Vicente J. Bernal's poetry marks the beginning of bilingualism for Hispanic New Mexicans. He was educated in the Midwest, and his writing reflects the work of a young man who made a clean transition from a Hispanic cultural milieu to an Anglo environment. Bernal is one of the first Hispanics of the American Southwest to publish a text of creative literature in English. He does not ignore his mother tongue, however, as half of his collection is written in Spanish, and the entire text bears the Spanish title Las primicias (The First Fruits, 1916).

Bernal was born in 1888 in the isolated mountain village of Costilla, New Mexico. His was not to be a long life. On 28 April 1915, he died of a brain hemorrhage in Dubuque, Iowa, where he attended Dubuque German College and Academy (now University of Dubuque). Edited by his brother, Luis E. Bernal, and a faculty member...