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Also by Kate Gray: also see Daniel Chacón's work in CLR A Triumph of Chicanery: Review of Daniel Chacón's Chicano Chicanery
Chicano Chicanery, by Daniel Chacón
Forget magical realism. In Daniel Chacón's collection, Chicano Chicanery, his short stories carry the harshness and humor of Mexican-American lives. He writes with a gritty and startling clarity about lust,
betrayal, ambition, and triumph.
With compelling opening lines like "Juan's cousin wrote what he
knew of the dead guy," Chacón quickly creates a world in which
Chicanos search for their identities amidst the madness of border crossing in "Godoy Lives" and amidst the intersection of intellectual and
actual education in "The Biggest City in the World." In both stories
chicanery operates on simultaneous levels: a) the characters run coincidentally into people who recognize them, b) the characters try to be
people they are not, and c) they end up realizing truths they had not
sought.
In "Godoy Lives" (originally published in our Spring 2000 issue),
the main character Juan leaves his wife Maria and two children and
assumes the identity of a dead man named Godoy to cross the border
into California to find work enough to provide a better life for his family. At the border crossing he is identified by Godoy's real life cousin
who invites him to his house, sets him up with a job, and even a girlfriend, whom Juan falls for, with little regard for Maria and the children. He grows into the character of Miguel Valencia Godoy, the "clean-shaven, handsome, lean-bodied, confident" man Juan has never been.
At the end of the story, only a trace ofJuan is left, which he recognizes
just as he is about to carry off the greatest deception, pass as the son of
a dying mother: "But then he glimpsed something that bothered him,
a dull gleam in his eyes, something that didn't belong to him. Insecurity. It was Juan. He shook it off and went out into the living room to
see his mother." And so the story ends with many questions.
In "The Biggest City in the World" Chacón delivers a different type
of identity crisis. Harvey Gomez is a graduate student studying Mexico
who travels for the first time to Mexico City. Had Gomez stayed more
in touch with Mexican people instead of leaving them to study Mexico
in a university, he might have spoken "smooth easy Spanish . . ., not
slow deliberate words which fell like chunks;" the longer he stays,
Gomez finds himself more and more terrified of the city. He runs into
a professor he admires and tags along with him because ironically, the
Anglo professor knows the ways of the city better than Gomez does. By
the end, chicanery has struck, and Gomez falls prey to a pickpocket.
With no money, he hails a cab, realizing that he will have to swindle
the driver. But looking into the eyes of the driver, he sees his father and
the depth of his Mexican heritage. Again, the story ends with uncertainty because the kinship is laced with betrayal.
Many of Chacón's stories explore loyalty and betrayal. Both "Slow
and Good" and "Too White" take the voices of young Chicanos who
struggle for identity in a racist culture and find kinship with boys of
different races. In "Slow and Good" the main character betrays a Filipino kid who had once been a friend. In "Too White," ]oey, who is part
of a group of Chicanos just forming a gang, betrays a white friend,
named Kenny, but in the process saves the kid and is beaten for that
act. Both stories illustrate the complexity of allegiances.
The writing in "Slow and Good" is tighter than that of the other
stories, more choppy, more like walking quickly. Three gang members
are sent on a mission to damage a Filipino boy, named Kurt, who had
the audacity to speak to another gang member's girl. They walk to a
bowling alley to tempt the boy outside. ]oey, one of the gang members, had met Kurt when he had first moved to that town in California:
"Perhaps we were attracted to each other across the classroom because
we were both brown, the only brown." Unfortunately, the information
he learned from Kurt during that time, he uses to lure him outside
where his two friends jump the boy and beat him mercilessly. ]oey
does not participate and observes painfully, " Oh, how red and wet blood
bubbles on the face of a brown boy." Despite the kinship he felt with
the boy, he does his part for his new kin and violates any sense of
loyalty:
But I've done my part.
In "Too White" again the main character, ]oey, befriends someone
from another race, a young boy, named Kenny. Chacón describes Kenny
as "too dorky, too uncool. Too white," and goes on to add, "Damn it, I
couldn't help it: I liked this kid." The two boys play together, all the
while ]oey realizes that their friendship cannot last. The chicanery is
the facade he paints, which later ends up revealing more than it hides.
Later when the Chicano boys are talking about forming a gang and
having to "get jumped in," Kenny rides up on his bike. The fiercest of
the gang, Gilbert, wants to kill the white boy, but Joey steps in front of
Gilbert and yells at Kenny: "'Get out of here, you wuss,' I told Kenny.
In the tone of my voice I heard that I was warning him, protecting
him, but that wasn't how it sounded to him." Kenny yells back a curse,
but the story continues because Gilbert is offended that Joey denied
him the pleasure of hurting the white boy. After a struggle, the gang
turns on Joey, kicks him brutally, and he becomes the first member
jumped into the gang.
Throughout his stories, Chacón challenges notions of loyalty and
friendship. In his writing chicanery is not an excuse but a reality. Rules
of friendship may not apply to men trying to find their way in a culture bent on crushing them, in the clash of many cultures. What is
true throughout the stories is a sensitivity to the heart of the characters, a terrific sense of the construction of a story, and an ability to
leave readers questioning what survives. In the end, there is no magic,
but a chicanery that tortures and teaches.
Printed in the Spring/Summer 2001 issue of CLR |
Kate Gray earned an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Washington in 1990, a literary fellowship from the Oregon Literary Arts in 1995, and a residency at Hedgebrook in 1999. Her first chapbook won the Blue Light Poetry Prize and was published in February 2000. Her poems have appeared in The Seattle Review, Aethlon, Poetry Northwest and other magazines. She rows as often as possible on the Willamette River. You can find Kate
Gray on the web at: |
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