Romeo Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, an award-winning Texas novelist who began writing a series of novels about individuals living in a fictional county near the Texas-Mexico border in the 1970s, has passed away. He was 93 years old when he died.
Hinojosa-Smith, an English professor at the University of Texas in Austin for nearly 30 years, died Tuesday, according to his daughter, Clarissa Hinojosa, at an assisted living home for dementia patients outside Austin.
Hinojosa-Smith is most known for his “Klail City Death Trip” series, which recounts the changes in South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, where he grew up. He wrote in both English and Spanish and produced novels, essays, and poetry.
“The aim was to represent humanity in all of its stages and individuals in all of their stages in life,” Hinojosa explained.
“The world knows about the Valley and love it as much as he did,” Hinojosa said of her father, who was born in Mercedes in 1929.
The series, according to John Morán González, an English professor at UT-Austin, “gave a type of narrative and fictional shape of a region of the country and a set of people who have rarely, I believe, been truly accepted as Americans.”
“I believe that portrait is quite significant, “he stated
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