Lucha Corpi Oral History Interview

Amanda Belantara: Today I'm speaking with Lucha Corpi, author, scholar, and former staff at the Chicano Studies Library at the University of California, Berkeley. The interview was conducted for Bibliopolítica, a digital history of the Chicano Studies Library. The interview took place in the Ethnic Studies Changemaker Podcast Studio on September 14th, 2023. Engineered and recorded by Angelica Garcia, the interviewer is Amanda Belantara.

Amanda Belantara: Could you start off, Lucha, by telling us a bit about yourself, where you grew up, and what you studied, and the kind of work you do?

Lucha Corpi: Well, actually I was born in Jáltipan, Veracruz, in the jungles of Veracruz. I'm a jungle baby! From there I went to school, I started school, you know, I live in a very, very, very small town, but it was very alive, you know, and like Veracruz can be. You know, my father would ask me to read part of the newspaper, news, you know, because I was learning to read very fast, and nobody asked me to, you know, I wasn't pushed to go to school, you know, I was very young. He would choose the noticias that I could read, but I always managed finding that newspaper and reading all kinds of stuff. I think that's where my love for the mystery, the crime story, was born, through the newspaper because there were all kinds of things going on. Somebody had killed somebody, somebody had, you know, killed the man who was visiting his wife, or, you know, or the wife would go and do something to the woman, the other woman. I mean, it was a small town, and so for me, all of that was just, you know, something I adore, you know, and I think I did it so that nobody would know that I was, and that's how I learned to read and write well, and got a lot of vocabulary of the crime story, which so many years later, decades later, I again felt that continued reading about, you know, crime, the crime, and some people would say, "How can you read that so awful?" It's a story, and if the story is well told, it'll make you shake with fear, it will make you, you know, cover yourself at night when you're reading it, and so move you in many ways, but it is not widely accepted by the literary institutions. So I was kind of off that from the very beginning, and so I don't have any fear to write whatever it is where, you know, crime, nice things, poetry, you know, and so it liberated me from social no-no's, you know, and of course, my dad and my mom had a little hard time with me when I was growing up, but it was worth it.

Amanda Belantara: So you grew up in Vera Cruz, and you're reading all the news stories that capture your imagination as an author, and eventually you wind up here in Berkeley. Could you talk about the energy on campus at the time, and were you involved in the Third World Strike?

Lucha Corpi: Well, first I was secretary to the Oswaldo Asturias, and there was also Eduardo Hernandez, who also became a coordinator of the kind of studies. There were so many, you know, professors. Professor Asturias was also head of teacher training in San Francisco, and so that's how I was hired. I was hired as his secretary, and he was asked when the whole thing of the Third World Strike, and you know, it was over and all of that, he was asked to get the program going for Chicano Studies. And so being his secretary for the other one, that, you know, the teacher training, you know, he just said, he just moved me, and I was doing half for La Raza, but I was working still for the Latino Project. At some point, he said, you know, we need a library. You know, there are a lot of books that are not sold anywhere. You have to start getting them for the students because there wasn't a library that carried books unless you wear Pablo Neruda or something like that. You know, more Latin American writers. What's the name of the other one? Oh, goodness, my head is spinning right now. There were many, many that, you know, were admired, but even those did not have really what they deserved. You know, Carlos Fuentes, all of them, you know. So here come the movement of the Chicanos, and all of a sudden, all of those books had to be in the library. There was a lot written in the communities, you know, all through the Southwest, but they were not available. You know, they were in the little stores, bookstores that sold those books because they loved it. They loved the, you know, and they wanted also, I believe, to save that literature. That was a great, great thing because, of course, you know, as Berkeley was hit with the strike and all of that, and Professor Asturias, because I was still his secretary, said, you know, well, we need to find a space first, and then we're going to order first the books that are being used in class, and then, you know, we'll see, we'll go from there. I was excited to see what kind of books were out there, you know, who was writing what. I started going through catalogs, asking people, you know, calling New Mexico or whatever, where the few writers that we knew of, and then each one of them, I asked them, do you belong to the group? He said, well, some would say, "mmm...me junto con ellos y nos ponemos una cervacita y..." I said, oh, great, that's what I'm looking for, you know. And so I started getting some names of people, you know, in different areas that were writing books, but nobody was paying attention to them. And so that's how we began, but something interesting happened. Well, I mean, kind of feel funny because it will tell you how Berkeley campus was at the time. Everything went, you know, everything goes to the campus like Berkeley at that time. Everybody had to be different, you know, in one way or the other. So it was a hippie movement as well. And so everybody was aiming to do this and that. It was such an incredible energy. Of course, the hippies were dancing, the women barefoot, carrying their babies, like women in Mexico with their rebozos kind of thing. You know, the kids, they were running all over the place. There were lots of pigeons because everybody threw food all over the place. It was a different campus. And so, Professor Asturias got a space on the fifth floor, which we believe the fifth floor of the Dwinelle Hall. Nobody knew there was a fifth floor in Dwinelle Hall. All of a sudden, I walk out of the elevator to take the stairs. And right there, there is a sculpture, I thought at first. And now, the only thing I could see were the eyes moving. There was this man, tall. He was standing there at the corner, exactly where you had to look when you stepped out on the fifth floor of the Dwinelle Hall that nobody knew existed, right? He had, he had covered himself except a little place here and around his nose. He had covered himself, oh, white, naked. So the little, you know what, were also... And he would just stand there. Would not say anything. He was like playing the role of a statue, you know. Sometimes I would say to him, well, how are you doing today? You know, and nothing. I was alone up there. And well, I thought maybe he's my guardian angel. So these were things that were so natural to Berkeley at the time.

Amanda Belantara: One of my questions for you is going to be, how did you come upon the Chicano Studies Library? But it sounds like you were really involved in making it happen in the first place. Is that correct?

Lucha Corpi: I mean, I was in literature to begin with. So books were important to me in a different way than just textbooks. And so we started, "Quinto Sol," Octavio Romano was about, I would say the only press at the time that was publishing books, all Raza, or having to do with issues in that. Herminio Rios, he was a graduate student, but he was also working with Octavio Romano. Jose Arce was really the one that shaped the library.

Amanda Belantara: And how did you come to meet Jose?

Lucha Corpi: I remember him so clearly. We became very good friends. So we could work very well together. I said to him, "This kind of getting books that have never been, I mean, there isn't at the library, there is something maybe about Mexican literature or Latin American literature or the islands, but there isn't really a way to catalog all this." And he said, "I've been thinking the same thing. So why don't we start doing this?" We started manipulating ways to, because Chicano studies was all over the map in terms of literature. And I mean, it could go here or it could go there. And you know, Jose said, "We need a new way of doing this. This is just not going to work." So he started working on it. I was amazed. He was so good. And he was truly the one to shape the library in terms of the different areas. And so I just said, "Go for it, tell me what to do." (laughs) We worked well together because I believe in what he was doing and how he was doing it. And so I was going to help that. And so we did and the library became the library. He came up with a cataloging, because you see, what do you do with the library when the other groups, you had the Asian Americans, you know, they were for the four in Ethnic Studies, the four groups, Asian Americans from where? From China, from Japan, the Philippines. I mean, everything was out there. And by the same, Chicano literature had been developed. At the heart of Chicano literature was different, but the way the thinking around was pretty much Latin American, Mexican. Mexican literature, Carlos Fuentes, Cabo y Paz, all of those were, you know. But then we had already the Chicanos producing literature. They had all the time, but it was more oral or newspaper. And so that's why the library, a good set of periodicals, because that's where the news were, that's where the literature was, that's where the story somebody would tell you, you know. It was exciting. I always, I never, never, never for one second said, oh, I have to go to work, never. Then Herminio came a lot more, but it's still the emphasis was the community. What is going to benefit the community on campus, in Berkeley, in Oakland, in San Francisco. Those were the centers of culture and literature, you know, the mission. I remember that when Arturito, when Guillermo, Arturo's dad and I divorced, he spent the Sundays with his dad. And I would go to the mission every Sunday, you know. And there was always something and someone, you know, just, it was a time of enthusiasm. So there I met Francisco Alarcón, Juan Felipe Herrera. We were all part of that group in the mission. And a poet, we began a different movement over there.

Amanda Belantara: I want to go back to talking a little bit more about the library here, the memories of the library. And so once you walked into this space, was it always called the Chicano Studies Library or was it called a reading room? And can you describe what somebody would see if you were trying to paint a picture of what it was like when you walked in?

Lucha Corpi: Well, there were, as you know, there were four groups, you know, there was the Ethnic Studies Library, there was the Chicano Studies Library, and each had different space. So the space that we got, as always, we were the last ones, right, to be served, was only up there, fifth floor, you know. Nobody knew that, you know. In a way it was nice because nobody would bother you, you know, but on the other hand, it was so solitary. And you never knew who was coming up on that elevator, you know, so you had to, as a woman working alone there, I would have to be very, very careful.

Amanda Belantara: And so in the early days in the space in Dwinelle Hall, was it primarily you and Jose working together in the very beginning?

Lucha Corpi: Well, in the very beginning, very, very, very beginning, I was alone there.

Amanda Belantara: And so you would be there working on building the collection.

Lucha Corpi: I started researching more what was being written. There were so many connections, you know, that to other things happening, other, you know, places. It was really good to have connections with San Francisco, you know, through the Latino project, for example, because Dr. Asturias could, you know, just tell me, well, why don't you talk to someone and make it easy for me to see what kind of books were being read there, what would be good for us, you know, and appropriate for the studies, because that's what was going to serve first. But for example, you know, we needed to order books by Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes, because at the beginning, there wasn't that much being written in that areas, in those areas, in political, people who were political, like Carlos Fuentes and everything. They would tell you they were not, but they were. So those were the books that were being read. Women's literature is a different story. This movement and everything done for it was to benefit the men. That's just it. But there were brave women (laughs) who would not accept that they were just there to do things for the men to excel. And there were the wives that were missing from the picket lines, because they were home, or they went to work to provide the men for that experience and for the good of the Rasa and for the good of their families and all of that. They were the breadwinners. I look at it now and I said, and I feel after having read so much about revolutions here and there and the other place, that that happens. It happened in Cuba. The men, there were some, you know, guerreiras, but it wasn't their wives. (laughs) Their wives were at home, you know, with the children, making it possible.

Amanda Belantara: Well, as you were making possible the growth of this library, which is pretty incredible.

Lucha Corpi: Books were important to people, children's books too.

Amanda Belantara: We noticed just today there was a book compiled by somebody at the Chicano Studies Library in 1973 put together a book, they compiled a book of clippings from a newspaper of children's stories, games and jokes. And that was pretty incredible to see people putting those pieces together.

Lucha Corpi: Yes, because there weren't any books at the time that really, I mean, we could import books from Mexico and Latin America, but here, you had to go to secondhand stores. You know, I remember going to so many of them. Yes, I found a couple of them, you know, for children, you know, their children's literature, you know, some others in the mission, the mission had a very good, yeah, there was always being collected, but there was a center there that did the collection, did a very good job at collecting all that was in the mission. For here, I don't think there were that many books except when they started being the second generation of writers.

Amanda Belantara: So your work as a writer, like your involvement with these poets in the mission, did you bring back some of their works then? Would you collect some of their stories to bring back to the library?

Lucha Corpi: Well, the books were over there and they came through the universities, the campus way of dealing with books, you know, for a different, so, you know, one day I would walk in there and there would be two boxes, you know, of books. And so that was our, you know, tarea for a week or so to, for Jose and myself.

Amanda Belantara: And so what role would you say the library played in supporting the growth of the field and the program at Berkeley?

Lucha Corpi: They were using classes. That was the primary, you know, directive, as they say. You know, it was that there would be books that would back what was being taught. And that meant not just textbooks, not just the books that the professors, you know, had for their courses needed for the students, but also going to that other area, you see, because nothing is isolated from the rest. If you're going to be in a library, you're going to have to deal with different ondas, you know, and so in that, Jose and I were very much alike, you know, we wanted to not just bring, Bless me, Ultima, you know, but we wanted also to explore what had gotten that writer to write this book. What has been, what had been, what books have taught him to love this kind of thing. And so in that, I think that kind of thinking that Jose and I kind of exchanged, you know, and shared was what began to give direction to the library. Because you can't just have the books that go, ra ra ra you have to build a literature, a literature that is already there. So in that, Jose and I work very well. I am always grateful, I always remember him. And then came Herminio to give it form, shape, to extend it, to, you know, work in different ways. And it was, I always remember my time at the library, you know, as a very happy, happy time.

Amanda Belantara: And so what was the atmosphere like inside the space? So it would be you three, you'd be building the collections, they'd be bringing stuff in to show you Jose would be maybe collecting or describing the collections.

Lucha Corpi: You had to go to the fourth floor, elevator. Then you had to walk about two or three stairs. I always, I used to call it the Palomar, you know, because it was like where they, you know, how people build dovecotes and they, coo coo cooo, all of that, you know. In Mexico, at least, you know, that's, that's where my brothers had their Palomas, you know. And, and every home had Palomas that would, you would wake up and, you know, when we were kids, to the coo coo coo the Palomas, you know. And sometimes I think I still, when I probably in a dream return to those years in Mexico, you know, and the Palomas, I hear them. They wake me up, still. -

Amanda Belantara: And so when did you stop being involved with the library? Can you remember what, when you transitioned and did Jose stay on after you left?

Lucha Corpi: Jose continued and Herminio continued. I got my, my degree and well, I had a young, young child and I was divorced by that time. So I had to go get a job. I mean a job, you know, that would maybe not give me such pleasure, but that would put food on the table.

Amanda Belantara: So I just have a couple more questions about the library. What impact do you think the library, working at the library has had on you as a person, writer and community member?

Lucha Corpi: Yes. It was one of the most wonderful times I had on campus and it was a very hard time for me, but was working at the library. At the library. There wasn't one day that I said, oh, I have to go, you know, never, never, you know. And sometimes I would bring my son too and he would have his books there, you know, I would bring him with his books. And I said, well, would you like to, you know, give these books to the, to the library? He would say, maybe when I am seven, mom. I always, I enjoy that. It's so good to be here [at the library].