Victor Villasenor

Victor Villaseñor is a writer whose works have brought Mexican-American culture and literature to a wide audience. Victor was raised on a ranch in Carlsbad, CA. Since his parents were born in Mexico, Victor spoke only Spanish at home until he began school. After years of facing language and cultural barriers, heavy discrimination and a reading disability, later diagnosed as dyslexia. Victor dropped out of high school and moved to Mexico. There he discovered a wealth of Mexican art, literature, and music that helped him recapture and understand the dignity and richness of his heritage. Victor returned to the U.S. at the age of 20, but felt the old frustration and rage return as he witnessed again the disregard toward poor and uneducated people. Then a chance encounter with James Joyce's Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Man changed Victor's life. It awakened a desire to confront through literature the problems associated with his cultural heritage that continued to plague him.