Early Work by Oscar Zeta Acosta
"Tres Cartas de Zeta" in Con Safos, Number 6, 1970
Notes: Included in this issue are three open letters from Oscar "Zeta" Acosta: one on his embarrassing fascination with light-skinned women, one on his troubles as an unpaid civil rights lawyer, and one on the trial of Catolicos Por La Paz—a group arrested for disturbing a Christmas Eve mass. The third is prophetically titled "I'm Headed Underground." Acosta disappeared in 1974, and his fate remains unknown.
Together these short essays in the form of letters give an interesting glimpse of Acosta as a man and as an activist (and it's not always a pretty sight). J. L. Navarro and Raúl Salinas (raúlrsalinas) also contribute to this issue. One of Salinas's poems, "A Trip Through the Mind Jail", became the title poem of his best-known book. A Chicano glossary is printed on the inside back cover.
Con Safos was a Chicano literary and art magazine that lasted 8 issues in the early 1970s. Oscar Zeta Acosta, a Chicano lawyer immortalized in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as Hunter S. Thompson's "Samoan" attorney, contributed regularly to Con Safos. He wrote two memoirs, The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo and The Revolt of the Cockroach People.
48 pages. 8-1/4 by 10-1/2 inches.
Edition + Condition: Short tear to base of wrappers at the spine fold, thus very good. Uncommon.
Publication: Los Angeles: Con Safos Literary Group, 1970.
Item No: #362532
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