So, without further ado, Manuel.
[APPLAUSE]
How's the height and the sound?
Cybele, are we good?
Because Matt and I are the same height.
So you hear me-- you hear me, you'll hear him.
First of all, thank you Ander for all the work
that you've done to get the Prose
Series going for the year.
And everybody at the Poetry Center
for making this such a great event.
I love the fact that we opened up those walls
to show how big we can really get.
[APPLAUSE]
I have been confused for Matt Mendez,
at least, twice since I arrived at the U of A. Twice,
but I'm not complaining.
He is taller.
He is more handsome.
He is better dressed.
He's a Bread Loaf Fellow.
And most important, he's in possession
of a very keen talent and a voice that is all his own.
Chicano writers might look the same to some people
but we certainly don't sound the same.
And I'm here to tell you, though,
that Matt's lineage, if he lets me call it that,
comes right from the seeds planted
by none other than the great Chicano ironist Dagoberto Gilb.
Like Gilb, Matt's first collection, Twitching Heart,
features and honors the complications
of working class lives.
What to wear to court, for example, as if an impression
can be made when it's already too late with the judge.
Where to turn when you're a smart, dreamy kid
like the young Efrén who's bombed out of World history
and he looks to the moon for guidance.
Or how to describe the pain of distance and longing
as the troubled Tomás must do from continents away
in a really magnificent story called Airman.
When you've got nothing but the pen in your hand.
In all of these cases Matt's first collection
reaffirms a central tenet of Chicano literature, which is,
to reflect the most recognizable aspects of life
when everywhere the world doesn't reflect you.
And to allow a book to serve.
To serve as a moment in which those of us who rarely
see ourselves on the page might discover what literature
can be for.
That it can fill a private need to reflect
and, for a lot of us, can enact the urgency of art
at the very crucial stage of literacy.
And I mention this because lineage is as important to me
as it is to Matt.
It is one of the reasons that when I say,
I truly mean it's an honor to introduce him tonight
as a fellow Chicano writer and a peer.
There are others here tonight who taught Matt
and to whom Matt himself would agree
he's in debt to for guidance, and goodwill, and mentorship.
Aurelie, Alison, Elizabeth, Buzz himself.
All of them witnessed him develop
as an undergraduate with promise,
ushered him as a talent through our MFA graduate program,
and they now honor him, all of us, honor him, this time,
as a published writer.
His work is as connected on the page as it is to his dedication
to local literacy causes, to his work in support
of Mexican-American studies at Tucson High--
Thank you, Matt, for that--
and to young writers at Pima Community College.
So on behalf of everyone in the program
I'm delighted and proud to welcome back,
to welcome home, Matt Mendez.
[APPLAUSE]