Mexican-American author and alumnus of the UH Arte Publico Press Rolando Hinojosa-Smith was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award. | Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Mexican-American essayist, novelist and author of the Klail City Death Trip series Rolando Hinojosa-Smith has been elected to receive the prestigious Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to American literature.
A professor at the University of Texas at Austin and UH Arte Público Press alumnus, Hinojosa-Smith will accept the award from the National Book Critics Circle Awards on March 13 in New York City.
“We are super pleased for Rolando and for him to finally be recognized in a very concrete way at the national level,” APP Assistant Director Marina Tristan said. “We are definitely scheduling things to celebrate this award.”
The Klail City Death Trip series has received national recognition by authors, fans and critics alike. The series is composed of 15 books, but Hinojosa-Smith said he is planning to revisit Klail City, the fictional town where his works take place, within the year.
“I am working on something right now, and I hope to finish it in December,” Hinojosa-Smith said. “I don’t like to talk about it, because I may change my mind later on. … I don’t even have a title yet. We’ll see what happens.”
Hinojosa-Smith’s books deal with the relationships between Anglo-Americans and Mexican Americans who live on the border of Texas and Mexico. A lot of his work is based on his bicultural background, he said, and he wants to share those experiences.
“I want Spanish speakers to be able to understand our culture as well. Kids go to American schools, and I don’t know how much they know about Mexican history or history about Mexicans in Texas,” Hinojosa-Smith said. “I’m not really a teacher in that regards. I’m a writer, but you have to have society in all your writing. The society reflects the society that I was born into, and that includes Mexicans, obviously.”
Some of his favorite authors include Miguel de Cervantes and Benito Pérez Galdós. But Hinojosa-Smith has been compared to another great author, William Faulker.
The Valley, Estampas del valle by Rolando Hinojosa
“I am a thousand light years away from him. He is one of my favorites from here in the United States. I shouldn’t be compared to him,” Hinojosa-Smith said. “That’s really something. I’m just content to say that I read him and reread him more than anything else.”
Hinojosa-Smith grew up in Mercedes, a small town in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. He is the fifth child of an Anglo-American mother and a Mexican-American father. He began writing as a teenager during World War II, when he would spend his summers in Saltillo, the capitol of the Mexican state Coahuila.
“I have been writing in both languages since I started writing,” Hinojosa-Smith said. “As a writer, whatever we put down on paper, we do it on purpose. So when I’m translating one to the other, that’s what I’m doing. Writing is about decisions. When you make a decision to write, and when you use this term or that other term, you’re fully conscious of what you’re doing.”
Tristan said the director of Arte Público Press will accompany Hinojosa-Smith when he accepts his award next month in New York.
