On publishing: Daniel Chacón

 [...]

"Recognition from the top doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if I'm invited to great ivory tower universities, where white men with patches on their sport-coat elbows stand in line to buy my book and later write papers about the many metaphorical possibilities of my landscapes.

What matters is to be recognized by the kids at Lynn Middle School.

What matters is that right now and for who knows how many years into the future, my book will be on the shelves of their homes, maybe even one of the few books in the house, and even if they don't read it now, even if it sits unopened for many years, it's there, in their homes. Maybe someday when when they're in high school or when they're adults, they'll open the book and release my spirit into their lives.

And I loved that I started my tour at a Middle School with a majority of Chicano students.

It was like the benediction that opens a poetry book.

It was like a blessing, 120 tiny hands on my head and shoulders blessing me for my journey, blessing my new book."


---Daniel Chacón, March 15, 2009

from "Unending Rooms: Book Tour Confessions (A Writer's Reality)"

And here's another interesting post, which references Andrés Montoya and a California Community College where he taught.