User:Richard Vasquez Writer/sandbox

Biography:

Richard Vasquez (1928 – 1990) was a journalist and author. Born in Southgate and raised in Pasadena, California, Richard was son to Nèftali Vasquez, who built bridges in San Gabriel Valley in the 1930s and 1940s, and Irene Vasquez. He had nine siblings.

After serving in the Navy, Vasquez worked in construction during the late 1940s and early 1950s. He became increasingly familiar with and interested in the cultural and sociological aspects of the Latino community in Los Angeles, and in 1952 quit his construction job to become a writer.

With luck Vasquez landed a job at a weekly paper in Pasadena, and worked for several newspapers in the greater Los Angeles area, including the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. While working for the Tribune, he wrote a daily column focusing on Early California history, and became an expert in the field.

Vasquez married for the second time in 1960 to Lucy Wilbur, a college music professor and concert pianist. It was at this time that Vasquez began writing his most notorious novel, Chicano (Doubleday, 1970, HarperCollins, 2005).

During the 1960s, Vasquez became increasingly active in Civil Rights issues while maintaining his work as a reporter and continuing to work on his novel.

On August 29, 1970 he covered the Chicano Moratorium, where colleague Ruben Salazar was killed by police. Vasquez then replaced Salazar at the Los Angeles Times, the same year that Chicano was published.

“Richard Vasquez the writer was in the right place at the right time,” writes Ruben Martinez in his forward to the 2005 reprinting by HarperCollins. ''“By the late 1960s, after decades of ignominy, Chicanos had finally arrived on the national stage. Robert Kennedy sat with Cesar Chavez in the San Joaquin Valley shortly before his assassination. Chicano students at several East LA schools led “blowouts,” walking out of classes to protest blatantly inferior educational resources in the barrios. And the music of Carlos Santana (born in Mexico but an honorary Chicano if there ever was one) played constantly on the airwaves.”''

In addition to his work at the LA Times, Vasquez spent time speaking at universities and high schools across California, addressing Civil Rights issues as well as discussing other social justice issues that Chicano addressed.

In 1973, Richard’s wife became ill and he dedicated much of his time to care for her. He did continue to freelance as a reporter, and published two additional books, The Giant Killer and Another Land. Vasquez died in 1990.

Books:

Chicano (1970 Doubleday, 2005 HarperCollins)

Chicano unfolds the fates and fortunes of the Sandoval family, who flees the chaos and poverty of the Mexican Revolution for the United States, in hope of a better life.

Second generation Néftali Sandoval manages to buy a piece of land in Rabbit Town (known today as Irwindale, CA), some 20 miles east of Los Angeles, and builds his own home by hand out of rock and cement. He raises his nine children in Irwindale even as he faces discrimination and injustice.

Of his children, only Angie and Pete are able to create a brighter existence, at least for a time. But when Pete’s daughter Mariana falls in love with David, an Anglo sociology college student, a clash in cultures is set in motion.

David refuses to marry Mariana, fearing the reaction of his family and friends. Mariana, pregnant with David’s child, is trapped between two worlds and shunned by both because of the man she loves.

The complications of their relationship speak volumes – even today – about the shifting sands of racial politics in America.

A bestseller when first published in 1970 at the height of the Mexican-American civil rights movement, Chicano was the first novel about Mexican-Americans ever released by a major publisher. Coinciding with the Chicano Movemiento, Chicano demanded attention to social and cultural issues previously unaddressed, and which are still relevant today.

In his forward to the re-printing by HarperCollins (2005), award-winning author Ruben Martinez reflects on the historical significance of Chicano’s initial publication and explores how cultural perceptions have changed since the story of the Sandoval family first appeared in print.

“Whether reading it for the first time or returning to it after many years,” writes Martinez, “the book adds priceless depth to Chicano literary history and enhances our reading of what has been written since.”

Ruben Martinez goes on further to write of Chicano:

“Like the first and second generations in Chicano'', there are countless migrant families today that follow the picking seasons across the country. There are new Mexican barrios in places like Georgia, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Iowa. There are workplaces today that are not very different from the ones described in the early pages of Vasquez’ novel, or, for that matter, in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. And there are young people today – much like Mariana and Sammy – facing the challenges, and the glories, of growing up in that Chicano world of contrary signs.''

''In the age of the global, those signs are becoming the world’s. There will be many more Chicanos – and not all of them will be Mexicans. They will also be from Asia and Africa and the Middle East and Eastern Europe. They will exist wherever journeys of necessity bring together, and draw apart, distinct peoples to summon new identities. This is a novel about such journeys – Chicano, American, human.”''

Reviews for Chicano:

LA Times - Jonathan Kirsch 10/30/2005

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/oct/30/books/bk-kirsch30

“Chicano is a work on a monumental scale, unfolding in the first two-thirds of the 20th century and illuminating a neglected aspect of the U.S. immigration saga. Vasquez tells the story of the Sandoval family, whose patriarch, Hector, crosses into the United States to escape the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution; his children and grandchildren are forced to confront a different kind of social and cultural turmoil as the multigenerational novel moves forward in time.”

The Elegant Variation – Daniel Olivas, Author   10/20/2005

http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2005/10/chicanoby_richa.html

“Richard Vasquez offers a potent and unvarnished portrayal of one family’s attempt to find dignity and raise children in a land that forever feels foreign even over four generations. Chicano also serves as a historical document that chronicles imperfect survival in the face of often unrelenting obstacles. As Martínez notes: “Maybe in the end there is something essentially American about being Chicano.” Perhaps that was Vasquez’s greatest accomplishment: demonstrating that Chicanos are as American as anyone else.”

NBCLatino - Claudio Iván Remeseira  9/30/2013

http://nbclatino.com/2013/09/30/a-spotlight-on-chicano-authors-on-hispanic-heritage-month/

“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 (granddaughter) 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.”

HarperCollins Teachers Guide, Classroom discussion and references

Íhttp://files.harpercollins.com/OMM/chicano.html

La Bloga – Michael Sedano 11/22/2005

http://labloga.blogspot.com/2005/11/review-richard-vasquez-chicano.html

Remezcla 2008

http://remezcla.com/culture/chicano-by-richard-vasquez/

"Vasquez is a writer of power and honesty; his novel is a chapter in our own history."—Los Angeles Times

"A melting-pot novel in the tradition of Upton Sinclair, touched with authentic color and understandable bitterness."—New York Times Book Review

"In my hunger for works that spoke to my realities, my traumas—and perhaps my hopes——as a drug addict and gang youth, I came across Richard Vasquez's novel in a bookstore. The title stopped me cold. Chicano. That's what I was! Us barrio street kids had used that term long before it became the moniker of a movement (which I eventually found my way into). Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd see "Chicano" on a book cover—a book one could find by accident in a bookstore or library. I bought that book. One of the few I ever did in those days. I read it. I connected to it. And perhaps, somewhere, a seed that had been planted in jails and juvenile halls became further nurtured to allow me deep consideration of a writing life. Years after, in my mid-twenties, working in a steel mill and facing a jobless future in industry and a nebulous one in literature, I finally decided to become a writer. I never met Richard Vasquez. But I know inside his words sang and his stories flowed. His writer's blood filled my pen. Thank you for the reissue of a classic in Chicano literature. It feeds me still."—Luis J. Rodriguez, author of Always Running and Music of the Mill

Other Books by Richard Vasquez

The Giant Killer (1978)

Taking place in Los Angeles during the 1970's, a Chicano reporter uncovers a huge political conspiracy.

Acclaim for the The Giant Killer:

“Finally—an authentic and exciting Mexican American character. More importantly, Richard Vasquez portrays him with truth. I hope to meet RAMON GARCIA again and again.”

—RICARDO MONTALBAN, actor

“In RAMON GARCIA, novelist Richard Vasquez has created a fascinating, bigger-than-life Chicano hero. While Garcia is a hard-hitting, skilled reporter, he is at once tough, sensitive, and humorous. He made me laugh and cry...”

—FRANK SIFUENTES, Latin American Perspective Magazine

Another Land (1982)

Another Land address the struggles of two illegal immigrants trying to survive in Los Angeles.