Description: Estela Portillo Trambley (1926-1998) is a foundational Chicana writer who edited one of the first anthologies of Chicana literature and art in 1973. Chicanas en la literatura y el arte was published by El Grito!: A Journal of Mexican-American Thought and off the press of Quinto Sol Publications. El Grito established the Quinto Sol Literary Prize and published for the first time the major Chicano novels that continue to appear on classroom syllabi and in intellectual discussions. Portillo Trambley was one of the few women to publish in El Grito and to edit an anthology comprised exclusively of Chicana art, poetry, and prose. The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection (UT Austin) contains the Estela Portillo Trambley Papers, with original manuscripts of both published and unpublished material, audio recordings, newspaper clippings, notes, and other ephemera. This lecture presents the Estela Portillo Trambley Papers and the poem, “After Hierarchy,” but it also contemplates the lessons this collection has for Chicana archives and for the Chicana who is at work archiving the literary past.

Bio: Dr. Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán is an Associate Professor in the Department of English where she teaches classes in American Literary Studies and specializes in twentieth-century ethnic, Southwest, and Chicanx studies. She has a book, Gender and Place in Chicana/o Literature, and several other publications in the journals of American Literary Scholarship; Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies; south: a scholarly journal (formerly Southern Literary Journal); Southwestern American Literature; and Western American Literature. Her most current publication is entitled “Chicana Letters: Writing Back, Con Safos,” which appears in the Spring 2024 of Pasados: Recovering History, Imagining Latinidad and forms the basis of this current project.