Although Floyd Salas has written a fine prison novel, Tattoo the Wicked Cross (1967), as well as other lauded prose and poetry, sometimes his political views, his social notions, and his ethnicity have attracted more attention.

Floyd Francis Salas was born in Walsenburg, Colorado, 24 January 1931, to Edward and Anita Sanchez Salas. His father's ancestors originally immigrated to Florida in the seventeenth century, then to Colorado over the Santa Fe Trail in the mid nineteenth century. His mother's family came to the Southwest with Spanish explorer Juan de Oñate in the 1580s and pioneered in New Mexico and then in southern Colorado. Edward Salas moved the family to California when Salas was eight. The Salas family relocated frequently, living in the East Bay area of California and in the area near Shasta Dam in northern California. Salas attended six high schools in four years--"A great education for...