Margaret Elysia Garcia
Noir is having its Latino/Chicano moment, and I am here for it, and I hope it lasts decades to come. Historically, noir centers around a main character who is usually a white guy of some moral ambiguity; there is also a damsel of mystery who we never know until near the end whether she is a victim of circumstance or the orchestrator of downfalls. It’s always been a fun genre of murder and intrigue. But noir has its limits in character development and motivation.
Gabino Iglesias' third, and award-winning novel, The Devil Takes You Home with its follow up, The House of Bone and Rain, explore a new take on the genre of noir.
Iglesias coined the term barrio noir to describe his characters and stories. In his books, the Latin American tradition of magical realism, American racism, and the desperation of impending contemporary poverty (lack of health insurance or a giant medical bill rather than a get rich quick scheme, for example) combine to make noir more relevant than ever. The Texas-based Puerto Rican author has moved the goal post in a literary direction for the genre.
Likewise, debut novelist David A. Romero takes the dark mystery story out of the easily identifiable and ethnic urban environment and into the assimilating suburbs. Romero provides an exciting new take on both the genre and expands the notion of what the Latino/Chicano story can entail with his novel The Enemy Sleeps.
To remain relevant, noir and mystery must change and adapt to fit a more contemporary ethos and Romero’s novel certainly provides that. The cover art by Art Carrillo exemplifies this beautifully. For what is the southern California suburb if not one of pushing social order and ignoring the history of the landscape? Here we have a row of trash, organic waste, and recycle bins, ubiquitous in suburban life, the coyote of wilderness and conformities encroachment, and the bloody handprint. Perfect.
This makes the novel absolutely delicious to me, a connoisseur of the dark.
My grandfather, a gardener all this life, used to warn us that the ones most likely to stiff a gardener are never the rich or poor, but the precarious middle-class suburbanites who are just one step up from where they began. He had plenty of evidence over the years to the point where he would just not accept jobs in up-and-coming suburbs. In the suburbs, the component of danger is the precariousness of the newly arrived who climbed out of the urban landscape with aspirations of a higher economic status, but whose bank account has dwindled in making that down payment for the better life. It’s a haunting lifestyle change. Or more bluntly: you can take the Latine out of the city, but the moral fight might be remembering who you are in the new landscape.
David A. Romero, Martillo
I sat down with Romero recently to talk about The Enemy Sleeps. Romero, a well-known spoken word performance artist and poet from Diamond Bar accomplishes a challenging goal. Not everyone can make the jump from poetry to prose. Writing stories was Romero’s first love and poetry—what he’s known for—was the dalliance. He loves the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe and the use of colloquial language in a story of Kurt Vonnegut, themes of pre-destination and all roads leading to a bad end. True crime, after all, is now mainstream.
Not unlike myself, he’s been inspired by film and music—I’m finding more often that is the case with millennial and gen x writers, especially those of us who grew up in the bleak shadow of Hollywood. The book is intentionally cinematic, inspired in part by noir films like Double Indemnity. Think too in terms of modern horror and noir like Get Out.
The hills surrounding Diamond Bar seem the perfect setting for the unraveling of a story with murder. Ominous dry hillsides, long stretches of highway, and frontage roads at night, that perfect mixture of urban meets wilderness. Anything can happen. A body can easily be dumped.
The long form of a novel gives Romero a chance to play, including the joy of going off on tangents—like how to set up a tent. But he also has intention with the style of his writing matching the main character. It was also fun for him to write. A murder mystery must have intention, red herrings, and a sense of foreboding. Literary fiction must have philosophical themes it is pre-occupied with, and social commentary must have its scapegoats. And twilight is when it all goes down. To get into the mind of the killer is exciting and thrilling and fun to write—and it speaks to America’s fascination with its macabre and serial killers (Netflix anyone?).
But Romero also touches on something often missing in Latino/Chicano literature that’s near and dear to my own heart: the relationship between Latinos/Chicanos to suburbia. Suburbia always seeks conformity, shared bland capitalistic values and a pretense of safety. Putting Latino/Chicano characters in the suburbs means a discussion on what it means to be Latino/Chicano in the upper working class/lower middle class.
The pressure for assimilation is huge in the suburbs—it’s a question that is always looming and can be oppressive. Resonating with me is the subtlety of what it is to be Chicana/o and Latina/o—moving beyond the immigration tale and pushing back with our own expectations. I liken it to how, say, Chicano Frankenstein hits, or the Spy Kids franchise, or the Netflix series Wednesday--placing Mexican Americans in stories that humanize and find commonality rather than set us apart with the trauma porn of immigration/narco stories/poverty. Do we not deserve stories that go beyond that? Falling for our own stereotypes, writing with white progressives in mind, trap us in our own cliches.
Romero used his own family’s experience in the suburbs for some of his characters and descriptions. Authentically Latina Gabriela and Xochitl he bases on a cousin’s wife. His first version of the story was front loaded with local history and interspersed with a character who knows the history, the fauna and flora of the region –coyotes always an omniscient presence. The author explodes the prejudice against the undocumented. Romero’s favorite character is Michael Martinez, complex and prideful. Not having a perfect and noble character has always been a part of noir.
A story like this is hard to publish due to agents' and publishers' largely stereotypical expectations of what a Latino story will be. Often, it’s only acceptable to be set in Boyle Heights or East LA with a gang component or immigration story in the mix. We need more stories telling the plurality of what is, and is not, assimilation, and how assimilating does and does not work.
Perhaps, however, Southern California will always be the perfect setting for the murder mystery and the noir. Consider how our history and myth fit snuggly into the genres. We have a mostly mild climate and stolen water. We have the myth of the Californio Spanish period of romanticism. We have the tenacity and exploitation of the robber barons whose names still line our streets and institutions. There is the cinematic aspect to such novels that signify we are—if nothing else—a giant company town of lies and storytelling.
Romero, after much consideration of other presses and acquiring an agent ultimately decided to place it with El Martillo Press—where he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief. The press, while continuing to publish internationally renowned poets and Chicano poets closer to home, has moved into publishing fiction and plays, such as Herbert Siguenza’s Anthology of Latino Plays and my short story collection, Chicana Noir & Other Stories.
Romero is now writing a prequel to The Enemy Sleeps.
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