Rico, Gabriele Lusser (1937-2013)
Date Updated
10-21-2023
Department
English and Comparative Literature; Creative Arts
Academic Rank
Professor
Year Retired from SJSU
2008
Facebook or Website URL
Gabriele Rico Challenge for Nonfiction
Educational Background
Stanford University, 1976 Ph.D.
San José State University, 1964 M.A.
San José State University, 1959 B.A.
Teaching Experience
San José State University, 1964-2008
San José City College, 1963
Camden H.S., San José, CA, 1959-1964
Administrative and Professional Experience
Worldwide Speaker on brain research, writing, & creativity, 1976-
SJSU Director of Composition in English; Coordinator of Upper Division Writing Exam campus-wide. Teacher of Writing Intensives for many years.
Publisher, Natural Way Publishing, 2011 -
Selected Publications
Carlson & Rico, Western Literature: Themes and Writers, McGraw-Hill, 1974
Writing the Natural Way, 1983, 2000. Tarcher/Penguin
Pain and Possibility: Writing Your Way through Personal Crisis, Tarcher, 1991
Guth & Rico, Discovering Literature, Prentice-Hall, 1992
Creating Re-Creations: Inspiration from the Source; Absey Press 2002
Guth & Rico, Writing in a Changing World, Allyn & Bacon, 2003; etc.
Files
Personal Commentary
An immigrant from Germany (my Father was a German Rocket scientist), I didn’t speak English until I was almost 12. I wanted so badly to belongto America, I spoke almost without accent within seven months. Because of war’s rubbled aftermath, I attended only 9 months total of elementary school as a fourth grader in a tiny country school combining eight grades. My mother, killed in a bombing raid just before war’s end, was replaced by a step-mother who added four children to the five he already had, making my teenage years complicated, including yearly moves and four high schools, the last at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, AL.
I matriculated at U.C. Berkeley, discovering that its out of-state tuition was prohibitive, my finances forcing me to shift to SJSU. I have never been sorry. Not only did I learn much from my caring professors, but I ended up teaching at SJSU for 40 years. Betwixt and between, I was––to my shock–– accepted at Stanford in a self-designed major involving brain research and creativity which led to the writing of books, articles, and to a circuit of many speeches, radically changing the trajectory of my life. This research yielded a brainstorming process, Clustering, which is a staple of schools, corporations, software, and textbooks today.
I became a passionate writer, was selected President’s Scholar in 1986, chosen Teacher/Scholar in 1991, and held an Endowed Chair at Notre Dame in Belmont, CA. in 1992.
I haven’t “retired.” I’m actively working on three books: a Memoir of my wartime childhood, ending with my arrival in America; a book entitled, Write to Fly Again; and the most challenging, how intensifying human time-consciousness (involving brains research findings, literature, and physics) has developed civilization and culture. Whether or not I can complete this daunting challenge remains a question.
Last year, against my better judgment, I started a small Publishing house to give worthy books––which are lost in the grand jungle of publishing–– a chance to see the light of day. I’ve published two to date, have seven more in the queue (two by former SJSU students). Crazy, I know, but I’m giving back.
Survivor of two cancers, each day I am grateful for the privilege of being an American, for my long, productive participation in the SJSU community, which simultaneously gave me the freedom to spread my wings to fly in unanticipated directions, and for the ongoing gift of learning, leading to ever-new challenges.
Date Completed:November 11, 2011