A Railroad Runs Through It

Review: Mona Alvarado Frazier. A Bridge Home. Houston: Piñata Books Arte Publico Press. 2024. ISBN: 978-1-55885-995-1

Michael Sedano

It's 1972, the Chicano Movement has found its way to a nondescript small California town named San Solano. Railroad tracks divide the town. Raza and black families struggle to make ends meet on their side of town. Seventeen year old Jacqueline Bravo attends St. Bernadette High School, on the anglo side of town. 

Jacqui's a good student whose dream is winning a scholarship to attend UCLA next year. She won't be able to apply for the scholarship if St. Bernadette's transfers Jacqui to public school because she's hundreds of dollars behind on tuition. 

Tuition, rent, bills, five people in a one-bathroom house, a father killed in Vietnam two years before, add incredible stress to the teenager's tortured life. Jacqui perseveres with maturity forced upon her by economics and by having to be big sister mother-substitute to a boy-hungry 13 year old sister (who already gets hickies) and younger twin brothers.

This is the tapestry Mona Alvarado Frazier weaves to entangle her characters in a plot that probably mirrors the lives of young adult readers whom Frazier's story will inspire and motivate to do like Jacqui does in the exciting final chapters. With Jacqui's example, kids won't fall into the traps Jacqui gets herself into. In a sense, Jacqui has no option other than sneak around and take a job behind her mother's back. Jacqui's poorly considered choice is working in a sleazy restaurant-bar. In no time, Jacqui is in over her head running drugs and collecting payments.

To her credit, Jacqui doesn't know what's going on. Catholic school girls can be sheltered from the real world, especially when mother detests the word "chicano" and warns off her eldest child from those people.

Those people are the bridge Jacqui needs to find voice, direction, and salvation. Readers will thrill at the final chapters of Frazier's 43 short chapters, 290 page, gem of a YA novel from Arte Publico's Piñata imprint.

How does a kid find success when repressive nuns clamp down on individuality, practice public shaming of kids whose families fall behind on tuition, and go into high dudgeon over feminism? Jacqui can't go it alone, but that's Jacqui's method. Readers see how wrong it all can turn out, and here's one of Alvarado Frazier's more valuable author's messages: you can't do it alone. You need help.

When Jacqui learns this lesson she awakens her entire community, Mother included, and the movimiento's message hits the streets. El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido.

I won't delve into the finer points of the novel's plot and character development because there's so much fun for readers feeling the tension build as the plot and characters wind their way to an entirely engaging and satisfying climax. It's only for Jacqui, but there's probably good news for her peers. And the community might get that bridge spanning the railroad tracks.

One significant change I'd like to see: Piñata must devote a lot more attention to editing out the novel's several apostrophe-as-plural errors. It's not a minor flaw when YA readers are soaking in a wonderful story filled with important lessons about character, desperation, honesty, academics. Ineffective editing blinds the kids to effective spelling and perpetuates inattention to detail.

Mona Alvarado Frazier clearly is hitting her stride as a writer and author of YA literature. A Bridge Home, her second novel, marks a high point in a promising future.

You can order publisher-direct at https://artepublicopress.com/browse-and-order-books/ or ask your local indie bookseller to get your copies of this $15.95 gem.

From a work in progress...Birth of the First Child

Michael Sedano

The left arm is back after two months pinned to my side. A "separated shoulder" stopped me cold just as I neared the end of a big project I began back in July. It was incredibly frustrating.

Today, as I'm getting back to speed, I'll share what I was doing until I fell head over heels and tasted cement.

Over the summer of 2018 I had the pleasure of meeting regularly with Esteban Torres with the goal of writing an As-Told-To YA autobiography. My goal was to finish it in January. Last month.

When I went looking for autobiographies for raza boys I found Cesar Chavez and a raft of athletes. Torres and I weren't looking to portray heroism or great moments like striking out the side in the ninth inning of some baseball game. That's not what I want to write. And Torres' story demands telling (such as when he got Chavez together with the Mexican worker federations).

Autobiography, literature generally, creates a rhetorical process--Identification. Learn by reading, or "Literature as equipment for living," Kenneth Burke wrote, saying that literature should "size up a situation" for a reader so everyday life comes easier, and all those  situations and decisions add up to big things on purpose.

Esteban Torres' career makes it difficult to avoid being awestruck at "the first" or "the only" status. The vato graduated from Garfield, goes straight into the Army and finds himself patrolling the Iron Curtain. He comes home, falls in love, joins the UFW in the middle of the Red Scare.

The Chicano gets elected Shop Steward at the Chrysler Plant in Maywood. Next, Walter Reuther sends Torres to organize South America when Detroit starts building cars there. Torres organizes South America.

Then Torres goes public sector. Esteban Torres becomes the United States Ambassador to UNESCO and moves his familia to Paris. Jimmy Carter brings Torres back from Europe to work in the White House. 

Out of a job with Reagan's win, Torres comes home. He closes down the toxic BKK landfill in Covina and rides that to Congress. Backtrack to the movimiento years; Torres and the Union start LULAC. Torres fails to incorporate the City of East Los Angeles. By the way, the police riot during the Chicano Moratorium interrupted a permitted event. Torres is the one who paid the fees and signed for the permit.

A Chicano does all this, from Garfield High School to walking with Jimmy Carter in the Rose Gardeen to sitting down to talk with Nelson Mandela, puro wow. Torres sat as Speaker Pro Tem of the House of Representatives, third in line to replace a vacant executive.

Some young man carbuncular assigned to read an autobiography in tenth grade English needs to know about this life. Not because Esteban Torres had all those salaried titles when no one else did, but because Chicanos and Chicanas from East Los belong in those roles. 

Being the First is an index of delay and systemic shortcoming, not a beneficence bestowed upon a First or Only tipo tipa. This storyteller's endeavor is not to pound a kid over the head with this.  Exposing Torres' magnificent attainments as those of a commoner is the point, for the Firsts and the Onlies of the world. 

Interestingly enough, so many Firsts and Onlies in the world confess to a notion of "imposter syndrome." For any reader, Torres' biography informs an affirming perception of belonging and being qualified for challenges.

And the point of all this for a YA reader, for a boy in his adolescence especially? I ponder, what did I need to read when I was a kid that woulda been my Burkean literature as equipment for living? Torres and I talk our way toward those questions. A great life like the one being lived by Esteban Torres is made up of everyday experiences every boy goes through, will live through, will size up and make choices.

Esteban and I, we converse. I'm an inveterate talker but restrain myself. So is he.

Esteban recounts events and I listen. We focus on beginnings--early "firsts" because everyone has firsts, many of them a kid doesn't notice, doesn't put them together right away. Torres' career has so much adult significance but I focus upon his experiences nearer those of his YA reader. Here, for example, is Esteban Torres' reflection on a man's first pregnancy and birth.

Torres has been attending Art Center on the GI Bill and is heading to Madison Avenue to jump feet-first into the dog-eat-dog advertising game. His fiancée talks sense to him

Instead of a walk-up cold water New York flat, Arcy and I found a rental behind a larger house in East L.A. It was to be the first of many addresses with a half in it, like 1243 ½ Ford Street, until we could buy our first house to raise our family.

When I hear a man say, “My wife is pregnant,” I want to correct the attitude behind the statement. No matter how much help your wife receives from her mother and sisters, a wife cannot go through the pregnancy without the constant involvement of her husband. “We are pregnant” is the only accurate statement.

We read a popular book on babies written by Dr. Spock. Today, as soon as they learn they’re pregnant, couples read a book like The First 12 Months of Life, and because Dr. Spock’s book is still in print, many parents read both. 

All responsible parents-to-be should read-up on what to expect during pregnancy. It’s not just the mother and the baby, there are new demands and expectations in store for the father-to-be. Gathering as much information as a man can, makes him well prepared to be a good father.

All around, people offer advice and consejos and myth and emotion. Reading offers the author’s cool, observer’s voice. That voice of fact can buffer the intensity of a wife’s experience, the husband’s responses. Day by day, a pregnant couple bears it together, but each in their separate ways.

In the morning, I go off to Chrysler for ten hours absence, surrounded by co-workers. Arcy has those ten hours alone, until she has someone to talk to.

But of course, she can only distill her nine hours into a few minutes. Words, nor tears, just don’t do enough to fill the empty hours. I’d come in the door, and no matter the soot covering me from the grimiest day in the pit, Arcy needed me, I needed Arcy, we needed each other’s abrazos.

Thankfully, Dr. Spock prepares a family for some of these trials. You live the parts the book leaves out, and you're on your own. Then things happen and it's like it says in the book. Like ganas. The book tells about how a mother’s body drives the need for ingredients in strange food combinations like ice cream and pickles. Try patas en vinagre and a pink concha. Fortunately, the panaderia is next door to the carniceria, and they’re a short walk from the house.

How will you know when it’s time? The book and our doctor told us in detail, because “when the water breaks” doesn’t mean a lot if you’ve never experienced the onset of labor. My mother and grandmother reassured us, “you’ll know and if you can’t tell, Arcy will.”

I put fifty cents worth of Ethyl in the tank the day before, so I was ready when Arcy told me to warm up the Dodge. I took a deep breath and helped Arcy into the back seat where she could stretch out and get comfortable. Her labor pains had not begun.

I’d planned the route, Arcy and I had driven it. Just like practice. I drove straight out Sixth to Alameda, up to College, turned left. I exhaled with relief when French Hospital came into view. I drove around back to the Maternity entrance. Nurses wheeled Arcy into the hospital and I found a seat with a couple of other guys and that was it for us fathers. Sit around and wait.

I stood outside the newborn nursery at the window separating me from Carmen Torres. Nowadays, the dad can be right there helping with delivery, the mom and baby not surrounded by strangers.

The nurse brought Carmen to the window. My daughter is red-faced and her skin all splotchy. Sleek black hair peeks out from the knit cap. Her little eyebrows are dainty like her mother’s. I am in love in an entirely new sense of that word, love. My body feels like it's swelling up and bursting with something I know even though I've never felt like this before.

Staring into that baby’s shiny black pupils an enormous weight settles on my shoulder and I accept it eagerly. “For the rest of your life, baby girl, I will take care of you,” I say to myself. And thinking it, saying the words to myself, that “enormous weight” evaporates. I understand with perfect clarity in that moment. My responsibilities to this little girl and her mother are no burden.

Being a father offers me the challenge of my lifetime, one every father can take on himself, whatever his means and ability. It’s the challenge I see for myself in this tiny girl’s curling fingers, of providing a home, nurturing her, and making the world a better place.

YA a different way 1. Great opp to support El Museo. Keystone XL Pipeline.

Assessing YA lit

La Bloga's contributors cover many genres, especially children's lit, Chicano nonfiction, memoirs, detective and crime, chicalit, works in Spanish, sci-fi, magic realism and poetry. The Young Adult genre has been covered, though nowhere as extensively as its share of the market.

Last year sales in young adult were up 13%, and up 117% in e-books, more than twice the digital growth in adult markets. Reports indicate that young adult fiction yielded much bigger advances to authors.

It's obviously an important genre, given its influence on the younger generation. Also, in a La Bloga series last year, "Spic vs spec - 1. Chicanos/latinos & sci-fi lit", I referenced how classic, American SciFi helped produce the scientists and engineers responsible for the U.S. space program.

For these and other reasons, I've decided to shift my posts to YA lit, especially to the speculative novels of SciFi, fantasy and magic realism. I will focus on books pertinent to Chicano, latino et al youth, but not exclude others.

I'm not a teenager, nor certain if I ever was a "regular" one, either. And from my limited understanding of YA, I won't be reviewing books, so much as assessing them for the messages they give to the young. In the process, I'll refer readers to other, regular reviews.

Morals, ethics, principles, beliefs--all reviewers inject some or much of this into their reviews. I propose to bring mine out front, bring them to bear on specific stories and come out on the other end with "what's the message," if you will.

Being subjective means my opinion can't be taken as THE word about YA books. My intention isn't to attempt to develop a Must-Read or Never-Let-Your-Kid-Read lists. Kids read what they want to, not what their parents wish they would, anyway.

I can already hear Latin@ author cringing, hoping I don't zero in on their work. I know how my gente is and don't necessarily expect my assessments will be met with open brazos. For that reason, I'm going to test my methods on non-brown authors and books first. That won't get me off the hook, but it will give you an idea of the basis for the appraisals. I'd welcome a better term than that one or assessments.

In the end, I hope to generate dialogue, not only among Chicano et al authors, about the nature of YA authorship in these times. I begin.

YA a different way 1

Halo - The Flood (2003) by NYT bestselling author William C. Dietz who's published over forty novels. On his website, Dietz doesn't list any more than he's an American author. Halo is one of the most popular war video games, so boys particularly may pick up one of novels in the series. The book was a Publishers Weekly Top Ten paperback bestseller, listed as SciFi genre, not YA. It's written as an "adult" book, but appeals to youth because of its game connection. (Here's reviews about it by gamesters. Go here for an Amazon synopsis.)

If you're into war, kill, death, weapons, soldiers, alien enemies and earthling heroes, that's in the novel. If you're not, pick up something else. From the first chapter, the novel takes you in and through to the end of the Halo videogame.

So, what are some of the main messages conveyed to readers?

• Tired or wounded soldiers can usually fix themselves with drugs, ganas or inspiring leaders, and keep on fighting.
• There are no cowards on "our side," the earthlings'.
• Our heroes always come up with more weapons or ammo and only run out of anything for brief periods.
• Lack of sleep, rest or food never stops "our side" for long.
• There are few female good-guy soldiers.
• Shotguns aren't just legal in war, they're very good to use.
• The enemy is stupid and are inferior fighters, no matter their technology.
• It is quick and easy to kill hundreds of the enemy, no matter how many come at you or how they're armed.
• The enemy doesn't take prisoners, except for special ones they need to torture for info, collaborate against their people, or Spartan, who is basically Super Soldier, their most deadly and seemingly invincible enemy.
• The good guys, especially the hero Spartan, can go for hundreds of pages, killing hundreds of the enemy and suffer no regrets, PTSD or negative changes to their personalities.
• In war, there is no collateral damage, since there are no civilians in the story.
• The war on the alien threat is never-ending.

I plowed through this book and about two thirds of the way through, my mule had difficulty traversing the mud of death, body parts and blood. After a few thousand kills, I wondered about the mind of a reader still interested, entertained and avid to turn the page.

From what I've read, violent games don't breed school shooters. On the other hand, it's conceivable such games and a novel like this do breed something. I won't make this assessment any more subjective by saying what I think that is.

This completes YA A Different Way 1. I am very interested to know what La Bloga readers and contributors feel about this post. Should they include more? Should I push the envelope of criticism? Qué más?

Next time, I'll up the stakes by assessing the messages of non-Chicano author Paolo Bacigalupi, bestselling author of The Windup Girls--an incredible novel. I'll consider instead his two YA SciFi bestsellers, Shipbreakers and Drowned Cities. I'll examine his novels in the context of his words, "Give up on the adults!."

2 to 1 Matching Fundraising Campaign - Only 1 day left!

A worthy appeal from Denver's Museo de las Américas:

"Museo's long-term benefactor, Irving Tragen, has offered a matching grant that will make it possible to own our building in the Art District on Santa Fe that we have occupied since 1991. Mr. Tragen has offered $50,000 if we meet a goal of $25,000 by June 30, 2013. Through many Museo friends and 100% of our board contributing, we have raised $18,000.

"Please give today to support the only Latin American museum in Colorado, which serves 11,000 students and 20,000 visitors each year!

"Thank you for your generosity!"

http://coloradogives.org/tragen

Keystone XL Pipeline - not good news

From Obama's Climate Change statement:

"I know there's been, for example, a lot of controversy surrounding the proposal to build a pipeline - the Keystone pipeline, that would carry oil from Canadian tar sands down to refineries in the Gulf. The State Department is going through the final stages of evaluating the proposal. That's how it's always been done. But I do want to be clear. Allowing the Keystone pipeline to be built requires a finding that doing so would be in our nation's interest. And our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution. The net effects of the pipeline's impact on our climate will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project is allowed to go forward. It's relevant."

It's relevant, as he says, but he may approve the pipeline. The reason is, the wording "significantly exacerbate." The State Dept.'s has already certified that the pipeline won't "significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution." The EPA is not in agreement. Pipelines leak, energy companies lie about safety and compliance,  their compliance with regulations. Those are the inescapable facts about pipelines, especially oil pipelines, especially tar-sands oil pipelines, especially tar-sands oil will poison the atmosphere and further char-broil the planet. The Oglalla Aquifer will be affected by the filthiest fossil-fuel ever. Obama may take a dive on this summer.

You can read more here. 

Here you can do something about it in your area, this summer.

Es todo, hoy,

RudyG

aka Rudy Ch. Garcia, author of The Closet of Discarded Dreams, awarded Honorable Mention at the 2013 International Latino Book Awards, Fantasy/SciFi category