Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales's "Yo Soy Joaquin" is one of the first examples of explicitly Chicano poetry, while José Antonio Villarreal's "Pocho" (1959) is widely recognized as the first major Chicano novel. The novel "Chicano", by Richard Vasquez, was the first novel about Mexican Americans to be released by a major publisher (Doubleday, 1970). It was widely read in high schools and universities during the 1970s and is now recognized as a breakthrough novel. Vasquez's social themes have been compared with those found in the work of Upton Sinclair and John Steinbeck.