Letters To The Poet From His Brother by Maceo Montayo

"[W]here does it all come from, Andrés? The images, the words?" Posed early on, the question unleashes a mestizaje-of-a-tome-that is: a book that marries words and image, prose and poem: a hybrid work of art as personal and vulnerable and moving as anything I've read in a long while. This is risky writing." -Francisco Aragón LETTERS TO THE POET FROM HIS BROTHER is hybrid memoir woven between essay, painting, drawing, and poem. A young artist probes his lineage of artists, poets, and cultural activists after the death of his brother, poet Andrés Montoya, and grapples with the cultural legacy of his pioneering Chicano artist father, Malaquias. As he attempts to craft himself into his own image, he questions the ideals of the solitary artist, contemporary Chicano art, the politics of place, and his own memory.