Burro Genius: A Memoir

Standing at the podium, Victor Villase�or looked at the group of educators amassed before him, and his mind flooded with childhood memories of humiliation and abuse at the hands of his teachers. He became enraged. With a pounding heart, he began to speak of these incidents. When he was through, to his great disbelief he received a standing ovation. Many in the audience could not contain their own tears.

So begins the passionate, touching memoir of Victor Villase�or. Highly gifted and imaginative as a child, Villase�or 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, Villase�or clung to his dream of one day becoming a writer. He is now considered one of the premier writers of our time.