Drawing on his own background, he has contributed to Mexican-American literature, notably with his novel The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez, which has been taught in several Chicano studies courses throughout the United States.

[10] He applied for admission to a creative writing class taught by novelist Pearl S. Buck by submitting an unpublished draft of a novel he had written titled Pablo!

[13] Though he is probably the best-known gay male Latino writer in the United States, his gay-themed work reflects little of his Mexican-American heritage, except for the surnames of some of his characters.

These excerpts were fictitious recreations of his life working as a hustler in New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans and appeared alongside writers like Christopher Isherwood, Jack Kerouac and Jean Genet.

[7] Rechy was cited by journalist Amy Harmon in a 2004 New York Times article that reported about a computer glitch on Amazon.com that suddenly revealed the identities of thousands of people who had anonymously posted book reviews.

[19] In 2021 Rechy was at work on a new novel entitled Beautiful People at the End of the Line, inspired by "comic books and celebrity culture.

[23][non-primary source needed] In 2016, he won the first annual Los Angeles Review of Books/UCR Creative Writing Lifetime Achievement Award.

TIL President Carmen Tafolla called Rechy's work "a significant turning point in modern American literature, and a prose so poetically crafted it sharpens our perception of both the beauty and the ache of the human experience.

"[citation needed] Writers Michael Cunningham,[26] Kate Braverman, Sandra Tsing Loh, and Gina Nahai were students of Rechy's creative writing classes before becoming published authors.

Maria DeGuzman argues in her book, Understanding John Rechy, that "his decolonial Chicana feminist representations of women indicate the fact that he has long understood the relationship that exists between misogyny and homophobia (against gay men as well as against LGBTQ+ more generally).

"[27] English pop artist David Hockney's painting Building, Pershing Square, Los Angeles was inspired by a passage in City of Night.