Dancing with Ghosts

the long version

This first critical biography of Arturo Islas (1938-1991) brings to life the complex and overlapping worlds inhabited by the gay Chicano poet, novelist, scholar, and professor. The book considers both the larger questions of Islas's life--his sexuality, racial identification, and political personality--and the events of his everyday existence, from his childhood in the borderlands of El Paso to his adulthood in San Francisco and at Stanford University. Aldama describes Islas's struggle with polio as a child, his near-death experience and ileostomy as a thirty-year-old beginning to explore his queer sexuality in San Francisco in the 1970s, and his fatal struggle with AIDS in the late 1980s. He also explores Islas's coming into the craft of poetry and fiction--his extraordinary struggle to publish his novels, as well as his pivotal role in paving the way for a new generation of Chicano/a scholars and writers. --From publisher description.