Roberto Ontiveros

Roberto Ontiveros is an artist, critic and fiction writer; his work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Threepenny Review, the Dallas Morning News, and others.

  • A Boy King’s Literary Coronation

    The book is a hilarious yet hellish account of wasted days and wasted nights in Brownsville, which Martinez depicts as a dirt-poor land of extreme machismo, where growing up means having to contend with a drug-smuggling father and the hijinks of two sisters who bleach their brown hair blond and call themselves “Mimi” in a fruitless effort to pass as Caucasian. Full Story

  • Coming of Age in Brownsville

    It has always taken a lot of guts to write unfavorably about one’s family. Domingo Martinez, a Seattle-based writer who grew up in Brownsville, [...] Full Story

  • Coming of Age in Brownsville

    It has always taken a lot of guts to write unfavorably about one’s family. Domingo Martinez, a Seattle-based writer who grew up in Brownsville, [...] Full Story

  • Cine Las America’s Maturing Voice

    At 15, Cine Las Americas, the international film festival featuring titles from Mexico and Latin America, is coming of age. “It takes time to [...] Full Story

  • Sandra Cisneros to Leave Texas

    Celebrated author and benefactor of Latino/Latina writers, Sandra Cisneros plans to leave Texas. Cisneros, who lives in San Antonio, says she wants to spend [...] Full Story

  • The Measure of a Man

    Before the End, After the Beginning: Stories by Dagoberto Gilb AFICIONADOS OF STORIES IN WHICH tough guys take care of their families and manage [...] Full Story

  • Party Time in McAllen

    WHEN I WAS 15, WEARING EYELINER and dressing like The Cure, I used to go to “Mex” (Mexico) on Friday and Saturday nights. A [...] Full Story

  • Ernest Cline: Geeking Out and Getting Paid

    In the 1984 film The Last Starfighter, a boy immerses himself in a video game world to escape his mundane trailer park existence. His [...] Full Story

  • The Real Enchilada

    My late grandmother Martha made mole—which I knew as a dark peanut and chocolate sauce over chicken—for her nine children on their birthdays. Originally, [...] Full Story

  • For Bolaño, No Divine Miracles

    Amulet Since his death in 2003 at age 50, Chilean-born writer Roberto Bolaño seems to have skipped over the typical stages of an emerging [...] Full Story