Scene from the Movie Giant
A long poem that begins with the memory of Giant and moves into the politics of race, segregation, and representation.
Work Information
A single film scene opens onto questions of representation and history.
Using a film fragment as its spark, the book calls up histories of land, race, and silence inside poetry. It is a dense work where criticism and memory meet.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Curbstone Pr
- Published
- 2005-07-30
- Pages
- 55 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 13.97 x 1.02 x 21.34 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781880684122
- ISBN-10
- 1880684128
- Price
- 2221 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Poetry/American
A 14 year-old boy sits in the darkness of the Holiday Theater watching a scene of anti-Mexican racism in a Rock Hudson / Elizabeth Taylore movie. This scene, this memory, is at the heart of Scene from the Movie GIANT, a remarkable book-length poem in five parts by Tino Villanueva. Villanueva excavates the meaning of this scene and in doing so grapples with urgent questions of cultural identity.
Tino Villanueva (born December 11, 1941, San Marcos, Texas) is an American poet and writer.
Reviews
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At the Crossroad of Art, Culture and Manhood
It's not very often that a cultural experience tears open the veneer one has unknowingly grown over one's vulnerabilities and cultural wounds, but Scene From The Movie Giant tells the tale of one such upheaval wrought upon the life and self-examination of a boy almost grown into manhood. Tino Villanueva was 14 years old when he sat in the darkness of a Texas movie theater watching the movie Giant. What he experienced was far more than a movie; call it a cultural earthquake, as he witnessed anti-Mexican racism supposedly offered to highlight and counter its racist cruelties, but still a painful dose of medicine for a boy struggling to understand his own identity in a bicultural community. Scene from the Movie Giant is Villanueva's exquisite portrayal of the havoc that viewing experience wrought in his life and growing understanding of the world around him. As he says in his artful poetry, "By now the day was fading into twilight/and I beginning/not to cast a shadow where I had always been/when I saw/suddenly a boy alone/who had to tear to prove he was…/Something from the movie screen had/dropped into his life, his small shield of faith/no longer with him. Words that cut deep into the human condition. A gem worth reading more than once.
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Eye opener
I attended high school, ran track, and attended the same movie theater as Tino Villanueva. I found his interpretation of this movie to which I had hardly given a second thought fascinating and eye opening. Again, I am reminded how two people who live in the same community can see things so differently and how much we need each other's perspectives. I am thankful to Tino for this poem.
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Had to read for class, was pretty good but repetitive
It’s written well, but it’s not really my thing. Just a book I had to read for class, otherwise I wouldn’t read it
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Tino Villanueva was presented a painful reality when he was fourteen
If we have any sensitivity, at some time in our life we face the environment in which we were born. Tino Villanueva was presented a painful reality when he was fourteen. His ability to take the reader back into his world at that time, both emotionally and visually, is incredible. This moving poetry is for all, including those of us who infrequently experience the genre.