SOURCE: A review of Hijo del Pueblo, American Book Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, December, 1977, pp. 19-20.

In the following review, Kopp praises the manner in which Quintana collects and expresses communal experiences in his poetry.

Leroy Quintana's Hijo del Pueblo is a strong book, handsomely printed, intelligently arranged and illustrated. The poems evolve from a child's partial view of the doings and stories of “the old ones” of his village, through the poet's experience as a young adult, and on to a complete awareness of one's world, or “pueblo.”

But the simple (deceptively simple) viewpoint of the child—though growing in a sense of humor, irony, and sadness—never leaves these poems. Two drawings by Trini Lopez anchor this—the first of a boy, his body still rounded from babyhood, looking objectively with full black eyes at the world beyond his door; and then, the last illustration in the...