This article is part of "Palabras," the Latin Post Latino Author Series.

Alejandro Morales, accomplished author and professor of Chicano/Latino studies at the University of California, is a covert speculative fiction novelist and a tireless employer of bilingualisim in his prose.

Morales was born in Montebello, California, but his childhood years were spent in Simons, the company town of the Simons Brick Yard #3, a barrio in east Los Angeles area. During middle school and high school years, he developed an urge to write about the people he'd seen and the things he'd witnessed. He was inspired by his family who shared layered tales and encouraged by teachers who recognized his distinct ability as a young writer.

"The thing about my family -- and maybe this happens in a lot of Latino families -- is the aunts and uncles were always around, and they had stories. We had big families: my mother was one of ten kids, my dad was about the same, and my father was the oldest, so he was the patriarch," Morales told Latin Post. "I remember all of these stories he and others would tell about Mexico or things that were happening or would happen when they lived in that company town. Those kind of stories stuck with me. As, I grew up and went to middle school, I started to write a little bit. There, a teacher encouraged me to scribble down the things that I recalled, and in high school, there was a teacher who was a teacher of English who encouraged me to write.

"When I graduated from high school, there were two things that I discovered: I really liked writing and I wanted to a writer. Also, I'd lost a lot of my language... my Spanish. Nonetheless, the dream of writing started when I was in middle school, and my first novel was based on little scraps of poems and essays that I wrote through high school about two kids that were 17 years old or so, living in el barrio. It's kind of an autobiographical text. "

After high school, Morales gained his B.A. from California State University, then taught at a high school for one year before he and his wife chose to get away from the west coast. His wife encouraged him to go to graduate school, and he gained his M.A. and Ph.D. from Rutgers University. He then received a scholarship to study at the Centro de Estudios Literarios at the University of Mexico, where he connected with the future publisher of his first novel and he received an invitation to give a lecture at UC Irvine. Following the lecture, he was offered a job and 40 years later, he still teaches there.

Despite Morales' many years of schooling, he is a self-taught writer, he never took any writing classes and he's a self-reported terrible speller. His way of speaking English and Spanish works its way into his writing, creating unique structure and a unique voice, especially when writing in Spanish.

His first novel, "Caras viejas y vino Nuevo," was published in Mexico, and a Mexican reviewer once asked, "What is this guy saying, is this even Spanish?" Morales' use of Spanglish tends to confuse the older generations, while younger generations enjoy the way the author chooses to express himself.

"I kept going, I kept writing. People were looking at my text, my writing at conferences, and that was encouraging. Whether there were good reviews or bad reviews, it's a compliment when readers and critics are reading your work and reacting to it. I write the way I write, I'm a self-trained writer," said Morales. "My first two books were published in Spanish. The third book is completely bilingual. The main narration is in Spanish, and the main character speaks English, though some speak English, Spanish... both. It's based in Orange County, and southern California is diverse in many, including with its use of language. The book is completely bilingual, which is how I prefer to write.

"From that point on, even in the last one, 'River of Angels,' there was a lot Spanish. In the book, there's a character named la madre de rio or the river mother. In the original manuscript, she had a much greater role and her dialogue was totally in Spanish. But, because you have to sell the book, the editor said, 'No, you have to cut out a lot of this, you can't publish all of this Spanish.' We cut that down but there's still some Spanish left."

Whether it's "The Brick People," "River of Angels," "The Captain of All These Men of Death" or one of his other publications, Morales' stories are marked by a focus on "common folks," an interest in history, an injection of speculative fiction, the use of family as an industry, and the preservation of little known stories that have been buried and hidden away. According to the author, it's his modus operandi to dig up tucked away truths and turn them into short stories.

"Now, I'm working on a book that I've finally, finally, finally started to write. It's a very challenging book. It has nothing to do with the Latino community, and it basically deals with Japan and my in-laws who lived in Japan. I really have to do a lot of research," Morales stated. "The other thing that I'm doing is delving into speculative literature. I was asked to participate in an anthology. I sent a story in, they liked it and we worked more on it. At the very end, they couldn't use the story because it wasn't 'Latino enough.' Not one person in the story had a Latino last name, all these characters were scientists and I didn't think about having to write names that were uniquely Latino."

The author touched upon being pigeon-holed or put into "a little cubby hole" as an author and having expectations forced upon him. He stated, "Latino writers don't have to write about Latino issues, we don't need authority to write about a certain topic and we can use Anglo American characters or Asian American characters or whoever in our stories. We create good stories and good characters, I think that's what counts, and those stories should connect with all human beings." Like others, Latino authors have the right to write about characters of any experience. Also, Latino authors have the right to push the envelope and write engaging speculative literature.

"I was trained in 20th century Latin American literature, doing lot of work with the 'boom writers.' I find that magical realism and the different 'isms' developed in the 1920s deal in the fantastic. To me, all of that is speculative literature... people who believe that certain things exist and certain things are possible, such as human transfiguration. I was trained in it, and I read lot of it. My family believed in curandeirismo, and in the neighborhood that I grew up in, there were witches and good people, and strange things that happened. All of those things were a window into a different dimension, a different way of looking at reality, which is speculative. Latin American speculative writers moved me to publish speculative work, and to put extraordinary scenes and events in my writing."

At 70 years of age, Morales plans to keep writing and he wants to stay as healthy as possibly. He has countless ideas and wants to continually produce novels. The professor and author has no intention to retire, although he may take a sabbatical to visit a seminary to complete his upcoming book.

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