José Antonio Villarreal (born 30 July 1924, Los Angeles, California) was a Chicano novelist. He was born in 1924 in California to migrant Mexican farmworkers. Like Juan Manuel Rubio in Pocho, Villarreal's father fought with Pancho Villa in the Mexican Revolution. Jose Antonio Villarreal He spent four years in the Navy before attending the University of California at Berkeley in 1950.
Villarreal's novel Pocho (1959) is one of the first Chicano novels, and the first to gain widespread recognition.
"A Pot of Pink Beans Boiling," short story, San Francisco Review, 1959
POCHO, a novel, Doubleday & Company, New York, 1959
POCHO, reprint, Anchor Books, New York 1971
"The Conscripts," short story, Puerto del Sol, 1973
THE FIFTH HORSEMAN, a novel of the Mexican Revolution, Doubleday & Company, New York, 1974
THE FIFTH HORSEMAN, Second edition, The Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue, State University of N.Y., Binghamton, 1984
POCHO, New Edition, in Anchor Literary Series, Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, New York, 1984
CLEMENTE CHACON, novel, Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue, State University of N.Y., Binghamton,1984
TWO SKETCHES: "The Last Minstrel in California," and "The Laughter of My Father," Iguana Dreams, ed. Delia Poey and Virgil Suarez, Harper-Collins, 1992