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This essay argues for a queer rereading of Jose Antonio Villarreal's classic Chicano novel, Pocho, by highlighting the role of "books" as a leitmotif that functions as a queering mechanism for protagonist Richard Rubio. In Pocho, books and all they signify code a spectrum of queer ( "soft," "ruined") masculinity, from male effeminacy and emasculation to homosexuality and other non-heteronormative desires. I analyze how the narrative places Richard Rubio in a lineage of two queer masculine characters in the novel, Rene Soto and Joe Pete Manoel, demonstrating the queer continuities symbolized by and associated with the leitmotif of books. My analysis of Pocho seeks to intervene in current scholarly discussions about queer reading practices, gay Chicano and Latino literary production, and the limits of conventional categorization of literature. Ultimately, a queer analysis 0 /Pocho reveals its uneasy, if not troubled, literary categorization as an otherwise normative and formative "first" canonical Chicano novel and bildungsroman, creating new possibilities for contemporary rereadings of such historic, canonical Chicano works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]