Jim Sagel Papers, 1947-2002

Biographical Sketch

Writer and educator Jim Sagel was born in 1947 in Fort Morgan, Colorado, to parents Edward and Betty Sagel. The eldest of three brothers in the farming family, Jim graduated from Fort Morgan High School in 1965, and published his earliest piece in the school’s literary newspaper “Prufrock” that same year. He continued his education at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1969. Later that year, Sagel moved to Española, New Mexico, and began substitute teaching at Española Valley High School, where he met Teresa Archuleta, a native of the Española Valley. They married in 1970. Sagel continued to teach high school in northern New Mexico until 1976, when he received a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico for his thesis “Rebuilt,” a poetry collection.

Sagel’s tenure at Northern New Mexico Community College started in 1976, and during his 22-year career as a university instructor, he taught at the Institute of American Indian Art (Santa Fe), at University of New Mexico campuses in Los Alamos, Española, Santa Fe and Taos, and at campuses in Peñaso, Gallina, and Mesa Vista. He was appointed director of the Division of Humanities at the University of New Mexico in Los Alamos, a position he held until his death in 1998. He was awarded the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1993 and appointed the Carruthers Chair in Honors in the UNM General Honors program.

Of Prussian descent, Sagel arrived in New Mexico neither speaking nor writing Spanish. He quickly determined, however, that mastery of the language was a necessary skill. With the help of his wife’s family, particularly his father- and mother-in-law, Jacobo and Matilde Archuleta, Sagel learned Spanish solely through contact with native speakers, and began to write in both English and Spanish. Three collections of his bilingual poetry, Hablando de brujas y la gente de antes, Foreplay and French Fries, and Small Bones, Little Eyes, were published in 1981. In the same year, Sagel won Cuba’s Premio Casa de las Américas for his Spanish-language collection of short stories Tunomás Honey. Sagel was the second United States citizen in the prize’s history to win the prestigious award, and Tunomás Honey remains Sagel’s most-recognized work.

As a result of the recognition accompanying this achievement, Sagel became a controversial figure within the Chicano literary community. Though Sagel was widely praised for the quality of his work and for the precision of the vernacular New Mexican Spanish in which it was written, his ethnicity made him difficult to categorize. Given that the subjects and themes of his works pertained to the Hispanic communities of New Mexico, the descriptive term “Chicanesque” was applied to Sagel’s pieces. Coined by Chicano literary critics Donaldo Urioste and Franciso Lomelí, chicanesque works sympathetically treat subjects relevant to the Chicano community, but are written by are written by non-Chicano authors.

Sagel continued to pen English-language and bilingual essays, short stories, poetry and children’s literature throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He was also a regular contributor of local-interest feature articles to the Albuquerque Journal from 1981 to 1996, researching and writing over 150 pieces for that newspaper. His 1992 collection Dancing to Pay the Light Bill drew from these articles and others Sagel published in New Mexico Magazine. A 1990 collaboration with photographer Jack Parsons, Straight from the Heart: Portraits of Traditional Hispanic Musicians, featured an essay by Sagel that accompanied Parson’s photos of traditional New Mexican singers.

Two more bilingual poetry collections followed Sagel’s early efforts: Los cumpleaños de Doña Águeda (1984) and On the Make Again/Otra vez en la movida (1990), and in 1994 the Venezuelan press Espada Rota published Remedios: Una colección de poemas curativos. In keeping with the bilingual publication of Tunomás Honey in 1983, Sagel wrote three more short story collections, producing Sábelotodo Entiéndelonada (1988), El Santo Queso/The Holy Cheese (1990) and Más que no love it (1991), collections for which he wrote complete Spanish and English versions of each story.

Sagel’s series of bilingual children’s books, Where the Cinnamon Winds Blow/Donde soplan los vientos de canela (1993), Garden of Stories/Jardín de cuentos (1996), and Always the Heart/Siempre el corazón (1998), were met with much popular interest, as was his final collection of poetry, Unexpected Turn (1997). In 1997, he won the Premio San Sebastián for his Spanish-language play Doña Refugio y su comadre (Kuxta, 1997), a work that was performed bilingually in Española in 1998.

As an editor, Sagel prepared special editions of the literary journals Suntracks and Puerto del sol, and compiled the Resiembra (1982) literary anthology, efforts which placed him in contact with regional authors, and led to relationships that he continued to cultivate throughout his professional career. He also acted as a consultant on the local Spanish dialect used in the Spanish-language editions of the Pleasant Company’s American Girls: Josefina series. Sagel’s professional association with the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities and various education-related state agencies resulted in numerous speaking and workshop engagements throughout the state.

After suffering from bouts of depression throughout his adult life, Sagel committed suicide at the Sevilleta Wildlife Refuge in Socorro, New Mexico on April 6, 1998.

Scope and Contents Note

The personal and professional papers of New Mexican author and educator Jim Sagel consist of ten series: Personal and Biographical , Correspondence, Written Works, Talks and Speeches, Teaching, Professional, Collected Material, Research Material, Audio-Visual Materials, and Artifacts.

The    Personal and Biographical series consists of diplomas, family-related documents, dream journals, date books, articles and works about Sagel, and materials relating to Sagel’s death.    Correspondence includes ongoing correspondence with Sandra Cisneros, Denise Chávez, José Antonio Burciaga, Nasario Garcia, and John Nichols among others.    Written Works is divided into nine subseries: Children’s Literature, Editorial Work, Essays, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Short Stories, Textbook, and Notebooks. The content of each of the subseries can include notes, notebooks, outlines, draft fragments, drafts, proofs, publication information, publications, and reviews and publicity, in that order.    Talks and Speeches includes an inventory of the speaker’s associations to which Sagel belonged, typescripts of his speeches, newspaper articles announcing talks, and information about workshops Sagel offered.    Teaching is comprised of course materials, lesson plans, handouts (both Sagel’s original work and copies of other material), teaching-related paperwork, teaching materials, and student writing.    Professional contains materials relating to Sagel’s professional careers as an author and as a university instructor. It incorporates paperwork regarding Sagel’s publishing, university teaching, grant applications, and involvement in literary conferences.    Collected Material consists of unique books, articles, and collections written by others that Sagel acquired. Many of these works are by fellow writers whom Sagel knew personally, or with whom he corresponded.    Research Material includes handwritten notes, newspaper clippings, articles, and papers Sagel used in his writing, teaching, and personal life.    Audio-Visual Materials contains photographs, artwork, a compact disc, videocassette tapes, and cassette tapes.    Artifacts includes such miscellaneous items as oversized photographs, plaques, personal items, and folk art.

Restrictions

Access Restrictions

Unrestricted.

Use Restrictions

Standard copyright restrictions apply.

Related Material

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Cite as: Jim Sagel Papers, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin.

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