BROWNSVILLE NATIVE MARTINEZ TO SPEAK TUESDAY

BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS – OCTOBER 26, 2012 – The University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College will host Brownsville native and Seattle-based author Domingo Martinez for a talk with sociology students at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 30.

Domingo Martinez

Martinez is author of the memoir “The Boy Kings of Texas,” a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award. An excerpt of the book has been nominated for the 2013 Pushcart Prize.
The event is free and open to the public and will take place at the Science, Engineering and Technology Building Lecture Hall. C-SPAN is scheduled to record the lecture and air it on television before the National Book Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, Nov. 14 in New York City.
“When I began reading ‘The Boy Kings of Texas,’ I was blown away, and I couldn’t put it down,” said Dr. Antonio N. Zavaleta, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Texas Center for Border and Transnational Studies at UTB and TSC.

“I immediately began telling my sociology class about the book and its socio-cultural implications for the border.”Martinez used the people he is most familiar with – his relatives and friends – as subjects for his book.

The Boy Kings of Texas

“There was some concern at first from my father and my mother,” said Martinez. “But after they really began to understand what I was doing and that the book was not an excoriation of a family but a complete celebration of survival, they completely sort of binded by it.”
Martinez said he has been pleasantly surprised by the book’s reception since it was released earlier this year.
“I had hoped for it at first and then we had a quick education in publishing and I realized the sort of Goliath I was against,” he said. “My expectations were sort of realistically calibrated at that point to the point of nearing disappointment. I knew I had something and my editor knew I had something and my agent knew I had something.”
Martinez attended classes at El Jardin Elementary School, Vermillion Elementary School, Central Junior High School and Hanna High School where he graduated in 1990. After a short stint at what is now Texas A&M University – Kingsville, Martinez worked for a local political newspaper before moving to Washington.
Martinez has been published in the “Epiphany Literary Journal” and “The New Republic” and featured on National Public Radio. For more information, contact the Office of News and Information at 956-882-8231