Rolando Hinojosa

Rolando Hinojosa

on a visit to UC Merced; December, 2006
Born 1929
Texas
Occupation novelist, poet, professor
Nationality USA
Notable work(s) Klail City Death Trip Series (15 vols.)
Notable award(s) Premio Casa de las Américas; Quinto Sol

Rolando Hinojosa (born 1929) is a novelist, essayist, poet and the Ellen Clayton Garwood professor in the English Department at the University of Texas at Austin.

Contents

Life and career

He was born in Texas's Lower Rio Grande Valley in 1929, to a family with strong Mexican and American roots; his father fought in the Mexican Revolution while his mother maintained the family north of the border. An avid reader during childhood, Hinojosa was raised speaking Spanish until junior high, where English was the primary spoken language. Like his grandmother, mother and three of his four siblings, Hinojosa became a teacher; he has held several academic posts and has also been active in administration and consulting work.

Hinojosa has devoted most of his career as a writer to his Klail City Death Trip Series, which comprises 15 volumes to-date, from Estampas del Valle y otras obras (1973) to We Happy Few (2006). He has completely populated a fictional county in the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas through this generational narrative. Although he prefers to write in Spanish, Hinojosa has also translated his own books and written others in English.

Hinojosa was the first Chicano author to receive the prestigious Premio Casa de las Américas award for Klail City y sus alrededores (Klail City), part of the series. He also received the third and final Premio Quinto Sol Annual Prize (1972), for his work Estampas del Valle y otras obras.[1]

Works

Further reading

References

  1. ^ Cyrus R.K. Patell, "Emergent Ethnic Literatures: Native American, Hispanic, Asian American," A Concise Companion to Postwar American Literature and Culture, ed. Josephine G. Hendin, p.367

External links

Terms
Pre-Chicano Movement
Chicano Movement
Supreme Court cases
Culture
Lists
Category:Mexican Americans · Category:Mexican-American organizations