Arturo Islas, Jr. (May 25, 1938 – February 15, 1991) was an English professor and novelist from El Paso, Texas, whose writing focused on the experience of Chicano cultural duality.
Fleeing the Mexican Revolution, Islas' father and paternal grandparents crossed the United-States-Mexico border to live in El Paso, Texas, in 1910.
Despite a life-threatening polio attack during childhood that left him with a permanent limp, Islas was a good student, and graduated as valedictorian of his class from El Paso Public High School in 1956, beginning undergraduate studies at Stanford University in Palo Alto in the fall of the same year.
In 1986, Islas became a full professor at Stanford University and began to write Migrant Souls, a sequel to The Rain God that was published in 1991.
Islas also wrote local stories about El Paso into his work, and his disciplinarian grandmother, Crecenciana, appears in the form of Mama Chona.
One scholar wrote that "[The Rain God] is a fictional autobiography because it is, first and foremost, the protagonist's own account of how the Angel family shaped his self-identity."
While not an exact retelling of his life, Islas' depictions of the Angel family place him in the category of contemporary semi-autobiographical Chicano/a writers from working-class backgrounds who have transcended language barriers to include Chicano/as in the class of educated, published people.
As is common in Chicano literature, Islas critiques the stereotypes involved with the association of white and American with civilized as well as dark and Mexican with tribal and uncivilized.
He discusses the rifts this causes in border town communities, especially in some of his earlier short stories, and continues to expand on the topic in his later novels such as The Rain God.
He identifies the advantages of bilingualism in the United States, the stereotypes associated with Mexican Spanish, and how the different forms of language contribute to the establishment of personal identity.
He casts the protagonist as the non-macho son who defies the will and expectations of his very macho father by breaking through the stereotypes of masculinity in Chicano culture.
In The Rain God, the Ángel family lives in a highly structured, patriarchal community in which homosexuality is not viewed as valid and the topic remains unspoken.
"Rather than define a homosexual presence within the family, which would mean confronting the truth, the Ángel clan rely on their fear and shame of it to accommodate the illusion that it does not exist in their home or lives" (103).
The story of Kahoutek was originally related to Arturo by Margaret Moore, who first heard it from "Mike", a bass player and bandmate in Johnny Nitro's blues band, The Door Slammers.