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Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

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Before his mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1971, Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano lawyer and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr. Gonzo," a fat, pugnacious attorney with a gargantuan appetite for food, drugs, and life on the edge.

Written with uninhibited candor and manic energy, this book is Acosta's own account of coming of age as a Chicano in the psychedelic sixties, of taking on impossible cases while breaking all tile rules of courtroom conduct, and of scrambling headlong in search of a personal and cultural identity. It is a landmark of contemporary Hispanic-American literature, at once ribald, surreal, and unmistakably authentic.
Born in 1935, Oscar Zeta Acosta was an activist in the Chicano Movement and an attorney. His friendship with Hunter S. Thompson provided fodder for that author’s best-known work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, in which Acosta was dramatized as the eccentric Samoan attorney Dr. Gonzo. Acosta disappeared in Mexico in 1974 and is presumed dead. View titles by Oscar Zeta Acosta
"Immensely readable...A Chicano Manchild in the Promised Land."-- Publishers Weekly

"Acosta has entered counterculture folklore. This is the life story of a man whose pain is made real, whose roots are in question, and whose society seems to be fragmenting around him."-- Saturday Review of Literature

"The most straightforward account of a Chicano's journey in search of a dream..." - The Los Angeles Times

About

Before his mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1971, Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano lawyer and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr. Gonzo," a fat, pugnacious attorney with a gargantuan appetite for food, drugs, and life on the edge.

Written with uninhibited candor and manic energy, this book is Acosta's own account of coming of age as a Chicano in the psychedelic sixties, of taking on impossible cases while breaking all tile rules of courtroom conduct, and of scrambling headlong in search of a personal and cultural identity. It is a landmark of contemporary Hispanic-American literature, at once ribald, surreal, and unmistakably authentic.

Author

Born in 1935, Oscar Zeta Acosta was an activist in the Chicano Movement and an attorney. His friendship with Hunter S. Thompson provided fodder for that author’s best-known work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, in which Acosta was dramatized as the eccentric Samoan attorney Dr. Gonzo. Acosta disappeared in Mexico in 1974 and is presumed dead. View titles by Oscar Zeta Acosta

Praise

"Immensely readable...A Chicano Manchild in the Promised Land."-- Publishers Weekly

"Acosta has entered counterculture folklore. This is the life story of a man whose pain is made real, whose roots are in question, and whose society seems to be fragmenting around him."-- Saturday Review of Literature

"The most straightforward account of a Chicano's journey in search of a dream..." - The Los Angeles Times

PRH Education High School Collections

All reading communities should contain protected time for the sake of reading. Independent reading practices emphasize the process of making meaning through reading, not an end product. The school culture (teachers, administration, etc.) should affirm this daily practice time as inherently important instructional time for all readers. (NCTE, 2019)   The Penguin Random House High

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PRH Education Translanguaging Collections

Translanguaging is a communicative practice of bilinguals and multilinguals, that is, it is a practice whereby bilinguals and multilinguals use their entire linguistic repertoire to communicate and make meaning (García, 2009; García, Ibarra Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017)   It is through that lens that we have partnered with teacher educators and bilingual education experts, Drs.

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PRH Education Classroom Libraries

“Books are a students’ passport to entering and actively participating in a global society with the empathy, compassion, and knowledge it takes to become the problem solvers the world needs.” –Laura Robb   Research shows that reading and literacy directly impacts students’ academic success and personal growth. To help promote the importance of daily independent

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