Romero, José Rubén (1890–1952)

José Rubén Romero (b. 25 September 1890; d. 4 July 1952), Mexican writer. Although Romero wrote poetry and served as a diplomat, his reputation rests upon his achievements as a novelist of the Mexican Revolution. Born in Cotija, Michoacán, Romero took a nostalgic, humorous, and often satirical view of provincial life during the early decades of the twentieth century. He is most famous for a picaresque novel, La vida inútil de Pito Pérez (The Futile Life of Pito Pérez, 1938). In addition, two autobiographical novels, Apuntes de un lugareño (Notes of a Villager, 1932) and Desbandada (Disbandment, 1934), recount Romero's experience of the Mexican Revolution as it arrived in small provincial towns, and serve as vehicles for his trademark irony as a social critic. He was named to the Mexican Academy of Language in 1941. Romero died in Mexico City.

See alsoMexico, Wars and Revolutions: Mexican Revolution .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Raúl Arreola Cortés, José Rubén Romero: Vida y obra (1946, 1990).

David William Foster and Virginia Ramos Foster, eds., Modern Latin American Literature, vol. 2 (1975), pp. 277-282.

Luis Leal, "José Rubén Romero," in Latin American Writers, vol. 2, edited by Carlos A. Solé and Maria Isabel Abreu (1989), pp. 711-715.

Additional Bibliography

Cárdenas Fernández, Blanca. Influencias e ideología en la obra de Rubén Romero. Morelia, Michoacán, México: Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, 1995.

Martínez, José Luis. José Rubén Romero: Vida y obra. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2001.

                                      Danny J. Anderson