Textual History

‘A Trip Through The Mind Jail’ 1969-2006

‘A Trip Through the Mind Jail’ (1969) is Raúl Salinas’ most celebrated and most anthologized poem.  The poem is a nostalgic reflection of the Chicanx neighborhoods of Salinas’ youth and his painful memories of prison life. 

Last stanza from ‘A Trip Through the Mind Jail’ (Un Trip 55)

i respect you having been:
My Loma of Austin
my Rose Hill of Los Angeles
my West Side of San Anto
my Quinto of Houston
my Jackson of San Jo
my Segundo of El Paso
my Barelas of Alburque
my Westside of Denver
Flats, Los Marcos, Maravilla, Guadalupe, Magnolia,
Buena Vista, Mateo, La Seis, Chiquis, El Sur and all
Chicano neighborhoods that now exist and once
existed; somewhere… someone remembers….

Most scholarly sources maintain that this poem was first published by the newspaper Aztlán de Leavenworth on May 5, 1970 in broadsheet format.

‘Aztlán de Leavenworth, detail front cover 1970.’ M0774, box 7, folder 1. Courtesy of Salinas Special Collection, Stanford Libraries.
  • Subsequently, this poem has been published in the following anthologies:

Valdez, Luis y Steiner, Stan. Aztlan: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature. New York: Knopf. 1972. 339-344.

Castañeda-Shular, Antonia, Ybarra-Frausto, Tomás y Sommers, Joseph. Literatura Chicana: Texto y Contexto/Chicano Literature: Text and Context. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. 1972. 182-186.

Ortego y Gasca, Philip D. We are Chicanos: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature. New York: Washington Square. 1973. 195-200.

Gilb, Dagoberto. Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P. 2006. 286-291.

  • This poem has also appeared in the following books authored by Salinas:

Salinas, Raúl. Viaje/Trip. Providence: Hellcoal. 1973. 5-9.

Salinas, Raúl. Un Trip Through the Mind Jail y Otras Excursions: poems by raúlsalinas. San Francisco: Pocho-Ché. 1980. 55-58.

Salinas, Raúl. Un Trip through the Mind Jail y Otras Excursions: Poems. Houston: Arte Público. 1999. 55-60.

  • This poems also appeared in the following newspapers and magazines, but they are either inaccessible, unavailable, or not archived:

New Era Penal Magazine (Leavenworth, KS)

Penal Digest International (Iowa City, IA)

Con Safos Magazine (Los Angeles, CA)

Entrelineas Magazine (Kansas City, MO)

Originally, ‘A Trip’ was published on newspaper broadsheet with dimensions of 29.5 y 23.5 inches. The bilingual newspaper in which it appeared was edited and published by inmates at Leavenworth. In  1972 Salinas explained that:

“A newspaper, which bears the name Aztlán, meaning ‘the lands to the North’, assumed to have been the point of origin for the Aztec nation, came to existence with the first issue printed in May 1970. To date, there have been four issues printed. With rare exception, the material for the paper is strictly Chicano convict work. We do not solicit outside material, and only on one occasion have we featured an article by someone other than the Chicano population of Leavenworth. In this manner we try to stress the importance of originality and the nurturing of unknown hidden talents in the arts, poetry, journalism, publication work, and public speaking” (raúlrsalinas and the Jail Machine 49).

You can access the front page of Aztlán de Leavenworth as well as Salinas’ poem here. Both are dated May 5, 1970.

The editorial team in charge of Aztlán was (left to right): Alberto Mares (correspondence), Rubén Estrella (publicity), Alfredo Arellanes (reporter), Ricardo Mena (vice-president), Raúl Salinas (editor) and Beto Palomino (programing).

‘Editorial team in charge of Aztlán’ M0774 Box 7, Folder 3, Courtesy of Salinas Special Collection, Stanford Libraries.

Subsequent anthological iterations

In 1972 Salinas’ poem was published in two anthologies. In Aztlan: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature the poem appears not on broadsheet but broken up onto six pages. All Spanish underlined words in the original are italicized in this anthology. The only major difference is that the Valdez-Steiner iteration does not include the tattoo and graffiti stanzas that make this poem such an innovative and disruptive work of art. The editors and publishers at Knopf may have had difficulties in adding these images. Which speaks to the creativity and ingenuity of the editors of Aztlán de Leavenworth who edited and published this work behind bars and under duress.

The other anthology from 1972, Literatura Chicana: Texto y Contexto/Chicano Literature: Text and Context is able to include the graphic stanza and also chooses to italicize rather than underline all Spanish words. Furthermore, this iteration expands the dedication to Eldridge Cleaver which in previous iterations simply states ‘For Eldgridge’. This iterations reads:

[A Trip Through the Mind Jail is dedicated by a Chicano poet, raúlrsalinas, from his little room at Leavenworth, to his camarada wherever he is, El Eldridge (Leroy) Cleaver de Rose Hill, barrio Con Safos]

The editors of this anthology were the scholars at the University of Washington that through activism and advocacy facilitated Salinas’ release from prison and his entry to the University. Given this close relationship it is fair to assume Salinas participated in elongating this dedication.

The 1973 iteration in We are Chicanos: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature does not include the graphic stanza, italicizes Spanish words and replicates the simple dedication while including the last name ‘For Eldridge Cleaver’. A pedagogical addition that this text makes is that it adds explanatory footnotes. For example, there is a footnote explaining that the Spanish term ‘tricolor’ refers to the Mexican flag, that the date May 5 celebrates the expulsion of the French Empire by Mexico and that September 16 is Mexican Independence Day. These are educational footnotes directed at an audience that may not be bilingual and/or bicultural. As an interesting ekphrastic addition, this anthology includes a small painting within the pages of this poem by artist Salvador Valdez. Valdez’s painting has the same name as the poem and is a surrealist representation of the psychological suffering of inmates.

Accompanying art work, 1973 (We Are Chicanos 199).

The most recent anthology, Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature includes the graphic stanza, does not include a dedication and chooses to neither underline nor italicize any Spanish words. At the bottom of the first page of this poem, this anthology adds a brief biographical note about Salinas. The note explains that Salinas was editor of Aztlán de Leavenworth “whose inaugural issue contained Salinas’ most famous poem, ‘Un Trip Through the Mind Jail’” (Gilb 286). There are several mistakes in this anthology; first, the poem is called A Trip not Un Trip; second, the poem is erroneously titled La Loma and lastly the ‘Contents’ also uses this erroneous title to refer to Salinas’ Magnum Opus. Neither Gilb’s ‘Introduction’ nor any other part the anthology explain these changes to the title.

Subsequent book iterations

  • Salinas, Raúl. Viaje/Trip. Providence: Hellcoal. 1973. 5-9.

In 1973 Hellcoal Press published Salinas’ five-poem chapbook Viaje/Trip. This collection included A Trip as well as the poems Los Caudillos, Ciego/Sordo/Mudo, Journey and Journey II. Hellcoal was a small, student-run press which received some institutional support from Brown University. The co-editors of Hellcoal, Jaimy Gordon and Bruce McPherson, were in epistolary contact with Salinas and worked closely with him to facilitate his first published poetry collection.

The year prior Gordon was at Brown studying for her Masters when she took the class ‘American Poetry since 1900’ with professor Glauco Cambon. Cambon had received one of the carceral newspapers, either Aztlán de Leavenworth or New Era Penal Magazine,  was fascinated with Salinas’ poem and decided to include it in his courses.

Through these particular circumstances and the friendships that were formed, Hellcoal Press published 291 chapbooks which were distributed to bookstores and amongst friends and academics (Salinas raúlrsalinas and the Jail Machine 189-207). Salinas, who by now lived in Seattle, received 30 copies; one of which is archived and can be accessed here:

‘Viaje/Trip’ Chapbook published in 1973. M0774 Box 27 Folder 23 Special Collections. 

An aside: ‘A Trip’s first literary criticism

Glauco Cambon (1921-1988) was an Italianist with specialization in European and North American poetry. He  started communicating with Salinas in January 1971 while he was still in prison and developed a friendship with him. Cambon would go on to write and publish an article on Salinas’ work titled ‘Raúl Salinas: Una Nuova Voce Della Poesia Americana’ in Annali de Ca’ Foscari Vol. 10, 1971.

The original article is hard to locate but the Salinas Papers hold a translated version. Salinas’ close friend and mentor, Óscar Collazo, translated Cambon’s work into Spanish so Salinas could read it and have a copy.

Editorial Pocho-Ché was established in the 1970’s in San Francisco by its founders Roberto Vargas and Alejandro Murguía. In his book The Medicine of Memory: A Mexica Clan in California (2002), Murguía explains that it was very difficult to find books about the Chicanx experience and there were few or no Chicanx or Latinx presses.

By founding Pocho-Ché, their aim was to break the industry’s monopoly and find ways to publish the works of up and coming Chicanx and Latinx writers. As an artists’ collective, Pocho-Ché published poetry and photography books and also magazines and newspapers covering revolutionary and radical content such as the guerrilla wars in Nicaragua and the FBI attacks against the Oglala people at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota (124).

Salinas was by now an active member of the Chicano Arts Movement and his poetry fit in well ideologically with the politics of Pocho-Ché.

Un Trip Through the Mind Jail y Otras Excursions: Poemas de raúlrsalinas. Back cover photo by Kathy Apodaca, 1980

Salinas lived in Seattle not San Francisco, but he was part of Pocho-Ché’s editorial board and in 1980 published his first book containing 68 poems including the five from Viaje/Trip (1973).

In 1999 Arte Público Press, an academic press for the University of Houston, published a reprint of Un Trip Through the Mind Jail y Otras Excursions: Poems. This reprint was part of their series ‘Pioneers of Modern U.S. Hispanic Literature’ itself part of the larger project called Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage which aims to disseminate ‘Hispanic’ culture in the US. This reprint in a prestigious academic press signals Salinas’ canonization and the general recognition that his work is an important contribution to Latinx and Chicanx letters.