Background
Hinojosa was born in 1929 in Texas's Lower Rio Grande Valley to a family with strong Mexican and American roots: his father fought in the Mexican Revolution while his mother maintained the family north of the border.
(In these vignettes set in the fictional county of Belken ...)
In these vignettes set in the fictional county of Belken along the Texas-Mexico border in the early to mid-twentieth century, Rolando Hinojosa sketches a landscape of Mexican Texans and Anglo Texans living side by side, in good times and bad. "The world's a drugstore: you'll find a little bit of just about everything, and it's usually on sale, too. Belken County, Texas is part of the world, and so, it's no different; it's people are packaged in cellophane and they, too, come in all sizes, shapes and in a choice of colors." Some are brave; others are craven. Some are sharp, and some are dull. Death calls on a regular basis in this first installment of Hinojosa's acclaimed Klail City Death Trip Series. Jehu Malacara was seven when his mother died and nine when his father passed. He has family, but it's Don Victor Pelaez who takes him in and makes him an integral part of the Pelaez Tent Show. When la muerte comes for Don Victor, Jehu is orphaned again. Others die in bar room brawls, in a clandestine amorous tryst at the local Holiday Inn and on the street. Hinojosa paints his canvas with a montage of life's events births, weddings, friendships and love affairs but his brushwork all too frequently highlights the discrimination experienced by Mexican Americans. They lose their land to Anglos, are paid with rotten fruit for their labor and are refused admission to certain cafes. But life goes on. Young men go to war and old men remember their wars, whether the Mexican Revolution, World War II or the Korean War. This classic novel has never before been available in a bilingual edition; it was originally published in the early 1970s as Estampas del valle and in the early 1980s as The Valley. Frequently compared to William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Macondo, Rolando Hinojosa's Klail City Death Trip Series is required reading for anyone interested in life along the Texas-Mexico border in the twentieth century.
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(The second installment in Rolando Hinojosa's acclaimed Kl...)
The second installment in Rolando Hinojosa's acclaimed Klail City Death Trip Series returns to South Texas, where Mexicans and Anglos share an uneasy coexistence. Don Aureliano Mora waits three years for justice after his son, a World War II veteran, is murdered by a Belken County Deputy Sheriff. When the Anglo gets away with murder, Don Aureliano takes matters in the shape of a crowbar into his own hands, pulverizing the plaque in old Klail City Park that honors the town s World War II vets. The younger generation has to fight for equality, too. The Texas Mexican boys playing high school football in Klail City didn't get letter jackets, even though all of their Anglo peers did. And when the Mexican boys weren't interested in hustling for the ball the following year, the school board came up with enough money for all the eligible players to get letter jackets. In the end it didn't really matter; several of the Mexican boys died in the Korean War. But life goes on in Klail City. The rains come and go, crops are raised and people are buried. This is the first bilingual edition ever available of this important novel. Originally published in Cuba in the 70s, the Spanish edition won the esteemed Casa de las Américas Prize in 1976. The English-language version was published by Arte Público in 1987. Frequently compared to William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha and Gabriel García Márquez's Macondo, Rolando Hinojosa's Klail City Death Trip Series is required reading for anyone interested in life along the Texas-Mexico border in the twentieth century.
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(Welcome to Klail City, in Belken County, along the Mexico...)
Welcome to Klail City, in Belken County, along the Mexico border in Texas Rio Grande Valley. In the weeks leading up to the Democratic primary, Jehu Malacara chronicles the political rabble-rousing of Klail Citys wealthiest citizens in letters to his cousin Rafe Buenrostro. Led by Arnold "Noddy" Perkins, the whos who of Belken County create a complex web of relationships. Wrangling bank loans, club memberships, and local politics, Perkins dominates the political and economic landscape of the community. When Malacara turns up missing, and the writer, P. Galindo, begins interviewing the citizens, tales of deceit and betrayal float to the surface. From Jehus knockout girlfriend Ollie to up-and-coming socialite Becky Escobar and even to old man Perkins himself, Hinojosa offers a feast of quirky characters and misdeeds. Part epistolary, part mystery novel, the population of Klail City makes an indelible impression. With an introduction by Hinojosa scholar Manuel Martín-Rodríguez, a professor at University of California Merced, this volume combines for the first time the English and Spanish-language versions of the novel that creates a fictitious community that The New York Times compared to Faulkners Yoknapatawpha and Marquezs Macondo.
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(It's a cool Monday morning in October 1972, and the Belke...)
It's a cool Monday morning in October 1972, and the Belken County Homicide Squad is dealing with a dead body found in an abandoned car in the middle of a cotton field. Lieutenant Detective Rafe Buenrostro and the four other men making up the squad are accustomed to corpses, even though they live and work in a mostly rural area of South Texas along the Mexican border. The bloody scene at the Kum Bak Inn is a different story, though, and one that is impossible to get used to: three men--including one of their own--slaughtered so brutally that their faces, arms, legs and even genitalia have been completely severed from their bodies. Two witnesses spared this horrific death are able to provide first-hand descriptions of the killers: three Mexican nationals, armed with machine guns, driving a cream-colored, four-door Oldsmobile. These clues send Rafe and his colleagues down a twisting path strewn with leads and assumptions, many of which lead to dead ends after patient, plodding examination. But it's a meeting with their Mexican counterpart, Captain Lisandro Gomez Solis of the Tamaulipas State Police, which sets them on the trail that will eventually lead them to the killers. The way is littered with suspects and shady characters, including a veteran car thief, unsuspecting drug mules, dirty bank tellers and double-crossing Mexican gangsters. Foreshadowing the horrifying violence plaguing Mexico and the border area, Rolando Hinojosa's first mystery novel featuring characters from his acclaimed Klail City Death Trip series about life along the Texas-Mexico border was originally published in 1985 and has been out of print for many years. Partners in Crime is a procedural whodunit that will satisfy the most hardened mystery book aficionado.
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(Mirroring the linguistic and cultural evolution of those ...)
Mirroring the linguistic and cultural evolution of those living on the Texas-Mexico border, Rolando Hinojosa's Klail City Death Trip Series examines relations between Mexican Americans and Anglo Americans born and raised in the fictional Rio Grande Valley town of Klail City, Texas. Depicting the transformation of a place and its people "from a sleepy agricultural and ranching backwater of Mexican and American society and history" over a 30-year period, the series comprises fifteen books-published between 1973 and 2006-and reflects the importance of the growing Hispanic population in the U.S. The people of Hinojosa's Klail City, which has been compared to William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Macondo, have dealt with the same issues as their real-life counterparts living along the border, including discrimination, generational change, drug violence and the quest for women's rights. The editors of this scholarly volume assert in their introduction that the series, with volumes in English, Spanish and a mix of both languages, "may well be the most innovative and complex project of literary creation ever conceived and realized by a writer based in the United States." The eleven essays in this volume consider both broad and specialized aspects of the Klail City Death Trip Series. Divided into two sections, the chapters in the first half examine the series as a whole and look at general topics such as cultural hybridity, the individual's needs versus those of society and the influence of Hispanic literary tradition on Hinojosa's work. The essays in the second half explore more specific aspects, including Klail City youth going to war, women's search for autonomy in the face of societal and familial tradition and a comparison of Hinojosa's The Valley with Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show as examples of Hispanic and Anglo literary traditions that developed in the same region. Also included is an interview with Rolando Hinojosa, the Ellen Clayton Garwood Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the most prestigious prize in Latin American fiction, Casa de las Americas, for the best Spanish American novel in 1976 and the Premio Quinto Sol, the National Award for Chicano Literature, in 1972. This collection is an essential tool for scholars and students alike in understanding the work of Rolando Hinojosa and the people living a bilingual, bicultural life along the Texas-Mexico border.
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(When Lee Gomez, a former Mexican government official conv...)
When Lee Gomez, a former Mexican government official convicted of murder, is sprung from a south Texas jail, the lawmen of Klail City have their hands full. No one is more concerned than Chief Inspector Rafe Buenrostro of the Belken County Homicide Squad, because criminals don't come much nastier than Lee and his drug-running brother, Felipe Segundo Gomez. Sometimes they do, though . . . as Buenrostro soon discovers when the younger generation of the Gomez crime family turns up, in the form of the elusive and extremely unpleasant twin brothers Juan Carlos and Jose Antonio Gomez. Buenrostro struggles to keep his cool as gunfire, explosions, and seamy sex heat up the already scorching Texas-Mexico borderlands. Halting the crime spree will require not only Buenrostro's own detective force but that of his official counterpart across the Rio Grande, Maria Luisa (Lu) Cetina of Barrones.
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Hinojosa was born in 1929 in Texas's Lower Rio Grande Valley to a family with strong Mexican and American roots: his father fought in the Mexican Revolution while his mother maintained the family north of the border.
An avid reader during childhood, Hinojosa was raised speaking Spanish until he attended junior high, 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 academic posts and has also been active in 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 Jehú 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 Jehú'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, Jehú'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 composed of interwoven narratives, conversations, and anecdotes illustrating the town's collective life spanning fifty years. Winner of the 1976 Premio Casa de las Américas, 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 Jehú, Klail City prompts 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 Jehú 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 Echevarría, who comment on their own and others' circumstances. Writing about Fair Gentlemen of Belken County, World Literature Today contributor Tatum comments that Hinojosa's "creative strength and major characteristic is his ability to render this fictional reality utilizing a collective voice deeply rooted in the Hispanic tradition of the Texas-Mexico border. " Also expressing a favorable opinion of the book was Los Angeles Times Book Review writer Alejandro Morales, who concludes 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 Jehú-now a successful bank officer-to his cousin Rafa. Between the novel's two parts, however, Jehú 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 Jehú'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 Jehú's letters, and Jehú's life is sketched through the opinions of the townspeople. 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. Jehú and Rafa reappear in the novel as minor characters who nevertheless play important parts in the mystery's development.
In 1993, Hinojosa released The Useless Servants. This is a novel of the Korean War, told in the form of the journal of Rafe Buenestro, a Mexican American soldier. This novel exposes the negative treatment Mexican Americans and African Americans received from their fellow soldiers.
(Mirroring the linguistic and cultural evolution of those ...)
(In these vignettes set in the fictional county of Belken ...)
(It's a cool Monday morning in October 1972, and the Belke...)
(The second installment in Rolando Hinojosa's acclaimed Kl...)
(When Lee Gomez, a former Mexican government official conv...)
(Welcome to Klail City, in Belken County, along the Mexico...)
(novel, Spanish text, English intro Gonzales-Berry)
Quotations:
"I enjoy writing, of course, but I enjoy the re-writing even more: four or five rewritings 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 Cortázar, Ishmael Reed, Elena Poniatowski and George Lamming. ''
"My goal is to set down in fiction the history of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and with Becky and Her Friends, [which came] out in 1990, I am right on schedule. The Spanish version will also be out the same year. 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. "
Quotes from others about the person
"Hinojosa is such a master of English that he captures the same intimacy and idiomatic word play in his re-creations. "
"Hinojosa gives us a graphic picture of the unchanging face of war-raw, gritty and inhumane. "