By Brian Dunlap

Fullerton College professor and poet Cynthia Guardado announced on Wednesday the acceptance of her second full-length collection of poetry Cenizas, by The University of Arizona Press. It’s scheduled to be released in the Fall of 2022.

Guardado’s collection is about her family and ancestors and their homeland of El Salvador. “I’m so happy I get to honor,” them, she said in a Facebook post. The Journey to do so had been arduous. It’s taken 10+ years to reach this point, beginning first as her grad school thesis at Fresno State. It’s gone through many revisions; was a runner-up for the prestigious Andres Montoya Prize, a biennial award to honor and publish a promising Latino American poet; and a section of the manuscript won the Pellicer-Frost Poetry Prize inb 2017.

Guardado acknowledged “our journey is not over yet.” It’s been one where she’s faced racism from the white publishing world for their inability to understand the manuscript and how to market it. She faced the reality of American publishing not being ready for, or willing to publish, a collection from a social justice poet, about El Salvador, where “Guardado bear(s) witness to” its “atrocities” and takes a critical, unapologetic look at what the Salvadorian people had to endure in regards to “the country’s political upheavals,” as poet, author and editor Rigoberto González said when he awarded her the Pellicer-Frost Poetry Prize.

As one of the earliest publishers to release Latinx literature, Cenizas, will be published as part of The University of Arizona Press’ Camino del Sol series, “a Latina and Latino literary series,” established in 1994 and edited by Rigoberto González.

“I am already immensely grateful to the editors and team,” Guardado said in the same Facebook post, “at the University of Arizona Press and Rigoberto González, who has been amazing through this whole process amidst a pandemic.”

But Cynthia Guardado understands, “It’s just the beginning.”