Visits to schools and communities in the United States and Mexico represent one of many contributions Dr. Jiménez has made through his scholarly, civic, and literary work. As a writer, scholar and public servant, he has been an agent for change in academia and public education for the last several years. Through his roles with the Modern Language Association (MLA), the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the California Council for the Humanities, the Western Association Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities (WASC), and Santa Clara University (SCU), he has been a dedicated and effective voice for multi-cultural dialogue in the arts and education.
Francisco’s work to develop a more inclusive literary canon means that today’s Mexican and Mexican American students can see their stories represented as part of the American narrative. His advocacy for a multi-cultural education at SCU and elsewhere ensures that students of different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds can appreciate the perspectives of all kinds of people. Today, Francisco’s life – chronicled in four internationally acclaimed autobiographical books – is an inspiration to thousands of students across the United States and abroad. His books and author visits are often the best motivators for encouraging students to take an active role in their own education.
Early life
Dr. Francisco Jiménez’s family lived in a small rural village in the northern part of Jalisco, Mexico, and when he was four years old, his family crossed the United States-Mexican border without documentation to escape their poverty and to seek a new and better life. For the next nine years, the family moved from place to place following seasonal crops to make a living. At the age of six, Francisco began to work in the fields alongside his parents and older brother, Roberto, to help make ends meet. During that time, he missed two and a half months of school every year.
When he was in the eighth grade, he and his family were deported back to Mexico. Later, they returned to the United States legally, thanks to Ito, a Japanese sharecropper for whom they picked strawberries. Ito sponsored the family and loaned them money. The family settled permanently in Bonetti Ranch, a migrant labor camp in Santa Maria, California. Francisco’s father could no longer continue working in the fields because of severe back problems. Consequently, Francisco and his older brother worked as janitors 35 hours a week each while attending school to help support their family. Under the guidance of his high school counselor, Francisco graduated from Santa Maria High School where he was student body president. He received several local scholarships that covered expenses for his first year at Santa Clara University. His younger brother, who was a freshman in high school at the time, took over his janitorial job so Francisco could attend college.
For the next three years in college, Francisco received full-tuition scholarships from Santa Clara University and free room and board in exchange for being a resident assistant. He also worked in the language lab, assisted a professor in her research, and tutored students in Spanish at Bellarmine College Preparatory High School.
After graduating from Santa Clara University, he received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to attend Columbia University where he received a master’s degree and Ph.D. in Latin American literature with emphasis on Mexican literature and culture.
Professional Life
Soon after earning his Ph.D. and teaching at Columbia University for two years, Francisco urged the Modern Language Association (MLA) to create an ongoing forum on Mexican American literature to bring more Mexican-American literature into the commonly identified American canon. The MLA agreed and asked him to organize the effort. These discussions brought together a small community of leading critics in Mexican American literature who worked to better define the genre and establish scholarly outlets for Latino writers. Out of this effort, Francisco helped found and edit the Bilingual Review and Bilingual Press, where he was an editor for the west coast region. In 1976, he was appointed to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing by then California Governor Jerry Brown, serving as chair for two of his ten years of service. He was influential in the development of high credentialing standards for teachers and school administrators for the State of California.
During his six-year tenure on the Western Association Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities (WASC), he was actively involved in integrating diversity in the standards used for accrediting colleges and universities in California, Hawaii and Guam. His advocacy for a multi-cultural education at SCU and elsewhere ensures that students of different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds can appreciate the perspectives of all kinds of people.
As a professor and administrator at Santa Clara, Dr. Jiménez was one of the first faculty members to call for a community-based learning program. Today, the Arrupe Partnership for Community-based Learning engages more than 1,100 students – almost a quarter of the undergraduate population – each year in service-learning placements throughout the Silicon Valley region. Francisco also worked to establish the University’s Ethnic Studies Program, which he directed for many years. Among the other initiatives brought to fruition under his leadership were a yearlong Institute of Poverty and Conscience, held in 1985, and the Eastside Future Teachers Project. The latter is an ongoing program that provides college preparatory mentoring and, after college admission, scholarships for approximately thirty East San Jose high school students interested in pursuing teaching careers. As director of the Division of Arts and Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences and later as associate vice president for academic affairs, he helped to establish university teaching grants and the development of a university-wide academic advising plan. He also administered an "Excellence Through Diversity" grant of $1,000,000 from the James Irvine Foundation. The purpose of the grant was to engage all professors in the different disciplines in teaching, research and service that enhanced ethnic and racial diversity at SCU.
Writing Life
Dr. Jiménez is the author of four award-winning autobiographical books, The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child, Breaking Through, Reaching Out, and Taking Hold: From Migrant Childhood to Columbia University and two bilingual children’s picture books, La Mariposa and The Christmas Gift. His works have received several state, national and international literary awards, including the John Steinbeck Award, the America’s Award, the Tomás Rivera National Book Award; the Pura Belpre Honor Book Award, Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Reading the World Award, the Carter C. Woodson National Book Award, the Jane Addams Honor Book Award, the Nacionalle Culturate Bonifacio VIII della Comunita Cattolica, Anagni Award, The California Library Association’s John and Patricia Beatty Award and UC Santa Barbara’s Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature.
Dr. Jiménez’ books have garnered international acclaim and have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Italian, and Persian, and have been excerpted in German, Dutch, and French anthologies of American literature. He has also published and edited several books on Mexican and Mexican-American literature, and his stories have been reprinted in over 100 textbooks and anthologies of literature.
His four-book series—The Circuit, Breaking Through, Reaching Out, and Taking Hold—has been included in the American Library Association Booklist's 50 Best Young Adult Books of All Time.
Breaking Through and The Circuit have been adapted as plays and performed by the Pacific Conservatory for the Performing Arts at Hancock College and at schools throughout the Central Coast of California. Santa Clara University Presents Arts for Social Justice performed both plays on campus and at numerous schools in the Silicon Valley. The Circuit was also performed at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Francisco’s books are regularly assigned in schools and colleges across the country and beyond, providing inspiration for a generation of students, especially Latinos and children of recent immigrants. He is frequently invited by county offices of education, school districts, and community reading programs in the United States and Mexico to speak about his work . It is not uncommon for him to spend a week in residence visiting six or seven schools in a county prior to holding a community-wide presentation. In addition, he has collaborated with the PEN International Foundation to facilitate extended visits to rural Oregon and Florida and continues to appear at benefits for non-profit organizations, including the Mexican American Community Services Agency (MACSA).
Dr. Jiménez’s work has been recognized by the United States Congress, the State Department of Education, the California State Senate and the Governor and Minister of Culture of the State of Jalisco, Mexico. He holds an honorary degree from De Anza College and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters degree from the University of San Francisco. In 2002, he was selected United States Professor of the Year by CASE and the Carnegie Foundation. In 2015, the City of Santa Maria, California, inaugurated a new school in his and his older brother’s honor: Roberto and Dr. Francisco Jiménez Elementary School. He has been featured on Telemundo’s “Al Rojo Vivo” and Univisión’s “Aquí y Ahora”.
When Francisco discusses the significance of his work, the conversation always returns to the transformative power of education—both for individual students and the future vibrancy of our American democracy. His vocation as an educator is grounded in respect for the teachers who shaped his life and is animated by a desire to empower a new generation of students.