Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, "a charismatic, award-winning writer who created a fictional version of the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where he was raised by Anglo and Hispanic parents, as the backdrop for 15 novels," died April 19, the New York Times reported. He was 93. "A major figure in Chicano literature along with Tomás Rivera, Sandra Cisneros, Rudolfo Anaya and others, Dr. Hinojosa-Smith wrote stories in Spanish and English about race, power, class, money and war in Belken County, creating a vivid world that mirrored his own life."
The National Book Critics Circle presented him with the Ivan Landrof award for lifetime achievement in 2014, calling him the "dean of Chicano authors."
A professor of literature at the University of Texas at Austin for 35 years, Hinojosa-Smith began his Klail City Death Trip series in 1972 with Estampas del Valle y Otras Obras (published in English in 1983 as The Valley), which won the Premio Quinto Sol in 1973 for the best work of fiction by a Chicano writer. Three years later, he earned the prestigious Casa de las Américas Prize, which honors Latin American writers, for the novel Klail City y Sus Alrededores, which would be titled Klail City when it was published years later in English.
"He captured people in realistic ways that reflected their humanity," said Jaime Mejia, a professor of Chicano literature at Texas State University in San Marcos. "He could convey their humor and tragedy whether they were working class, middle class, petty, loyal, honest or pretentious."
In an appreciation in Texas Monthly, novelist Richard Z. Santos wrote, "Hinojosa-Smith left behind a body of work that stands apart from anything else produced in American letters, both in terms of output and his ability to shine a light on a corner of the country--the Hispanic, Anglo, and mixed inhabitants of Texas's Rio Grande Valley--ignored by most readers, most Americans, and probably most Texans as well."
The Times also noted that Hinojosa-Smith was a prolific essayist and wrote police procedurals, published by small presses like Arte Público, whose director, Nicolás Kanellos, described him as "a surveyor of the human scene, always keen to recognize the humor, irony and just plain outrageousness of people, especially as political animals."