Ron Arias Explained

Ron Arias
Birth Name:Ronald Francis Arias
Birth Date:30 November 1941
Birth Place:Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation:Journalist, author
Nationality:American
Period:1962–present
Genre:Novels, short stories, essays, memoirs
Spouse:[1]
Children:1
Awards: (nominated)

Ronald Francis Arias (born November 30, 1941) is an American former senior writer and correspondent for People magazine and People en Español. He is also a highly regarded author whose novel The Road to Tamazunchale has been recognized as a milestone in Mexican-American literature.[2]

About Arias' fiction anthology, The Wetback and Other Stories (2016), author Paul Theroux writes, "I felt reading these wonderful stories that I was admitted to an adjacent neighborhood, a rich culture that is another world—call it Amexica—both mysterious and magical, that is persuasive through its tenderness. My hope is that Ron Arias continues to write short stories that tell us who we are."[3] [4]

Early life

A Los Angeles native, Arias spent his early years in a neighborhood located between the Los Angeles River and Elysian Park known as Frog Town or Elysian Valley, the allegorical setting for much of his fictional work.[5]

Career

Journalism

Arias' journalism career began in 1962 in Argentina working for the English-language daily newspaper, Buenos Aires Herald. Later, he became a Peace Corps volunteer near Cusco, Peru, contributing to the Christian Science Monitor an eyewitness account of a massacre of farmers by government troops. He also worked for a year on the Daily Journal in Caracas, Venezuela, thereafter publishing as a freelancer to various publications, including The Nation, the Los Angeles Times, Hispanic Link, and Nuestro magazine.[6]

In 1985 Arias began work as a People magazine senior writer with a global beat. His feature byline stories focused on all manner of people in war, famine, hurricanes, earthquakes and other calamities.[7]

Of his time as the magazine's parachute journalist, Arias has said, "On every continent, I covered five wars, famine, earthquakes, hurricanes, all kinds of disasters in Haiti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Australia, Vietnam, Moscow, you name it." His first major disaster article was the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, which he was assigned simply because he was the only staff member fluent in Spanish.[8]

Literary work

Arias' work is influenced by twentieth-century Latin American literature[9] and he has been called "a post-modernist who integrates in his fiction a keen eye for actual Mexican-American experience."[10]

The Road to Tamazunchale

Arias' best known work is the novel The Road to Tamazunchale, for which numerous critical studies exist. The Road to Tamazunchale depicts the last days of Fausto Tejada, an old widower being cared for by his teenage niece in Los Angeles and occasionally visited by the spirit of his dead wife. Fausto spends his final days in a number of fantastic scenarios that suggest magic realism.

Tamazunchale, while a real place, serves here as a metaphorical place, a magical place where wishes come true but that can never really be reached; the real town is never shown in the novel, but is used in the fantastical play that Fausto and his neighbors create called "The Road to Tamazunchale". The novel radically breaks with the tradition of Chicano literature that focuses on learning to understand reality, constructing a Chicano version of history and bringing order to the world. Instead, Arias' protagonist is more a creator of worlds than an interpreter of them.[11]

Chicano Literature: A Reference Guides entry for Arias describes The Road to Tamazunchale as a breakthrough work of Chicano fiction:

A feature film adaptation of The Road to Tamazunchale entitled Fausto's Road is in the works.[12]

The Wetback and Other Stories

According to Arias himself, The Wetback and Other Stories, a collection of short stories inspired by the Mexican-American denizens of the Elysian Valley of his youth, is an attempt to "bridge the white world and the darker Spanish-speaking world":

Gardens of Plenty

In 2024, Arias published Gardens of Plenty, his historical novel about the adventures of Joseph Fields, a teenage orphan who flees the squalor of 16th-century London aboard a British slave ship and finds himself shipwrecked in colonial Mexico.[13]

Personal life

While a student at UCLA, Arias met and quickly married his wife Joan, then working towards her doctorate in Hispanic languages and literature.[14] Their only son is filmmaker Michael Arias, currently residing in Tokyo, Japan.[15]

Arias is an accomplished potter (retiring from People having ignited a previously dormant passion for the fine arts).[16] [17]

Awards and honors

List of works

Fiction

Non-fiction

Notable articles

Bilbiographical Resources

https://faculty.ucmerced.edu/mmartin-rodriguez/index_files/vhAriasRon.htm

See also

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Obituary: Joan M. Arias. Claremon Courier. December 20, 2017. February 23, 2024. claremont-courier.com.
  2. Book: Eliud. Martínez . Ron Arias' The Road to Tamazunchale: Cultural Inheritance and Literary Expression. The Road To Tamazunchale. Arias. Ron. Bilingual Press. Tempe, AZ. 9780916950705. 1987. The Road to Tamazunchale, then is a carefully crafted work which exhibits and places in the service of Chicano literature a large number of artistic resources. For this reason it has been a pacesetter and it marks a new direction for Chicano literature..
  3. Web site: The Wetback and Other Stories by Ron Arias (Peru). peacecorpsworldwide.org. Peace Corps Worldwide. July 15, 2015. October 16, 2016.
  4. News: Hispanic Truths: Ron Arias in conversation with Juan Delgado. August 15, 2018. IECN.
  5. Book: Martinez. Julio A.. Lomeli. Francisco A.. Ron Arias. Gingerich. Willard. July 24, 1985. Chicano Literature: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT. Greenwood Publishing Group. 978-0313236914. registration.
  6. Book: Juan . Bruce-Novoa . Chicano Authors: Inquiry By Interview . University of Texas Press . 1980.
  7. Book: Kessler. Judy. Inside People: The Stories Behind the Stories. registration. Villard Books. 1994.
  8. Web site: Ron Arias: Journalist Teaches Students to Tell Their Stories. California State University, Dominguez Hills. October 11, 2007. Harmon. Joanie. October 16, 2016. csudhnews.com.
  9. http://latinostories.com/Latino_Fiction_and_the_Modernist_Imagination/Latino_fiction_chapter_two_part_one.htm Latino Fiction Literature Analysis Chapter 2 Part 1
  10. http://www.bookrags.com/biography/ronald-francis-arias-dlb/ DLB entry
  11. Luis Leal and Manuel M. Martin-Rodríguez, "Chicano Literature", The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature (eds Roberto González Echevarría and Enrique Pupo-Walker), pg. 573.
  12. Web site: Fausto's Road. IMDbPro. February 16, 2015. October 18, 2016.
  13. Web site: Kirkus Reviews Gardens of Plenty. Kirkus Reviews. Kirkus Media LLC.. June 12, 2024. July 15, 2024.
  14. Web site: Hermosa Beach volunteer breaks it down. June 24, 2014. The Beach Reporter. Gross. Lynne S.. The Beach Reporter. October 16, 2016.
  15. Web site: Ron Arias profile. Red Bird Chapbooks. Red Bird Chapbooks. October 16, 2016.
  16. News: Writer finds new life in his hands - Potter Ron Arias. Easy Reader News. Easy Reader News. November 8, 2012. October 16, 2016.
  17. News: Wheel House. South Bay Magazine. Moon Tide Media. Dawson. Kelly. October 16, 2016.
  18. News: Professor at Craft Hills nominated for book award. The San Bernardino County Sun. November 7, 1975. Leonard Metz. 29. 2016-10-13.
  19. Web site: 100 YEARS OF LATINO LITERATURE. ... 1975 At the University of California at Irvine, writer Alejandro Morales and his colleagues at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese institute the Chicano Literary Prize. The first, second and third prize winner are Ron Arias for The Wetback .... March 6, 2010. latinopia.com. October 13, 2016.
  20. Web site: Bilingual Review/Press books receive awards . April 2004. News You Need To Know. Arizona State University Public Relations. October 13, 2016.
  21. Web site: Awards Winners Announced. June 30, 2004. Los Angeles Press Club . Los Angeles Press Club. October 13, 2016.
  22. Web site: Long-Time Journalist's Story Collection Wins 2016 Peace Corps Award!. August 23, 2017. Arte Público Press . Arte Público Press. October 2, 2017.