Richard Vasquez

In 1970, when Chicano hit the bookshelves, there was just one similarly themed novel published by a major U.S. imprint: José Antonio Villareal’s Pocho.The author of Chicano, Richard Vásquez (1923-1990), was a third-generation Angelino who worked in the fields, in construction, and as a taxi driver before turning to journalism. His seminal book recreates the life of four generations of the Sandoval family, from when the patriarch Héctor fled the Mexican Revolution and established himself in California, to the tragic love story of Hector’s daughter-in-law and her non-Latino lover. In the best tradition of American social realism, the novel vividly portrays half-a-century of collective Mexican-American experience.