Hinojosa, Rolando 1929–

(P. Galindo, Rolando R. Hinojosa-S., Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Rolando R. Hinojosa-Smith, Rolando (R.) Hinojosa Smith)

PERSONAL: Born January 21, 1929, in Mercedes, TX; son of Manuel Guzman (a farmer) and Carrie Effie (a homemaker; maiden name, Smith) Hinojosa; married Patricia Mandley, September 1, 1963 (divorced, 1989); children: Clarissa Elizabeth, Karen Louise, Robert Huddleston. Education: University of Texas at Austin, B.S., 1953; New Mexico Highlands University, M.A., 1963; University of Illinois, Ph.D., 1969. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Catholic.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of English, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: High school teacher in Brownsville, TX, 1954–56; Trinity University, San Antonio, TX, assistant professor of modern languages, 1968–70; Texas A & I University, Kingsville, associate professor of Spanish and chair of modern language department, 1970–74, dean of College of Arts and Sciences, 1974–76, vice president for academic affairs, 1976–77; University of Minnesota—Minneapolis, chair of department of Chicano studies, 1977–80, professor of Chicano studies and American studies, 1980–81; University of Texas at Austin, professor of English, 1981–85, E.C. Garwood Professor, 1985–, Mari Sabusawa Michener Chair, 1989–93. Consultant to Minneapolis Education Association, 1978–80, to U.S. Information Agency, 1980 and 1989, and to Texas Commission for the Arts and Humanities, 1981–82. Texas Center for Writers, University of Texas, Austin, 1989–93. Military service: U.S. Army 1946–49 and Army Reserves, ten years; became second lieutenant.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association (chair of Commission on Languages and Literature in Ethnic Studies, 1978–80), PEN, Academia de la Lengua Es-panola en Norteamerica, Hispanic Society, Fellow Society of Spanish and Spanish American Studies (fellow), Texas Institute of Letters.

AWARDS, HONORS: Best in West Award for foreign language radio programming from the state of California, 1970–71; Quinto Sol Literary Award for best novel, 1972, for Estampas del valle y otras obras; Premio Casa de las Americas award for best novel, 1976, for Klail City y sus alrededores; Southwest Studies on Latin America award for best writing in the humanities, 1981, for Mi querido Rafa; distinguished alumnus award from University of Illinois College of Liberal Arts, 1988; Lifetime Achievement Award, Texas Institute of Letters, 1997; distinguished achievement award, University of Illinois, 1998; distinguished alumnus, Texas Southwest College, 1999.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Estampas del valle y otras obras (first novel in "Klail City Death Trip" series), Quinto Sol (Berkeley, CA), 1972, bilingual edition with translation by Gustavo Valadez and Jose Reyna published as Sketches of the Valley and Other Works, Justa Publications (Berkeley, CA), 1980, revised English language edition published as The Valley, Bilingual Press (Ypsilanti, MI), 1983.

Klail City y sus alrededores (second novel in "Klail City Death Trip" series), bilingual edition with translation by Rosaura Sanchez, Casa de las Americas, 1976, published under name Rolando R. Hinojosa-S. as Generaciones y semblanzas (title means "Biographies and Lineages"), Justa Publications (Berkeley, CA), 1977, translation by Hinojosa published as Klail City, Arte Publico Press (Houston, TX), 1987.

Korean Love Songs from Klail City Death Trip (novel in verse form; third in "Klail City Death Trip" series), illustrations by Rene Castro, Justa Publications (Berkeley, CA), 1978.

Claros varones de Belken (fourth novel in "Klail City Death Trip" series), Justa Publications (Berkeley, CA), 1981, bilingual edition with translation by Julia Cruz published as Fair Gentlemen of Belken County, Bilingual Press (Ypsilanti, MI), 1987.

Mi querido Rafa (fifth novel in "Klail City Death Trip" series), Arte Publico Press (Houston, TX), 1981, translation by Hinojosa published as Dear Rafe, 1985.

Rites and Witnesses (sixth novel in "Klail City Death Trip" series), Arte Publico Press (Houston, TX), 1982.

Partners in Crime, Arte Publico Press (Houston, TX), 1985.

Los amigos de Becky (seventh novel in "Klail City Death Trip" series), Arte Publico Press (Houston, TX), 1990, translation published as Becky and Her Friends, 1990.

The Useless Servants (eighth novel in "Klail City Death Trip" series), Arte Publico Press (Houston, TX), 1993.

El condado de Belken—Klail City, Editorial Bilingue, 1994.

Estampas del valle, Editorial Bilingue (Tempe, AZ), 1994.

Ask a Policeman, Arte Publico Press (Houston, TX), 1998.

OTHER

Generaciones, notas, y brechas/Generations, Notes, and Trails, (nonfiction; bilingual edition), translation by Fausto Avendano, Casa de las Americas (La Ha-bana), 1978.

(Author of introduction) Carmen Tafolla, Curandera, M & A Editions, 1983.

(Contributor under name Rolando Hinojosa-Smith) Alan Pogue, Agricultural Workers of the Rio Grande and Rio Bravo Valleys, Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas at Austin (Austin, TX), 1984.

(Translator from the Spanish) Tomas Rivera, This Migrant Earth, Arte Publico Press (Houston, TX), 1985.

(Contributor) Jose David Saldivar, editor, The Rolando Hinojosa Reader: Essays Historical and Critical, Arte Publico Press (Houston, TX), 1985.

Valley: A Re-Creation in Narrative Prose of a Portfolio of Etchings, Engravings, Sketches, and Silhouettes by Various Artists in Various Styles, Bilingual Review Press (Tempe AZ), 1994.

Also author, under pseudonym P. Galindo, of Mexican American Devil's Dictionary. Work represented in anthologies, including Festival de flor y canto: An Anthology of Chicano Literature, edited by F.A. Cervantes, Juan Gomez-Quinones, and others, University of Southern California Press, 1976. Contributor of short stories, articles, and reviews to periodicals, including Texas Monthly, Texas Humanist, Los Angeles Times, and Dallas Morning News.

SIDELIGHTS: The first Chicano author to receive a major international literary award, Rolando Hinojosa won the prestigious Premio Casa de las Americas for Klail City y sus alrededores (Klail City), part of a series of novels known to English-speaking readers as "The Klail City Death Trip." Hinojosa's fiction, often infused with satire or subtle humor, is widely admired for its blending of diverse plot lines and narrative styles. The individual perspectives of many characters come together in his works to form a unique collective voice representative of the Chicano people. Hinojosa has also produced essays, poetry, and two detective novels titled Partners in Crime and Ask a Policeman.

Hinojosa was born in the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas. There his Chicano ancestors settled long before the United States annexed part of it. His Mexican American father fought in the Mexican Revolution, while his Anglo American mother maintained the family north of the border, and he was thus deeply influenced by both cultures. An avid reader during childhood, Hinojosa was raised speaking Spanish until he attended junior high school, 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 professorial posts and has also been active in academic administration and consulting work. Although he prefers to write in Spanish, Hinojosa has also translated his own books and written others in English.

Hinojosa entered the literary scene with the 1973 Estampas del valle y otras obras, which was translated as Sketches of the Valley and Other Works. The four-part novel consists of loosely connected sketches, narratives, monologues, and dialogues, offering a composite picture of Chicano life in the fictitious Belken County town of Klail City, Texas. The first part of Estampas introduces Jehu Malacara, a nine-year-old boy who is left to live with exploitative relatives after the deaths of his parents. Hinojosa synthesizes the portrait of Jehu's life through comic and satiric sketches and narratives of incidents and characters surrounding him. The second section is a collection of pieces about a murder presented through newspaper accounts, court documents, and testimonials from the defendant's relatives. A third segment, narrated by an omniscient storyteller, is a selection of sketches depicting people from various social groups in Klail City, while the fourth section introduces the series' other main character, Jehu's cousin Rafa Buenrostro. Also orphaned during childhood, Rafa narrates a succession of experiences and recollections of his life. Hinojosa later rewrote Estampas del valle y otras obras in English, publishing it as The Valley in 1983.

Hinojosa's aggregate portrait of the Spanish southwest continues in Klail City y sus alrededores, published in English as Klail City. Like its predecessor, Klail City is comprised of interwoven narratives, conversations, and anecdotes that portray fifty years in the town's collective life. Winner of the 1976 Premio Casa de las Americas, the book was cited for its "richness of imagery, the sensitive creation of dialogues, the collage-like structure based on a pattern of converging individual destinies, the masterful control of the temporal element and its testimonial value," according to Charles M. Tatum in World Literature Today. Introducing more than one hundred characters and developing further the portraits of Rafa and Jehu, Klail City prompted Western American Literature writer Lourdes Torres to praise Hinojosa for his "unusual talent for capturing the language and spirit of his subject matter."

Korean Love Songs from Klail City Death Trip and Claros varones de Belken are Hinojosa's third and fourth installments in the series. A novel comprised of several long poems originally written in English and published in 1978, Korean Love Songs presents protagonist Rafa Buenrostro's narration of his experiences as a soldier in the Korean War. In poems such as "Friendly Fire" and "Rafe," Hinojosa explores army life, grief, male friendships, discrimination, and the reality of death presented through dispassionate, often ironic descriptions of the atrocity of war. Claros varones de Belken (Fair Gentlemen of Belken County), released three years later, follows Jehu and Rafa as they narrate accounts of their experiences serving in the Korean War, attending the University of Texas at Austin, and beginning careers as high school teachers in Klail City. The book also includes the narratives of two more major characters, writer P. Galindo and local historian Esteban Echevarria, who comment on their own and others' circumstances. Expressing a favorable opinion of the book was Los Angeles Times Book Review writer Alejandro Morales, who concluded that "the scores of names and multiple narrators at first pose a challenge, but quickly the imagery, language and subtle folk humor of Belken County win the reader's favor."

Hinojosa continued the "Klail City Death Trip" series with Mi querido Rafa. Translated as Dear Rafe, the novel is divided into two parts and consists of letters and interviews. The first half of the work is written in epistolary style containing only letters from Jehu—now a successful bank officer—to his cousin Rafa. Between the novel's two parts, however, Jehu suddenly leaves his important position at the Klail City First National Bank, and in the second section, Galindo interviews twenty-one community members about possible reasons for Jehu's resignation. The two major characters are depicted through dialogue going on around and about them; the reader obtains a glimpse of Rafa's personality through Jehu's letters, and Jehu's life is sketched through the opinions of the townspeople. San Francisco Review of Books writer Arnold Williams compared the power of Hinojosa's fictional milieu, striking even in translation, to that of twentieth-century Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, noting that "Hinojosa is such a master of English that he captures the same intimacy and idiomatic word play in his re-creations."

After writing Rites and Witnesses, the sixth novel in the "Klail City Death Trip" series, Hinojosa turned to a conventional form of the novel with the 1985 Partners in Crime, a detective thriller about the murder of a Belken County district attorney and several Mexican nationals in a local bar. Detective squads from both sides of the border are called to investigate the case; clues lead to an established and powerful cocaine smuggling ring. Jehu and Rafa reappear in the novel as minor characters who nevertheless play important parts in the mystery's development. "Those who might mourn the ending of the ['Klail City Death Trip' series] and their narrative experimentation and look askance at Hi-nojosa's attempting such a predictable and recipe-oriented genre as the murder mystery need not worry," concluded Williams. "He can weave a social fabric that is interesting, surprising, realistic and still entertaining."

In Becky and Her Friends Hinojosa continues his attempt to capture the many voices of the Hispanic community. Twenty-six characters from previous novels in the "Klail City Death Trip" series (including Becky) are each given a chapter here to discuss Becky's divorce from Ira Escobar and her subsequent marriage to Jehu Malacara. Writing in Western American Literature, R.L. Streng noted that "the characters' voices are difficult to differentiate one from another, and since each character falls into a camp for or against Becky and her escapades, there is very little difference between what we hear from Lionel Villa and Viola Barragan in one camp or Elvira Navarrete and Ira Escobar in the other." Streng concluded that Becky and Her Friends "fails in its attempt to corral a variety of characters and establish a lively vocal forum. Instead, the novel is tedious and requires readers to wade through extensive and unnecessary redundancies. Other reviewers, however, praised the novel for its evocation of the American-Hispanic ethos, one that is simultaneously deeply traditional, Catholic, and superstitious."

Hinojosa extended the "Klail City Death Trip" series with The Useless Servants, a novel—unlike many others in the series—with only one narrative voice. A kind of novelization of his previous book of poems Korean Love Songs from Klail City Death Trip, The Useless Servants is the diary kept by Rafe Buenrostro when he was an infantryman in the U.S. Army during the Korean war. It is written very much in the manner of personal diaries, employing clipped phrases, few pronouns, and little explanation of the objects in the writer's daily routine—in this case, military jargon, acronyms, etc. Thematically, the book presents Rafe's experience of warfare and army life as a Hispanic-American. Critical reaction to the novel was mixed. B. Adler, writing in Choice, felt that the work "is curious in the lack of insight it demonstrates, its flatness overall, with no reaching toward even stylistic significance." Dismayed by Rafe's apparent detachment from his own experiences, Adler concluded: "Perhaps Hinojosa is trying to make a point about the essentially boring nature of the average human being, even when placed in an extraordinary situation such as war. The dilemma is how realistic to make dullness. Hinojosa is too successful here." On the other hand, while William Anthony Nericcio in World Literature Toady also found Hinojosa's use of military jargon and acronyms rather unrelenting, he lauded the author's allusions to Plato's Republic, stating that "Plato's cave fire and the Korean battlefield illuminate each other nicely." Nericcio also noted that The Useless Servants further enriches the thematic texture of its series, writing: "The studied effort at intertextual dialectics set up between volumes in the Klail City Death Trip Series is as dense and electric as some to be found in Faulkner's oeuvre."

Hinojosa once commented: "I enjoy writing, of course, but I enjoy the re-writing even more: four or five re-writings are not uncommon. Once finished, though, it's on to something else. At this date, every work done in Spanish has also been done in English with the exception of Claros varones de Belken, although I did work quite closely on the idiomatic expressions which I found to be at the heart of the telling of the story.

"I usually don't read reviews; articles by learned scholars, however, are something else. They've devoted much time and thought to their work, and it is only fair I read them and take them seriously. The articles come from France, Germany, Spain, and so on, as well as from the United States. I find them not only interesting but, at times, revelatory. I don't know how much I am influenced by them, but I'm sure I am, as much as I am influenced by a lifetime of reading. Scholars do keep one on one's toes, but not, obviously, at their mercy. Writing has allowed me to meet writers as diverse as Julio Cortazar, Ishmael Reed, Elena Poniatowski and George Lamming.

"My goal is to set down in fiction the history of the Lower Rio Grande Valley…. A German scholar, Wolfgang Karrer, from Osnabrueck University has a census of my characters; they number some one thousand. That makes me an Abraham of some sort.

"Personally and professionally, my life as a professor and as a writer inseparably combines vocation with avocation. My ability in both languages is most helpful, and thanks for this goes to my parents and to the place where I was raised.

"My main motivation (for writing) stems from a childhood need to express myself. The influences are so many and so diverse, I could not begin to name or list them all; a few, however, bear mentioning, Benito Perez Galdes; Anthony Powell, and Heinrich Boll.

"My writing begins with a half-formed idea that then takes off by itself. Sometimes, a stranger's passing comment may set off a train of thought that my or may not lead to a piece of writing.

"The inspiration comes from various places: A bi-cultural background, a sure knowledge of the history and myths of where I was born, the relating of official history and that which opposes it. I imagine my writing has changed, but I don't know to what degree. That, then is a matter for the critics.

"I don't think I've had or made changes in my writing; it happens that I've written three novels in fragmentary form, one in narrative verse, one consisting mainly of dialogues and monologues; there is also an epistolary novel. The two detective works are linear and both the English and Spanish versions of Becky (Becky and Her Friends and Los Amigos de Becky) consist of thirty-eight male and female voices, of all ages. There is also a first person novel in diary or log form. The many forms may appear as changes, however, I've chosen the different forms because I found them suitable for what I wanted to write at the time.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Bruce-Novoa, Juan, Chicano Authors: Inquiry by Interview, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), 1980.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 82: Chicano Writers, First Series, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1989.

Lee, Joyce Glover, Rolando Hinojosa and the American Dream, University of North Texas Press (Denton, TX), 1997.

Saldivar, Jose David, editor, The Rolando Hinojosa Reader: Essays Historical and Critical, Arte Publico Press (Houston, TX), 1985.

Zilles, Klaus, Rolando Hinojosa: A Reader's Guide, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 2001.

PERIODICALS

Choice, December 1993, B. Adler, review of The Useless Servants.

Hispania, September 1986.

Hispanic, September 1990, p. 48.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 12, 1987, Alejandro Morales, review of Fair Gentlemen of Belken County; October 10, 1993.

Publishers Weekly, November 28, 1986; July 12, 1993, review of The Useless Servants, p. 69.

San Francisco Review of Books, spring, 1985; fall/winter, 1985.

Western American Literature, fall, 1988, Lourdes Torres, review of Klail City; summer, 1991, R.L. Streng, review of Becky and Her Friends.

World Literature Today, summer, 1977, Charles M. Tatum, review of Klail City y sus alrededores,; summer, 1986; winter, 1995, William Anthony Nericcio, review of The Useless Servants, p. 139.