Standing at the podium, Victor Villasenor looked at the group of educators amassed before him, and his mind flooded with childhood memories of humiliation and abuse at the hands of his teachers.
He is now considered one of the premier writers of our time..
Despite teachers who beat him because he could not speak English, Villasenor clung to his dream of one day becoming a writer.
Highly gifted and imaginative as a child, Villasenor coped with an untreated learning disability (he was finally diagnosed, at the age of forty-four, with extreme dyslexia) and the frustration of growing up Latino in an English-only American school in the 1940s.
So begins the passionate, touching Memoir of Victor Villasenor.
Many in the audience could not contain their own tears.
When he was through, to his great disbelief he received a standing ovation.
With a pounding heart, he began to speak of these incidents.
He became enraged.
Standing at the podium, Victor Villasenor looked at the group of educators amassed before him, and his mind flooded with childhood memories of humiliation and abuse at the hands of his teachers
