Victor Villaseñor is a novelist and screenwriter whose novel of immigration, Macho! (1973), and epic saga of his family, Rain of Gold (1991), have helped bring Chicano literature to a wide readership. His screenplay for the television movie The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1982), adapted from Américo Paredes's "With His Pistol in His Hand": A Border Ballad and Its Hero (1958), introduced Mexican and Chicano concerns to a broad viewing audience.

Victor Edmundo Villaseñor was born on 11 May 1940 in Carlsbad, California, to Mexican immigrants Salvador and Lupe Villaseñor. He was raised on a ranch in Oceanside with his brother and three sisters. Having started school as a Spanish-speaker and, unknown to his family and teachers, a dyslexic, he experienced learning difficulties in school. As he recalled in an unpublished interview, "Both my parents are from Mexico and I grew up in a house where...