Sergio Troncoso is an American author of short stories and novels.
Troncoso, the son of Mexican immigrants, was born in El Paso, Texas. He grew up in Ysleta, an unincorporated neighborhood or colonia, on the east side of El Paso. His parents built their own adobe house, and the family lived with kerosene lamps and stoves and an outhouse in the backyard during their first years in Texas. Troncoso attended South Loop School and Ysleta High School, and later graduated from Harvard College and received two graduate degrees in international relations and philosophy from Yale University. He won a Fulbright Scholarship to Mexico, and was inducted into the Hispanic Scholarship Fund's Alumni Hall of Fame. In 1999, his book of short stories, The Last Tortilla and Other Stories (University of Arizona Press), won the Premio Aztlán Literary Prize for the best book by a new Chicano writer, and the Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association.
In his story "Angie Luna," the tale of a feverish love affair in which a young man from El Paso rediscovers his Mexican heritage, Troncoso explores questions of self-identity and the ephemeral quality of love. "A Rock Trying to Be a Stone" is a story of three boys playing a dangerous game that becomes a test of character on the Mexico-U.S. border. "My Life in the City" focuses on a transplanted Texan's yearning for companionship in New York City. "Remembering Possibilities" delves into the terror of a young man attacked in his apartment while he takes solace in memories of a lost love. Troncoso typically sets aside the polemics about social discomfort sometimes found in contemporary Chicano literature and concentrates instead on the moral and intellectual lives of his characters.
His novel, The Nature of Truth (Northwestern University Press), was published in 2003, and is a story about a Yale research student who discovers that his boss, a renowned professor, hides a Nazi past. A reviewer from Janus Head, a journal of Philosophy, Literature, and Psychology, wrote: "The subtlety, and fairness, with which Troncoso presents these conflicting frameworks [Nietzschean valor, Christian pragmatism, and blind inductivism] stand as the novel’s crowning intellectual achievement, side by side with the artistic one: a convincing tale of murder and ruminating guilt."
In 2011, Troncoso published two books. His second novel, From This Wicked Patch of Dust (University of Arizona Press), is a story about the Martinez family, who begins life in a shantytown on the U.S.-Mexico border, and struggles to stay together despite cultural clashes, different religions, and contemporary politics. A reviewer from The Dallas Morning News wrote: "In a media market where cultural stereotypes abound, it's refreshing to read a novel featuring Latino characters who are nuanced and authentic. Sergio Troncoso’s latest, From This Wicked Patch of Dust, follows a family from humble beginnings in a Texas border town through several decades as its members move beyond their Mexican Catholic culture to inhabit Jewish, Muslim and Ivy League spaces....These middle spaces have long been fodder for writers, though the El Paso-born and Harvard-educated Troncoso has created new, empathetic characters to explore it. No, the real beauty of this book is that it mines the rich diversity of tradition and culture among Latinos, as well as the commonalities they share with other Americans- love of family, faith and country."
Crossing Borders: Personal Essays (Arte Público Press) was also published in 2011, and is a collection of sixteen essays about how Troncoso made the leap from growing up poor along the border to the Ivy League, his wife's battle against breast cancer, his struggles as a writer in New York and Texas, fatherhood, interfaith marriage, and Troncoso's appreciation of Judaism.
Troncoso's stories have been featured in many anthologies, including Camino Del Sol: Fifteen Years of Latina and Latino Writing (University of Arizona Press), Latino Boom: An Anthology of U.S. Latino Literature (Pearson/Longman Publishing), Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas-Mexican Literature (University of New Mexico Press), Once Upon a Cuento (Curbstone Press), City Wilds: Essays and Stories about Urban Nature (University of Georgia Press), and New World: Young Latino Writers (Dell Publishing). His work has also appeared in Encyclopedia Latina, Newsday, The El Paso Times, Hadassah Magazine, Other Voices, Blue Mesa Review, and many other newspapers and magazines.
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