Lupita Reads Nobody's Pilgrims

Thank you, Lupita Aquino at Lupita Reads, for interviewing me about Nobody's Pilgrims. One of the questions I answer: If your book was a famous musician, who would it be?

Sergio Troncoso: "Nobody's Pilgrims would be Lil Nas X, because he doesn't fit anywhere exactly, he's constantly pushing across different boundaries of music and audiences, because he doesn't give a damn and just is who he wants to be, without fitting into predetermined boxes in the music industry or the expectations of others. Lil Nas X is creating his own road as he goes, upsetting people, opening people's minds, prompting serious questions about identity and culture, all of it like Nobody's Pilgrims."

https://lupitareads.substack.com/p/on-moral-luck-and-moral-grit#%C2%A7without-further-ado-our-special-guest-author-today-issergio-troncoso-author-of-nobodys-pilgrims

WKNY Interview of Sergio Troncoso

I loved chatting with Rita Vanacore of WKNY of Kingston, New York. What a great conversation we had about Nobody's Pilgrims, how I started as a writer, my motivations for telling stories about outsiders and the border, and the messages in my novel. Thank you, Rita, for an excellent interview!

https://radiokingston.org/en/archive/planet-seniors/episodes/sergio-troncoso-author-of-nobodys-pilgrims-shauna-kanter-of-the-voice-theatre

Kirkus Reviews on Nobody's Pilgrims

"Troncoso delivers a surprisingly fast-paced, character-driven story. For example, readers watch Turi evolve from a meek 16-year-old loner to a capable young man who genuinely cares for his 'semi-friend' Arnulfo. At the same time, the road trip keeps the tightly plotted narrative moving across the country, all while villains (there are quite a few) close in. The cast also shines, including one criminal henchman harboring a tender affection for his 'hulking giant' of a partner. The author rounds out his memorable tale by touching on contemporary topical issues, like prejudices against caramel skin and undocumented immigrants. 

A sublime, diverse cast drives this tale of looking for a safe, welcoming home."

 https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sergio-troncoso/nobodys-pilgrims/

Sergio Troncoso on Nobody's Pilgrims

Nobody's Pilgrims is my latest novel, an adventure story about three seventeen-year-old teenagers (Turi, Arnulfo, and Molly) who find each other and believe in each other, as evil pursues them across the United States. A novel that somewhat predicted the pandemic, Nobody's Pilgrims is set in a dystopian America where grit, intelligence, luck, and love are needed to survive. Here's a brief talk I did on YouTube on the main themes of Nobody's Pilgrims (Lee & Low Books). I hope you enjoy it.

 

https://youtu.be/X6thIoAgq3I

Predicting the Pandemic in Nobody’s Pilgrims

My blog post about NOBODY'S PILGRIMS (Cinco Puntos Press: Lee & Low Books):

 

"Can imagination be a window into a possible future? Yes, indeed it can. I wrote my novel, Nobody’s Pilgrims, before twenty cases of COVID-19 existed in the United States. I actually turned in the final final draft of my novel to my publisher, Cinco Puntos Press, on leap day, February 29, 2020. Moreover, most of the novel had been written even earlier. And what was the novel about? Three runaway teenagers, Turi, Arnulfo, and Molly, pursued by evil people across a dystopian United States collapsing because of a pandemic."

https://blog.leeandlow.com/2022/05/12/predicting-the-pandemic-in-nobodys-pilgrims-a-guest-post-by-sergio-troncoso/

 

Humanities Texas and Nepantla Familias

Thank you Humanities Texas for including Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature on Families in Between Worlds in your November/December Season's Readings. Here's what I wrote about the anthology I edited:

"I think one of the benefits that Nepantla Familias will have for all readers is to break apart any preconceptions about Mexican American literature and Mexican American authors. What you will find in this anthology is variety, experimentation, metaphysical questions, real-world complexity, tragedy, and comedy.... I think this anthology will stand the test of time for readers across the country and will open their eyes to appreciate that Mexican Americans deserve an essential and important place in American literature."

https://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/articles/seasons-readings

 

 

A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son Makes HipLatina's Must-Read List

A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son among the "18 Must-Read Books By Latinx About Latinidad" by HipLatina Magazine. Thank you Laysha Macedo. I'm so grateful that these stories about immigrants keep resonating with readers across the country. This book is a collection of thirteen stories about immigrants and perspectivism: we are many different selves, and yet we are one, or we struggle to be one. In that struggle we find out who we are and why.

https://hiplatina.com/books-about-latinx/

Nepantla Familias: Must Read Fiction

Erin Popelka of Must Read Fiction talks with Sergio Troncoso and Octavio Solis about Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature on Families in between Worlds (Texas A&M University Press). We talk about what nepantla means to both authors, and how this in between creates illusions, conflicting loyalties, and also transcendence. We also talk about both of their pieces in the collection as well as highlights from some of the others writers in the book.

 https://youtu.be/kcOeBjMQkUc

Nepantla Familias: Video Interview with Sergio Troncoso

The Wittliff's literary curator, Steve Davis talks to author Sergio Troncoso about his new book, Nepantla Familias (Texas A&M Press and The Wittliff Collections), an anthology of Mexican American authors writing on the topic of families living in between cultures and how their experiences can help us all have more empathy for one another.

Sergio Troncoso, David Dorado Romo, Reyna Grande, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Francisco Cantú, Rigoberto González, Alex Espinoza, Domingo Martinez, Oscar Cásares, Lorraine M. López, David Dominguez, Stephanie Li, Sheryl Luna, José Antonio Rodríguez, Deborah Paredez, Octavio Quintanilla, Sandra Cisneros, Diana Marie Delgado, Diana López, Severo Perez, Octavio Solis, ire'ne lara silva, Rubén Degollado, Helena María Viramontes, Daniel Chacón, Matt Mendez.

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xAJ2ytvbZs

Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature on Families in between Worlds

I am the editor of a great new anthology forthcoming in 2021, Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature on Families in between Worlds (Texas A&M Press and the Wittliff Collections). Twenty-five of the thirty works in this collection are unpublished, from Sandra Cisneros, Reyna Grande, Jose Antonio Rodriguez, Rigoberto Gonzalez, ire'ne lara silva, Matt Mendez, Diana Lopez, Alex Espinoza, Daniel Chacon, Helena Maria Viramontes, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Deborah Paredez, David Romo, Francisco Cantu, Domingo Martinez, Oscar Casares, Lorraine Lopez, David Dominguez, Stephanie Li, Sheryl Luna, Octavio Quintanilla, Diana Marie Delgado, Octavio Solis, Severo Perez, and Ruben Degollado! Here's the terrific cover by Antonio Castro and a blurb from Juan Felipe Herrera.

"Such a window, such an ax, into the hard, human struggles of writers, sisters and brothers here — resolving, harmonizing and perhaps, simply just telling their Nepantlas. These lives in-between bridges of culture, of gender, of memory and presence, invisibility and courage, of raped bodies on the precipice of healing and wholeness, of speaking versus silence, of shame in-between wholeness, of big time university life then riding back to Segundo Barrio DNA. And of mothers drifting and daughters blazing in the Now. Each page, a revelation. Each story, a valley of tears and a mountain of triumph. This Nepantla Familia will tear your heart open. You will finally get to feel like a human being. You will have humanity in your hands. One of a kind, I thank Troncoso for this anthology — I bow before these writers of truth and love. A mega-ground-crackling and life expanding house of diamonds."

—Juan Felipe Herrera, Poet Laureate of the USA, Emeritus

 

To pre-order your copy, visit Texas A&M University Press: 

https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781623499631/nepantla-familias/

Albuquerque Journal Review: A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son

"Sergio Troncoso demonstrates in the short-story collection A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son that he’s a master storyteller but with a special bent."

Thank you, Albuquerque Journal and David Steinberg.

https://www.abqjournal.com/1477173/two-story-collections-reflect-the-impact-of-living-and-working-in-the-southwest.html

Remembering Rudy Anaya

My article in the El Paso Times to remember Rudy Anaya. I think it will run in Sunday's print edition in the Opinion section. When the Times asked me to do it earlier this week, I dropped everything. I needed to do it for Rudy. Que descanse en paz.

https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/opinion/2020/07/09/sergio-troncoso-remembers-great-writer-friend-rudolfo-rudy-anaya/5405469002/

Texas Monthly: Reinventing the Canon

Texas Monthly: "Born and raised in El Paso, Sergio Troncoso is a prolific short story writer, novelist, and essayist. In From This Wicked Patch of Dust, Pilar and Cuauhtémoc Martínez are raising their four children in Ysleta, a border town. The novel unspools over four decades, and spans from Ysleta to New York City to Tehran in the aftermath of September 11, as the physical, ideological, and religious borders between the family members threaten to separate them for good."

 https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/latinx-texan-literature/

A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son

I have a new book of linked stories, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son, forthcoming from Cinco Puntos Press in October 2019. The stories focus on immigration, Mexican-American diaspora, perspectivism, and time. I will be reading and discussing this new book from El Paso to New York, so please check my website for Appearances in your area. Below are some early blurbs. Thank you for supporting my work. I appreciate it.

"Sergio Troncoso is one of our most brilliant minds in Latina/o Literature. These new stories demonstrate that he is also possessed of a great corazón. This is a world-class collection. Troncoso continues to raise the bar for the rest of us."
---Luis Urrea, author of The House of Broken Angels and The Hummingbird's Daughter


"A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son is Troncoso at his absolute finest ... a masterwork bursting with immigrant intimacies, electrifying truths and hard-earned tenderness. This is a book I could not let go of, that took me from El Paso to New England to Mexico and to the labyrinths beyond. In these aching stories Troncoso has perfectly captured the diasporic dilemma of those of us who have had to leave our first worlds  - how that exile both haunts and liberates, heals and injures. An extraordinary performance."
---Junot Díaz, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

"Our bodies are legacies that encompass landscapes, borders, ancestors, histories that bind us to the past.  Here are stories lodged in the geography of polarities and the taut tightrope act between."
---Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street


"In his thought-provoking collection of stories, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son, Sergio Troncoso introduces us to a wide cast of characters, each unique and particular in his or her own way, and yet ever so universal in terms of the human experience. Troncoso’s stories are timely and relevant; only with knowledge can one beat back the bear of a colonial past."
---Christina Chiu, author of Beauty and Troublemaker and Other Stories

“I love Sergio Troncoso’s new collection, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son. It traces epic journeys, both of body and soul, from places like Ysleta in Far West Texas to sophisticated avenues in Boston and Manhattan. But the best part of A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son is the magic of Troncoso’s language, which sings from each page. This book is a triumph, the work of a master writer at the peak of his game.”
---W. K. Stratton, author of The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, A Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Movie

Gabi, a Girl in Pieces

Isabel Quintero’s Gabi, a Girl in Pieces (Cinco Puntos Press) is a hilarious and powerful young adult novel with an unforgettable character in Gabi, la gordita, seeking to be true to her independence and integrity while she navigates the disasters and dramas of her senior year in high school. Quintero has created a voice that will resonate for many years to come. I hope this book will find the legions of readers it deserves, students, parents, teachers, and beyond.

Gabriela Hernandez starts a journal right before senior year, and it is this taboo-breaking, gut-spilling text where Gabi is true to herself, where she chronicles her confusions and declarations about being “a bastard child,” teenage sex and pregnancy, being too Mexican or not Mexican enough, her love of food, especially Hot-Cheetos, and society’s hypocritical expectations and pressures on young women, especially Chicanas. Gabi’s journal writing is profane, funny, revealing, and wise, but her experiences and decisions during her last year in high school will keep the reader riveted to the story.

Gabi struggles with her weight and self-image, yet she finds an outlet in writing when a teacher, Ms. Abernard, nurtures her poetry, recommends “secret reading lists” to Gabi and her classmates, and encourages them to read their poetry at a coffeehouse, The Grind Effect. Gabi has early crushes on Joshua Moore and Eric Ramirez, and has never been kissed. But she will change that soon enough, with the aroma of Hot-Cheetos on her “soft luscious lips.”

Meanwhile, Gabi’s two best friends have dramas of their own. Sebastian reveals to Gabi that he’s gay, which goes well, but when Sebastian reveals this to his father the son is kicked out of the house. Sebastian ends up staying with Gabi. Another best friend, Cindy gets pregnant by German, “one of those guys who knows he’s super hot and assumes girls HAVE to like him.” Gabi witnesses the birth of Cindy’s baby and wonders “how something so utterly disgusting can be so utterly beautiful at the same time.” Later, Cindy will confide a secret to Gabi that will cause la gordita to turn (justifiably) violent.

Gabi’s family is also a mess around her, and she must endure, explain, and overcome them. Her father is a methamphetamine addict, who is missing from home for days at a time. Gabi loves and hates her mother, who harangues her about her weight and constantly admonishes her to keep her ‘ojos abiertos y las piernas cerradas.’ Gabi listens and doesn’t listen to her mother’s advice, yet it is the mother who ends up pregnant after having unprotected sex. Beto, Gabi’s younger brother, skips school to paint graffiti art, and seems lost without his father. At the end of senior year, as Gabi is applying to the University of California at Berkeley, she must take whatever steps are necessary to go beyond this family and her life at Santa Maria de Los Rosales High School.

Gabi is in pieces in more ways than one: with emotions that contradict each other, with expectations and pressures that pull her every which way, with “jiggly goodies” in awkward dresses, and with crushes on boys she thinks she likes and those she learns to love. She is trying to put her self together, like a jigsaw puzzle, making mistakes and discovering solutions on the fly, her heart on her sleeve, with a verve that often astonishes the reader. If this is not one of best contemporary books about the teenage soul, I don’t know what is. 

Perhaps the best achievement of Isabel Quintero’s “Gabi, a Girl in Pieces” is what it says about what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ about teenage sexuality, and how many adults are captive to a moral system that often denies them their best sense of self. You can be responsible, you can be honest about who you are and what you want, and you can empower yourself, if you can only survive the treacherous shoals of those teenage years. Like Gabi, you will need a razor-sharp wit and family and friends, as long as they don’t screw you up too much. You will need a ferocious independence, even when you see yourself with so many faults and limitations. Finally, you will need an integrity that demands you be true to your emerging self, always.

(This book review originally appeared in the El Paso Times on April 19, 2015.) 

My Heart Is a Drunken Compass

Domingo Martinez’s second memoir, My Heart Is a Drunken Compass (Lyons Press), is a riveting roller-coaster of emotions from a writer struggling with his internal demons, mortality, family disasters, guilt, and the brink of failure. He succeeds to pull up from repeated nose-dives into oblivion, in part, through writing, a hard-won self-awareness, and friends who value his social insights, humor, and irrepressible spirit. My Heart Is a Drunken Compass is a must-read for those who love painfully honest memoirs and first-rate storytelling.

The book continues where Martinez left off in his first memoir, The Boy Kings of Texas, a visceral exploration into Mexican-American families in South Texas, machismo, alcoholic self-destruction, and even creativity and self-reliance amid abject poverty. Derek, the author’s younger brother, is bright, and wins a full scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin, only to descend into drinking binges that alienate him from the family. In one of these episodes, Derek passes out, smashes his head, and ends up in a hospital with serious head injuries. 

The author is plunged into an obsession with not only Derek’s mortality but his own, with missed opportunities and the guilt that comes with self-analysis. Martinez questions whether his actions as a brother caused Derek’s alienation and drinking, whether the alcoholic machismo the older brothers mimicked from their father only encouraged Derek’s own imitations of the brothers. Martinez also criticizes his mother’s divorce from his father, yet he also sympathizes with her. The author also escaped to Seattle to free himself of the toxic family environment in South Texas. 

After Derek recovers from non-life threatening injuries, Martinez segues into his erratic relationship with Steph, “the slim-hipped gentile promised to every son of an immigrant family as per the American Dream.” Bossy and bohemian, Steph is also running away from her family and leads the strangely passive Martinez to camping trips he detests and other misadventures in Seattle. Often when Martinez rethinks a decision he has made with her and wants to question or abandon what they are doing, she displays a terrific anger. Yet the sap still loves her:  Steph proposes marriage to Martinez, and he agrees. 

That’s the point where the relationship unravels. Steph continues her strange behavior of promoting half-truths about her past, manipulating Martinez into more misadventures, and finally punching him in another fit of anger. Martinez has had enough and more or less ends the relationship, yet he still goes back to Steph when she proposes another trip. The author meets Sarah, a level-headed and intelligent older woman, a philosophy professor he loves for her mind even if he is also attracted to her physically. In retrospect, Martinez recognizes how Steph ‘cannibalized’ his soul. As the relationship with Sarah begins, Steph is in a horrific car accident that leaves her with a traumatic brain injury. 

The ex-fiancé takes it upon himself to care for Steph, even though her Anglo parents hate him, even though Sarah feels as if she is having an affair with Martinez because of his devotion to the injured Steph. This is the most puzzling aspect of the memoir: this continued and guilt-ridden devotion to Steph as Martinez flounders with alcoholism, fights to keep Sarah, and struggles as a failing writer. It was a godsend that Sarah came his way, and that she is the one who tells him “to write your way out of this.” And he does so, brilliantly. So Martinez finally realizes what he has to do, with a little help from his friends. 

In My Heart Is a Drunken Compass readers are perhaps treated to the importance of the ethical quality of writing. That is, how writing about something happening to you now, even horrific disasters, gives the writer a way to gather meaning from a chaotic present, to process it, and act so that you make better choices. Martinez earns your trust as a writer and a storyteller because of his messy honesty that mirrors the lives of most readers: his heart is out there, in words, and it gets battered, and he also does much of the battering himself, but he still keeps going.

(This book review originally appeared in the El Paso Times on December 28, 2014.)

The King and Queen of Comezón

The King and Queen of Comezón (University of Oklahoma Press), by Denise Chávez, is a sometimes hilarious, often raunchy novel that enlivens the characters from a fictional small town in New Mexico, yet it also has an uneven narrative flow that may frustrate readers.

The Fiestas of Cinco de Mayo and 16 de Septiembre consume the tiny town of Comezón. Arnulfo Olivárez, an old man dying of cancer and a babyish buffoon, dresses up in an ill-fitting charro suit to attempt to lead the festivities. His eternal comezón is “to love those who didn’t love him, and to have those he didn’t love so much love him so hard.”

Chávez applies this metaphor of the comezón—an itch akin to desire, yearning, unrequited love—to all the characters in one form or another, a tactic that can be revelatory as well as repetitive. Juliana, the disabled daughter in a wheelchair, yearns for Padre Manolo Rodríguez, who in turn desires the well-endowed Juliana, not to mention a return to his native Spain. Lucinda, the wild other daughter, yearns for Ruley Terrazas and to discover the secret behind her real mother. Doña Emilia yearns for her husband Arnulfo to love her and be faithful to her. Don Clo yearns to be like the good man Rey Suárez, the proprietor of the Mil Recuerdos bar, where everyone is also waiting for something to happen.

Amid all of this yearning and waiting are reminiscences, discussions, and arguments where Chávez often focuses on meando or peeing, pañales or sanitary napkins, chones, “that strange fish juice and the powdery acrid smell of crotch,” “thighs dark con el chorro de sangre,” farts, culos, and so on. Sometimes these raunchy references are rip-roaringly funny, yet they also seem occasionally gratuitous, as if the vulgarity is inserted to create levity and movement in a narrative that sorely needs them.

This points to the central narrative problem of The King and Queen of Comezón: most chapters read like character studies rather than parts of an evolving story. The reader, instead of moving forward with a story, must follow lengthy back stories in each chapter—indeed, entire chapters that are back stories—about why a character is who he or she is, what happened in the past, and why it matters to a character’s portrayal. But not much is happening in the narrative present: we are simply learning who these people are.

Emblematic of this narrative problem is when Emilia locks herself in her room, not feeling well: it takes seven chapters to break that door down and to find out why it matters. The reader also feels a comezón, and it’s for a story where action primarily determines character.

A subtler issue with the novel is the constant shift in perspective and voice, not only from chapter to chapter, but paragraph to paragraph, and even within paragraphs. The reader jumps around in Arnulfo’s head for a few moments, only to find him- or herself in Juliana’s head unexpectedly, or Emilia’s, or Padre Manolito’s. Narrative momentum is lost with such haphazard, unexpected shifts in perspective and voice.

Chapter Sixteen, “The Confession,” is an excellent chapter in which Juliana confesses her love for Padre Manolito, and he reveals his conflicted feelings for her. The tension palpitates on the page, the suspense is unleashed through dialogue, and action determines the strength and self-knowledge of Juliana. If only the rest of the novel had been like “The Confession.”

Denise Chávez is an important chronicler of life on the border. She writes about the gritty peccadilloes that make us who we are, as well as the greater sins that condemn us. Those Chávez characters who rise above their lot in life, particularly independent and self-aware women, deserve our attention and admiration as readers.

(This book review originally appeared in The El Paso Times on November 23, 2014.)

A Letter from a Reader

Hello Sergio,

I wanted to reach out to you and share how much I relate to the personal essays in Crossing Borders. I am currently an undergrad student at the University of California, Irvine studying Spanish with an emphasis in Education. Like the majority of immigrant families in California, my family is originally from Mexico. Del Norte del país, estado de Durango to be more specific, just like your family.

I truly admire how much involvement your parents had in your education growing up. Most importantly, I admire you for carrying those family values and raising Aaron and Isaac the way you did. Unfortunately I grew up with a single mom, who worked until late hours of the night to provide for my siblings and me. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ll always be grateful for the sacrifice she’s made for our family, but she had very little involvement in my educational path. And as I continue on this path, I see our relationship growing more distant. Like you and your mother, my mom and I always had a really good friendship, but being away from home has made it difficult to relate to each other’s lives.

I see myself growing apart from my mom, my comfort zone, and for what purpose? I am surrounded by Asian, Middle Eastern, and white students who walk around like they have their lives figured out. Upper-class students who pull up to the parking lot in their Audis, Mercedes, Lexus; they would never be able to relate to my family’s financial situation. They would never know what it’s like to sleep in the living room because their family of six can barely afford a two-room duplex located in what’s considered the “ghetto.” Yet here I am, reading over your personal essays and reflecting on my decision to cross this border. My decision to continue with my educational goals, even if it meant growing apart from my mom, and her contribution to my Mexican identity. So more than anything, I just wanted to say thanks. Thank you for making me feel like I’m not alone.

I truly want to make a difference in our Mexican-American/Latino community. The families in our community need to make a change and be more college-oriented. We need more families like yours. More parents like Bertha and Rodolfo because a “Mexican accent” doesn’t stop them from getting involved in their children’s education. And for the parents who do not have the time to get involved like my mom, at least get them to understand the importance of a higher education.

Anyway, I hope you get to read this really long message. Even if you don’t respond, I just want you to see the impact your personal essays had on my personal life. Thank you and I am definitely interested in reading more of your work!

Alejandro Favela

---

Alejandro, I've read and re-read your letter several times. I write for readers just like you, and I can only say thank-you for writing such a wonderful, heartfelt letter to this writer. Every writer who toils alone for years deserves a letter like this, which gives him encouragement to keep writing. And yes, you are not alone. I am with you, if only from afar.

I think it's a difficult journey we are making, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be making the journey. I think you should be proud of your mother (as I am of my parents) for what they could teach you, about hard work, sacrifice, friendship. She may not understand everything you are doing now, but make an effort to get back into her community, to teach her about what you know now and why it matters to you.

I know you will find others who assume their position in life, who seem so much more sophisticated than you, who will never understand the poverty you grew up with. I know I did. Take it as an advantage, the advantage of being real, the advantage of knowing good people exist in all strata of life, the advantage of not being easily consumed by things. I have met so many people who assume they are right simply because they are rich. You show them otherwise. As a teacher once told me, "You show them that a Mexicano can beat them with his mind!"

Yes, you are right that I am trying to write about the great values we have in our community, through books like Crossing Borders, and how to translate those values in other settings beyond where we grew up. That's what will move our community forward, in my opinion. I believe we should also criticize those values that are not helpful to us, and leave them behind. I want this conversation to occur in our community, so that we can be self-reflective, so that we can improve ourselves, so that we can be proud of ourselves, yet without being idealistic or romantic about our community.

Thank you for reading my work. You made my day.

Saludos,
Sergio

The Rise of an Iron Mariposa

In Red-Inked Retablos (University of Arizona Press), Rigoberto González weaves his words to create a tapestry of literary activism and erudition, passion and precision, action with words. He successfully achieves a book of ‘mariposa consciousness’: that is, a primer for the gay Chicano writer and intellectual on how to move from family poverty and homophobia to self-education and self-realization, from not having a voice in a marginalized world to fighting with literary work to create your voice and change the world around you.

If individual and community freedom matter to you, then you should pick up this book and read it.

Red-inked Retablos is divided into three expressions (or ‘retablos’) of the memories, stories, people, books, and ideals that have inspired González to ‘spill blood on the page:’ self-portraits akin to memoir, studies of books and writers, and speeches.

The memoir essays, the strongest of these three sections, reveal González’s boyhood fascination with reading and his discovery of Truman Capote (“The Truman Capote Aria”) as an early model of sorts, a gay man on television who turns out to be a writer. Amid the poverty of a farmworker family in tiny Thermal, California, and with a father constantly disappointed with his sensitive, shy son (“Easter Rock: 1983”), González finds his way to books. He creates an interior life that keeps the meager, macho, and violent world around him from swallowing him whole.

As a teenager and young adult, González is self-aware enough to find answers to his questions, and courageous enough to take risks to change his life. González educates himself despite his mother’s death before he is a teenager (“Orphans in a Terrorist World”), and despite his father abandoning him with a cruel and controlling abuelo. At every turn, González remembers and makes sense of these traumas, as an adult, as a gay man, as a Chicano, as a student and later as a professor. He writes to find meaning in his world, he writes to overcome this world, and he writes with passion to change what he sees as its shortcomings.

The studies of the poet Andrés Montoya, Arturo Islas, John Rechy, Michael Nava, Richard Rodriguez, Francisco X. Alarcón, Gloria Anzaldúa and others show the rich vein of “beloved Jotoranos” who are González’s literary ancestors. But what these studies also display is that to achieve his ‘mariposa consciousness’ González has done, and continues to do, an enormous amount of work. The work to perfect his craft. The work of close reading. The work of criticism and thinking. The hard work of writing well. He has taken the work ethic of the farmworker, and transformed it, and transformed himself, into this hard-edged beauty.

The only quibble to this nonfiction collection is its cohesion. Some of the studies seem perfunctory, while others are more in-depth (“Lullaby from Thomas James”). One of the speeches is a must-read for any Chicano literary activist (“To the Writer, to the Activist, to the Citizen”), while the other is a polemical speech that makes the surprising claim that González’s book column for The El Paso Times was “shut down.” Whether or not that is true, I leave it for others to debate. But that speech doesn’t quite fit with the other one, and the whole collection is a loose fit at best between the memoir essays, studies, and speeches.

What matters, however, is this remarkable journey and transformation that González achieves in words and literary activism in Red-Inked Retablos. It is a roadmap for other gay Chicano writers who will follow him. His insistence on being proudly gay and on being proudly Chicano, his love of these two communities and antipodes in one self, the effort to bridge the two and create his world in words, the struggle to educate and elevate those around him– all of this work should make it a roadmap for all of us who care about living in a better world.

(This book review originally appeared in the El Paso Times on March 31, 2013.)

Stories from the Heart of El Paso

Matt Méndez’s Twitching Heart (Floricanto Press) is an evocative collection of stories set in El Paso that challenges the reader to explore the dynamics of relationships, gender roles, politics, and faith. The prose is simple but true, and the stories are suspenseful often without easy conclusions, which encourage the reader to ponder the layers of meaning in Méndez’s prose.

The interlinked stories begin with the title story, with Chuy and Teresa, father and mother to eleven-year-old Oscar, in a frayed relationship. Chuy has cheated and has been thrown out of the house. Yet Chuy agrees to take care of Oscar while the mother is at work, and agrees again to take Oscar to a tile job at a neighbor’s house, where paralyzed Angélica supposedly performs miracles at the behest of her mother María. The parents’ struggle is partly about their son, what kind of man he should become, whether he should learn skills with his hands, or skills for college. The struggle is also within the father Chuy, his life “silent and a stuck way to be.”

In “Tacos Aztecas,” Israel tries to remember how to show Cristina that he loves her, after homophobic thugs killed their son Artemio behind Ben’s Grocery one year ago. Israel believes it is his fault Artemio died, because he encouraged his son “to change his mind about being a sissy.” A big family never happened for Israel and Cristina. Cristina’s mother worried the family would be cursed, because Artemio was conceived before marriage. History is a crushing burden rather than a fount of pride or possibilities. Cristina is also wracked with guilt, because she encouraged Artemio “to deny who he was,” to hide it from his father, instead of defending Artemio like a Matachin. Revealing their sins to each other, Israel and Cristina might create another chance for themselves.

“El Terrible” is a gem of a story for two reasons: the details are terrific—from the father-son relationship to the basic skills of boxing—and the message about what work should mean, not labor, not the 9-to-5 grind, but work as caring about what you do, that message is so important. Martín is cut from the basketball team, and attends a school of “bored looking teachers and students.” His father José, a bus driver, has other plans for his son: to fight The Deacon’s kid—a star quarterback and “the biggest Mexican” Martín had ever seen—and to teach his son the skills and discipline of boxing.

At school, the promise of the fight takes on a life of its own, and Martín can’t back out. At home, Martín thinks his father is crazy and doesn’t know anything about boxing. But among the highlights of their training, José shows his son how waiting is sometimes better than attacking, the crucial lesson of counter-punching. Martín learns something new about his father, and himself, and why seriousness of purpose transforms the meaning of all work.

The language in Twitching Heart brings the reader to an authentic El Paso: homes are “chantes” and deflowering a young woman is “taking her cherry.” Even the right way to prepare and use thinset for setting floor tile brings you to the ground. Not the literal ground, of course, but that ground of the Chicano working-class too often overlooked in literature. This is the stuff that brings you to a place, and that brings to life a people. This is also what we should never be ashamed to explore, to criticize, and to laugh about: our struggling lives, with their imperfections and idiosyncrasies, our mannerisms and concerns, whether philosophical or stupid.

When we can do that artfully, then we have taken steps to value these lives from El Paso, and simultaneously we have taken steps to understand them and even transcend them. Matt Méndez succeeds on these counts in his admirable debut of stories in Twitching Heart.

(This book review originally appeared in the El Paso Times on February 17, 2013.)