Richard Villegas Jr.
Richard Villegas Jr.’s fiction includes the short story collection I (Heart) Babylon and La Música Romántica.
He has written for The Los Angeles Times, Playboy, and New American Media.
The half-hour drama series Vida on Starz (2017-2020) is based on his original source material and consulting.
His 10-minute plays Cochino and La Tina Duty both appeared in Casa 0101’s Brown and Out Play Festival IV and VI, respectively.
His writings about being a teacher can be found on his Substack: The Alphabet People: The LQBTQ’s of Teaching Kindergarten
IMDB: Richard Villegas Jr.
Instagram: @amazingwatcherr
From the kid who handed out her parents’ rent money at recess to the one that brought 100 strike-anywhere matches on the 100th day of school, Mr. Villegas has survived field trips gone feral, staff feuds, and the unpredictable absurdity of Los Angeles kindergartners. What he learned—about education, race, class, language, queerness, and the truth of who gets to be a “real teacher”—is far more explosive than anything any chamaco ever carried in his backpack.
For twenty years, Mr. Villegas taught kindergarten and preschool in the public schools of the City of Angels—Title I classrooms filled with chaos, comedy, heartbreak, and the kind of tiny epiphanies that stay with you for life. In Your a Fat Suckr Bich, he gathers twenty-five irreverent, funny, and deeply reflective essays that capture the real world behind the bulletin boards and behavior charts.
Vibrantly illustrated by artist Hector Garza, Your a Fat Suckr Bich is both a love letter to teaching and a challenge to the sanitized mythology of the bonneted schoolmistress of the one-room schoolhouse. It’s a book for educators, parents, policymakers, and anyone ready to see what really happens when you put a writer in a room and ask him to hand over the power of language to five-year-olds.
America has no idea what teachers do. This book is here to change that.
Brown Ink, an imprint of FlowerSong Press