from the work of teacher and co-adapter Mary Anchondo (b. 1937) and from the parents and children of a Head Start pre-school classroom, as well as from a larger Latino intellectual community invested in myth and folklore. This article traces the unusual origins of these first 10 books, their publication as a federally funded effort to desegregate public schools, and these books as art objects of a Latino arts renaissance in San Francisco’s Mission District.
Keywords: Children’s Literature; Harriet Rohmer (b. 1938); Mary Anchondo (b. 1937); Illustrations; Latino Art; Murals; Folklore
Superhero, or Andean god? The animated images of Viracocha in the 1976 children’s book, The Mighty God Viracocha/El Dios Poderoso Viracocha, straddled the line between comic book hero and stone temple icon. California artists Mike Rios (b. 1947) and Richard Montez (b. 1948) illustrated Viracocha, the great creator deity in the pre- Inca and Inca mythology in the Andes region of South America, as a gigantic, golden armored machine with superhero powers (Figure 1), yet their Viracocha also resembled a famous figure etched into the stone of an ancient temple in Tiahuanaco, Bolivia. As noted in the book’s final commentary, “on the Bolivian side of Lake Titica- ca, there exists to this day a number of gigantic stone statues which were already vastly old in the year of the Inca conquest.”1 One stone figure presides over Puerta del Sol (Gate of the Sun), one of the few walls left standing to represent the former greatness of the Tiwanakan empire (Figure 2). Like other presumed images of Viracocha, the figure appears petite in stature, but wide of girth, with arms spread, staffs in each hand, and luminous rays of the sun encircling his head.2 Rios and Montez adopted
Visual Resources, Volume 33, Numbers 3–4, September–December 2017 © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2017.1277096
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
this classic iconography, while also reinventing Viracocha as a modern superhero in order to appeal to contemporary children.
Neither Rios nor Montez had much practice creating children’s book illustrations, but the two had worked together several times as muralists. They belonged to a com- munity of artists and activists that were transforming San Francisco’s Mission District neighborhood into a fertile hub for the city’s community mural movement. Muralists like Rios and Montez – working jointly as well as in collectives – targeted unsafe loca- tions, such as Balmy Alley and the 24th Street Mini Park, in order to re-territorialize visually and reclaim public space for children. Helped along with small grants from the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), Rios, Montez and other artists across the nation turned urban blight into dynamic environs.3
Mural painting trained the artists in giving classic images a contemporary rele- vance, a style that subsequently shaped their book illustrations for children. For in- stance, one mural by Rios, Montez and Anthony Machado featured the powerful
Figure 1. Mike Rios and Richard Montez, book cover illustration for The Mighty God Viracocha/El Dios Poderoso Viracocha. Mylar color printing, 9 × 8 inches (23 × 20 cm). Book authored by Harriet Rohmer and Mary Anchondo, Children’s Book Press, 1976. According to their copyright, the first 10 books from Children’s Book Press entered the public domain in the mid-1980s.
Portable Murals 333
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl (a pre-Columbian deity) surrounded by dancing children of the neighborhood. As Alan Barnett wrote about the 24th Street Mini Park, “The park is not only a place for kids to play and grown-ups to rest, it is an en- vironment that reminds people of their roots and provokes thoughts about how to live today.”4 The muralists used an iconography that bespoke the transnational cultures of residents, drawing especially on indigenous histories and mythologies of the Americas, while at the same time representing the local landscape and the faces of the youngest residents.
Harriet Rohmer (b. 1938), who created Children’s Book Press in 1975, recruited Rios and Montez to illustrate her texts. Rohmer sought their aid in her larger quest to change not only children’s literature but also public schooling. She employed mu- ralists as illustrators because she believed that their “street” art could aid her vision and lead to a new form of children’s literature. Like the muralists, Rohmer too sought to challenge hegemonic narratives and iconographies. Children’s Book Press, in fact, was among the first publishers to challenge mainstream children’s literature for its whiteness. As Rohmer wrote, “In 1975, children’s literature in the United States was what I call a literature of exclusion. Children of color had virtually no op- portunity to open a book and see themselves, their worlds, or their home languages.”5
Figure 2. Puerta del Sol/Gate of the Sun, stone structure of andesite rock, approximately 12 feet wide by 10 feet high (3.5 × 3 meters), Tiahuanaco, Bolivia, c. 600–1000. Photograph by Gianni Dagli Orti, courtesy the Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.
334 Cordova
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
Thus, the Press’s first 10 books, published between 1975 and 1978, printed ancient myths from the Americas as counter-narratives to contest this “literature of exclusion.” This set of books became key to the non-profit’s growth into a major publisher of eq- uitable children’s literature.
Rohmer ran Children’s Book Press successfully for several decades, which helped generate multiple accounts of her vision and leadership, but the early history of this press is far more convoluted. Rohmer often referred to the experience of enrolling her son in a Head Start program with teacher Mary Anchondo (b. 1937) as a funda- mental influence, but minimized the role that Anchondo and the Mission District com- munity played as originators of this work. Seven of the first books listed Rohmer and Anchondo as adaptors of this classic folklore, but Rohmer’s name always appeared first, and later references to Anchondo listed her only as a translator. Anchondo recalled dif- ferent origins, explaining that she had been researching and recording stories from her students’ parents for a few years prior to meeting Rohmer. According to Anchondo, these stories served as the springboard for the first 10 books, and thus also served as a rare record of memory, history and visual culture in this poor and predominantly Latino immigrant community. Anchondo gave Rohmer access to these stories and entrée to the muralists that Anchondo knew as a local teacher and as a former staff member of the influential Economic Opportunity Council.6 The eclipsing of Anchon- do’s role, and that of the teachers, parents and larger Mission District community, in this early history is an ironic twist in the history of a press crafted to create equity in children’s literature.
In this article, I take a three-fold approach. First, I analyze Rohmer’s early history as a guiding force of Children’s Book Press. Rohmer played a dominant role in the ap- pearance and content of her books, but also derived this work from the Mission District community where she schooled her son. Secondly, I delineate how the first 10 books gained federal funding alongside the push to desegregate public schools in San Francisco. In fact, while part of the Press’s activism is contained within the pages of the books it published, this wealth of evidence may obscure another important characteristic of the Press: the outreach it conducted in the schools and the local com- munity. The Mission District neighborhood provided the art and the stories for Rohmer’s ideas to evolve. Finally, I analyze the ideologies and iconography that deter- mined the content and appearance of the first 10 books from Children’s Book Press. I show the strong aesthetic links that existed between the first books and the community mural movement and unveil some of the tensions that emerged between Rohmer, Anchondo and the artists. My analysis draws substantially from oral history interviews I conducted with Rohmer and Anchondo and from my extensive research on the Latino arts movement in San Francisco.7
I argue that these books became “portable murals.” They surpassed the physical boundaries that limit wall murals, circumvented the struggles over public space, and exported the ideologies shared by Rohmer, Anchondo and the artists to the audience that most occupied their concerns: children. The collaboration, however, was hardly seamless. Rohmer and Anchondo came from different worlds and recalled the early history of the press very differently. They both turned to muralists based in the Mission District to illustrate these books. At the time, many Latino artists in
Portable Murals 335
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
San Francisco adopted muralism as a way of publicly expressing their artistry, territo- rializing urban spaces and rejecting the covert racism of fine arts institutions. Few of these murals survived, but the books stand as an unusual printed record of their work in an alternate medium and subject to different patronage. In this article, I inves- tigate the strong connections existing between Children’s Book Press and the commu- nity muralists and contextualize the press within a broader cultural movement to reshape children’s literature and public schooling.
Children’s Book Press drew inspiration from growing public demand that child- ren’s literature represent children in a more diverse and egalitarian manner.8 In fact, the majority of literary narratives at the time still presented a white bias, as Nancy Larrick has demonstrated in her oft-cited article, “The All-White World of Children’s Books,” published in a 1965 edition of The Saturday Review.9 After surveying 5000 books published between 1962 and 1964, Larrick determined that only 6.7% contained a representation of an African American, regardless of whether it was a positive or neg- ative. A similar study of books between 1973 and 1975 surveyed 1775 books and showed small signs of improvement: 14.4% of these books featured black characters, but the change remained mostly confined to token representations.10
In 1975, the Council on Interracial Books for Children’s Literature released a study on children’s literature and Mexican Americans that delivered some similarly alarming statistics. According to their analysis, fewer than 200 US children’s books published between 1940 and 1973 were about Mexican Americans. As library scholar Jamie Campbell Naidoo summarizes:
[T]hose scant few books that purported to represent the Mexican American experience were written mostly by Anglo-Americans, and were loaded with cultural stereotypes, historical inaccuracies, and gross misrepresentations. Often, Mexican American characters were portrayed as dirty, passive, poor, unhappy, self-sacrificing migrant workers who needed to assimilate to the U.S. culture. The Council on Interracial Books for Children (CIBC) also noted that numerous children’s books claiming to represent Mexican Americans were actually about the culture and people of Mexico.11
These comments by Campbell Naidoo explain what Rohmer sought to change. In cre- ating Children’s Book Press, Rohmer sought to create an alternative, both intellectual and aesthetic, space where children of color could feel proud and empowered.
Although the Press’s first 10 books are now out of print, the history of their crea- tion and visual iconography is an important reminder of the effort to desegregate American schools and of the push of cultural workers to challenge the borders of main- stream American culture. The Press participated in a publishing revolution to challenge the dominating literary and aesthetic canon and demand racial and cultural integration of Latinas, Latinos, African Americans, Native Americans and Asian Americans into the US educational system. According to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, 317 al- ternative presses operated in the United States and Canada between 1970 and 1992.12
While these presses represented diverse interests, their emergence also signaled dissat- isfaction with mainstream children’s book publishing. Children’s Book Press deserves
336 Cordova
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
special attention not only for its longevity and influence, but especially for its unique start and its unusual patronage of muralists. Moreover, very few presses, then as now, operate as non-profit organizations, which was part of the hallmark of Children’s Book Press activism.
A Start-Up in the Mission
Rohmer’s initial career trajectory had all the markings of a life in politics, not children’s books. She was the daughter of Hilda Rotenberg (1910–74) and Ben Dorfman (1902– 85), an economist who worked at the US International Trade Commission for most of his professional life and who chaired the agency under Presidents John F. Kennedy (1917–63) and Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–73).13 Rohmer grew up in the world of in- ternational politics in Washington, DC, studied politics and international relations at Wellesley College, graduating in 1960, and at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris.14 Rohmer’s early life reflected privileges that she usually minimized, perhaps because doing so might have marked her as an outsider in the increasingly Latino Mission District.
Fundamental to Rohmer’s political awakening was her experience working in France in the early 1960s for UNESCO, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. Created in the wake of the Second World War, UNESCO’s mission was to preserve “the cultural heritage of mankind.” Rohmer’s job provided support for African ethnographic and art films, but her work exposed her to far more intense conversations about colonialism, cultural preserva- tion and independence. She landed at UNESCO in turbulent times, as an increasing number of “Third World” countries gained independence from colonial rule, or un- derwent “decolonization” in the 1950s and 1960s. For instance, Ghana gained inde- pendence in 1957, Guinea in 1958, Nigeria and Congo in 1960 and Kenya in 1963. While many scholars have debated what “decolonization” has meant for these and other countries, there is no question that this global social change informed Rohmer’s work.15 Rohmer stated:
being in UNESCO and talking to people from newly independent countries and understanding what they had gone through, [I absorbed] what the colo- nial process was about, how indigenous people in their own countries had been ignored, how their literature had been suppressed.16
Her work at UNESCO profoundly shaped her aspirations for Children’s Book Press, though she would not begin the Press for another 10 years.
Rohmer then entered the publishing world partly through her marriage to Arnold Reisman (b. 1934), a poet and painter later known as Bret Rohmer (the Reismans adopted the name Rohmer as a writing pseudonym). The two met while Rohmer was living in Paris; they married in Tel Aviv in 1961 and returned to Bret Rohmer’s home city of New York in 1963.17 The move to New York introduced Harriet Rohmer to a community of widely known Beat Movement artists and propelled her into the world of independent publishing. When Bret Rohmer and his old friend
Portable Murals 337
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
Diane di Prima (b. 1934) decided to start up a poetry journal together, Harriet Rohmer provided practical assistance. Their journal, Signal: A Quarterly Review, lasted for three issues between 1963 and 1965 and featured some important poets, including di Prima, LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka] (1934–2014), W.S. Merwin (b. 1927), Frank O’Hara (1926–66) and many others. Harriet Rohmer became Managing Editor because, as she modestly put it, “I probably was the only sober mind in the place at the time.”18
The Rohmers later ventured into publishing single-author books illustrated by artists. They set up Brownstone Press in an old warehouse at Union Square – in the same building as the Factory of pop artist Andy Warhol (1928–87) – and initiated the publication of a series of books by Bret Rohmer, Diane di Prima, Hunce Voelcker (1940–90), Joel Oppenheimer (1930–88), John Wieners (1934–2002), David Meltzer (b. 1937) and more. For Harriet Rohmer, the experience was more than simply prac- tical training in publishing; she especially appreciated how independence from the bal- looning publishing industry could facilitate the growth of independent thought. It was di Prima, according to Rohmer, who modeled an outlook that she also embraced, “because she was the one who showed me that in order to have a publishing company, you didn’t have to be Random House. You could just go do it.”19 This ap- preciation for decentering the world of publishing in many ways paralleled her time at UNESCO, even if the participants were quite different.
While Rohmer learned the ropes of independent publishing, she also had her first child and enrolled as a student of filmmaking at New York University. She found a variety of film jobs, including employment as a writer for a company called On Film, and working for Jonas Mekas (b. 1922) of the famous avant-garde filmmakers the Mekas brothers. However, her film work came to an end when she became preg- nant with her second child. “I was told in no uncertain terms that there was no work for me,” she recounted.20 The change in circumstances contributed to her willingness to leave New York. Di Prima encouraged the couple to move to her new city, San Francisco, which they did in 1969. The move inspired the Rohmers to initiate some collaborative documentary film projects, but their artistic differences prevented their completion. By 1974, these artistic differences mutated into irreconcilable differ- ences within their marriage. Rohmer stated, “By the time that my mom died in May of ’74, I was probably ready to not be with him. And as tragic as it was, everything that was sort of holding me back was gone.”21 With her move to a new city, the loss of her mother, the dissolution of her marriage, single motherhood and her career in flux, Rohmer was primed for something new.
Rohmer’s professional experience shaped in a fundamental way her ambitions for the Press, but she often concealed this ideological positioning. Instead, she regularly re- counted the Press’s beginnings through the lens of her personal experience with San Francisco schools. According to Rohmer, the idea for the Press started at her child- ren’s Head Start school in San Francisco’s Mission District. Upon volunteering to read at the school, she discovered that her assigned book, Kay Thompson’s (1909–98) Eloise, a tale about a wealthy, privileged blonde and blue-eyed young girl living at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, was entirely out of touch with the lives of the children in front of her.22 As Rohmer remarked, “Here was a day care center that was 85 percent
338 Cordova
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
Latino, and yet 100 percent of the books there reflected European culture.”23 More ex- pansively, Rohmer recalled:
So when I got to San Francisco and it became time for daycare, I thought, well, I’m only accepting Spanish bilingual daycare. I will not be anywhere else. I figured, okay, step one. So, I ended up in a Head Start program in the Mission … . And the head teacher was a woman by the name of Mary Anchondo. … So, I would come and read to the kids, as a lot of mothers did when we could and we were reading Eloise. … And they are just, “What is this about?” And I thought, “Yes, what’s this about!” So, I began to think that we really did need to bring in some books that were more rel- evant to the kids. And there were a lot of kids from Central America, big Nic- araguan population in the city at that time, Salvadoran less so, not too many Mexicans, but a few, Peru, and African Americans. So I said, “Well, we really need to do something else.” So I talked to Mary and she agreed to help me because I was going to go to the UC folklore archive in Berkeley and research the folklore from the countries represented in our daycare center.24
For Rohmer, this memory of reading Eloise spurred her decision to pursue research in scholarly archives and make more meaningful stories available. Drawing on practices in ethnohistory, Rohmer researched stories in the archival records of earlier folklorists and paired these narratives with contemporary ethno- graphic research. She found plentiful archival records from the early 1900s. Rohmer stated:
Lots of folkloristas went down there [to Latin America] – 1910 for some reason was a heyday to go to Latin America to record stories, and to the Phil- ippines. So I dug into it. It was a long digging into process. And adapted it. Got Mary to help me with the Spanish.25
The richness of these earlier records was partly a product of noble intentions and co- lonial nostalgia, as these folkloristas presumed indigenous people were destined to vanish from the earth. Rohmer, however, did not simply rely on these archives to rep- licate her stories. At UNESCO, she had learned that, “if you are going to write about somebody’s culture, you talk to somebody from that culture. I mean, it seems so obvious nowadays, but it really wasn’t … .”26 Accordingly, she remembered turning to local Latina elders to verify and elaborate on her stories. Rohmer recalled presenting her stories to various grandmothers, including artist Carlos Loarca’s grandmother, in order to give her stories greater authenticity. Her approach was a variation on the scholarly practice of “upstreaming,” that anthropologist William Fenton first described in his 1950s studies of the Haudenosaunee, a Native American confederacy based in the Northeast United States and Canada.27 As John Chance wrote, upstreaming means “using what is already known about a later time to fill in the gaps and interpret the am- biguities for an earlier time.”28 By calling on local elders, Rohmer felt she could give her stories some “ring of truth,” for how these stories might be passed along to young chil- dren. It was not that Rohmer sought the most authentic narrative, but she did seek a
Portable Murals 339
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
narrative that resembled what a grandmother might tell her grandchild. As Rohmer described:
I began to get the idea that it could have happened a lot of ways, but as long as she was there, and telling me, and I liked the story, fine, why not. So that kind of validation process of, are you really telling some kind of folklore that has roots in the community? In other words, I have an imagination myself, but in this case, I could use my imagination for what pieces I would choose, because these folklore epics could sometimes go on for days. It had to ring true with people who might themselves have told it, so that was sort of a major criterion back then.29
Rohmer recalled borrowing from various sources, including her imagination and her circle of acquaintances. Many have critiqued the technique of upstreaming for placing too much faith in historical continuity and contemporary sources, but Rohmer’s decision to draw on the memories of living family members reflected a def- erence to people not generally granted expertise.30 Her approach also showed an appre- ciation for methods in ethnohistory and Native Studies that is not obvious from merely glancing at the texts.
Anchondo performed a vague role in Rohmer’s recollections, but her memory ac- knowledged some form of partnership between the two women. On seven of the books, Anchondo received credit as a fellow adaptor (Anchondo’s friend Jesús Guerrero Rea co-adapted the last three books). In later references, Rohmer simply described Anchondo as the official translator. Upon Rohmer’s retirement from the Press, in ref- erence to Anchondo, Rohmer only wrote, “To the first core group at Children’s Book Press: Pat Hunter, Robin Cherin, Roger Reyes, Mary Anchondo.”31 Anchondo, however, recalled that she and the larger San Francisco Latino communities played a far more significant role in the process.
Anchondo grew up in a Mexican American family in El Paso, Texas, but she also believed that both her parents had a Native American parent. Her familiarity with the struggles of indigenous communities also developed through her schooling in the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, a settlement of Tigua Indians about 10 miles outside of El Paso. She obtained a high school degree, began working at various jobs, and got married. In the mid-1960s, when her husband was unable to find a job in Texas, they moved to San Francisco, where his parents lived. She found a job as a translator with the Economic Opportunity Council (EOC), which is where she learned about the relatively new Head Start pre-school program, launched by President Lyndon Johnson, to help disadvantaged children prepare for elementary school. She eagerly applied to be a teacher and soon found herself running her own classroom at Trinity Methodist Church near 16th and Market on the edge of the Mission District neighborhood.32
Anchondo followed a Head Start lesson plan, but since Fridays served as “free” days, she adopted storytelling as a Friday ritual. According to Anchondo,
before I accepted the kid, I told their parents, “okay, I’ll accept your kid, but you have to come and tell me a story. If you are working, then you write the story and give it to me, and then I’ll translate it into English, and I’ll say it.” So that was the deal with me.33
340 Cordova
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
In terms of recruiting parent participation, she added: “I encouraged them by telling them, ‘What kind of stories did your parents tell you?’ Those were the stories that I wanted. The stories that they were told by their parents.”34 Anchondo sometimes helped the parents to research and develop their stories, which she recorded and trans- lated for future use in the classroom. She also began going back to school at San Francisco State to pursue these interests and obtain a college degree. She described almost all of her parents and children as Spanish dominant, so this process of retelling familiar family stories in English became one of the ways Anchondo instilled cultural pride and prepared her students for English-dominant classrooms.
When Anchondo decided to pursue a Master’s degree in Early Education from Lone Mountain College in the mid-1970s, she opted to write about the experience of developing the Press’s first book, The Magic Boys. She wrote:
A parent in my class told the children a story that captured their imagination. They had never heard it before. The children started drawing animals from the story and retelling parts of it. Their enthusiasm led me to pay particular notice to the possibilities of using cultural materials in the classroom. On in- vestigation, I found the story to be from the Popul Vuh, the sacred book of the Maya Quiche Indians, who, in pre-conquest times, were the most pow- erful nation of the Guatemala highlands. The book’s stories were clear and simple, and were touched with the magic that children take for real, myste- rious, and exciting. With the help of parents, students, volunteers, and teach- ers, I began to work with these legendary stories.35
As Anchondo recalled, along with research, she consulted multiple community members and academics to develop her stories. Adaption meant “that there might have been a book already – a book from the culture. But it wasn’t the same, because this was Americanized by me.”36 Adaption required listening to similar narratives from multiple people and synthesizing the differences. Anchondo appreciated the way the narrative changed to reflect life in the United States. Her writings and recollec- tions tie the first 10 books more directly to the memories of Mission District residents than Rohmer indicated. For Rohmer, the stories started in the archives and in Latin America; for Anchondo, the stories started in her classroom and in the United States. Moreover, Anchondo began this work of storytelling, research and translation at least two to three years prior to meeting Rohmer. According to Anchondo, “about the third year that I was doing that, [Rohmer] went and told a social worker, Marilyn, that she didn’t have any money, and she couldn’t pay for classes, so she enrolled her son in my class.”37 While Rohmer’s memory emphasized enrolling in Head Start to maintain Spanish bilingual daycare, Anchondo pointed out how Rohmer also needed to empha- size her impoverished status to gain entry into the Head Start classroom. Rohmer pre- sumably passed into a Head Start classroom as a recently divorced single mother with limited funds, but her elite background, education and Jewishness also made her an outsider in this immigrant community.
Gradually, Anchondo realized Rohmer could help her publish her stories, and Rohmer recognized a ready archive and a socially conscious publishing opportunity.
Portable Murals 341
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
Anchondo wrote, “I showed her everything I had worked on and we decided to work together.”38 But while Rohmer made a name for herself in publishing, Anchondo saw her participation in the process vanish. She stated:
Well, I was always very respectful, because I knew [Rohmer] had a lot of talent in the publishing part of the books that I had done. And she was doing the cultures a tremendous favor because she was introducing all the books. So that’s why I didn’t – but towards the end, when they told me that she had bought a house and a car and all kinds of stuff, sending her kids to colleges and stuff. I kind of resented her. Because she took my concept and she didn’t share in the profits, none whatsoever.39
While Rohmer repeatedly used the Eloise story as an easy narrative to explain the birth of Children’s Book Press, the anecdote also blanketed over the participation of Anchondo and the larger community of parents and children in the process. The nar- rative also helped Rohmer minimize the relevance of other personal and professional experiences that shaped her vision for the Press: her political upbringing in DC; her studies at elite institutions, including Wellesley, the Institut d’Etudes Politiques and New York University; her work with UNESCO, in independent publishing and film- making. Under the circumstances, Rohmer may have found it useful to temper some of her privileged background, since such worldly experiences might have pro- voked suspicion and guardedness in a community that struggled with poverty, segre- gation and racism.
When asked about the Eloise story, Anchondo responded, “She’s just telling a story because I had books and books. I went to Texas and Juarez and got books from Mexico.”40 While Rohmer may have read Eloise to the class, the students also were part of a Head Start classroom led by an energetic teacher committed to decolonizing her students. She turned to indigenous folklore not because it existed in the archives, but because these were the stories recounted by her students’ families. As a teacher trained in indigenous histories, Anchondo recognized the complexities of her student populations, who may have migrated from Central or Latin America, but who also identified as Maya, Inca or Aymara.41 As Anchondo described, “Over, over, and over, I emphasized the self-image of the kids has to be uprooted so that they can feel well about themselves. And feeling well about themselves, they do better work. Their mind opens up more.”42
That Rohmer never fully acknowledged Anchondo’s contribution to the Press’s early history is an unfortunate turn for a press designed to combat colonialism and con- quest. Likewise, Anchondo disputed any credit to Rohmer for the adaptations, al- though Rohmer remembered otherwise. Their differing recollections reflected larger disagreements about where these stories came from, who they represented and what they signified. Nonetheless, Rohmer, with her capacity to organize and her diverse pro- fessional experience, made the books happen in a way that Anchondo never felt equipped to do. Anchondo acknowledged that Rohmer guided the overall process of publication and funding for the project.43 Rohmer wrote the grant and spearheaded the project to bring these textually and visually complex documents into print.
342 Cordova
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
Changing the School Curriculum
While Rohmer saw a need for bilingual children’s books, the school district was not easily convinced. As she noted, “I really tried very hard to interest the San Francisco Unified School District. I spent a lot of time with people with bilingual education and so forth, and they seemed very interested, they thought it was lovely, but nothing.”44 The lukewarm response of San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) officials was part of a larger resistance to change. Over the course of the 1970s, the school district was the target of multiple lawsuits for its failure to desegregate and its lack of educational parity. And, just as those suing SFUSD found it necessary to turn to the federal government for support, Rohmer found it necessary to turn to the federal government to fund her project.
Initially Rohmer applied for grants of just a few thousand dollars to publish a single book, but she had no luck. The experience taught her to think bigger. She stated, “If you want to make an impression, you have to show that your concept is bigger, is more im- portant, and so it has to be bigger, and you have to ask for more money.”45 Gradually, her efforts to obtain funding shaped her project in unexpected ways. She changed her approach from publishing one book to publishing 10 books. In order to apply for support from the Department of Education, she transitioned the project from just pub- lishing books, to active outreach. As she explained:
[T]his was an outreach program for authors and artists from these different cultures to go into the elementary schools, grades K through 6, all over the city, sample schools, something like 25 of them, and they would select two classrooms at each site, donate a book to each student. Have the author, well, it was actually the artist … come in there and talk about these issues to kids in a way that would excite kids. And outreach, nobody had ever heard of that. … the idea that we’re going to give away free books, totally free, and I would take care of the distribution, in my little bus, I would deliver them in the basement of every school.46
This shift towards public outreach not only helped Rohmer gain support from the Department of Education, but it also served more explicitly the new agenda of the Department of Education.
Indeed, Rohmer’s fundraising application overlapped with the new mandate for school integration. As historian Judith Bentley noted, “Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964] authorized powerful new support for school integration from the execu- tive branch of government.”47 Initially the act empowered the Department of Educa- tion to withhold funds if a school district remained segregated. Gradually, however, programs that promised desegregation gained momentum, especially after the 1968 case of Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, Virginia, in which the Supreme Court declared that schools had to actively and immediately integrate.48
San Francisco, like most US cities, responded slowly. Although a sharp decrease in white students conjured the appearance of greater racial diversity, school populations remained segregated. David Kirp described how the number of white students in the city’s public schools declined from 46% in 1965 to 21% in 1979. While white flight
Portable Murals 343
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
to the suburbs reduced the number of white students, the number of black, Asian and Hispanic students increased.49 In 1970–71, the city’s school population was 35% white, 28% black, 21% Asian, 14% Latino and 2% other non-white.50 However, as Kirp dis- cussed, “racial disproportion was greatest in the ninety-five elementary schools. Four schools were more than 90% white; seven were more than 90% black.”51 Latina and Latino students also experienced segregation as a result of their residential concentra- tion in the Mission District, but most of the public discussions about segregation focused on black and white populations.
The SFUSD implemented some changes to combat segregation, including a con- troversial bussing program in 1970, but the efforts did not correspond to the scale of the problem. The courts finally intervened to enforce change.52 In 1971, in the case of Johnson v. San Francisco Unified School District, the US District Court ruled against SFUSD for facilitating de jure segregation of its elementary schools. Accord- ing to the court, the school district knowingly relied on lines of attendance that maintained or heightened racial imbalances in its elementary schools. The court’s rulings exerted formidable pressure on the school district to improve, eventually contributing to the district’s 1978 educational redesign, which prohibited any single ethnic population to make up more than 45% of the student body.53 That same year, the court dismissed Johnson v. San Francisco Unified School District, de- claring that social conditions in 1978 were not the same as in 1971.54 While segre- gation was not resolved, other cases that more directly targeted the new social context gained momentum. Regardless of its dismissal, the case of Johnson v. San Francisco Unified School District thrust the city’s educational inequalities into the national spotlight.
Children’s Book Press did not offer a quick fix for segregation, but the non- profit did offer support for Spanish-speaking elementary school children just as the courts found SFUSD guilty of ignoring the needs of non-English speakers. In the 1974 case of Lau v. Nichol, the Supreme Court ruled against SFUSD for failing to provide any accommodation for non-English-speaking students. Sud- denly, SFUSD and public schools across the country had to offer non-English speakers a “meaningful opportunity to participate in the public educational program.”55 While many debated how to incorporate this accommodation, the inception of Children’s Book Press perfectly meshed with this new bilingual tra- jectory in the schools.
The Press’s use of creation stories from the Americas and the Philippines as the content of the first books also invoked, perhaps intentionally, a more subtle critique of the school curriculum. When the Supreme Court dismantled prayer in schools in the early 1960s, a wave of protests followed.56 These alternate creation stories not only served to make oppressed cultures visible; the books also presented a non-Chris- tian worldview at a time when the religious right was re-demanding the rights of chil- dren to pray in schools.
In 1975, in the midst of these dramatic events, the US Office of Education granted Rohmer $69,000 to publish her book series and conduct outreach initiatives in San Francisco’s public schools. According to Rohmer, she printed 3000 copies each of the first 10 books to distribute gratis in the public schools.57 All the books
344 Cordova
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
acknowledge the federal grant in their copyright, but they also include the following disclaimer: “the contents do not necessarily represent the policies or practices of that Agency and no US Government endorsement should be inferred.” While governmental support existed for Rohmer’s project, the government also maintained some distance from this semi-radical project.
The presence of federal funding was an important component of this non-profit press’s initial success. The systems of support for these books mirrored the systems of support for mural painting in the streets. Much as Mike Rios had applied for CETA funding to support the creation of murals in the 24th Street Mini Park, Rohmer applied for federal funding to support the creation of Children’s Book Press. The inverse is just as likely: the lack of federal funds would have limited the possibility of either of these socially oriented programs evolving. My point here is to emphasize that these books were tactical enterprises: they were federally funded, and they were intended to cultivate inclusion of marginalized children in schools.
Visualizing Social Change: The Ancient Iconographies of Children’s Book Press
The Press’s first 10 books, published between 1975 and 1978, used ancient myths to articulate a vision for social change. The technique is perhaps counter-intuitive, but the use of myth as a template for social change was not unique in the 1970s, a time when various scholars and social movements embraced folklore’s capacity to de- center Western ideologies. All books featured classic myths from the Americas (except for one, Skyworld Woman, which drew on a legend from the Philippines), and all were printed both in Spanish and English, and illustrated by San Francisco artists. For instance, The Magic Boys (illustrated by Patricia Rodriguez) adapted the Popol Vuh; How We Came to the Fifth World (illustrated by Graciela Carrillo) derived from an Aztec creation myth; The Little Horse of Seven Colors (illustrated by Roger Reyes) came from Caribbean folklore; and finally The Mighty God Viracocha (il- lustrated by Mike Rios and Richard Montez) stemmed from the Aymara of the Central Andes. Rohmer and Anchondo sought out muralists as illustrators because of their ac- cessibility in the community and because they recognized how their work already engaged in the art of storytelling. Muralists were skilled at making ancient iconography relevant to contemporary concerns. And like the murals, these books are art objects, although they have rarely been represented or exhibited in that way.58
Most likely, Rohmer and Anchondo partnered in the initial recruitment of the mu- ralists, although Rohmer did not recall Anchondo’s influence. Anchondo regularly took her students on field trips to visit murals in the area and to the Galería de la Raza, a Latino art gallery and artist hangout. She recalled:
Those muralistas, you could say, were my friends. And [Rohmer] did some of that work on her own. She did. But I knew a lot of them. That was because before I was a Head Start person, I worked for the EOC and I was a commu- nity organizer.59
Portable Murals 345
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
Indeed, Anchondo’s stature and belonging in the community may have helped validate the Children’s Book Press project. However, Rohmer recalled the recruitment more as a product of individual patronage:
I started hanging out at Galería de la Raza, and meeting [the curators] Ralph [Maradiaga] and Rene [Yañez] … and sort of following them, and I had the idea that these books would be illustrated, not by commercial illustrators, but by the muralistas because that fit so much more with the kind of popular stories, stories from the popular culture, that I had decided to publish.60
Rohmer did not turn to professional illustrators, not only because of the higher cost of their services, but because she realized that using voices from the community would help her to reach out to her target audience. As she recalled:
I didn’t come from that community. But I certainly hung around a lot, lis- tened a lot, and asked, I think, reasonable questions, and I had something to offer, which was very genuine. And which I think they perceived as helpful and something that extended their work. And for that reason, I think, they were very welcoming.61
Notably, four of the first 10 books featured artists from a group known as the Mujeres Muralistas (women muralists). Their group name hardly connoted an aesthetic mission; the term, however, did communicate the rarity of women in the early days of the community mural movement. At the very least, Mujeres Muralistas offered a convenient label to catalogue the multiple collaborations of its members. In various group formations, the artists Patricia Rodriguez (b. 1944), Graciela Carrillo (b. 1950), Consuelo Méndez (b. 1952) and Irene Pérez (b. 1950) painted a number of large-scale murals in San Francisco, including an untitled mural in Balmy Alley (1972); Latino America (1974); Para el Mercado (1974); and Fantasy World for Children (1975) (Figure 3). While scholars and curators have shown strong interest in the group’s murals, they have not yet accorded the book illustrations the same attention.62
Rohmer and Anchondo approached the Mujeres Muralistas to illustrate their books when the artists were at the height of their joint mural making. Rohmer first published Rodriguez’s The Magic Boys (1975), then Carrillo’s How We Came to the Fifth World (1976), Méndez’s Atariba & Niguayona (1976) and Pérez’s Cuna Song (1976).63 What Rohmer and Anchondo initiated as an entirely female, and partly fem- inist, venture into publishing books for children soon expanded to incorporate the work of male artists, too. After recruiting the Mujeres Muralistas, Rohmer and Anchondo reached out to other muralists in the community, including Carlos Loarca, Mike Rios, Richard Montez and many others.64
The Mujeres Muralistas murals exemplified the kind of visual storytelling Rohmer and Anchondo sought to incorporate into their books. For instance, Fantasy World for Children (Figure 3), painted by Rodriguez, Carrillo and Pérez in the 24th Street Mini Park (the same park where Rios and Montez later painted their image of Quetzalcoatl), offered a dramatic visual narrative. The mural featured a glorious tropical jungle full of lush plants, people and animals, all living harmoniously at the base of a waterfall. The unusual selection of animals
346 Cordova
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
– including a dinosaur, cheetah, peacock, turtle and flamingos – demonstrated the mural’s “fantasy.” Trouble appeared in the distance in the form of an erupting volcano. Red lava spilled from the top of the volcano, but stopped against the swirling cold breath of a god in
Figure 3. The Mujeres Muralistas (Graciela Carrillo, Irene Pérez and Patricia Rodriguez), Fantasy World for Chil- dren, wall mural, 20 × 40 feet (6 × 12 meters), 24th Street Mini-Park, San Francisco, California, 1975. Photograph by Patricia Rodriguez. Image courtesy of Patricia Rodriguez and the archive of Tim Drescher.
Portable Murals 347
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
a regal headdress, who overlooked the land and saved it from destruction. On the other side of the volcano, the artists depicted an inscrutable sun goddess, who gazed off into the dis- tance, seemingly oblivious to the potential disaster. The mural had a mythical iconography, an image of a paradise in trouble, yet saved. Viewers could easily interpret the narrative of this scene, and perhaps even imagine some backstory for the people or animals in the fore- ground. The muralists added various enigmatic details, such as two young boys carrying an enormous snake wound around a stick, or the image of a small monkey looking out directly at the viewer, all to inspire imagination and encourage creative storytelling for the children visiting the Mini Park.
Similarly, the first books from Children’s Book Press drew together images of in- digenous gods, brown people, magical animals, sacred spaces and material culture rich in symbols, such as traditional textiles, carvings and gold treasures. Unlike the murals, the books were not collaborative (apart from working with Rohmer and the book designer Robin Cherin), so they more visibly demonstrated the individual styles of each artist. Carrillo’s work appeared the most abstract, drawing together images more akin to collages than storybook scenes (Figures 4 and 5). Pérez
Figure 4. Graciela Carrillo, illustration of the end of the second world for How We Came to the Fifth World, Mylar color printing, 9 × 8 inches (23 × 20 cm). Book authored by Harriet Rohmer and Mary Anchondo, Children’s Book Press, 1976.
348 Cordova
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
instead added many decorative elements to the text, such as fish, bubbles and swirling sea plants, while the other three tended to keep the text visually segregated from the illustrations. Both Pérez and Rodriguez leaned towards drawing smaller-scale human figures. Rodriguez depicted her characters from head to foot in bi-dimensional set- tings with minimal detail devoid of shadow, while Méndez incorporated dramatic portraiture. For instance, in Atariba & Niguayona, Méndez portrayed startling close-ups of her characters, their brown faces covered with face paint, their sizable black eyes looking directly at the viewers, and their overarching eyebrows transition- ing into noses with large nostrils and full lips (Figure 6). She shifted back and forth between these portraits and fabulously elaborate scenes, such as her image of Atariba and Niguayona in dense jungle, surrounded by giant parrots, toucans, and iguanas, or her representation of the village healer’s hut (Figure 7). The dramatic differences between these illustrations underscored the intense collaboration these artists needed to achieve a cohesive mural.
The books demonstrated stylistic differences, but the technique of the printing process also enforced a specific approach. As a whole, the process prohibited blending
Figure 5. Graciela Carrillo, illustration of Chalchiuhtlicue for How We Came to the Fifth World, Mylar color printing, 9 × 8 inches (23 × 20 cm). Book authored by Harriet Rohmer and Mary Anchondo, Children’s Book Press, 1976.
Portable Murals 349
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
or bleeding of colors as that was more expensive. Rohmer adopted a “Mylar Color” printing process in her first 10 books because of its affordability, but this technique was very labor intensive, much like print making. The “Mylar Color” method required the artists and the book designer to use a layer of clear or frosted polyethylene plastic Mylar film cutouts, available in primary colors – yellow, red, blue and black – or overlap the Mylar to create a blended color (e.g. blue and red make purple; yellow and red make orange). The printer then used the Mylar cutouts to make the key black plate, along with three primary color plates. By pressing each plate from lightest to darkest color, the printer could “trap,” or overlap colors to create color variations. Occasionally, the color blocks are offset from their outlines, reflective of the capacity of the Mylar or plates to shift in position.65 All of the Fifth World Tales featured artwork with clearly outlined forms and borders, which is certainly common in murals, and perhaps also a product of the printing technology rather than a shared conscious aes- thetic choice. Similarly, all of the books featured the hand lettering of artist Roger Reyes because at the time setting type was so expensive. Anchondo also described how Reyes’s lettering in The Magic Boys replicated the style of Maya Quiche codices, a point that emphasized the attention to detail given to each of these books.
Figure 6. Consuelo Méndez, illustration of Atariba for Atariba & Niguayona, Mylar color printing, 9 × 8 inches (23 × 20 cm). Book authored by Harriet Rohmer and Jesús Guerrero Rea, Children’s Book Press, 1976.
350 Cordova
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
Rohmer grouped the books under the title, “Fifth World Tales/Cuentos del Quinto Mundo,” because the term linked the present with the Aztec past. According to the nar- rative of How We Came to the Fifth World, contemporary society takes place in the fifth world because the gods of water, air, fire and earth destroyed the four previous worlds. The current fifth world promised the most stability because the gods shared its rule, but as Rohmer wrote in her postscript, “this world too is doomed to destruction by earth- quakes and famine unless a way can be found to banish evil from the hearts of all hu- manity.”66 The parable taught that those who misbehave will bring destruction, while those who enable goodness will save the world. Like much children’s literature, the stories are intentionally terrifying, but usually punishment only came to those who acted in a cruel or greedy manner.
The darkness and violence of many of these early stories was a far cry from Eloise – and in that way, perhaps did seem “more relevant” to children living in the margins. Many of these books displayed fearsome events. For instance, in Skyworld Woman, Roger Reyes illustrated a goddess splitting her child in half and then restoring life to each half of his body. This story from the Philippines seemed an outlier in a group
Figure 7. Consuelo Méndez, illustration of the bohique’s hut for Atariba & Niguayona, Mylar color printing, 9 × 8 inches (23 × 20 cm). Book authored by Harriet Rohmer and Jesús Guerrero Rea, Children’s Book Press, 1976.
Portable Murals 351
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
of books from Latin America, but made more sense as a product of Filipino families in Anchondo’s classroom. Anchondo also linked the publication of this story to the eth- nicity of Reyes, the artist for this book and letterer for all the books. She recalled, “He was young, he was also Filipino. That’s why I did a Filipino thing. ’Cause I liked him a lot. He would show me the pictures and I would tell him … .”67 Her recollection sug- gests that Anchondo maintained a hand in the production process, even if Rohmer took the lead.
While the books appeared rapidly within three years of each other, Anchondo had been working with the stories for several years, continuously drafting and redrafting in conversation with many other people, and assembling an array of research materials. She described the process of adapting these stories in more detail in her 1977 report:
The children retold the stories at home and parents came to class to ask about the stories or add to them. Grandparents and volunteers asked to hear the stories. I encouraged the people of our Head Start program to talk about legends they remembered from their childhood, and to express opinions on the accuracy with which their mythical traditions were interpreted. The importance of these contacts with adults cannot be overstated. These adults are the generation that hands down myths and legends to a new gen- eration in a new country.68
Anchondo worked with the children to create puppet shows and drawings. She collect- ed material culture for her classroom that reflected the narratives, and developed an expansive collection of masks from Latin America. Anchondo offered up these images and material culture as inspiration for the artists.69
Like Anchondo and Rohmer, the artists also turned to archival sources and historic material culture for their art. As Rodriguez, a Chicana originally from Marfa, Texas, stated:
when you do a mural, it isn’t just for the artists, it’s for the community, it’s a voice. Therefore, who lives here? Well, it’s all the Central Americans, all these Latinos from Nicaragua, from Bolivia, from Peru, so well, let’s talk to them. How can we talk to them? Well, we have to do research. We spent a lot of time – that was why we went to school. We were using our schooling, but to educate ourselves and to bring it back to the community and to do some- thing for our community.70
Perhaps not surprisingly, the artists applied a similar method of research to their work for Children’s Book Press, pairing classic images from the indigenous history of Latin America with contemporary street art.
Rohmer specifically sought to hire artists whom she believed grew up with the stories that formed the content of her books. Referring to her process of interviewing community members to obtain the most authentic retellings of the legends she had se- lected, Rohmer explained:
once I had the text that I felt was valid, and that had been validated by the closest thing that I could find, living descendants of the people who might have told these stories hundreds of years ago – [who] still do tell these
352 Cordova
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
stories – and I think that a number of the muralistas felt that they were also descended from the same tradition. And so, it was a natural pairing. Much more natural than, say, commercial illustrators.71
Rohmer accorded the muralists an innate familiarity with the material, recruit- ing members of the Latino community because of their authentic ties to the literary content. However, the visual content of their work was not so much a product of native informants as it was an agglomeration of trained aesthetics and research.
Carrillo’s work exemplified the artists’ capacity to transform classic images into modernist representations. In the Press’s 1976 book How We Came to the Fifth World, Carrillo crafted familiar yet unique images of Aztec gods to tell the classic story of five worlds. Her representation of the fourth world earth goddess, traditionally known as Chalchiuhtlicue, bore a strong resemblance to a stone statue of a kneeling Chalchiuhtlicue (AD 1325–1521) in the collection of the British Museum (Figures 5 and 8).72 While both images showed a figure kneeling with her hands on her lap, her hair divided into two tassels, and a traditional shawl with tassels, Carrillo also took the opportunity to color this deity and encircle her in a ring of hands. Carrillo’s portrait of the goddess is a flattened, color-separated mural image of the stone sculp- ture. The resemblance to the stone statue is evidence of the artist’s efforts to draw on historic visual culture and simultaneously transform the figure through painterly abstraction.
Similarly, in her illustration of the end of the second world, Carrillo brought to- gether multiple layers of the story (Figure 4). Her central image of Quetzalcoatl is ab- stract, yet draws on popular images of this famous Aztec god found in the codices and other statuary. Her images of the jaguars on either corner, both likely references to Quetzalcoatl’s nemesis, Tezcatlipoca, shared more than a little similarity to Aztec rep- resentations found in the codices. The jaguar on the left appeared simple, yet his form, especially in terms of the placement of his paws, echoed a depiction of Tepeyollotl, the thunder-jaguar, also known as a manifestation of Tezcatlipoca found in the Codex Tell- eriano-Remensis (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris). In addition, the jaguar in the bottom right corner bore a remarkable similarity to a famous Aztec vessel in the collection of Mexico City’s Museum of Anthropology.
Most, if not all of the other artists for Children’s Book Press engaged in this tech- nique of reproducing antiquities in a contemporary way. For instance, Méndez provid- ed detailed images of Taino religious statuary in her representation of a bohique’s (healer’s) hut in Atariba & Niguayona (Figure 7). On a stone bench in the background, she gave ample attention to a carved image of a volcanic figure with an elongated face. Rohmer stated in the book’s endnotes that this triangular statue, often referred to as a “zemi,” popularly symbolized the Caribbean god Yucaju (or Yucahu). Whether this statue can be determined to represent Yucaju definitively may not be known, but it seems likely that Méndez drew visual inspiration for the image from the Puerto Rican antiquities collection of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. Her image is an exact replica of a prehistoric statue collected and donated by George Latimer (1803–74), a shipping merchant who later served as US consul-general in
Portable Murals 353
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
Puerto Rico for many years. Latimer bequeathed a substantial collection of objects from his travels around the island and elsewhere to the Smithsonian in the late nineteenth century.73 This small but significant detail served to authenticate, radiate and encour- age familiarity with Taino culture. Mendez incorporated many such details, displaying
Figure 8. Chalchiuhtlicue, Aztec stone statue, possibly granite, 7 inches wide by 12 inches high (18 × 30 cm), c. 1325–1521. Collection of the British Museum. Photograph provided by the Trustees of the British Museum/ Art Resource, NY.
354 Cordova
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
careful attention to clothing, jewelry, face paint and animals that, as a whole, blur the line between imaginary and authentic material culture.
As these examples show, the Mujeres Muralistas relied heavily on documentary photography, archeological excavations of ancient ruins, diasporic material culture and previous artistic representations to create their illustrations. While Anchondo and Rohmer adapted these stories from classic folklore and archival materials, many dating back hundreds, and even thousands of years, the accompanying illustrations also show how the artists crafted their images in terms of old and new iconography. The artists must have found these commissions challenging, as their patrons sought something historically accurate, but also shaped by their own creative vision.
As a whole, Rohmer provided an unusual form of patronage for her muralists. She gave them stories to illustrate, and they provided the illustrations. Artists needed finan- cial stability but they also believed in the project: to repurpose ancient images and reach out to children in the fight against cultural oppression. The job of the artists was not merely to illustrate the texts, but to go into the schools and teach the children about the stories and their images. The texts combined the aesthetic ambitions of the artists with the ideological ambitions of their publisher, Harriet Rohmer, who occupied the complicated role of arts patron, content provider and visionary publisher.
None of the artists Rohmer selected for this project ever limited themselves solely to making murals, but experimented with a variety of art forms, including fine art painting, poster making, wood cuts, installation and assemblage. Creating children’s book illustrations easily fit within a culture of artistic experimentation, plus the work offered a financial reward that, albeit small, made it more appealing. While the artists could view their work for Children’s Book Press as a paid adventure into a new art form, these first 10 books also reflect their shared experience as a community of muralists in the Mission District. The relatively low-key profile of these books in the field of children’s literature obscures the ways that Children’s Book Press provided a real form of employment for rising Latino artists and generated one of the few portable and lasting representations of the community mural movement (aside from documen- tary photography). Browsing through these books, the reader can imagine traveling through certain parks and streets in 1970s San Francisco, especially in the Mission. There are undoubtedly key differences between the murals and the illustrations. Most obviously, Rohmer assigned the narrative content to the artists, who then partic- ipated in a very different process of collaboration and production. Thus, these books are not exact duplications, but small likenesses, serving as provocative textual compan- ions to the art depicted on city walls.
Looking Back on Children’s Book Press
When Rohmer first searched for support for her publishing venture, she encountered significant resistance. As she recounted, “They asked, ‘Who is going to read these books? We do not have children like that here, and children like that do not buy books. You will never find a market’.”74 Rohmer’s success with Children’s Book Press proved that a market for ethnically diverse books existed.
Portable Murals 355
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
Rohmer drew on San Francisco’s Mission District as a site of inspiration for her Fifth World Tales. As Rohmer stated, “I don’t think Children’s Book Press could have been born anywhere else.”75 There is perhaps a touch of irony in this statement, as indeed, these first books evolved very much out of the culture of the children, parents, teachers, academics and artists of San Francisco’s Latino Mission District. Her efforts to publish these first books propelled Mission District muralists into prac- ticing another art form. Her books facilitated another way for these murals to exist, en- abling the work to survive rapid urban change and travel widely.
Since the 1970s, many city murals have been repainted or destroyed, but this first set of books still offers a provocative reflection of San Francisco’s community mural movement, as well as delivers a window onto social change in children’s literature and education. Understanding the cultural significance of these books requires ac- knowledging that they were used as more than reading tools; they were instrument for cultural workers to offer a counter-narrative and propel social change in the schools.
Not unlike the San Francisco mural movement, these books sought to connect with disenfranchised children and their families and to foster ethnic pride, awareness and social criticism. Anchondo described how students in her classroom felt kinship with these stories:
They had heard them, you know, somehow or other. I don’t know who had told them so. But kids that were from the country from where we were telling the story would tell the other kids to shut up. They wanted to listen.76
Of course, this initial set of publications also was quite removed from the everyday lives of children in the Mission. For instance, Rohmer and Anchondo’s decision to prioritize ancient folklore thrust the focus of all of the stories onto Latin America, not the US urban life that Latino and Latina children experienced. Moreover, the potential roman- ticization of the indigenous past skirted the responsibility of Latinas and Latinos in the oppression of indigenous peoples.
The publication of Fifth World Tales bore some similarities to the Chicano Move- ment’s complicated appropriation of indigenous histories. Shifra Goldman and Tomás Ybarra-Frausto wrote:
the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pyramids; Aztec or Maya princes, princesses, and warriors; elitist religious symbols; and adaptations of monu- mental sculptures and temple paintings that permeated Chicano visual arts in all media and techniques are sufficient testimony to this preoccupation with the indigenous past.77
The emphasis on a shared mestizaje, mixed ancestries, between Chicanas, Chicanos and Natives facilitated expressions of solidarity, but also obscured ancestral complicity in Spanish and Latin American colonialism and genocide.
The Fifth World Tales similarly emphasized the indigenous past. The books incor- porated stories attributed to the Aymara of Bolivia, the Yaghan of Chile, the Chibcha of Colombia, the Maya of Guatemala, the Aztec of Mexico, the Cuna of Panama, the
356 Cordova
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
Kiangan Ifugao of the Philippines and the Taíno of Puerto Rico. The Treasure of Gua- tavita (1978) is one of the few Fifth World Tales to make open reference to the con- quistadors. Rohmer and Jesús Guerrero Rea adapted the story from a classic Colombian folktale more widely known as The Treasure of El Dorado. Guatemalan artist Carlos Loarca portrayed the Spanish conquistadors as vicious in their quest for the treasure of the Chibcha. The tale gave the upper hand to the Chibcha and the goddess Bachue, who expelled the invaders and retained possession of their treasure. This depiction of the skilled and virtuous Chibcha versus the predatory Spanish soldiers celebrated native resistance and circumvented mestizaje’s complicity in the oppression of indigenous people. However, the story also presented an important counter-narra- tive to the celebratory representations of the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus (1450/1–1506) still pervasive in school curricula.78
Both the stories and the artwork for Children’s Book Press have changed over time, largely in relation to changing social concerns, leadership and economic circumstances. From the start, Latino titles represented the bulk of the Press’s catalogue, but the Press also made an effort to expand and incorporate African American, Asian/Pacific Islander and Native American literature. Authors of its children’s books have included a variety of well-established Latina and Latino writers, including Gloria Anzaldúa (1942–2004), Juan Felipe Herrera (b. 1948), Francisco X. Alarcon (1954–2016) and Manlio Argueta (b. 1935). A large number of stories draw on autobiography, such as Luis Rodriguez (b. 1954) writing about avoiding gang life in It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way: A Barrio Story; Amada Irma Pérez (b. 1951) writing about the difficulties of immigration in My Diary from Here to There; and Gloria Anzaldúa narrating a story of conflict between children born in the United States and a child from Mexico in Friends from the Other Side/ Amigos del Otro Lado. The Press’s Latino focus is not surprising, given its origins and subsequent residence in the Mission. In fact, a few of its later stories draw directly from life experiences in the neighborhood. For instance, Jorge Argueta’s (b. 1961) text, Xochitl and the Flowers/Xóchitl, la Niña de las Flores, illustrated by Carl Angel (b. 1968), parallels the real story of a flower vendor who fought against eviction at the height of the neighborhood’s dot-com boom.
Since its founding, Children’s Book Press publications featured the work of a diverse array of Latina and Latino artists with ties to the San Francisco Bay Area, includ- ing Enrique Chagoya (b. 1953), Anita De Lucio (b. 1972), Daniel Galvez (b. 1953), Carmen Lomas Garza (b. 1948), Maya Gonzalez (b. 1964), Carlos Loarca (b. 1937), Malaquias Montoya (b. 1938) and Xavier Viramontes (b. 1943). Several of these artists have played a significant role in the emergence and strength of the Bay Area’s community mural movement, two have served as directors of the well-established Galería de la Raza (Lomas Garza and Chagoya) and another has figured prominently in Sacramento’s Royal Chicano Air Force (Montoya). Many of the artists have shown their work in key national and international exhibitions, including the “Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation” show of 1990, the Smithsonian’s “Arte Latino” exhibition of 2000 and the “Just Another Poster?” exhibition of 2003.
The Press has not only sought out the illustrations of established artists, but it also has made a space for artists just beginning their careers. While most presses recruit pro- fessional illustrators, Children’s Book Press actively worked against this practice,
Portable Murals 357
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
reaching out to artists who might never have considered children’s book illustrations. For instance, recalling her experience creating the illustrations for Grandma and Me at the Flea: Los Meros Meros Remateros, Anita De Lucio described the work of Children’s Book Press as a kind of “affirmative action for artists.”79
Rohmer retired from the Children’s Book Press in 2001, but the press continued to produce work. In 2010, the Press celebrated its 35th anniversary. However, in 2011, economic circumstances were so difficult that the Press ceased operations and sold its inventory to Lee and Low, a New York publisher. Lee and Low is very much a de- scendant of Children’s Book Press, as it specializes in stories of diversity for children of color, although it is not a non-profit organization. The impact of the book catalogue’s transfer to a New York firm is still to be determined, but 2011 marked the end of an outstanding run. Like many non-profit organizations, Children’s Book Press could not survive an economic downturn without substantial support.
Children’s Book Press has been largely ignored by art historians and literary scholars alike. Similarly, children’s book illustrations are rarely featured in Latina and Latino art exhibitions, leading this work to vanish from some of the more mean- ingful examinations of Latina and Latino visual culture. The militant orientation and artistic contributions of this non-profit organization are easily missed, owing to its focus on children. Its reach has been widespread, not simply through its continued productivity but also by the emergence of many other presses that have emulated its ideological approach and aesthetic style. Undoubtedly, Children’s Book Press pro- vided a meaningful space for Latina and Latino visual artists and writers to share their work outside of the traditional art galleries, museums and cultural centers. In fact, because of their broader diffusion, its published images have reached a much wider, and more diverse audience than the contemporary art shown in local galleries, major museums and art catalogues. One thing is certain: in the process of creating literature for children, Children’s Book Press became a significant, even if largely un- acknowledged, patron of the arts.
Disclosure Statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
CARY CORDOVA is Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies and an affiliate of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in Latina/o cultural production, including art, music and poetry. She is the author of The Heart of the Mission: Latino Art and Politics in San Francisco, due out in spring 2017, with the University of Pennsylvania Press.
1 Harriet Rohmer and Mary Anchondo, The Mighty God Viracocha/El Dios Poderoso Viracocha, with illustrations by Mike Rios and Richard Montez (San Francisco, CA: Children’s Book Press/Imprenta de Libros Infantiles, 1976).
2 Referring to the Gate of the Sun, Laurie Schneider Adams wrote, “It is the most recognizable monument at Tiwanaku,” in World Views: Topics in Non-Western Art (New York: McGraw Hill, 2004), 96. Esther Pasztory also analyzes the Gate of the Sun in her book, Pre-Columbian Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 121–3. Adams and Pasztory only referred to the presiding image as a deity, and not as Viracocha specifically. However, other sources
358 Cordova
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
indicated how this frieze image is popularly identified as Viracocha. For instance, Jacqueline Barnitz linked a painted image of Viracocha to the site in her landmark book, Twentieth- Century Art of Latin America. Barnitz explained that the representation of Viracocha in “Triunfo de la naturaleza” [The Triumph of Nature] (1928) by Guzmán de Rojas (1900– 1950) “was based on the low relief carving on the frieze of the monolithic Gate of the Sun in Tiahuanaco near La Paz.” Jacqueline Barnitz, Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2001), 21–2. Whether or not the Gate of the Sun is definitively representing Viracocha, contemporary artists have relied on the iconography of the Gate of the Sun to represent Viracocha.
3 For a history of San Francisco outdoor murals, see Annice Jacoby, ed., Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2009); Alan W. Barnett, Community Murals: The People’s Art (Philadelphia, PA: The Art Alliance Press, 1984); Timothy W. Drescher, San Francisco Murals: Community Creates Its Muse, 1914–1994 (St. Paul, MN: Pogo Press, 1994).
4 Barnett, Community Murals, 14 and 141. 5 Harriet Rohmer, “Founder Harriet Rohmer Honors a Movement,” 35th Anniversary Speech re-
printed on Children’s Book Press website, http://www.childrensbookpress.org/news-events/ blog/archive/20101013/founder–harriet–rohmer–honors–movement (accessed November 3, 2010), now in the collection of the author.
6 Interview with Mary Anchondo by Cary Cordova, June 9, 2016. 7 Ibid.; Interview with Harriet Rohmer, September 26, 2010; Cary Cordova, The Heart of the
Mission: Latino Art and Politics in San Francisco (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming).
8 Herbert Kohl, Should We Burn Babar? Essays on Children’s Literature and the Power of Stories (New York: New Press, 1995); Ariel Dorfman, The Empire’s Old Clothes: What the Lone Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent Heroes Do To Our Minds (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983); Alison Lurie, Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups: Subversive Children’s Literature (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990); Julia Mickenberg, Learning from the Left: Children’s Literature, the Cold War, and Radical Politics in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
9 Nancy Larrick, “The All-White World of Children’s Books,” Saturday Review, September 11, 1965, 63–5.
10 Mickenberg, Learning from the Left, 273–4; Joel Taxel, “The Black Experience in Children’s Fiction: Controversies Surrounding Award Winning Books,” Curriculum Inquiry 16, no. 3 (Autumn 1986): 245–81.
11 Jamie Campbell Naidoo, ed., Celebrating Cuentos: Promoting Latino Children’s Literature and Lit- eracy in Classrooms and Libraries (Santa Barbara: ABC–CLIO, LLC, 2011), 65.
12 Kathleen T. Horning, “The Contributions of Alternative Press Publishers to Multicultural Liter- ature for Children,” Library Trends 41, no. 3 (Winter 1993): 524.
13 J.Y. Smith, “Ben D. Dorfman, Was Chairman of US Trade Agency, Dead at 83,” Washington Post, October 4, 1985.
14 “Harriet Dorfman Wed,” New York Times, May 18, 1961, 32. 15 Caroline Frick discusses the role of UNESCO in global film preservation in Saving Cinema: The
Politics of Preservation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 87–117. Frick also describes how UNESCO’s approach changed dramatically from the 1950s to the ’80s: “from advocating for the exchange of information relating to Western notions of culture, art, and science, UNESCO moved to development agendas celebrating global heritage.” This quote originally appears in UNESCO on the Eve of its Fortieth Anniversary (Paris: UNESCO, 1985), 15, as well as in Frick, 97. On dialogues about decolonization, see Raymond F. Betts, Decolonization, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004); Prasenjit Duara, ed., Decolonization: Perspectives Now and Then (New York: Routledge, 2004); M.E. Chamberlain, Decolonization: The Fall of the European Empires, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999); Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1996).
Portable Murals 359
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
16 Cordova, Interview with Harriet Rohmer. Rohmer was an intern with the African Documentary Film Unit at UNESCO in 1960. Rohmer, “Founder Harriet Rohmer Honors a Movement.”
17 “Harriet Dorfman Wed,” 32. 18 Cordova, Interview with Harriet Rohmer. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Kay Thompson, already a celebrity for her turns as a dancer and performer on stage and screen,
published her first book Eloise with Simon & Schuster in 1955. Hilary Knight’s accompanying illustrations portrayed Eloise as a girl with flyaway hair, disheveled clothing and a messy room. Young readers thrilled to the cheeky rebelliousness of a six-year-old girl who lived at the Plaza, ordered room service and ran around the hotel with limited supervision and oblivious to decorum. Subtitled inside as “A Book for Precocious Grown-Ups,” Thompson’s dry, satiric wit also played to adult readers with subversive references to martinis, Coco Chanel and AT&T stocks. As Marie Brenner wrote, “Eloise gave me permission to rebel.” The book became an immediate bestseller, launching three sequels, a fashion line, dolls, toys and “a special room at the Plaza where one could pick up a telephone and hear the voice of Eloise, high-pitched and childlike.” See Marie Brenner, “The Story of Eloise,” in Kay Thompson’s Abso- lutely Essential Eloise (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 68–76. See also Sam Irvin, Kay Thompson: From Funny Face to Eloise (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010).
23 Rohmer quoted in Dan Madigan, “The Politics of Multicultural Literature for Children and Ad- olescents: Combing Perspectives and Conversations,” Language Arts 70, no. 3 (March 1993): 168–76 (172). For other instances of Rohmer using the Eloise story to explain the origins of the Press, see also Annie Nakao, “Lost Heroes Battle Stereotypes through Bilingual Picture Books,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 19, 2003; “Q&A: Harriet Rohmer,” School Library Journal (July 2001): 17; and she also described this story’s influence in her interview with the author.
24 Cordova, Interview with Harriet Rohmer. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 William Fenton wrote widely on the Haudenosaunee, using their English name, the Iroquois. His
writings are expansive, earning him the nickname “Dean of Iroquois Studies,” but some of his highest profile work is collected in his book William Fenton: Selected Writings (Lincoln, NE: Uni- versity of Nebraska Press, 2009).
28 John K. Chance, “Mesoamerica’s Ethnographic Past,” Ethnohistory 43, no. 3 (Summer 1996): 379–403 (379–80). See also Fred W. Voget, “Anthropological Theory and Iroquois Ethnography: 1850 to 1970,” in Extending the Rafters: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Iroquois Studies, ed. Michael K. Foster, Jack Campisi and Marianne Mithun (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1984), 343–57 (on upstreaming, see 347–9).
29 Cordova, Interview with Harriet Rohmer. 30 Scholar Theresa McCarthy delivered a persuasive critique of William Fenton’s oeuvre and the
ways he and other researchers integrated colonialist expectations into their research. Of Fenton, McCarthy wrote, “His historical upstreaming approach was based on the premise that modern expressions of Haudenosaunee tradition must have had an historical antecedent in the early written records about the Iroquois to be valid … . His methodology was based on the assumption that nothing changes and that tradition is static and immutable. Simpson calls this practice ‘an authenticating research loop,’ which assumes that an authoritative non-In- digenous text trumps living Haudenosaunee expertise.” See Theresa McCarthy, In Divided Unity: Haudenosaunee Reclamation at Grand River (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2016), 60– 72 (65).
31 Rohmer, “Founder Harriet Rohmer Honors a Movement.”
360 Cordova
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
32 Cordova, Interview with Mary Anchondo. The Trinity Methodist Church at 2299 Market Street was destroyed in a fire in 1981. “Fire Destroys Historic Church,” Reno Gazette-Journal, October 12, 1981, 11.
33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Mary Anchondo, “The Magic Boys: The Development of a Children’s Book to Enhance Bilin-
gualism and Encourage Cultural Identity in Young Children” (Master’s report, Lone Mountain College, 1977).
36 Cordova, Interview with Mary Anchondo. 37 Ibid.; Anchondo, “The Magic Boys,” 23–5. 38 Anchondo, “The Magic Boys,” 28. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid., 9. 42 Cordova, Interview with Mary Anchondo. 43 Anchondo, “The Magic Boys,” 28 and 35; Cordova, Interview with Mary Anchondo. 44 Cordova, Interview with Harriet Rohmer. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 Judith Bentley, Busing: The Continuing Controversy (New York: Franklin Watts, 1982), 11. 48 Ibid., 10. 49 David Kirp, Just Schools: The Idea of Racial Equality in American Education (Berkeley, CA: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1982), 84, 108. On white flight, see Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
50 “SFUSD Enrollment 1967–2012F (11–10–2012),” RPA (Research, Planning & Accountability) Data Center, San Francisco Unified School District, http://web.sfusd.edu/Services/research_ public/rpa_student_enrollment/Forms/AllItems.aspx (accessed February 5, 2016). Charles Wol- lenberg cites similar statistics in All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855–1975 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978), 160.
51 Kirp, Just Schools, 89. 52 Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed, 160–63; Lilian B. Rubin, Busing and Backlash: White against
White in an Urban School District (Berkeley, CA: UC Press, 1972), 201–2. 53 Kirp, Just Schools, 111. 54 Ibid., 82; David Kirp, “Race, Politics, and the Courts: School Desegregation in San Francisco,”
Harvard Educational Review 46, no. 4 (November 1976): 572–611 (573); William G. Howell, Be- sieged: School Boards and the Future of Education Politics (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005), 105–7.
55 Kirp, “Race, Politics, and the Courts,” 604; Rosemary C. Salomone, True American: Language, Identity, and the Education of Immigrant Children (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 119–75.
56 Engel v. Vitale (1962), and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963). 57 An exhibit on Children’s Book Press at the San Francisco Public Library stated that Rohmer re-
ceived $69,000 to start the Press. “Creating Change through Words and Pictures: Children’s Book Press 35th Anniversary Event and Exhibit,” September 2010. In an interview with Rohmer, she recalled a print run of 3000 for each book. Cordova, Interview with Harriet Rohmer.
58 There are a few exceptions. For instance, there is one recent traveling exhibition of contemporary Latino-themed children’s books worth noting: Latino Folk Tales: Cuentos Populares Art by Latino Artists, curated by Sylvia Nissley, March 26–June 9, 2013, the Carle Museum, Amherst, MA. In addition, the Association for Library Service to Children, which grants many awards, including the Caldecott and Newberry Medals, created the Pura Belpré award in 1996, to honor a Latina/o writer and illustrator.
Portable Murals 361
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
59 Cordova, Interview with Mary Anchondo. 60 Cordova, Interview with Harriet Rohmer. 61 Ibid. 62 See Maria Ochoa, Creative Collectives: Chicana Painters Working in Community (Albuquerque,
NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2003), 33–58; Terezita Romo, “A Collective History: Las Mujeres Muralistas,” in Art/Women/California: Parallels and Intersections, 1950–2000, ed. Diana Burgess Fuller and Daniela Salvioni (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 177–86; and Cary Cordova, “Hombres y Mujeres Muralistas on a Mission: Painting Latino Identities in 1970s San Francisco,” Latino Studies 4, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 356–80.
63 Harriet Rohmer and Mary Anchondo, The Magic Boys (San Francisco: Children’s Book Press, 1975); Harriet Rohmer and Mary Anchondo, How We Came to the Fifth World (San Francisco: Children’s Book Press, 1976); Harriet Rohmer and Jesús Guerrero Rea, Atariba & Niguayona (San Francisco: Children’s Book Press, 1976); and Harriet Rohmer and Jesús Guerrero Rea, Cuna Song (San Francisco: Children’s Book Press, 1976).
64 Cordova, Interview with Harriet Rohmer. 65 On Mylar printing techniques, I consulted Dwight Pogue, Printmaking Revolution (New York:
Watson-Guptill Publications, 2012), esp. 180; Nick Paparone and Jamie Dillon with Luren Enison, Print Liberation: The Screen Printing Primer (Cincinnati, OH: F+W Publications, 2008), 66.
66 Text is from the back cover of How We Came to the Fifth World/Cómo vinimos al Quinto mundo, adapted by Harriet Rohmer and Mary Anchondo, illustrated by Graciela Carrillo (San Francisco, CA: Children’s Book Press, 1976). Rohmer signed her name to this description of the fifth world.
67 Cordova, Interview with Mary Anchondo. 68 Anchondo, “The Magic Boys,” 25. 69 Ibid. Interview with Mary Anchondo. 70 Interview with Patricia Rodriguez by Cary Cordova, March 27, 2003. 71 Cordova, Interview with Harriet Rohmer. 72 “Stone Kneeling Figure of Chalchiuhtlicue,” collection of the British Museum, http://www.
britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aoa/s/figure_of_chalchiuhtlicue.aspx (accessed September 1, 2015).
73 In 1907, Jesse Walter Fewkes wrote on the variable significance of these “three-pointed stone” figures and on the George Latimer Collection in The Aborigines of Porto Rico and Neighboring Islands (New York: Johnson Reprint Corp, 1970). This book included a plate image (XLVI) of the three-pointed stone statue that Méndez reproduced on page 2 of Atariba & Niguayona. The original statue measures three inches in length. A reproduction of the statue also appeared in Thomas Athol Joyce’s book, Central American and West Indian Archaeology (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916) (see plate XVII). Otis Tufton Mason offered a brief history of George Latimer in The Latimer Collection of Antiquities from Porto Rico in the National Museum (Wash- ington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1899), 391.
74 Rohmer quoted in Madigan, “The Politics of Multicultural Literature,” 173. 75 Cordova, Interview with Harriet Rohmer. 76 Cordova, Interview with Mary Anchondo. 77 Shifra M. Goldman and Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, “The Political and Social Contexts of Chicano
Art,” in Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965–1985, ed. Richard Griswold del Castillo, Teresa Mckenna and Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano (Los Angeles, CA: Wight Art Gallery, 1991), 88.
78 James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbooks Got Wrong, 10th anniversary ed. (New York: The New Press, 2007).
79 Author’s telephone call with Anita De Lucio, September 14, 2010.
362 Cordova
D ow
nl oa
de d
by [
U ni
ve rs
it y
of T
ex as
L ib
ra ri
es ]
at 1
3: 50
1 8
S ep
te m
be r
20 17
- Abstract
- A Start-Up in the Mission
- Changing the School Curriculum
- Visualizing Social Change: The Ancient Iconographies of Children’s Book Press
- Looking Back on Children’s Book Press
- Disclosure Statement
- fngroup
