José Antonio Villarreal (1924-2010) was born in Los Angeles on July 30, 1924 to José Heladio (a Mexican revolutionary) and Felícitaz Ramírez Villarreal. In 1921, Villarreal’s parents moved to the United States from Mexico and found work as migrant farm laborers in California. At age six, Villarreal’s family settled in Santa Clara, and he spent the remainder of his childhood there. After graduating high school in 1942, Villarreal served three years in the Navy during World War II. In 1950, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley. Villarreal married Barbara Gentles in 1953, and they had three children: Ian, Kelly, and Caleb. To support his family while pursuing a writing career, Villarreal held numerous positions ranging from public relations to bus driver to speech writer. After the second edition of Pocho was published in 1970, Villarreal began to receive guest lectureships and teaching positions at various universities, including the Pan American University, the University of Colorado, the University of Texas at El Paso, the University of Santa Clara, and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.

Villarreal is best known for his debut novel, Pocho, considered a landmark in Chicano literature. First published by Doubleday in 1959, Pocho tells the story of a second-generation Mexican-American growing up between cultures in California, and is the first novel written by a Chicano to be released by a major publisher in the United States. At the time, the book received little attention and quickly went out of print. However, in 1970, at the height of the Chicano Movement, Anchor published a paperback edition of Pocho, bringing Villarreal both recognition in academic circles and criticism from some members of the burgeoning Chicano Movement. Often considered to be one of the founding fathers of Chicano Literature in the United States, Villarreal did not consider himself a Chicano writer but an American writer whose work fell into a sub-genre of American literature. His second novel, The Fifth Horseman, a historical novel about the events leading up to the Mexican Revolution of 1910, was published by Doubleday in 1974. Pocho and The Fifth Horseman were meant to be part of a tetralogy following three generations of a Mexican-American family, but the series was never completed. Villarreal’s third novel, Clemente Chacon, departed from the tetralogy and was published by Bilingual Press in 1984. Villarreal also wrote several articles and short stories, many appearing in anthologies, magazines, and newspapers.

In 1973, Villarreal returned to Mexico, becoming a Mexican citizen, though he would eventually return to the United States. Over the next several years, Villarreal worked as a broadcaster, a free-lance writer, and an instructor at several colleges and universities in Mexico and the United States. Villarreal passed away in northern California on January 13, 2010.

Bibliography

Jiménez, Francisco. “An interview with José Antonio Villarreal.” Bilingual Review 3.1 (1976): 66-72. Print.

"José Antonio Villarreal." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Oct. 2014.

“José Antonio Villarreal.” Dictionary of Hispanic Biography. Gale Research, 1996. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Web. 9 Dec. 2003.

Vallejos, Tomás. "José Antonio Villarreal." Chicano Writers: First Series. Ed. Francisco A. Lomeli and Carl R. Shirley. Detroit: Gale Research, 1989. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 82. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Oct. 2014.

Santa Clara University was founded in 1851 by the Society of Jesus as Santa Clara College and is California’s oldest operating institution of higher learning. It was established on the grounds of Mission Santa Clara de Asìs, the eighth of the original 21 California missions. The college originally operated as a preparatory school and did not offer courses of collegiate rank until 1853. The institution became known as the University of Santa Clara in 1912, when the schools of engineering and law were added. For 110 years, Santa Clara University was an all-male school. In 1961, women were accepted as undergraduates and Santa Clara University became the first coeducational Catholic university in California. The number of students and faculty tripled over the next decade and the university began the largest building program in school history with eight residence halls, a student union, and an athletic stadium. In the early 1970s, the Board of Trustees voted to limit the size of the undergraduate population, an action that was intended to preserve the character and ensure the quality of the university for generations to come. In 1985, the university adopted Santa Clara University as its official name.

Bibliography

Santa Clara University. “About SCU – History.” www.scu.edu/about/history.cfm (Accessed Nov. 23, 2010)

McKevitt, Gerald, S.J. The University of Santa Clara: A History, 1851-1977. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1979.