University of Wisconsin Press gets into Latino market

New series will focus on Spanish and English co-editions of undiscovered work, both high- and low-brow.

Adriana Lopez -- Críticas, 10/1/2003

Despite the downturn that many university presses have experienced in recent years, Robert Mandel, director of the University of Wisconsin Press, sees great possibilities in a new publishing venture geared toward undiscovered Latin American and Latino books. The Americas Literary Initiative (TALI) series, funded by the press and its graduate school, will bring Latin American classics back into print and publish original books about Latino popular culture. Titles in Spanish and English will be marketed in the United States and Puerto Rico.

"I felt that Latin American culture wasn't being understood and having the impact in North America that it should have, so we came up with a publishing matrix," Mandel tells Críticas. The seven-part series ranges from highbrow to lowbrow, and includes paperback and hardback editions. It will become an imprint within the University of Wisconsin Press by 2005. Mandel plans to publish 14 books in 2004 and 24 per year by 2005, which will account for approximately a quarter of the press's production. For now, with a memoir by Brazilian author W.H. Hudson and a novel by Argentine author Jacobo Timerman, the Americas series awaits its official debut in spring 2004.

Mandel first tossed around the idea of the Americas series when he was director of Syracuse University Press. There, Irene Vilar, former acquisitions editor at SU Press, approached him with the idea for an imprint that focused on Latin American works. There was precedent for such an effort. In 1994, Mandel launched the highly acclaimed Library of Modern Jewish Literature that began by republishing out of print classics by Jewish authors such as Cynthia Ozick and eventually moved into publishing untranslated contemporary books in Yiddish. While Mandel and Vilar had hopes for the Latino series, SU Press was undergoing tremendous budget cuts at the time, and the project didn't seem right for it.

UW's reputation for having one of the top 10 Latin American studies programs in the country, along with a university press with an extensive backlist of Latino books, made Wisconsin a natural home for their original idea. In 2000, UW Press sought Mandel for an initiative that would diversify the press's scope, and it backed the offer with an initial $200,000. "When I came to Wisconsin, I was looking to publish something out of the box," says Mandel. "Looking ahead, there's a growing Spanish readership for important books in the United States. Spanish readers also come as adults to this country and need to have access to their literature. We're hoping to provide that."

The current team is a tripod, made up of Mandel, associate editor Vilar, and author and Amherst College professor Ilan Stavans, who is editor of the series.

In Mandel's opinion, university presses usually publish and then wonder if there's a market, while mass-market houses find hot topics and then find the writers. The TALI approach, he says, is to determine the needs of this market first. He not only wants to republish great Latin American works, such as late Brazilian author Jorge Amado's classics in English and Spanish, but also to fill in the void in nonfiction about the Americas.

According to Vilar, TALI will help create a kind of literary canon to stabilize the culture's integrity, which is threatened by assimilation. "I was worried that within this current Latino boom there was going to be a bit of de-Latin Americanization, a kind of erosion as we move into this more homogeneous Latino culture," she says.

The TALI program will also include distribution in the Caribbean and eventually the rest of Latin America through an initial partnership with Puerto Rican publishing house Qué Tal. "This imprint aims to protect and promote Latin American and Caribbean works and the region's diverse heritage for a mainstream North American audience and Latin American audience. There will be a cross-fertilization on both sides of the border," says Vilar.

While TALI published two English-language books last fall, the Spanish end of the initiative will launch in February 2004. The team is still trying to decide among the options: English first, Spanish first, or simultaneous publication. The original Spanish paperback translation of Jacobo Timerman's Preso sin nombre, celda sin número (Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number) will test the English-first approach. Both releases will contain a foreword by Arthur Miller. Horacio Quiroga's La gallina degollada y otros cuentos (The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories) will test the waters with a simultaneous English-Spanish paperback approach, and will be released alongside the re-release of Margaret Sayers Peden's translation. The English edition of Quiroga's book will feature a foreword by Jean Franco, the Spanish, a foreword by Homer Aridjis.

The Lives/Vidas component of the series, set to launch next fall, will include short biographies of Latin Americans, Latinos, and non-Latinos who have made a mark on Latin American culture. Planning to release two books a year, Lives/Vidas will kick off with a simultaneous English-Spanish book on Cuban salsa singer Celia Cruz by Alan West in October 2004. The TALI team is also planning a biography of Brazilian soccer player Pele to be written by New York Times writer Bruce Weber, and another on Puerto Rican baseball player Roberto Clemente to be penned by David González, also from the Times. Other components of the series include Classics/Clásicos (reprints), the Americas City/Country Readers (visual and literary guides U.S. and Latin American cities), Versions/Versiones (collection of newly translated works), the Challenge (anthology, memoirs, essays), the Americas Library of Latin American Film (multimedia), and In Praise of Latin American and Caribbean Women of the Americas (a four-volume reference set).

The TALI team still seeks funding to grow its initiative. Already, several highly regarded writers have lent their reputations to the series. Authors Álvaro Mutis, Rosario Ferré, Ariel Dorfman, Luis J. Rodríguez, and Bob Shacochis are among a few of the big names on TALI's advisory board. "If we sell 1,500 or 2,000 copies of a book, it's fine," says Mandel. "We can still keep the book alive for 10 years, keep introducing the book to new generations of readers, and penetrate the market in the United States. We're here to change the perception of Latin American culture."