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Great Lives from History: Latinos, 2nd Edition

Alma Villanueva

by Anita Price Davis

American writer and educator

Villanueva is an award-winning poet and novelist whose works reflect her own struggles with prejudice, sexual abuse, the deaths of loved ones, divorce, and male domination.

Latino heritage: Mexican

Born: October 4, 1944; Lompoc, California

Also known as: Alma Luz Villanueva; Luz Villanueva

Areas of achievement: Literature; poetry

EARLY LIFE

Alma Villanueva (AHL-mah vee-yah-NWAY-vah) was born in Lompoc, California, on October 4, 1944, to her Mexican mother, Lydia Villanueva. She never knew her father, who was of German ancestry. Villanueva’s Mexican grandfather was a newspaper editor in Hermosillo, Mexico; a poet and a minister, he also held a college degree in philosophy. Villanueva’s main family influences were her mother, her mother’s sister Ruth Villanueva, and particularly her maternal grandmother Jesus Villanueva. Jesus—a Yaqui Indian from Sonora—was the daughter of a healer and a visionary; she reared Alma in the Mission District of San Francisco, taught Alma the Mexican traditions, encouraged Alma’s writing, and ensured that Alma knew of her German ancestry. Jesus also helped Alma learn English, Spanish, and some Yaqui prayers. Jesus died, however, when Alma was eleven. After Jesus died, Alma lived wherever she could and experienced abuse and molestation.

Villanueva dropped out of school, married, and at age fifteen gave birth to her first child. While her husband served with the U.S. Marines, Villanueva took whatever jobs she could find. She worked often as a secretary and a model to help support her family, which soon included three children: Antoinette, Ed, and Marc Goulet. Despite her many responsibilities, in 1965 Villanueva was able to attend some classes at the City College of San Francisco. She also found time to continue writing.

After her divorce, she and her children relocated for four years to an isolated central California farm in the Sierras. There she read, studied, and communed with nature. She listed her religion as “Native Person of the Earth.”

LIFE’S WORK

In 1977, the Place of Herons Press published Villanueva’s first book of poetry, Blood Root. This book included “Poems,” which earned Villanueva the First Place Chicano Literary Prize in Poetry from the University of California at Irvine in 1977. “Poems” also was included in the anthology Third Chicano Literary Prize, 1976-1977 (1977). By 2010, Villanueva’s writings had been published in more than twenty anthologies and textbooks.

In 1978, Motheroot Publications published her forty-page, autobiographical poem Mother, May I? In this work, Villanueva shares her experiences of being molested, of having a child at a young age, and of growing up female in a male-dominated society. Her writings and studies continue to acknowledge her Native American sense of affinity with nature and the strength and power of the female influence, despite male control and dominance. In the 1980’s, when she was in her late thirties, Villanueva and her second husband, Chicano artist Wilfredo Castano, had a child, Jules Villanueva-Castano. At this time, she and her family lived in a secluded area along the California coast.

In 1984, Villanueva earned her M.F.A. from Norwich University. The same year, Place of Herons Press published Life Span, her third poetry collection and her second book for this company. Her fourth poetry collection, La Chingada, followed in 1985. Inthese works, Villanueva continued to assert the strength of women through her example and her writings. In 1988, she published her first novel, The Ultraviolet Sky. For this work she received the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; the novel also earned her a listing in Five Hundred Great Books by Women. Her second novel Naked Ladies (1994) brought her the PEN Oakland fiction award, and she went on to publish five additional novels. In 2009, she published Soft Chaos; in 2013, Song of the Golden Scorpion; and in 2015, Gracias, a poetry collection that documents her travels through Mexico and Costa Rica. Her short stories and poems continued to appear in many journals, anthologies, and publications, and her recordings and videos have been well received by the public.

By 2010, Villanueva had been teaching at Antioch University in Los Angeles for more than ten years. Before this, she had taught for four years at the University of California at Santa Cruz and for two years at Cabrillo College in Aptos, and she has held many assignments at other colleges and universities. She had also been a member of the panel on fiction of the National Endowment for the Arts and a member of such organizations as the Southern Poverty Law Center, Nuclear Freeze, and Greenpeace. She currently lives in San Miguel Allende, Mexico, with her family and commutes to California.

SIGNIFICANCE

Educator, writer, activist, and mother Alma Villanueva demonstrates through her university classes, her writings, and her own example how women can survive the prejudice of others, sexual abuse, the deaths of loved ones, divorce, and the domination that Chicanas and all women face. Her concerns are also evident through her memberships in such organizations as Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Native American Rights, and Save the Children.

Further Reading

1 

Koppelman, Susan. Between Mothers and Daughters: Across a Generation. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2004. Includes Villanueva's short story “The Choice,” in which a young woman must decide if she should abort her pregnancy.

2 

Madsen, Deborah. Understanding Contemporary Chicana Literature. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000. The chapter on Villanueva discusses her life, recurrent themes of womanhood and culture, and her search for identity in a male-dominated culture.

3 

Villanueva, Alma. Mother, May I? Pittsburgh, Pa.: Motheroot, 1978. Villanueva’s long, autobiographical poem emphasizes her communion with nature and her struggle to overcome abuse, loss of family, powerlessness, and other difficulties typical of Chicanas in a male-dominated culture.

4 

———. Soft Chaos. Tempe, Ariz. Bilingual Press, 2006. In this poetry collection, Villanueva explores many unpleasant topics that she personally has had to confront in life. She also describes the turbulent life of a typical wife, mother, and lover.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Davis, Anita Price. "Alma Villanueva." Great Lives from History: Latinos, 2nd Edition, edited by Trudy Mercadal, et al., Salem Press, 2021. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLLatin2e_0555.
APA 7th
Davis, A. P. (2021). Alma Villanueva. In T. Mercadal, C. Tafolla & M. P. Cotera (Eds.), Great Lives from History: Latinos, 2nd Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Davis, Anita Price. "Alma Villanueva." Edited by Trudy Mercadal, Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera. Great Lives from History: Latinos, 2nd Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2021. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.