Francisco Jiménez: The Boy Who Carried the Fields and Became a Literary Giant

by Sergio Domeyko August 12, 2025

He crossed the border as a four-year-old with nothing but his family and a willingness to work. Today, his story is required reading across America — and he is still writing.

Francisco Jiménez did not grow up dreaming in a classroom. He grew up in the fields of California — picking cotton, topping carrots, moving from labor camp to labor camp, missing months of school every year while his family followed the crops. He was deported to Mexico in eighth grade. He came back. And then he did something that changed everything: he wrote it all down.

The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child was never just a memoir. It was an act of reclamation. A declaration that the stories of farmworker families belong on bookshelves, in classrooms, and on stages around the world. That the children of migrants deserve to see themselves as protagonists — not footnotes.

That book, and the three that followed, now belong to one of the most celebrated literary series in American education.

From the Fields to Columbia — and Back to Santa Clara

Francisco was born in Tlaquepaque, in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. He crossed the border as a child with his family and began working in the fields of California at six years old. The family moved constantly — harvest to harvest, school to school — and Francisco learned early that education was the one thing no foreman could take away.

He graduated from Santa Clara University with a B.A. in Spanish Studies in 1966 — the same institution where he had once scraped by on scholarships and faith. He earned a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to Columbia University, completed his M.A. and Ph.D. in Latin American Literature, and then came home to Santa Clara. He never left.

As Professor Emeritus in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at SCU, Francisco has spent decades building the very pathways that weren't there when he needed them. He has served on the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the Santa Clara University Board of Trustees, the California Council for the Humanities, and the Latino College Academy in San Jose — among many others.

In 2002, he was named U.S. Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In 2015, an elementary school in Santa Maria, California was named after him and his late brother: The Roberto and Dr. Francisco Jiménez Elementary School. His four-book series — The Circuit, Breaking Through, Reaching Out, and Taking Hold — earned a place on the American Library Association Booklist's 50 Best Young Adult Books of All Time. His stories have been published in over 100 textbooks and anthologies. The Circuit has been performed on stages as far as the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Still Writing. Still Being Honored.

In 2024, Francisco published The Circuit: The Graphic Novel (HarperCollins) — a visual adaptation of his landmark work that introduced Panchito's story to a new generation of readers. The American Library Association recognized it as one of the Top Ten Graphic Novels of 2024. It also earned a place on the Bank Street College Best Children's Books of the Year list for 2025 — the honor SVL first celebrated when this article was originally published.

That recognition deserves its full context. The Circuit graphic novel is not a repackaging. It is a new door — one that opens Francisco's story to young readers who might come to books through images before words, who carry their own version of that border crossing inside them, and who need to see that the boy in those fields grew up to have his name on a school, on a shelf, and on a stage in Scotland.

In 2025, Francisco also received the Jorge Escobar Achievement in Education Award from the Latino Education Advancement Foundation (LEAF). That same year, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren issued a Congressional Resolution honoring his creative works and lifetime contributions to education.

Not bad for a kid who was deported in eighth grade.

What Francisco Jiménez Gives Back

Francisco's contribution to our comunidad is not abstract. It is in the hands of every student who has read The Circuit and felt, perhaps for the first time, that someone like them had a story worth telling. It is in the scholarship pipelines he has supported, the academic programs he has shaped, and the oral history projects documenting Mexican American community activists in San Jose.

It is in the graphic novel now sitting in school libraries, reaching kids who might not otherwise pick up a book.

It is in the elementary school that bears his name — and his brother Roberto's — in Santa Maria.

SVL celebrates Francisco Jiménez not because he has been honored. We celebrate him because he earned every honor by refusing to disappear — and by making sure those who came after him knew they didn't have to, either.

We are proud to call him an Executive Cultura Ambassador of Silicon Valley Latino. Follow his work and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Stories like this don't tell themselves.

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