He is the son of Rubén Martínez, a Mexican American who worked as a lithographer, and Vilma Angulo, a Salvadoran psychologist.
[1] Among the themes covered in his works are immigrant life and globalization, the cultural and political history of Los Angeles (Martínez's hometown), the civil wars of the 1980s in Central America (his mother is a native of El Salvador), and Mexican politics and culture (he is a second-generation Mexican-American on the father's side of his family).
Subsequently, he became a contributing essayist to National Public Radio, and a TV host for the Los Angeles-based politics and culture series, Life & Times, for which he won an Emmy Award.
[2] His 2012 book, Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West, reports on the world of "outrageous wealth and devastating poverty, sublime beauty and ecological ruin" that he found when he lived in northern New Mexico, Joshua Tree, California and Marfa, Texas.
The Los Angeles Times reviewer, Hector Tobar, wrote, "Martínez treats all the people he writes about, and the places where they live, with the kind of profound respect all too rare among the legions of Western writers who have preceded him.
The result is an emotional and intellectually astute portrait of communities long neglected and misunderstood by American literature.
Martínez followed a Mexican migrant clan, the Chavez family, from the small Michoacán town of Cherán, Mexico, into and across the United States.
The New Americans also brings to light many of the difficulties the immigrants face in the process of leaving their homeland and arriving in America.