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New voice in Chicano literature
By RAMON RENTERIA
El Paso
Even as a young
boy, Sergio Troncoso wanted to excel so much that everyone thought of him as
"el terco," a hard-headed
over-achiever.
Troncoso insisted
on riding his bicycle from Ysleta to the Segundo Barrio to see his grandmother,
a distance better covered by bus. It was an early example of Troncoso's spirit and drive.
Troncoso, 38,
returns home to El Paso on Saturday to promote his first published collection
of short stories, "The Last Tortilla and Other Stories."
The son of Mexican
immigrants, Troncoso often is described in literary circles as a promising new
voice in Chicano literature. "The Last Tortilla" is drawn from Troncoso's experiences growing up in El Paso, a young boy
who emerged from poverty in a shantytown in Ysleta just outside the Tigua Indian reservation called "Barraca"
and made it to Harvard Square.
Troncoso graduated
from Harvard College with honors and then, as if that were not enough, topped
off his academic credentials with a Fulbright scholarship to Mexico and a pair
of graduate degrees from Yale, where he now teaches writing.
His fiction --drawn
from that menudo of experiences-- is brutally
honest: a young man in love with an older woman from the other side of the
border, an elderly couple beaten and robbed en route to the senior citizens'
center and three boys playing a cruel game that results in another boy's death.
"A series of
tales about older men and women explores their vulnerability, loneliness and
faith in God as they near death, while other stories concentrate on young
adults caught in the cultural gap between their Mexican heritage and American
lives," Publishers Weekly said.
The irrigation
ditch, the playground that nourished many of Troncoso's
childhood fantasies, still runs behind the adobe house that his father built on
In Barraca, a barrio where families once had outhouses and no
electricity or paved streets, the men still serenade the women on Mother's Day.
Neighbors still look out for each other.
"The Last
Tortilla" is getting favorable reviews and some Hollywood production
companies have expressed interest.
"It's a mixed
blessing," Troncoso said in a telephone interview from New York. "I
care about writing more than anything else. I hope that people look at Chicanos
from El Paso as being moral characters, not stereotypes or stick figures but
complex people who think, who face difficult questions in their lives and who
think seriously about how to weigh the issues."
Troncoso points to
a couple of major influences in his life, besides his parents, who taught their
four children solid values, including a strong work ethic, respect and
tolerance for others.
Doña Lola Rivero, his maternal
grandmother, inspired him with her fascinating cuentos
of growing up in revolutionary Mexico. She also shared her philosophy: "El
que adelante no ve atrás se queda."
(He who does not look forward is left behind.)
His paternal
grandfather, Santiago R. Troncoso, a rabble-rousing Mexican journalist whose
outspoken criticism of the government landed him in jail dozens of times, is
credited with publishing the first daily newspaper in Juárez,
"El Día."
And though he has
trained as an economist and once toyed with the idea of becoming a lawyer, it
was literature that has captured Troncoso's heart.
"I found that
writing stories was how I could put all these things together," Troncoso
said. "Writing about my past, exploring ideas and
finding my own voice. Unlike other Latino writers, I like mixing
philosophy with my literature, although it may not seem obvious."
The
Troncoso children learned by example.
Bertha helped support the family as a seamstress. Rodolfo, a self-taught
draftsman who worked for engineering firms, thinks often of the boy who dared
to be different and went so far.
"Sergio has
never abandoned his Mexican roots," Rodolfo Troncoso said. "He has
always been close to the family."
For his wedding
back East, the writer asked that his parents take some
Mexican beer and tamales from La Tapatia.
Rodolfo Troncoso,
the patriarch of the family, always would pay his children a quarter for every
"A" they made in school. And even today, on
the rare times when the entire family is together, he still engages them in
discussions about Aristotle or some literary work.
All the Troncoso
children, Diana, Rodolfo Jr., Sergio and Oscar, obtained college degrees. When
Troncoso left home and went to Harvard, his mother would mail him flautas to ease his loneliness.
Laurie Ryan, his
fourth-grade teacher, remembers Troncoso as one of the most inquisitive
students, the kind of kid who wanted to know not just why, but how snakes
crawled. He was self-motivated, she said, the type of student who later would
stay up until dawn studying.
Josefina Kinard, now the English department head at Del Valle High
School, was Troncoso's journalism adviser at Ysleta
High. She recalls Troncoso as an outspoken editorial writer, routinely testing
the limits of expression, often writing about sex education, student apathy and
other sensitive topics.
"Sergio was
the top of all the bright children that I had," said Dolores Vega, who
taught him in third grade. "He caught on very fast to whatever we
taught."
In citywide junior
high math competition, Troncoso won three gold medals.
"It always
impressed me that he was multitalented, very strong in both math and
writing," said Oscar Troncoso, Sergio's younger brother and an assistant
principal at Americas High School.
Troncoso is working
on a novel. In this work, he explores the right reasons that might justify
killing somebody.
This feature
article appeared in the El Paso Times on August 24, 1999.