Meet ‘Pocho’ the novel, its author, and their times

The interview is three decades old but still amazing. Listen to the man that started “pochismo!”

As the University of Texas presents the Mexican American Experience writes:

Jose Antonio Villarreal discusses his 1959 novel, Pocho, and the ways in which his own life and politics influenced his writing. Villarreal first discusses his experiences growing up in the pre-World War II era in California. He traces some of the similarities between his own life and that of his character, Richard Rubio, but he stresses that his novel is not a biography. Villarreal says he wrote Pocho because he wanted to introduce the rest of the U.S. to a group of Americans they knew nothing about.

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