Rolando Hinojosa-Smith

Hinojosa was born Romeo Daniel Hinojosa in Mercedes, Texas, on January 21, 1929. His father, Manuel Guzman Hinojosa, was a Hispanic American sheriff and a veteran of the Mexican Revolution; his mother, Carrie Effie Smith, was an Anglo-American housewife and teacher. Hinojosa would learn English in junior high. Rolando Smith graduated from University of Texas at Austin in 1953. After working as a high school teacher, chemical-plant laborer, and civil servant during the ensuing decade, he undertook postgraduate studies at New Mexico Highlands University, obtaining a master's degree from that institution in 1962 before being awarded a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign seven years later. Influences Hinojosa would regularly read Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time in his early seventies, in addition to Marcel Proust, Alexander Pushkin, Heinrich Böll, and Miguel Ángel Asturias. Of these, the author has claimed that Böll was one of his favorite authors, with his favorite piece from Böll being Billiards at Half-Past Nine, a story that narrates with recounts by characters and flashbacks. ==Career==

Hinojosa first taught at Trinity University, and later moved to larger institutions in Texas A&I University and the University of Minnesota. He devoted most of his career as a writer to his Klail City Death Trip Series, which comprises 15 volumes, from Estampas del Valle y otras obras (1973) to We Happy Few (2006). He 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 consisting of short stories or narratives from the people of the Valley. They can also be a loose connection of short stories around Klail City, such as Hinojosa's first book Estampas de Valle y otras obras. 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 the general 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." New and changing experiences of the author's life is reflected in his novels. The rise of cartel violence at the border influenced Hinojosa to write two police work novels in Partners in Crime (1985) and Ask a Policeman (1998), which discuss betrayal, corruption, and violence at the border. He was later conferred the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2014. In presenting him with the award, the organization described him as "the dean of Chicano authors" and "a mentor and inspiration to several generations of writers". 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 Malacara 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. 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. ==Personal life==

Hinojosa's first marriage was to Lilia Saenz, with whom he had one child (Bob Huddleston). They eventually divorced. He subsequently married Patricia Sorensen. Together, they had two children: Clarissa and Karen. They remained married until her death in 1999. ==Awards and honors==

• Alumni Achievement Award, given by the Illinois Alumni Association (1998) ==Works==

• Ask a Policeman. Houston: Arte Público. 1998. • Los amigos de Becky. Houston, Texas: Arte Público, 1991. • Becky and her Friends. Houston, Texas: Arte Público, 1990. • Claros varones de Belken. Tempe, Ariz.: Bilingual, 1986. • El condado de Belken: Klail City. Tempe: Bilingual, 1994. • "Crossing the Line: The Construction of a Poem." Milwaukee, WI: Spanish Speaking Outreach Institute-U. of Wisconsin, 1981. • Dear Rafe. Houston, Texas: Arte Público, 1985. • Dear Rafe/Mi querido Rafa. Houston: Arte Público Press, 2005. • Estampas del Valle. Tempe: Bilingual, 1994. • Estampas del Valle y otras obras. Berkeley: Quinto Sol, 1973. • Estampas del Valle y otras obras. Berkeley: Justa, 1977. • Generaciones, notas y brechas. San Francisco: Casa Editorial, 1978. • Generaciones y semblanzas. 1977. Berkeley: Justa, 1979. • Klail City. Houston, Texas: Arte Público, 1987. • Klail City und Umgebung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981. • Klail City y sus alrededores. La Habana: Casa de las Américas, 1976. • Korean Love Songs. Berkeley, Calif.: Justa, 1978. • Korea Liebes Lieder/Korean Love Songs. O.B.E.M.A., Nr. 6, Osnabrück, Germany, 1991 • Mi querido Rafa. Houston, Texas: Arte Público, 1981. • Partners in Crime. Houston, Texas: Arte Público, 1985. • Rites and Witnesses. Houston, Texas: Arte Público, 1982. • This Migrant Earth. Houston, Texas: Arte Público, 1987. • The Useless Servants. Houston: Arte Público, 1993. • The Valley. Ypsilanti, MI: Bilingual, 1983. (Hinojosa's own translation of Estampas del Valle) • We Happy Few. Houston: Arte Público Press, 2006. ;Works and editions https://faculty.ucmerced.edu/mmartin-rodriguez/index_files/vhHinojosaRolando.htm ==References==