My 5 nonfiction books and 1 novel about Texas politics are for readers pursuing leadership positions.
In YEARNERS, readers will experience the difficulties that Latinos experience when they consider launching political campaigns. Like Tony Sanchez, wealthy Herson Moya decides to spend $30 million of his own money to run for Texas governor. Although he knows that his wife Ana, two married daughters, their husbands, and friends can only help so much, Herson follows his dream. YEARNERS demonstrates the extent to which ambitious LATINOS seek votes, working even without requesting contributions, like Sanchez did when he bravely ran against Governor Rick Perry in 2002.
YEARNERS took me a few decades to write because I did not start until demographic projections showed me that Latino and Latina candidates would run.
Why? I graduated in 1970 from UT/Austin, the campus that claims, “What Starts Here Changes the World.” Following four years of graduate studies at SUNY/Buffalo, UC/Berkely offered me an English faculty position, surprising family members and friends because no one expected that outcome!
After freshman and sophomore years at Pan American University in my Edinburg hometown, I left Austin for snowy Buffalo, where I spent 4 years. In western New York, I taught and read American Literature and finished a Ph.D. dissertation in English on “Old Men in Classic American Literature” in 1974.
That summer, the country’s most highly-ranked English Department hired me, the first Chicano to teach American Literature at UC/Berkeley! My dissertation chapter on Hawthorne, I later learned, had impressed search committee members. Remarkable is that I had consciously avoided speaking English until the 8th grade–when I was about to transfer to Edinburg High School–because, like my male classmates, I felt that using English would turn me into a gringo. Boy, was I deluded!
At Berkeley, my wife Rita and I lived a dream. She taught elementary bilingual education in nearby Oakland, and we happily raised a son and a daughter in a beautiful pink house I describe during our California life in WHY AFFIRMATIVE ACTION REMAINS NECESSARY. Besides teaching, I edited the early work of Anaya, Rivera, and Mendez, three of the first Chicano writers who created literary worlds that motivate students of Latino, African American, and other badly-misunderstood ethnic disciplines.
When my Berkeley tenure path failed to materialize, Rita and I returned to Texas. I next taught for 7 years at UH-Clear Lake, next-door to the NASA Johnson Space Center. In 1986, I applied and was invited to serve as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Texas Southmost College in Brownsville, a community college. A year and a half later, when TSC balked at asking the UT and the TAMU systems for inclusion, I returned to my UH position and published my first book in 1989. In 1990, 2 New York Times Book Reviews and 20 plus articles secured me a full Professorship in the Humanities at UH-Clear Lake.
In 1991, when I was elected MELUS president, Texas A&M University invited me to interview for a tenured English position. In College Station, I taught and served as an administrator for 26 years, retiring in 2017.
For more information, please see “marcoportales.com” and “booksbymarco.com”. My books are available through bookstores, Amazon, and Kindle:
- Why Affirmative Action Remains Necessary, a Memoir (Amazon and Kindle Direct Publishing, 2023)
- Yearners (Floricanto Press, 2017) A Political Novel
- A Mexican Revolution Photo History (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2010, 2013, Second Edition 2015), showing what the U.S. schools fail to teach students about U.S. history
- Latino Sun, Rising (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005, 2007), a collection of essays on hot-button issues rarely addressed in one place
- Quality Education for Latinos and Latinas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005, 2007), a discussion about Kindergarten-to-College education
- Crowding Out Latinos (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000), which addresses Media & Iconography of Latinos