Villaseñor chosen as September 2013’s “Author of the Month” on Houston Public Media
Houston Public Media radio host Eric Ladau interviewed Villaseñor for its website’s “Arte Público Press Author of the Month” feature, and along with the transcript, their conversation is available to listeners on the station’s interactive site through on-demand audio streaming here.
Click here to see all Arte Público authors featured on Houston Public Media.
About the Author:
VICTOR VILLASEÑOR is a novelist and screenwriter whose works have brought Mexican-American culture and literature to a wide audience. The Los Angeles Times compared his first novel, Macho! (Arte Público Press, 1973 & 2003), to the best work of John Steinbeck. In addition to Rain of Gold (Arte Público Press, 1991), he is the author of Burrio Genius: A Memoir (Rayo, 2004), Thirteen Senses: A Memoir (Harper Collins, 2001), Wild Steps of Heaven (Delta Books, 1995), and a collection of stories for young adults, Walking Stars: Stories of Magic and Power(Arte Público Press, 2003). Villaseñor lives in Oceanside, California where he continues to write.
About his latest book, Rain of Gold
Rain of Gold is a true-life saga of love, family, and destiny, pulsing with bold vitality, sweeping from the war-ravaged Mexican mountains of Pancho Villa’s revolution to the days of Prohibition in California.
It all began when the author’s maternal grandmother sat him down in their little home in the barrio of Carlsbad, California, and gave him sweet bread and told him the story of their past. Of his mother Lupe, the most beautiful girl in the whole village, no more than a child when Villa’s men came shooting into their canyon. And of his father Juan and his family, reduced to rags and starvation by the Revolution as they ran a tireless race against extinction to escape across the border into the United States, where they believed that endless opportunity awaited them.
But Juan found that the doors to the promised land are often closed to those from south of the border. There were times when a man had to take the law into his own hands. But Lupe, law-abiding and extremely religious, learned early in her war-plagued life that love was more powerful than violence, and she refused to bend. It became a struggle of iron wills and deepest passion, a story of love told with humor and poetry that celebrates the triumph of the human spirit.