By Juan Garcia
Gil Dominguez, local author and graduate student, will present “Latinos in the Vietnam War” at 12:30 p.m. April 23 in Room 168 of Brooks City-Base Campus.
Dominguez will be graduating from Texas A&M-San Antonio in May with a Masters of Science degree in counseling.
The event will be sponsored by the National History Honor Society at Texas A&M-San Antonio.
Dominguez will discuss his novel “They Answered the Call” from PublishAmerica and examine the experiences of Latinos in the Vietnam War and the research that went into writing his book.
“Originally I was going to do only a freelance feature story for one of the local papers,” Dominguez said, “but as I did my research and spoke with local veterans I realized that I had plenty of material for a book and that the Latino Vietnam experience deserved a larger treatment than was possible in one article.”
Dominguez said that in the early 80s there was not much being written or said in the media or popular press about the contributions and great sacrifices that Latinos had made in the Vietnam War, and that this served as his primary motivation to write his book.
“I had read the book “Bloods: Black Veterans of the Vietnam War” by Wallace Terry,” Dominguez said, “and thought that Latinos, also, deserved a book of their own.”
Assistant history Professor Edward Westermann organized the event and invited Dominguez to speak to students.
“I asked [him] to speak on the research and findings from his book discussing the role of Latinos in the Vietnam War,” Westermann said. “I felt that this was an interesting and important topic based on our student body and the university’s military embracing attitude.”
Dominguez said that he will be selling and signing copies of his book after the presentation.
Dominguez also is the author of “The Deaths of Harry Stubbs and Other Stories,” a collection of short stories in the horror/mystery genre by PublishAmerica.
Currently, his manuscript “West Side Stories,” a collection of stories based on his experiences of growing up on the west side of San Antonio is under consideration for publication by RavenWood.
