Mr. Spic Goes To Washington

Mr. Spic Goes To Washington
Ilan Stavans; Illustrated by Roberto Weil
Soft Skull Press (September 1, 2008)

I asked for this book at a couple of comic book stores where I have done a good deal of business. At the first, the young white men who looked up the book on their computer obviously were uncomfortable with the title. They breathed an audible sigh of relief when the book turned up in their search as legitimate. Can you imagine what they must have been thinking? But I knew what they were going through - I had been a bit uneasy myself about asking for something with spic in the title and I rushed through my query so that the word wouldn't hang in the air too long. It's ugly, and when I heard that Stavans had published a graphic novel under the title of Mr. Spic Goes to Washington, I thought the ugliness would hamper sales. And I wondered what he was up to.

The older guy at the second store impliedly agreed with my speculation. He rolled his eyes when I asked for the book, but when I mentioned that I didn't particularly like the title he nodded and said something like, "But, you know, sometimes political correctness gets in the way of the reality of the streets."

We engaged in a conversation that evolved from our musings about the word spic. He had grown up in a city other than Denver (Chicago, if I remember correctly), in a Latino neighborhood, and he knew the word and its ugliness. He had been surprised that in Denver the word wasn't used all that much. I concurred - there were plenty of hate words for Chicanos and Mexicanos in the Colorado where I grew up, but I can't remember that spic was one of them. At least, not one that confronted me directly.

He remembered the Japanese American who had run a convenience store across the street for years and how the old man was grouchy and unfriendly, but that eventually the two of them got along okay - "he treated me all right." The comic book guy learned from the store owner that the Japanese American had been interned in a camp in Colorado during World War II. "I hadn't known that there were those camps in Colorado," he said. I nodded and added what I knew about Camp Amache, near Granada, and he remarked that it "must have been racism" that produced the camps since no Germans were locked up, and, after all, the Germans were "more likely" to cause problems during the war than the Japanese Americans.

He said he didn't have the book in the store, but I should check again at the end of the month, when I promised to return for a few other books on my reading list.

The hero of Stavans' book is Samuel Patricio Inocencio Cárdenas, alias S.P.I.C. ¡El vato loco! Ex-gangbanger who straightened out his life and managed to get himself elected Mayor of Los Angeles.

Along the way he participated in a crime that haunted him for his entire life. César Chávez became his hero and Mr. Spic was compelled to become "active in the Chicano Movement." Roberto Weil's black-and-white artwork shows the young hero with icons of the Movement: Rubén Salazar, Oscar Zeta Acosta, Reies López Tijerina, and Rodolfo Corky Gonzales, as well as Chávez.

As L.A.'s mayor, Mr. Spic tries to remain true to his principles but the realities of the political arena intrude, and his radicalism is toned down. His big opportunity comes with the death of one of California's senators. The party bigwigs tap him as a replacement, sure that he will "play by the rules - our rules." Of course, he doesn't, and with unabashed enthusiasm for Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stavans takes Mr. Spic through the corrupt and bizarre offices, meeting rooms, and congressional halls of Washington, D.C., culminating in a fantastic filibuster on the Senate floor that transforms Mr. Spic into a national hero, and, thus, a threat.

Stavans gives his readers a few surprises. For example, he peppers the pages with guest appearances by Paquito D'Rivera, Juan Felipe Herrera, Jorge Ramos, and the ghosts of Che Guevara and Abraham Lincoln; his characters allude to Lolita Lebrón and Puerto Rican nationalism. Liberal hypocrisy and conservative conspiracies play important roles in the story.

The book is a tragedy. Probably not a surprise in an election year in post-9/11 U.S.A. Sometimes with tragic endings the reader is still left with a sense of hope. I can't say I got that from Mr. Spic Goes to Washington. The hero is admirable and his causes are just, but one of the last images in the book is a poster of Uncle Sam, his finger to his lips, with the caption, "Shut The F#*&k Up!!"

And that's how it ends.

LA BLOGA'S GREAT BOOK GIVEAWAY
Remember that on Saturday (September 27, deadline noon, Pacific Time) La Bloga will be giving away books. All you have to do is provide answers to questions about La Bloga (of course.) Michael Sedano explained the contest in his post earlier this week; go back to Tuesday and get the details. Here are the books that you can win:

Dream in Color by Linda Sánchez, Loretta Sánchez
Gunmetal Black by Daniel Serrano
The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters by Lorraine López
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
Brownsville by Oscar Casares
The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Urrea
The General and the Jaguar by Eileen Welsome
Tomorrow They Will Kiss by Eduardo Santiago


ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS CELEBRATES WITH FICTION
I posted a few weeks ago the Rocky Mountain News' initiative to celebrate Denver's 150th birthday with fictional short stories about the city's history. The project is called A Dozen On Denver and it is exactly that. Twelve writers will take a crack at a story about Denver, each from a different decade, beginning in 1860 and working up to the present, with the final story set in the future. That final story will be the winner of a fiction contest sponsored by the News. The contest is now closed; good luck to all of you who entered. Four of the twelve stories have already been published, and I think they are excellent, each in its own way. The writers and stories are a diverse and intriguing lot, just like Denver and its people. The writers so far include: Margaret Coel, Joanne Greenberg, Pam Houston, and Nick Arvin. You can find all of these stories on the News' website, in print as well as recorded versions available with just a mouse-click, and interviews with the writers. My contribution to this project, Fence Busters, is set for publication on October 14. I think the Rocky Mountain News deserves un aplauso - in these days of shrinking book sections in major newspapers, the disappearance of book reviews and reviewers from the Sunday pages, and the general newspaper malaise that has stymied journalists around the world, it is indeed refreshing and encouraging that one of Denver's major dailies has devoted a great deal of its resources and newsprint to the often overlooked art of the short story. I'm grateful to be a part of it.

Later.