Luis Leal

Mexican-born writer, educator, and scholar

• Born: September 17, 1907
• Birthplace: Linares, Mexico
• Died: January 25, 2010
• Place of death: Santa Barbara, California

Best known for his literary criticism of the Latin American short story, Leal also was a professor and an advocate for the dissemination of Mexican literature, Chicano literature, and the literature of Latin America in the United States. Leal helped define the term “Magical Realism” as it is used in Latin American fiction.

Early Life

Luis Leal (lew-EES LEE-ahl) was born on September 17, 1907, to a prominent and influential rancher family in Linares, Mexico. He grew up in a large Spanish-style house with his parents, four brothers and sisters, and a host of aunts, uncles, and cousins. From a very early age, Leal had been interested in literature and was always reading different types and genres of literature. In May, 1927, he came to the United States, where he had been accepted as a student at Northwestern University in Chicago. Although he originally planned to study mathematics, Leal soon discovered that his academic interest was in Spanish, particularly in the literature of Latin America. In 1940, he earned his B.S. degree in Spanish from Northwestern. In 1941, he received his M.A. in Spanish from the University of Chicago, and in 1950, after serving in the U.S. military from 1943 to1945, he received his Ph.D. in Spanish and Italian from the same university.

While studying at Northwestern, Leal met Gladys Clemens, who tutored him in English and whom he married in 1936. They had two children, Antonio and Luis Alonso, and two grandchildren and four great grandchildren.

Life’s Work

Leal distinguished himself as a professor at various universities in the United States, among them the University of Mississippi (1952-1956), Emory University (1956-1959), and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (1959-1962), and he was a visiting professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara for many years. At the latter university, Leal taught graduate courses in Latin American and Chicano literature, held various research fellowships, and served as the director of the Center for Chicano Studies.

Leal was a popular teacher and scholar who taught many graduate students, mentored many professors, and directed forty-four Ph.D. dissertations. As a professor and researcher, he championed the dissemination of Chicano, Mexican, and Latin American literature in the United States and encouraged American universities to incorporate these literatures into their curricula.

Leal was a prolific scholar, who, in his fifty years as an academic, wrote more than four hundred scholarly articles and forty-five books. His scholarship was focused primarily on Mexican literature, as well as Latin American literature and later on Chicano literature. His scholarly publications, his conference presentations, and his teaching popularized Chicano literature in the United States and led to the development of the first graduate degree in Chicano studies in the United States, pioneered by the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Leal’s scholarship was as diverse as it was prolific. His initial academic fame originated with the publication of his seminal text Brief History of the Mexican Short Story, originally published in Spanish in 1956. In this text, he demonstrates his attention to careful and precise research; it became a popular academic book not only for its use of research methods but also for its historical content. Some of his other works, such as his book Juan Rulfo (1983), demonstrate Leal’s scholarly ability to systemically analyze literary texts written by other authors.

Leal also popularized the legitimacy of oral traditions as an accepted literary venue by conducting conference presentations on this topic and by the publication of his short story collection Myths and Legends of Mexico (2003), in which he recounts a number of stories, all based on oral traditions from the Mexican culture.

Although Leal was a naturalized U.S. citizen, he never forgot his Mexican culture and roots and made every effort to popularize knowledge of Chicano literature in American and Mexican colleges. As a student in Chicago, he worked successfully with the Mexican American Council to make university scholarships available to Chicano students. In 1973, he published “Mexican-American Literature: A Historical Perspective” in the journal Chicana-Riqueña, in which he postulated, convincingly, that Chicano literature has its roots in the Spanish civilization and colonization of the Southwest. He followed this with his book No Longer Voiceless in 1995, in which he affirms that Chicanos in the United States now have a literary forum through which their voices can be heard and their academic accomplishments showcased.

In addition to being a professor and a scholar, Leal established a literary journal, Ventanas Abiertas, which served as an academic venue for the publication of literary articles on Chicano and Latin American literature. Because of his pioneering work in the promulgation of Chicano, Mexican, and Latin American culture and literature, the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2003 created the competitive Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature, presented annually to deserving scholars.

Leal received many prestigious awards, among them the Distinguished Scholarly Award from the National Association of Chicano Studies in 1988, the Aguila Aztec Award presented to him by Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari in 1991, and the National Humanities Medal presented to him by President Bill Clinton in 1997.

Leal died on January 25, 2010, predeceased by his wife, Gladys, and his son Luis Alonso.

Significance

Leal was one of the principal figures in disseminating and popularizing the study of Mexican, Chicano, and Latin American literature in universities in the United States. Because of his tireless efforts, U.S. universities developed graduate programs in these literary areas, giving students the opportunity to specialize in these fields. In addition to his scholarly achievements, Leal helped forge, through an awareness of literature and culture, a closer and more meaningful academic relation between Mexico and the United States.

Bibliography

García, Mario T. Luis Leal: An Auto/Biography. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000. A concise biography of Leal, emphasizing his literary formation.

Leal, Luis. Brief History of Latin American Literature. New York: Knopf, 1971. A synopsis of the development of Latin American literature from its origins to the time of its publication.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. A Luis Leal Reader. Edited by Ilan Stavans. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2007. A collection of Leal’s selected writings.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Myths and Legends of Mexico. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Center for Chicano Studies, 2003. A collection of twenty well-known Mexican myths related by Leal.