Carlos Cumpián followed the poets Carlos Cortéz, Ana Castillo, and Carlos Morton as pioneering Mexican and Mexican American writers who identified themselves as Chicano and who began reading and publishing their work in Chicago during the 1970s. Born and mainly raised in Texas, he brought a Southwest Chicano perspective to the post-1968 political and cultural world of the city.

Carlos Jerónimo Cumpián was born on 22 August 1953 in San Antonio to Texas-born parents. His mother was the daughter of a Texas-born railroad worker, though one of her grandmothers was from Zacatecas, Mexico; his father was a Korean War veteran who, even though college educated, worked as a migrant laborer in Texas, Illinois, and California. The family left Texas when Cumpián was two and spent some years in Sacramento and San José, California. In 1954 his father had contacts with...