José Antonio Villarreal

José Antonio Villarreal was a Chicano novelist. Villarreal was born in 1924 in Los Angeles, California, to migrant Mexican farmworkers. Like Juan Manuel Rubio in Pocho, Villarreal's father fought with Pancho Villa in the Mexican Revolution. He spent four years in the Navy before attending the University of California, Berkeley in 1950. He cited his influences as Spanish literature, Latin American literature, primarily Mexican literature; English literature, specifically James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Thomas Wolfe.