Pocho

Pocho is a 1959 novel by José Antonio Villarreal. Often considered the first Chicano novel, it was a critical success and an important landmark in American literature. This guide refers to the 1989 Anchor Books edition.

Plot Summary

Pocho is a bildungsroman, telling the coming-of-age story of young Richard Rubio. However, the story starts before his birth with the tale of how his father, Juan Manuel Rubio, first came to America. A soldier who fought alongside Pancho Villa in the Mexican Revolution, Juan Rubio was a proud, patriotic man, with an intense sense of masculine honor. He crossed the border after Villa’s assassination; his wife, Consuelo, followed him, and the two set up a home in Santa Clara, California, arriving just in time for the Great Depression.

Richard is their fifth child and first son. Sensitive and thoughtful, he often finds himself at odds with both his Mexican heritage and the American world he grows up in: He hates the hypocrisy he sees in his parents, his school, and his church. The novel’s title, Pocho, sums up its questions about identity and selfhood: A “pocho” is a second-generation Mexican-American, a child of immigrants born in the US.