Reymundo Gamboa
Reymundo Gamboa was a significant Chicano poet, educator, and writer born on February 2, 1948, in Anthony, New Mexico, and raised in La Mont, California. Growing up in a family of farm workers who supported the United Farm Workers Union, Gamboa developed a deep appreciation for education and bilingualism in English and Spanish. He excelled academically, earning numerous accolades, including representation at the Southern California Governor's Conference and the Bank of America Achievement Award during his teenage years. Gamboa graduated from Fresno State College with a degree in English and later earned a master's degree in multicultural education from Pepperdine University.
Throughout the 1980s, he contributed to public education as a teacher and later as a director of bilingual and bicultural education. Gamboa's literary works, including his poetry collections "The Baby Chook, and Other Remnants" and "Madrugada del ExtraFifty-six/Morning of ExtraFifty-Six," are characterized by introspective themes and a unique blend of languages that reflect his Chicano identity. His fiction also garnered recognition, including awards for stories exploring complex familial relationships. Gamboa passed away in 2001, leaving behind a legacy that highlights the richness of Chicano literature and culture.
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Reymundo Gamboa
Poet
- Born: February 2, 1948
- Birthplace: Anthony, New Mexico
- Died: 2001
Biography
Reymundo Gamboa’s poetry is intensely introspective work that exploits the rich linguistic resources available to Chicanos. Gamboa was born on February 2, 1948, in Anthony, New Mexico, but he grew up largely in La Mont, California, in the San Joaquin Valley. His parents, farm workers and active supporters of César Chávez’s United Farm Workers Union, imbued him with respect for education and for both the English and Spanish languages. After excelling in school, at seventeen Gamboa was sent to the Southern California Governor’s Conference to represent his high school and later that year was given the Bank of America Achievement Award for his studies in the humanities. He graduated from Fresno State College in 1970 with a degree in English. While in college, he helped stage performances of El Teatro Campesino (the farm worker’s theater). He completed a M.A. in multicultural education at Pepperdine University in 1978 and took graduate courses in English at California State Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo and at the University of California, Santa Barbara. During the 1980’s he taught in public schools in Orcutt and other Southern California towns and then became director of bilingual and bicultural education for the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District. Gamboa died in 2001.
Gamboa published The Baby Chook, and Other Remnants in 1976 (the book also contains poems by his friend Ernesto Padillo) and Madrugada del ExtraFifty-six/Morning of ExtraFifty-Six in 1978. Cecilio García-Camarillo wrote in a review of Madrugada del ExtraFifty-six/Morning of ExtraFifty-Six that “the poems themselves are quiet; they are perceptions of the poet sensing, conversing, observing himself.” This self-oriented focus, other critics noted, allows Gamboa to use Spanish and English idiosyncratically to disrupt the rational flow of thought in order to reflect on the inner process of awareness. At the same time, however, he proposes his own reflections about his life as, in his own words, “ethnographic fiction” that represents the Chicano outlook. Gamboa also won praise for his short fiction. In 1979 he took third place in the Annual Chicano Literary Prize (sponsored by the University of California, Irvine) for “Your Disdain,” a story about the inhibitions between a father and son that prevent them from demonstrating their love for each other, and in 1984 he won first place with “Fifty-Fifty Chance.” He also placed third in the poetry division of the Annual Chicano Literary Contest of Bakersfield College in 1976 and was named a fellow of the Scriptwriting Institute of the University of California in 1984. His poetry appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies of the 1970’s and 1980’s.