User:Tacovilla17/Rolando Hinojosa-Smith

Rolando Hinojosa (born 1929) is an American novelist, essayist, poet and the Ellen Clayton Garwood professor in the English Department at the University of Texas at Austin.

Early Life and Education
He was born in Texas's Lower Rio Grande Valley in 1929, to a family with strong Mexican and American roots and grew up in Mercedes, Texas, a border town. His father fought in the Mexican Revolution while his mother, an Anglo-Saxon woman fluent in both Spanish and English, maintained the family north of the border. Hinojosa-Smith already grew up with Spanish as his native language, however he became proficient through Mexican immigrants, who came in exile to Mercedes after the revolution, that created "las escuelitas", or little schools, as means of teaching people how to formally read and write in Spanish. Hinojosa also acknowledges La Prensa de San Antonio, a Spanish newspaper based in San Antonio, Texas, that would release content semi-weekly, as one of the reasons he became proficient in the language.

At the age of 17, Hinojosa joined the army where he was sent to the Office of Information and Education at Fort Eustis, Virginia. After completion of his training, he attended the University of Texas at Austin before returning to the army to serve in the Korean War, where he would find inspiration for many of his literature works on the war such as Korean Love Songs (1978), Rites and Witnesses (1989), and The Useless Servants (1993).

Before pursuing further education, Hinojosa worked plenty of jobs such as laborer for a chemical plant, high school teacher, office manager, and sales manager before pursuing graduate school. Alongside obtaining his baccalaureate from the University of Texas at Austin, Hinojosa obtained his master's degree at New Mexico Highlands University, and received a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1969. 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.

Influences
Although Hinojosa was already writing by the time he read Somerset Maugham, the Mexican-American author claims that the English writer taught him how to read from the perspective of a writer. Hinojosa also drew inspiration from Luis Leal and linguist Marcos Morínigo. After having multiple conversations with the duo, the author decided to focus on the Mexican-American experience, specifically from the Texas border area. Hinojosa states that one of his first audiences was Tomás Rivera, another prominent Chicano author who had already published his well known work, ...y no se lo tragó la tierra (1971). After Hinojosa sent a chapter of what would become Por esas cosas que pasa (1972) to Rivera, Rivera forwarded it to Quinto Sol Publications. The publishing company offered Hinojosa a contract thereafter.

Hinojosa-Smith has also been inspired by William Faulkner, who is prominently known for his novels and short stories that take place in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. Rolando Hinojosa's Klail City Death Trap Series mirrors this with his own fictional county that takes place in the American-Texas border instead of Faulker's Mississippi area.

Career
Hinojosa has devoted most of his career as a writer to his Klail City Death Trip Series(KCDTS), which comprises 15 volumes to-date, from Estampas del Valle y otras obras (1973) to We Happy Few (2006). He has completely populated a fictional county in the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas through this generational narrative. The series uses multiple styles, such as poems, journal entries, epistles, and sketches to talk about multiple subjects such as the Mexican-American experience in Texas, including daily life, corruption, politics, marriage, academia, and war. Collectively however, the series uses realism, satire, humor and irony, with most of his books comprising of short stories or narratives from the people of the Valley. These stories can focus on the same issue, such as the titular character's divorce in Becky and Her Friends (1980), where the people of her community discuss her impending divorce and discusses statuses such as economic, gender, and social. It can also simply be a collection of stories that are loosely connected on similar subjects, such as the discrimination Jehu Malacra and Rafe Buenrastra face in Hinojosa's first entry of the series, Estampas del Valle (1973) .

Hinojosa uses his own life experiences growing up on the frontier border to write his books. For example, the Mexican-American author has stated that although the Mexican Revolution ended in 1920, there were still skirmishes from both sides of the forces until 1934 with the election of President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río . Inspired by these conflicts as well as the stories his father would tell him, The Mexican Revolution was a prominent topic in his early of books of KCDTS, notably Estampas del Valle (1973) and Klail City y sus alrededores (1976). In Estampas del Valle (1973), specifically under the chapter "Otra Vez La Muerte", Hinojosa writes about a man's experience in the war in the style of journal entries that the character wrote in while stationed in Papantla, Veracruz in the spring of 1920.

Hinojosa has derived some of his literature from his time serving in the Korea. The author uses Korean Love Songs (1978) as means of expressing his frustrations with his own country. Under the chapter "The Eighth Army at Chongchon", Rafe (the character writing the poems about the war) makes a reference to the General Walton H. Walker's comment on the underestimation of Chinese fighters in the Korean War, who proclaims that the many Chinese groups that live in Korea are akin to Mexicans living in Texas, implying that he views Mexican-Americans as Mexican and thus not as actual Americans. Rafe writes "and many of us there/ were reminded who we were/ thousands of miles from home." Thus, Rafe, and therefore Hinojosa, seems to be irritated that they risk death for a country that sees them as internationals regardless.

Daniel Y. Kim (an English associate professor at Brown University) analyzes Hinojosa's literature on the Korean War and notes the frustrations the author feels with his fellow Americans in combat. Kim for example, points out the mention of General Walton H (Johnny) Walker's "pep" talk in Korean Love Songs's Chapter 8, "The Eighth Army at Chongchon", where General Walton, addressing the underestimation of Chinese fighters in the Korean War, proclaims that the many Chinese groups that live in Korea are akin to Mexicans living in Texas, implying that he views Mexican-Americans as Mexican and thus not as US citizens. Rolando Hinojosa proceeds to state via Rafe that Mexican-Americans are reminded of who they are perceived to be from the point of view of Anglo-Americans despite being on the same groups in battle. Thus, Rafe, and therefore Hinojosa seem to be irritated that they risk death for a country that sees them as internationals regardless. The author also seems to point out the difference in treatment Chicanos receive after the Korean War, in that discrimination against them by Anglo-Americans is now less prevalent, and in fact post war, the Klail City Valley is now more integrated during Rites and Witnesses. Despite Anglo-Americans still controlling the community, there is at the very least integration of Chicanos in public school and more of them joining politics and college (Rafe and Jehu due to the GI Bill for example).

New and changing experiences of the author's life is reflected in his novels. The rise of cartel violence at the border (including where the author lives) has resulted in the author creating two police work novels in Partners in Crime (1985) and Ask a Policeman (1998), which discuss betrayal, corruption, and violence at the border.

Hinojosa was the first Chicano author to receive the prestigious Premio Casa de las Américas award for Klail City y sus alrededores (Klail City), part of the series. He also received the third and final Premio Quinto Sol Annual Prize (1972), for his work Estampas del Valle y otras obras.

Bilingualism in KCDTS
Rolando Hinojosa's series is written in both Spanish and English. However, the author originally wrote the series in Spanish as it is his native language, as he first wrote Estampas del Valle in 1973 and the English rendition was not published until 1983, almost a decade later. Much has been noted about the differences between the English and Spanish versions of the series, such as the rearrangements in chapters, added content to the English version with a picture included, and changes in dialogue to accommodate between the two cultures such as proverbs and slang that are meant to fit in better with their respective cultures. The 2014 reprint of Estampas del Valle/ The Valley includes both the Spanish and English version, where such chapter rearrangements are more obvious. Observations from this book is that after the chapter "Bruno Cano: Lock, Stock, and BBL", the section switches from focusing on Jehu Malacra to Rafe Buenrostro. In the Spanish original version, there are a couple of more stories such as "Don Javier" and "Emilio Taves", with the section on Rafe Buenrostro not coming until the very last section of the book.

Another example is seen in the sequel to the books, Klail City y sus alrededores (1976) in Spanish and Klail City (1987) in English. In Klail City y sus alrededores, Jehu Malacara travels with a protestant Preacher, Iman, spreading their word and selling the bible around the community. Iman is less literate in the Spanish language, with Hinojosa displaying it with Iman's inability to conjugate verbs in Spanish correctly, as well as his troubles with gender agreement. This illiteracy does not translate well in English, with Hinojosa instead compromising by letting Iman speak in rather unusual alliterations as well as a general odd manner of speaking to keep the same message that Iman speaks in an unusual way.

Hinojosa himself has noted the differences between the English and Spanish versions of his series, noting that he sees his translations as more so "renditions", giving him the freedom to edit his content to better suit the community that he is aiming between English-Spanish speakers and Spanish-English speakers. He also states that he rarely translates his English books into Spanish, as he has noted that the Mexican-American community is more proficient in English than in Spanish.