After years of being ignored by New York publishers, Arturo Islas was encouraged by the 1990 publication of Migrant Souls by William Morrow, a major eastern firm. His literary success with The Rain God: A Desert Tale (1984), which reached its twelfth printing in 1990, undoubtedly influenced the publication of his second novel. This relative success, however, gave Islas mixed feelings, for he believed that Chicanos are judged by New York publishing firms as a people without a literature. "It's a shame"--Islas said in an interview with Frank Quaratiello--"because there are a lot of talented Chicano writers out there." Aside from its redefinition of an "ethnic" self in a postmodern world, Chicano literature also rescues a collective history from oblivion, and the work of Arturo Islas has become fundamental to the rethinking of the cultural history of the United States.

Arturo Islas was born in El Paso, Texas, on...