The Valley

Hinojosa creates a daguerrotype in print by ruthlessly editing until a skeletal work is left, devoid of embellishment or superfluity, illustrating masterfully the liminal position occupied by the chicanos in the border towns he reveals to us. I read this work in college and couldn't bear to sell it back to the bookstore. Every white, middle-class, midwestern student should read this book as well as Rivera's ...And The Earth Did Not Devour Him- my son will.

Rolando Hinojosa, born in Mercedes Texas, in 1929, is one of the best-known contemporary Chicano writers....Hinojosa's work depicts the autonomous Chicano culture of the Rio Grande Valley and its modes of coping with the separate Anglo world. Our author is a master portraitist whose deft and concise use of language enables him to describe events, personages, and mores. His style makes strategic use of documents to create a fiction of alleged veracity. Ultimately, the conflicts that the author exposes and develops are resolved with his characteristically wry, ironic humor. --- from book's back cover