Since 1848, Latinos & Latinas have been unfairly represented in the media. My 5 nonfiction books & 1 novel seek a fairer balance.
In YEARNERS, readers will see what Latinos face when launching a political campaign. Several decades after Tony Sanchez’s unsuccessful bid for Texas governor in 2002, rich Herson Moya decides to use $30 million of his own money to run for that same office. Although he knows that his wife Ana, two married daughters, their husbands, and friends can only help so much, Herson moves forward. YEARNERS shows how ambitious LATINOS seek votes, working even without requesting contributions, like Sanchez did when he bravely ran against Governor Rick Perry.
YEARNERS took several years to write because when I learned that demographic projections showed Latino population increases, I knew Latino candidates will soon try again. It’s how we’re built.
I graduated in 1970 from UT/Austin, the campus that claims, “What Starts Here Changes the World.” After four years of graduate studies at SUNY/Buffalo, UC/Berkely offered me an English faculty position, surprising family members and friends because who expected that outcome!
Following my freshman and sophomore years at Pan American University in my Edinburg hometown, I also left Austin for snowy Buffalo, where I spent 4 years. In western New York, I taught, read American Literature, and finished a Ph.D. dissertation on “Old Men in Classic American Literature” in 1974.
That eventful summer, the country’s top-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. What’s remarkable is that I had consciously avoided speaking English until the 8th grade! Why? Because I grew up thinking that speaking English would turn me into a Gringo! How deluded can one be!
At Berkeley, my wife Rita and I lived a dream life. She taught elementary bilingual education in Oakland, and we happily raised a son and a daughter in a beautiful pink house I describe in WHY AFFIRMATIVE ACTION REMAINS NECESSARY. Besides teaching, I edited the early work of Anaya, Rivera, and Mendez, three of the first Chicano fiction writers who still motivate students of Latino, African American, and other unappreciated ethnic disciplines.
When my Berkeley tenure path did not materialize, Rita and I returned to Texas. I then taught at UH-Clear Lake for 7 years, 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 campus 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, I was elected MELUS president. Texas A&M University shortly after invited me to interview for a tenured English position, where I taught for the last 26 years of my teaching career before retiring in 2017.
For more information, 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
Youth and Age in American Literature (New York, Bern, Frankfurt am Main, Paris: Peter Lang, 1989)