About Me
José is a staff writer at The Drive. He was raised in the bed of a single-cab Mazda B2000 and, later, in the jump seat of an extended-cab Ford F-150, which should have come with a LOBO badge. José’s parents were migrant workers who drove all across the American South, so he spent his formative years on the road and now finds the comfort of home on the highway. Cars are cathedrals for him where individuals can commune with the self. That’s why he loves small cars like his 1997 BMW 318ti—the smaller, the better. José is also an avid motorcyclist who enjoys spotting bike cameos in the works of Akira Toriyama and Studio Ghibli.
Experience
José was formerly a staff writer at Jalopnik. He’s also worked as a translator to bring American scholars the works of Mexican philosophers who have been largely overlooked by academia until the last decade or so. This work is partially featured in textbooks published by Oxford University Press.
Education
José studied philosophy at the University of Texas—Pan American, pairing the study of Gaston Bachelard and Gloria Anzaldúa with a steady diet of Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway for a bachelor’s degree with a double major in philosophy and English. He returned to the renamed University of Texas Rio Grande Valley for an MFA in creative writing, producing a bilingual master’s thesis inspired by Tomás Rivera. ¡Órale!
