Eliud Martínez, an important critic and novelist, was the first of six children born to Estroberto and María Martínez in Pflugerville, Texas. In 1939, when he was four years old, the family moved to Austin and settled in its Mexican eastside barrio; Martínez's father worked as a construction laborer. Although having little formal education, the parents, according to Martínez, encouraged learning and professional advancement in their five sons and one daughter in spite of the widespread class and ethnic segregation which gave local Mexicans few hopes of upward economic mobility. In 1941 Martínez entered Bickler Elementary School where the children were mostly Mexican. He remembers being, at four years old, a daydreamer, hypersensitive, and anxious to begin his schooling. As is usually the case, he did not speak English when first attending elementary school; yet Martínez...