• Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s ELA Music Stories
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen

latinopia.com

Latino arts, history and culture

  • Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s ELA Music Stories
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen
You are here: Home / Literature / LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW / LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW “POCHO”

LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW “POCHO”

July 30, 2012 by

Pocho Book cover“Pocho”

Written by José Antonio Villareal

First Publication Knoft Books, 1959

Current edition: Anchor Books

187 pages

Reviewed by Luís Torres

________________________________________________

“Pocho” by José Antonio Villareal is one of the earliest novels by a Mexican American writer. It was first published by Knopf Doubleday in 1959 and is still in print and available from Anchor Books, an imprint of Random House. Encompassing key aspects of the Chicano experience from the 1920s to the 1940s, “Pocho” still holds powerful resonance for today.

Literary scholars like to show us how sophisticated they are by using all kinds of obscure words and phrases to characterize various styles and genres of literature. A book such as “Pocho” is characterized as a bildungsroman. That’s simply German for “coming of age story,” and indisputably “Pocho” can be described as a coming-of-age novel. It charts the adolescence of Richard Rubio, a character who struggles to define himself as he draws on the strengths and weaknesses from two worlds – that of the mexicano and that of the “American.” Rubio, born in 1919, is the child of a one-time revolucionario foot soldier who fought under Pancho Villa and a subservient, presumably “typical” Mexican village girl. The chaos of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 eventually pushes the family al norte where they end up in rural Santa Clara, California.

A constant theme of the story is the tension Mexican immigrants face as they are pulled (and pushed) by two cultures and two languages. It is a theme that appears, sometimes subtly and sometimes heavy-handedly, in many Chicano novels of the 1960s and 1970s. Here Villareal generally handles these struggles with a deft narrative touch. We see what is happening to the characters as they evolve. We hear their struggle in their voices as they inevitably confront the push and pull of the cauldron of duality in which they are distilled. Villareal effectively “shows”; he doesn’t “tell”. In Richard Rubio’s case it is often a difficult journey, forcing him to embrace his “Mexicanness” (as embodied in boldface in his mother and father) at times and compelling him to adopt a more “American” perspective as he grows and begins to question the world around him. He becomes a distillation of both worlds and becomes someone who “knows himself.”

Like Villareal himself, Richard Rubio grows up in a world that is immediately defined by the quotidian existence that comes with being a Mexican immigrant family eking out a living by picking the crops in the Santa Clara Valley. One season it is prunes, the next it can be asparagus. It is arduous, mind-numbing work. Richard is a kid who dreams of a world beyond his immediate circumstances. He haunts the tiny public library, devouring seemingly every book on the shelves. He realizes it would be a gigantic leap, but he dreams of someday going to college and being a writer. Such goals are not easily accessible for a young man of his circumstances, especially when the family is forced to deal with the challenges of the Great Depression by the time Richard is a teenager.

But he persists, all the while working to understand the people around him and, tellingly, working to understand himself and what his essence is. His chums are Mexicans and Italians and Japanese Americans. He confronts discrimination, prejudice and oppression in their many forms. He and his friends are busted by the cops and beaten for no reason, apparently, other than being “other.”

Meanwhile, his father and his mother begin to tear each other apart. In doing so, they begin to tear themselves apart. Richard is a witness to his father’s many infidelities and his long-suffering mother’s attempts to become strong and independent “in this new country.” The father berates her for being “Americanized.” She challenges his domineering, macho ways. The clashes threaten to lead to a kind of personal disintegration on Richard’s part, but now he’s strong enough not to let it do so. Ultimately, he determines that he can play no role in such chingasos. He can’t really take sides. He resents the idea that his parents try to make him choose one over the other. He loves them both, but realizes he has to focus on his own life, his own challenges and his own aspirations. All the while he is somewhat torn between two cultures, but works to create his own identity – drawing strength from the positive dimensions of each culture.

As the United States enters WWII after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he enlists in the navy. He is both getting away from something and heading toward something – a future he hopes to have his own say in. He has to become his “own person.” That is the only way he can survive and eventually thrive. It’s a narrative arc that, of course, resonates with many Chicanos.

Now more than fifty years after it was first published, “Pocho” still has a strong, engaging narrative and the ideas at the core of the story are still relevant. However, there is a strange dimension to it, too. Some of the attitudes embodied by Richard’s father, Juan, seem indefensible given our social consciousness today. (I first read the book some thirty years ago and wasn’t struck by some of those things as much as I was on this latest reading.) Specifically, I’m talking about the heedless swaggering negative machismo that drives the book, particularly in the beginning.

The first few chapters are told from Juan Rubio’s point of view. We meet Juan (Ruben’s father) when he is a young man leaving the revolutionary struggle about the time Pancho Villa is assassinated. The scenes of near casual sexual abuse of women are disquieting to say the least. And it’s not as if such incidents are presented in a way that would lead the reader to question such negative macho behavior. It’s as if we are supposed to blithely accept such actions and attitudes as “normal” for Mexicans. Again, it is disquieting. I would be interested to read what today’s feminist literary scholars would make of those portions of the book.

Yet, despite that “Pocho” is an accomplished bit of storytelling. It is still valuable as one of the big stones that helped lay the foundation for the many Chicano/a bildungsroman novels that were to come.

_________________________________________________

Luis Torres photoLuís Torres is the author of a forthcoming book about the life and legacy of activist/educator Vahac Mardirosian.

 

Copyright 2012 Luis R. Torres

Filed Under: LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 01.28.23 CRYSTAL CITY 1969

January 27, 2023 By wpengine

An Inspiring Latino Play: Crystal City 1969 David Lozano and Raul Trevino wrote Crystal City 1969 in 2009, a production which The Dallas Morning News called the “Best New Play” of 2009. Residents from Crystal City learned of its success by word of mouth, but individuals who contributed to the school walkouts that permanently transformed […]

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 01.20.23 OSCAR ALVARADO MASTER MOSAIC ARTIST

January 20, 2023 By wpengine

Oscar Alvarado: Latino Master Artist of Tile Mosaic On most days of the year, Oscar Alvarado steps out of the warehouse at his San Antonio Southtown studio, spaces that he shares with his twin brother Robert, to look over sections of nearly two acres filled with sand, tile, rock, glass, and steel. He treasures the […]

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT AL RENDON AN ACCLAIMED LATINO PHOTOGRAPHER

January 14, 2023 By wpengine

Al Rendon: A Highly Acclaimed Latino Photographer Every American City has its favorite photographer who is able to produce revealing imagery that captures the mind and soul of its people, that documents the cultural attributes of its society, and that reveals the historical aspects of the region’s landscape. Large cities with diverse populations count on […]

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT JOSÉ ESQUIVAL A CHICANO TRAILBLAZER

January 7, 2023 By wpengine

José Esquivel: A Chicano Art Trailblazer José Esquivel, one of the founding members of the Chicano art movement in America, passed away on December 16, 2022. He was 87 years old. A memorial to Esquivel is planned for Tuesday evening, January 3rd at the Centro Cultural Aztlan. Through his paintings Esquivel documented life in his […]

More Posts from this Category

New On Latinopia

LATINOPIA EVENT 1966 UFW PEREGRINACIÓN (PILGRIMAGE) MARCH

By Tia Tenopia on March 19, 2013

The effort to organize farm workers under a union contract has been a long and difficult struggle. In 1965, César Chávez and Dolores Huerta created what would become the United Farm Workers Union. From the onset they  faced many obstacles, not the least of which was how to get dozens of California grape growers to […]

Category: History, LATINOPIA EVENT

LATINOPIA MUSIC ANGELA ROA “TOCO DESAFINADO”

By Tia Tenopia on June 22, 2014

Angela Roa is a Chilean singer and lyricist residing in Los Angeles, California. Her songs are about the Latino experience in the United States and in Latin America. Here she performs an original song, “Toco Desafinado” (Out of Tune). She is accompanied by Fernando Losada, Rich Silva and Thiago Winterstein..

Category: LATINOPIA MUSIC, Music

LATINOPIA MUSIC LOS FABULOCOS “UNA PURA Y DOS CON SAL”

By Tia Tenopia on January 4, 2015

Delta Groove Music recording artist Los FabuLocos is a Southern California band whose unique sound, “Cali-Mex,”is a fusion of blues, Americana and Chicano soul music. Band members include Jesús Cuevas, accordion and vocals; Rubén Guaderama, guitar,bajo sexto, tres and vocals; James Barrios, bass and vocals; Mike Molina, drums and Kid Ramos, guitar( not in this […]

Category: LATINOPIA MUSIC, Music

© 2023 latinopia.com · Pin It - Genesis - WordPress · Admin