Leroy V. Quintana Biography

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Dictionary of Literary Biography on Leroy V. Quintana

Rather than focusing on the political, philosophical or linguistic aspects of Chicano experience, communicated in abstract schemes or through a conglomerate speaker, poet Leroy V. Quintana draws upon oral tradition to introduce readers to a wide range of characters and their reactions to their social and natural environment. In this aspect his books resemble more the novels of Tomás Rivera and Rolando Hinojosa-Smith than they do those of other Chicano poets. His models come from the traditions of his grandparents and from his intense interest in psychology.

Quintana was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on 10 June 1944. He never knew his father and spent his early years moving between small northern New Mexico towns such as Ratón and Questa, where the old cuentos (tales) had not yet been displaced by Anglo influence. In a 1985 interview with Douglas K. Benson, published in 1987, he talked about his reverence for the aged and his fascination with their stories: "I remember grandmother making candy on the old firewood-burning stove and telling us all the old cuentos deep and long into the night, and grandfather telling me the tales of walking to Wyoming and sheepherding as a kid, along with the traditional cultural stories of brujas [witches], casas despobladas [abandoned houses], buried tesoro [treasure] and la Llorona [the legendary ghost-woman who cries out for her children on the night wind]."

Quintana speaks fondly of his parents and grandparents, yet he characterizes his childhood as "rootless," in part because he lived first with his grandparents (until third grade), then with his mother and stepfather.

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