• 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 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 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 05.06.22 FIDENCIO DURAN

May 6, 2022 By wpengine

Fidencio Duran: A Painter Who Captures Latino Culture and Traditions in Everyday Life Texas artist Fidencio Duran has been climbing tall scaffolds since he won a commission to complete a mural in Brownsville, Texas thirty-seven years ago. Today, Duran’s murals are among the most visible for any Latino artist in America. On an annual basis […]

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 05.13.22 CARLOS ROSALES-SILVA

May 13, 2022 By wpengine

Carlos Rosales-Silva’s Abstract Imagery Captures Latino Culture Carlos Rosales-Silva, a resident of New York City for the past decade, relies on memory, photographs, and historical accounts of his native West Texas community to create art that represents a visual narrative of nature, people, architecture, and objects of a dynamic American borderland region. His art is […]

BURUNDANGA BORICUA DEL ZOCOTROCO 04.30.22

April 30, 2022 By wpengine

Burundanga de Zocotroco José M. Umpierre La atención pública en la Isla del Encanto en los últimos tiempos ha estado enfocada en la determinación del tribunal Supremo Federal en cuanto a la aplicabilidad de Seguridad de Ingreso Suplementario (SSI) a los ciudadanos residente en Puerto Rico. El caso trata de José Luis Vaello Madero al […]

POLITICAL SALSA Y MÁS with SAL BALDENEGRO 04.16.22 “NICKNAMES CAN BE HURTFUL”

April 15, 2022 By Tia Tenopia

Nicknames can be hurtful, harmful… Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive. Thomas Chandler Haliburton – Nova Scotian-Canadian-English politician and author. By your leave, I’m going to deviate from political issues such as the Jan. 6 insurrection by the Trump cultists, the Russian war crimes in Ukraine, etc. Instead, I’m […]

More Posts from this Category

New On Latinopia

LATINOPIA WORD ROLANDO HINOJOSA “KLAIL CITY”

By Tia Tenopia on April 15, 2013

Dr. Rolando Hinojosa Smith is a pioneering Chicano author whose writings transcend genres. His novel “Klail City” won the prestigious Casa de las Americas literary award. Hinojosa has created the fictional world of Klail City located in fictional Belkin County, Texas. His writings draw on his experiences growing up in the Rio Grande valley of […]

Category: LATINOPIA WORD, Literature

LATINOPIA FOOD “JALAPEÑO SODA BREAD” RECIPE

By Tia Tenopia on March 14, 2011

Jalapeño Irish Soda Bread The sweetness of traditional Irish soda bread ingredients—raisins, buttermilk, some sugar—are richly complimented by jalapeño heat. Here’s a soda bread recipe from Ireland brought to the USA from Galway by Mary Patricia Reilly Murray and later transformed  with her blessing by her daughter, Bobbi Murray, who added jalapeño chile.  A real […]

Category: Cooking, Food, LATINOPIA FOOD

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

© 2022 latinopia.com · Pin It - Genesis - WordPress · Admin