People are always asking me in what order they should read my books.
Rain of Gold is a trilogy about my grandparents and parents. Start with Rain of Gold, then read Thirteen Senses and Wild Steps of Heaven. These three books will anchor you into our long-forgotten magical world of miracles when we were all Indigenous People the globe over.
The second trilogy, Burro Genius, Crazy Loco Love, and Beyond Rain of Gold is the heart-wrenching story about us kids growing up in the United States and yet still trying our best to hold onto the spiritual miraculous cultural heritage of our parents and grandparents.
Macho! my 1st book after 265 rejections, was compared to the best of John Steinbeck by the LA Times and is currently used in high schools all across the country.
Discover the magic of Victor Villaseñor’s storytelling in his latest book, Gathering Stardust, a touching story of his early childhood with his grandmother, featuring 100 vivid watercolor illustrations.
Gathering StarDust
Discover the magic of Victor Villaseñor's storytelling in his latest book, Gathering StarDust, a touching story of his early childhood with his grandmother, featuring 100 vivid watercolor illustrations.
“Who are You? Who am I? Who are We?” the book begins as Victor invites the reader, “Come and take my hand, and let us be children once again, and this time be raised up together by my Yaqui Native American grandmother.”
More info →Our First Woman Pope
Love, Harmony, Peace, Unity and Miracles —
Are these not the ingredients of all religions? What went wrong? Why are our institutions failing us?
The answer, known to indigenous people throughout the world, is that modern civilization has lost its connection to Mother nature and the understanding of our natural, loving Feminine Energy which nurtures all life.
More info →Rain of Gold
Rain of Gold is a true-life saga of love, family and destiny, pulsing with bold vitality, sweeping from the war-ravaged Mexican mountains of Pancho Villa’s revolution to the Prohibition days of California. Bursting from the pages with real-life characters and passionate drama, RAIN OF GOLD is a major work by a Mexican-American writer of extraordinary power, Victor Villaseñor.
More info →Lion Eyes
Lion Eyes is a mystical, heartfelt, soul-inspiring love story of timeless relevance. It shows us that our global future lies not just in our politics and religious beliefs, but also in our unwavering love and our forgotten native wisdom that once we find our totem, everything falls into place, even amidst chaos . . . illustrated by one man’s incredible life, which can become the norm for all of humanity!
More info →Snow Goose Global Thanksgiving
We have Christmas, we have Hanukah, we have Easter and Halloween and Valentine’s Day, but we have no celebration for world-wide peace and harmony. And if we really want peace and harmony on earth, then we need a day to rally around, a day of fun and joy. So let’s take our U.S. celebration of Thanksgiving and go global with it. Check our Snow Goose website and learn how there’s nothing we can do to stop World Harmony and Peace. It’s written in the stars and from where we came and to where we will return.
More info →Thirteen Senses: A Memoir
A daring memoir of love, magic, adventure, and miracles, Victor Villaseñor's Thirteen Senses continues the exhilarating family saga that began in the widely acclaimed bestseller Rain of Gold, delivering a stunning story of passion, family, and the forgotten mystical senses that stir within us all.
Thirteen Senses begins with the fiftieth wedding anniversary of the aging former bootlegger Salvador and his elegant wife, Lupe. When asked by a young priest to repeat the sacred ceremonial phrase "to honor and obey," Lupe surprises herself and says. "No, I will not say 'obey'. How dare you! You don't talk to me like this after fifty years of marriage and I now knowing what I know!" After the hilarious shock of Lupe's rejection of the ceremony, the Villaseñor family is forced to examine the love that Lupe and Salvador have shared for so many years -- a universal, gut-honest love that will eventually energize and inspire the couple into old age.
More info →Burro Genius
So begins the passionate, touching memoir of Victor Villaseñor. Highly gifted and imaginative as a child, Villaseñor coped with an untreated learning disability (he was finally diagnosed, at the age of forty-four, with extreme dyslexia) and the frustration of growing up Latino in an English-only American school in the 1940s. Despite teachers who beat him because he could not speak English, Villaseñor clung to his dream of one day becoming a writer. He is now considered one of the premier writers of our time.
More info →Macho!
MACHO details seventeen-year-old Roberto Garcia’s journey from the state of Michoacán, Mexico, to his illegal entry into the United States. His backbreaking work in the vegetable fields of California and the workers’ divided sentiments over César Chavez’s efforts to unionize the workers are chronicled in a style that many critics have compared to John Steinbeck. MACHO is a novel of the conflict of spiritual, social and economic values during the coming of age of a young Mexican.
More info →Wild Steps of Heaven
In his critically acclaimed bestseller Rain of Gold, Victor Villaseñor brought his mother's family vividly to life. In Wild Steps Of Heaven, he turns to his father's family, the Villaseñors. Against a vivid backdrop of love and war, magic and heroism, the author breathes life into his father's people--and in particular, the Villaseñor women*Margarita, the indomitable matriarch who was swept away by Don Juan Jesus Villaseñor on the eve of the Mexican revolution*their beautiful daughters, who find strength and endurance in their mother's faith, and searing passion amidst the turmoil of war. But it is little Juan, the youngest son, through whose eyes this tumultuous saga unfolds. Juan would learn from his brother Jose, a hero of the revolution, how to be a man; and from his beloved mother, how to live and love con gusto y amor.
More info →Crazy Loco Love
His memories of events from 50 years ago are passionately vivid, and at times they seem to leap off the page, striking with such an impact that you wonder how one person could face such abuse of the heart and soul and still emerge with his dignity intact.
He verbosely chronicles his sexual awakening and shares with the reader the pleasures his body, and those of the opposite sex, bring him. If that weren’t enough, his blasphemous conversations with himself about his Catholic faith may prove shocking to some, while others will recoil when they discover what he hides in between the pages of his Bible.
More info →Beyond Rain of Gold
Beyond Rain of Gold is the incredible story behind the writing and publication of Victor Villaseñor’s national bestseller Rain of Gold. In the process of ensuring that his family’s saga would be published as the authentic, true account it was, Villaseñor forged a sacred bond with his father and his indigenous ancestors, who were guiding him from the Other Side. The book eventually became a national bestseller and an enduring favorite of millions of readers.
More info →Jury: The People vs Juan Corona
The page-searing, hour-by-hour documentary that takes you inside the locked doors of the courtroom and reveals the shocking truth behind “the worst series of murders in U.S. history.” –Time Magazine. Twenty-five mutilated bodies – and a man’s life hung on the verdict. From the secret deliberations of the twelve jurors faced with the grim decision…to the bizarre tangle of false evidence, grisly errors, and raging emotions that made their task a soul-wrenching ordeal.
More info →Walking Stars
These are the stories of Victor Villaseñor’s childhood. Magical, yet true, they are fables of endurance, defeat and triumph, spirituality, and, always, of love. Handed down through the generations, the Villaseñor’s have been telling these family tales for years. Now, Victor shares them with his unmistakable storyteller style, complete with beautiful imagery and timeless significance.
More info →The Stranger and the Red Rooster
One day in a small California barrio, a scary-looking stranger with an ugly scar on his face arrives. Silence falls on the streets. Normally raucous children stop playing, and their fearful mothers quickly beckon them inside. Everyone peeks out of windows and doors to watch the stranger walk down Main Street.
More info →The Frog and His Friends Save Humanity
It’s the Spring of Creation, and all of the animals are busy doing what they do best. There was no confusion. But suddenly, a strange, furless, shell-less creature appears in their midst and the animals are mystified by the strange being. The bear knew that this creature would not be as strong, the deer knew it would not be as fast, and even the grasshopper knew it was not going to hop and screech like him.
More info →Goodnight, Papito Dios
Everyone knows that the trick to putting children to bed is creating a bedtime routine, and in this new children’s story from Victor Villasenor, he recreates his own family’s bedtime tradition.
More info →Little Crow to the Rescue
Little Crow and Father Crow sit on the branch of a tall tree surveying the freshly planted corn field. Father Crow tells Little Crow that the human father and son they see working in the fields do a lot for crows. They plant corn, they move water, and they feed the crows with their fields. The crows sing their gratitude to the farmers, but in spite of their efforts to sing their best songs, the farmers don’t like the crows.
More info →Mother Fox and Mr. Coyote
The home of Mother Fox and her three babies is hidden by the roots of a tree stump in a long valley. In the beautiful fields around their home, Mother Fox cares for her children, who are so tiny they fit in the palm of a human hand. She brings them treats to eat, and she leads them to sit on the rocks in the sun.
More info →Biography
Born in the barrio of Carlsbad, California in 1940, Victor Villaseñor was primarily raised by his Yaqui Indian grandmother alongside the alley behind his father’s poolhall until the age of four. Then Victor and his family moved to a ranch by the sea four miles north in South Oceanside. Since his grandmother and parents were born and raised in Mexico, Victor spoke only Spanish when he started school and yet “only English” was the philosophy of American education at that time. And so Victor and his fellow Latinos were yelled at and slapped when they spoke Spanish, and Spanish was all they knew.
School was a nightmare for young Victor, and he became a bedwetter, then after years of facing language and cultural barriers, heavy discrimination and a reading problem, later diagnosed as dyslexia, Victor dropped out of high school his junior year and moved to Mexico. There, he discovered a wealth of Mexican art, literature, music, and to his utter shock, he found out Mexicans could become doctors and lawyers and architects and teachers and weren’t just people who labored in the fields.
Returning to the U.S. at the age of 20, with a new understanding of the dignity and richness of his Indigenous Native American heritage, he began to immediately feel the old frustration and anger return to him as he once again witnessed the total disregard toward poor uneducated people and especially toward Mexicans and Native Americans.
And also now in quick little flashes, he began to remember how his old Yaqui Indian grandmother had raised him with such joyous LoveAmor to Know that we were all Walking Stars, and we’d come across the Universe with our very own Guardian Angel collecting Stardust from our different familia of Stars, so we could help Papito Dios, Little Daddy God, plant His ongoing Holy Garden with the Stardust we’d brought with us from the Heavens. Why? Because Little Daddy God couldn’t do it without us.
Oh, we were such special wonderful people. Papito Dios needed us as much as we need Him. And so this was why it was so important for us to plant with all our LoveAmor the Stardust we’d collected, helping Our Holy Creator plant His ongoing Happy Sacred Holy Garden of Heaven on Our Beloved Mother Earth.
This was why we saw all of Our Sister Flowers open every morning with such joy when Our Father Sun, the Right Eye of God, came up each morning, giving light and warmth to all of us. Birds chirping. Trees swaying. Rocks purring. And Our Beloved Mother Earth along with all her Holy Waters giving Life, la Vida, to all of Creation. And at night Our Mother Moon, the Left Eye of God, along with all Our Familia de Estrellas giving us gentle Sacred Guidance and warm LoveAmor in our Sleep DreamVoyaging.
And all this had been ripped away from him with “English only” ever since he’d started kindergarten and he and the other Mexican kids had been slapped and ridiculed and punished for speaking Spanish. They’d only been little five-year-old kids and within a week they’d been made to feel ashamed of their brown skin and Mexican Indian heritage.
Feeling such rage of having been culturally raped as a child, Victor drove down to Wisconsin Street to see the old playground teacher who’d so mistreated him and his Mexican friends. And there she now was, an old woman with trembling hands blowing into her too hot cup of coffee.
Teaching was a sacred job, and so teachers should be kind and thoughtful and good hearted. Sad and angry he drove east through Riverside, San Bernardino, Las Vegas, St. George, Utah, then turned north going through Salt Lake City and into Idaho and turned right. The whole way he kept crying and praying and asking for Papito Dios and his grandmothers to come to him, for he knew that we all came from the Stars with our very own Guardian Angel to Mother Earth to help Little Daddy God plant His Ongoing Sacred Garden. But how in hell could he help plant a Sacred Garden with all this anger, confusion and hate that was killing him deep inside?
Then in Wyoming out in the middle of nowhere, a herd of antelope ran across the road in front of him. He slammed on his brakes.
Then in the early morning light, he saw the distant snow-capped Tetons and they were so beautiful and the antelope around him were also so beautiful that he dropped to his knees and screamed, “GOD, I NEED HELP! Can’t You see that I need to get all this hate and rage out of me so I can once more see all of Your Beautiful Holy Creation as mi mamagrande taught me to see!”
And saying this was when he saw the Father Sun, the Right Eye of God, come up shooting beams of Bright Golden Light with such warmth and LoveAmor to all the world that the wildflowers instantly opened up with big happy smiles. And the birds began chirping. And the Tetons danced. And the three little just-spring-born antelope began coming towards him. No doubt never having seen a human before.
He smiled.
And the three antelope ShapeShifted into three little nine-year-old human girls with colorful Indian dresses and they were smiling. He rubbed his eyes, thinking he’d gone crazyloco, but when he looked again, he saw that the three little antelope were now young white girls with sunflower dresses.
He laughed, and now they were little Asian girls, then little African girls, then all the different little girls of the whole world, and they were all, all, all smiling as they kept coming closer and closer to him with such curiosity and trust and LoveAmor that he was overwhelmed with joy. And this was when they turned into just-born little antelope again and his VISION BURST INTO FLASHES and he suddenly saw with his SoulEyes that God never chose the Jews to be His Chosen People.
No, we were all God’s Chosen People. Antelope People. Grassland People. Wildflower People. Breeze caressing People. Oh, we were all God’s Chosen People!
And the Jews had learned this when they’d taken their oral story and put it into written form, and this was why there’d been chaos before the word. The written word was Sacred. And so it was now for all of us — Mexicans and Indians and Blacks and Asians and Whites — to put our own oral stories into written form, so we, too, could all then become the Chosen People of God.
And in that zenith of a moment, Victor realized that he had to become a writer. A great writer. And write about his familia. His own People. But then he remembered that he didn’t even know how to read, and he leaped to his feet and started screaming at God, “What are You, senile? Or so hard up and mean that You just love giving wonderful visions to people that you know they can’t do it?”
But then he suddenly remembered that God can do anything and so he said, “Look, God, I’ll make a deal with You, but not kneeling down! No, standing on my two feet, planted here on Our Beloved Mother Earth, I swear that if You stick with me and don’t chicken out, then I won’t chicken out either, and so I’ll write my Peoples’ story with all my Heart and Soul, so we, too, can be Your Chosen People!”
And so, with this commitment and tears pouring down his face, Victor drove non-stop all the way home to Southern California, well-over 1,500 miles away, and he looked up his old high school English teacher at his old military high school in Carlsbad and told him that he had to become a great writer.
Captain Moffat looked at Victor in his eyes, a student who’d done well-below a “D” level work in his English classes, but had also been the chess champion of their school, and he could now see in Victor’s eyes that same fire he’d had when he’d played chess, and so he said, “Yes, you’ll do it.” And he walked his former student across his classroom and pointed to a big poster he always kept on the wall by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and he read it to Victor.
“Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic.” Victor shouted, “THAT’S IT! THAT’S IT! That’s exactly what I’ve been hearing ever since I took my oath before God in Wyoming! For me to just go for it!”
And so, with his old English teacher’s guidance, Victor put all his concentrated energy into confronting cultural and racial discrimination through literature. Getting up at 2 and 3 in the morning, Victor wrote with burning passion for 10 years producing 9 novels, 65 short stories, and receiving well-over 265 rejections, before he sold his first book, Macho!, which was immediately compared to the best of John Steinbeck by the LA Times.
Thusly Victor’s journey began that would eventually lead to the publication of his non-fiction National Bestseller Rain of Gold, used by thousands of teachers and school systems across the nation and abroad as required reading, and publishing 17 other books, including his most recent, Gathering Stardust.
Victor and Dyslexia
About dyslexia, I want you to know that I’m still a little bit nervous when I talk about this. I was in my mid-40s when my wife Barbara told me that a teacher told her that our two sons, David and Joseph, should be evaluated for dyslexia.
I’d never heard the term “dyslexia” and Barbara told me that this teacher explained to her that the best place to take our sons was to Long Beach, that the woman who ran the place was considered the foremost expert on dyslexia in the nation.
Well, we drove up to Long Beach and the woman took each of our boys into the back room while Barbara and I stayed in the waiting room. Then after testing each boy, she told us that Joseph, the youngest, who was about 10 at this time, was an 8 on her charts that went from 1-20, so he would have some difficulty in reading, but not too much.
Then she told us that David who was two years older than Joseph, was a 12, so he was going to have to work twice as hard as other students to learn the same material, and yet, at his level he would still be able to finish high school and go to college and do a profession, but it was going to be difficult for him.
Well, for me all this sounded pretty good, and so I was ready for us to go. But then the woman told us that dyslexia was hereditary, and she asked if Barbara or I had trouble reading. I laughed, telling her that Barbara had been reading since before kindergarten, and I, the writer, was the one who used to have trouble, but I didn’t have any trouble anymore, and so I got up for us to leave.
But the woman now said that she’d like to test me.
This is when I began to get upset, and so I said to her that there’d be no purpose in doing this because I now knew how to read.
“I understand,” she said, “but I’d like for you to please let me test you anyway.”
“Okay,” I finally said and followed her into the back room.
She had me look through a machine and follow a little light, and then to look to the left, and then to look to the right and see where I would see little spots of light.
And then she had me put some pads on my ears and listen to different sounds, some high, some low, and then she spoke words to me real fast and then real slow and asked me what I had understood and what I had heard.
Finally, we were finished, and I thought I’d done pretty well, because I figured I was no longer dyslexic, so I went outside to the waiting room to wait with my family. But the woman didn’t come out for such a long time that I thought maybe she’d left, or something was wrong, so I knocked on the door and her assistant said that she was still studying my charts. And then when she came out a little while later, she looked absolutely devastated and was crying. And I don’t know why, but I started crying, too.
“In all my years of testing people for dyslexia,” she said, “I’ve had a few people off the charts. The chart is 1-20, but I’ve never had somebody so off the charts as you. Literally, according to all I know it was impossible for you to learn to speak, because you don’t hear what other people hear. And it was even more impossible for you to learn how to read. You reverse things. You take the end of a word and put it in the front and then with great difficulty you work to straighten it out so you can read it.”
Now I was really crying. “That’s true,” I said, “that’s really true!”
“Do you see rivers between the words?” she asked. “All the time,” I said. “I look at a page and I have to take a big breath to stop the rivers from coming down the page between the words from the left up high to the right down low. And you mean other people don’t see these rivers moving on the page?”
She shook her head, “No, they don’t. Oh, I’ve never had someone so far off the charts. It’s incredible, it’s a miracle that you ever learned to speak or read. And to write, to become a professional writer, is beyond my comprehension. How did you do it?”
I couldn’t talk anymore. Finally, somebody understood what I’d gone through to become a writer.