Personal profile
About
A native of Los Angeles and the son and grandson of immigrants from Mexico and El Salvador, Rubén Martínez is a teacher, author, and performer.
Martínez holds the Fletcher Jones Chair in Literature and Writing at Loyola Marymount University, with a joint appointment in English and Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies. His interdisciplinary classes examine literature, journalism, history, ecology, popular culture, spirituality, and religion in settings such as Los Angeles, the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, Mexico City, and Central America.
He is the author of: Desert America: A Journey Across Our Most Divided Landscape (Metropolitan/Holt), Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail (Metropolitan/Holt), The New Americans (New Press) and The Other Side: Notes from the New L.A., Mexico City and Beyond (Vintage), and has collaborated with photographer Joseph Rodriguez on several of his projects, including LAPD: 1994 and Eastside Stories: Gang Life in East L.A. (powerHouse).
He is also the creator and host of the VARIEDADES performance series, multidisciplinary performances that reveal hidden histories in Los Angeles and the borderlands. Two of these, The Ballad of Ricardo Flores Magón and VARIEDADES on Olvera Street, were produced for broadcast by PBS. His most recent production, Little Central America: Sanctuary Then and Now received a New England Foundation for the Arts national touring grant and was staged in Los Angeles (2019), Houston (2022), Washington, D.C. (2023) and Berkeley (2024).