(The Computes is Down is at once a celebration of the crys...)
The Computes is Down is at once a celebration of the crystalline and silvery image of the modern city, its advanced technology and economic power, as well as an iconoclastic questioning of the values attendant to this late twentieth century monument of civilization.
(Decade II: an Anniversary Anthology is a select collectio...)
Decade II: an Anniversary Anthology is a select collection from The Americas Review during the decade of 1983-1992, and a celebration of the Twentieth Anniversary of the founding in 1973 of the most important U.S. Hispanic literary magazine. For twenty years RCR/TAR has been a vanguard literary review.
(Marina is a girl with great imagination who loves to drea...)
Marina is a girl with great imagination who loves to dream about the faraway lands that her gradparents left to come to the U.S. Her mind is filled with the stories of Mexico told by her grandfather and the stories of Hawaii told by her grandmother. Through the stories and the pictures of the Hawaiian side of her family, Marina dreams of the beauty of the islands. She admires the dresses worn by her grandmother and her extended family, and she yearns for her very own, full of brilliant colors and dazzling images.
Evangelina Vigil-Piñón is an American poet, children's book author, translator, and television personality. Her work has been published widely, she also is the recipient of prestigious literary awards.
Background
Evangelina was born on November 29, 1949, in San Antonio, Texas, United States. She is the daughter of Juan (a shoe repair shop operator) and Maria Soto (a homemaker; maiden name, Evangelina) Vigil. She is the second child in a family of ten children and grew up speaking both Spanish and English.
Her mother’s family came from Mexico to San Antonio, Texas in the early 1900s. and her father’s family came from the area of Seguin, Texas. In her later childhood, she lived with her maternal grandmother’s extended family and heard her great- uncle tell many stories about life growing up in Parras, Coahuila, Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution and about the struggles making a new life in the United States at the turn of the century. According to Elaine Dorough Johnson in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, she learned from her maternal grandmother “to observe and listen for words of wisdom which come only with experience.” Her great-uncle, who was a father figure to her during her teenage years, gave her a sense of independence and self-reliance. Through her mother, who read the San Antonio Light daily, page to page, she developed a love of reading.
She wrote her first poem when she was eight years old, winning third place in a national poetry contest sponsored by Dreamside Ice cream, and her love of music and words intertwined as she grew older; she wrote down the lyrics of her favorite songs, filling in the lines she didn’t know with her own words.
Education
Evangelina was talented in art, and in sixth grade was one of only two-grade school students who attended the Inman Christian Center, a private art school in San Antonio. According to Johnson, she recalled, “The art studio was a wonderful place - I loved the smell of oil paints and inks and art supplies all around, the students’ canvasses on easels.... My teacher’s name was Mrs. Burk. She was the most inspiring teacher I’ve ever known.”
Later, Evangelina attended Prairie View A&M (business administration). She also studied at the University of Houston (English) and received her Bachelor of Arts in 1974. She had graduate studies at St. Mary’s University and the University of Texas-San Antonio in 1977.
In 1978, Vigil-Pinon decided to devote more time to her writing; most of the poems in her collection Thirty An’ Seen a Lot were written between 1976 and 1979, and Node y Nade was published in 1978. Node y Nade is a collection of thirty poems on the topics of sadness, the passage of time, self-knowledge, and communication with others. Johnson wrote, “In spite of the weighty sound of these themes, the poems in this volume are neither ponderous not bitter in tone. In fact, many are characterized by gentleness and a contemplative spirit.” The poems often combine Spanish and English and accurately portray Hispanic dialogue, but their subjects are universal.
Thirty An' Seen a Lot is a collection of poems written during a six-year period in Houston, San Antonio, and
Galveston, where Vigi-Pinon moved in 1981. The poems praise simple pleasures, celebrate the wisdom passed down by elders in the barrio, portray the Hispanic culture, and show her relationship with nature.
She is also a television journalist extensively involved in community affairs with ABC-KTRK TV Channel 13 in Houston, Texas.
Evangelina Vigil-Piñón is mainly known as the author of three books of poetry Nade y Nade, Thirty an’ Seen a Lot, and The Computer Is Down. Her work also appears in national and international journals. Besides, she is the noted editor of the first anthology of U.S. Latina literature, Woman of Her Word: Hispanic Women Write. Notably, Vigil-Piñón is the translator of one of the most influential novels in Mexican American letters, Y no se lo tragó la tierra / And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, by the late Tomás Rivera (1995).
Vigil-Pinon loved living in Galveston, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and told: “If there is one single element that has inspired me the most to write, it has to be the ocean, the sea, the surf, beaches, and breezy umbrella skies.”
Quotations:
“Poetry is the rhythm of time, the ticking of clocks, hearts beating. To me poetry is music. It is the song in our hearts. Life is the dance to that music.”
Membership
Evangelina is a member of National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Hispanic Women in Leadership, Houston Association of Hispanic Media Professionals.
Interests
music
Connections
On February 14, 1983, Evangelina married Mark Anthony Pinon (a musician/artist). They have one child, Marc Antony.
