José Antonio "Tony" Burciaga (1940 - October 7, 1996) was a Chicano artist, poet, and writer who explored issues of Chicano identity and American society.
Burciaga was born and raised in the border town of El Paso, Texas. In many ways, his childhood in El Paso laid the foundations for his future as a writer. During the summer he often read biographies, his favorite pastime. His mother, who had been a schoolteacher in Mexico, used to read to him a...
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José Antonio "Tony" Burciaga (1940 - October 7, 1996) was a Chicano artist, poet, and writer who explored issues of Chicano identity and American society.
Burciaga was born and raised in the border town of El Paso, Texas. In many ways, his childhood in El Paso laid the foundations for his future as a writer. During the summer he often read biographies, his favorite pastime. His mother, who had been a schoolteacher in Mexico, used to read to him as a child. Storytelling was an integral part of his family life. His youth was also influenced by the fact that his family lived in the basement apartment of a synagogue, where his father worked as a caretaker for forty years. This circumstance exposed him to a different culture at an impressionable age, and in the 1950s his group of friends became known as the Temple Gang.
In 1960 Burciaga joined the United States Air Force. After spending a year in Iceland, where he wrote extensively as part of his job, he was sent to Zaragoza, Spain, for...
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