Pocho by Jose Antonio Villarreal Essay -- Mexican Culture Catholicism

Pocho by Jose Antonio VillarrealThe 1959 novel, Pocho, by Jos Antonio Villarreal is an insightful cultural exposition told primarily from the vantage send of Richard Rubio, the coming-of-age son of immigrant Mexican parents who eventu on the wholey settle in Santa Clara, California, afterwards umteen seasons of migrant farm work. Although fiction, the story analogously mirrors some of the experiences of the author who was innate(p) to migrant laborers in Los Angeles in 1924 and was himself a pocho - a child of the imprint era Mexican-American transition. (I am a Pocho, he said, and we speak like this because here in California we make Castilian words out of side of meat words. p 165)Such a journey was a difficult iodin (...for the transition from the culture of the old world to that of the new world should never have been attempted in one generation. p 135), and Villarreal nicely employs a cross cultural bildungsroman to explore a diversity of related themes.Among the intimat ely prominent are strains of racism/classism, belonging and dislocation, death and meaning and self-identity, and internal awakening. In a slim 187 pages the author competently weaves social exposition (via the seemingly innocent adolescent perspective) into a moving narrative that notwithstanding occasionally veers toward the pedantic.Richards father, Juan Rubio, is proud to be a Mexican and resents the Spanish good deal, whom he identifies as oppressors (although Juan is clearly of Spanish descent since he had fair climb and blue-gray eyes - p 1). He explains to his son, who exclaims in response to his fathers blemish, But all your friends are Spanish (p 99)That is all there is here, said Juan Rubio, but these people are different - they are also from the lower class... ...s parents. Second, one should not, on penalty of going to Hell, discuss religion with the priests. And, last, one should not contract questions on history of the teachers, or one will be unploughed in a fter school, he said. I do not remark it in me to understand why it is this way. (p 85, 86)Author Jos Antonio Villarreal has a dry adept of humor and, as mentioned above, does a marvelous job weaving bits of humourous commentary throughout the novel. Another fun quote is when Richards sister, Luz, demonstrates her own prejudice for the newly arrived, and darker skinned, Mexicans Well, they aint got nuthin and they dont even talk good English. (p 148) Now, 50 years after the novel was first written, the story is still relevant. Its an intriguing narrative and helpful in capturing the double consciousness that many Mexican-Americans lived with as a function of course.