El diablo esta listo pare seguir su chiste eterno.

by Richard Vasquez takes the Mexican Revolution

Chicanos who do not consider themselves Mexican

Mexicans who migrated north during the Mexican Revolution

Aztlan,

Chicanos

What kinds of words does the novel use? Are they common or rare?

The things he values in nar­rative, like psychological insight and interior drama, just can't be rushed.

we can glean from a first page, but here are eighteen beauties:

I know, I know–seduction? Seems extreme, doesn’t it?

There is no better way, including the Ouija board and the séance to get in touch with people who have been dead for years

it can help us understand what it means to be human beings.

who, high on the chemical rush of violence the brink of committing a hate crime or perpetrating a genocidal massacre, would be stopped by the memory of a young girl's diary?

One of the things that most disturbs me about the way in which children may come to prefer electronic devices and video games to books is that they no longer know or intuit that an individual person has created the thing that is the source of their pleasure.

id not possess any work by Michelangelo, his favorite artist,

Andres Serrano

but each of us  secretly believes that we are the one with the eye for beauty

Garden of Earthly Delights?

Jackson Pollock

Critics and philosophers have devoted their entire lives to defining beauty,

They made me an old man before my time," he'd say to me many years later.

An aunt regularly called her dark child mi feito (my little ugly one)

She revealed her fear of dark skin to me only in adulthood when, regarding her own three children, she quietly admitted relief that they were all light.

Regarding my family, I see faces that do not closely resemble my own.

Powerful, powerless men. Their fascinating darkness–like mine--to be feared.)

You look like a negrito, she'd say, angry, sorry to be angry, frustrated almost to laughing, scorn. You know how important looks are in this country. With los gringos looks are all that they judge on. But you! Look at you! You're so careless!" Then she'd start in all over again. “You won't be satisfied till you end up looking like los pobres who work in the fields, los braceros.”

machista culture of Mexico that broke my mother's spirit, coercing her into a loveless marriage of submission to her husband

Still, this feels like a kind of reinvention, now that I'm on my own, introducing myself as Joe rather than Jose, ever since a sixth-grade teacher suggested it. It's been so long, it feels natural.

And a repudiation because I left my parents' side, because I didn't marry and father children, because I left to find a way out of the gay closet in that city where I hear being gay is not so bad.

siesta

And although I expected her to one day thank me for enrolling her in a bilingual program,

1) the thought of seeing a translator's name on the cover of my book was humiliating, and

Why don't you write in your mother tongue? What kind of Mexican are you? The kind who can't write in

If I write in English, I will be celebrated and win prizes. The underlying message was that English would lead to success in this country.

Years later, I would learn the term for what had happened to me: subtractive bilingualism--the removal of my mother tongue, the psychological violence of tearing out a piece of my being.

Two years later, when I was in junior high, I was enrolled in my school's ESL program. Although I was happy to finally be in a self-contained class full of English learners like me, it was humiliating to be in those classes

On my first day of school in September 1985, on realizing that I didn't speak a word of English, my fifth-grade teacher pointed to the farthest corner of her classroom and sent me there. She ignored me for the rest of the year. I sat in that corner feeling voiceless, invisible, and deeply ashamed of being a Spanish speaker.

I was also risking the loss of my mother tongue. My journey toward learning English was so traumatic that, to this day, I'm still dealing with the repercussions, not only in my career as a professional writer but also in my interactions with my own family-especially my mother and my children.

The culture expects women to show greater acceptance of, and commitment to, the value system than men

e. My tongue would not move, saliva drooled from the corners of my mouth. I had been so heavily medicated I could not summon the slightest gestures. Yet inside me a small voice cried out, I am fine! I am hurt now but I will come back! I’m fine!

It was the only way I had of protesting.

I emptied my pockets on his booking desk: twenty-six cents.

Neruda, Paz, Sabines, Nemerov, and Hemingway

I showed the book to friends. All of us were amazed; this book told us we were alive

I am a turtle, where I go I carry “home” on my back.

la Raza

I thought homophobia meant fear of going home after a residency.”

therefore, he or she would not use witchcraft against you

Chingada

I had a stubborn will. It tried constantly to mobilize my soul under my own regime

Terca

I have a vivid memory of an old photograph: I am six years old. I stand between my father and mother, head cocked to the right, the toes of my flat feet gripping the ground. I hold my mother’s hand.

You do not speak for the dead.The dead speak for you.

ook at the homie,                                         even when in a gang               he came home to crack Nietzsche, Beyond              Good and Evil, Will to Power. Believing everybod

and when the body does not obey as the doctor demands more pillsmore insulin more syringes more often

The Tejas sun took a boyI do not know, a young man

Pemexspill in el Río Salado

Right here(or maybe a little farther down)my great-grandmother washed the dirtout of her family’s clothes,soaking them, scrubbing them,bringing them upclean.Right here(or maybe a little farther down)my grampa washed the sinsout of his congregation’s souls,baptizing them, scrubbing them,bringing them upclean.

cuz we didn’t need no mantelling us what to do

in a Tex-Mex restaurant. His co-workers, unable to utter his name, renamed him Jalapeńo.

(I’ve printed my name at different schools for indifferent teachers who’ve snickered at my native surname, who’ve turned me in “for speaking Spanish on         the premises”

I’ve taken refuge under cowsheds        when all of driving Winter rained down a sea         of stiff mud.)

am now on a pedestal, “She of the Serpent Skirt,”

You bring out the colonizer in me.The holocaust of desire in me.The Mexico City ‘85 earthquake in me.

You bring out the Mexican in me.

I am evil. I am the filth goddess Tlazoltotl.

Your sonrisa is a sunrise that was reaped from your smile sewed like a semilla into the sol of your soul with an ardent pasíon,

Since a child, the river and its veins of canalswere places for me to think. Places to heal.Once on the river’s bed, I began to cleanse.I ran.

But who to kill? Not her–sweet allure wrapped in a black skirt.I’d kill myself first.

earlier that night. It had a bad solenoid.I held a 12-gauge shotgun across my lap.I expected trouble from the Paragons gang

My mother roared like the ocean,“No. No. It’s their beach.It’s their beach.”

Mouths full of laughter,the turistas come to the tall hotel

I’d give my lifefor ten places there, certain folks,

I don’t love my country. Its abstract gloryis beyond my grasp.

maybe I look like a bitch, probably      because that’s what       I am.

come inching out–then bursting out               by way of laugh/cry, and cry               being the best of all because then the ocean that lives within               me shatters the seawall               of my reason

reminds me of a woman looking            directly at a man               (and he doesn’t like it)

Yes, I ampicking up the torch.I am the welder.I understand the capacity of heatto change the shape of things.I am suited to workwithin the realm of sparksout of control.I am the welder.I am taking the powerinto my own hands.

for too long a timethe heat of my heavy handshas been smolderingin the pockets of otherpeople’s business-they need oxygen to make fire.

I am interested in the blendof common elements to makea common thing.

as they look at their hands so long away from their tools,as they look at themselves, so long gone from their families

The doctors don’t care, our bodies decay,our minds deteriorate, we learn nothing of value.Our lives don’t get better, we go down quick.

The administration says this is right,no mixing of cultures, let them stay apart,like in the old neighborhoods we came from.

We are born with dreams in our hearts,looking for better days ahead.

yes, i’ll laugh, carnales,just like we all want to laugh,not to mock us nor to spite you,just to say i understand, pero eso sí, compiras,’no quiero regresar.

all the crazy liesthat say that we are savage;

this abysmal human warehouse.

for she was Soledad Guerra,        solitude and war,

a pinche vida         Que a tirones la vivimos                 under a never changing sun         nos sigue jodiendo.

Las chicharras         en los mesquites         cantan Y segundea        la tortolita        con su coo-coo-coo

La mańana         fresca        duerme todavía

YOU ARE TORN PIECES OF MY FLESH!!!!

Neighborhood where purple clouds of Yesca

Did only Mexicans have cooties in their hair?                                 ¡Que gacho!

Neighborhood of dilapidated community hall         –Sálon Cinco de Mayo–        yearly (May 5/Sept. 16) gathering        of the familias. Re-asserting pride

Neighborhood of my youth        demolished, erased forever from        the universe.

Did you ever notice, Feliz continued, how nothing around here is named after a woman? Really. Unless she’s the Virgin. I guess you’re only famous if you’re a virgin. She was laughing again.

Was Cleofilas just exaggerating as her husband always said? It seemed the newspapers were full of such stories. This woman found on the side of the interstate. This one pushed from a moving car. This one’s cadaver, this one unconscious, this one beaten blue. Her ex-husband, her husband, her lover, her father, her brother, her uncle, her friend, her co-worker.

La Llorona, the weeping woman?

Did you watch last night’s episode of “The Rich Also Cry”? Well, did you notice the dress the mother was wearing?

But passion in its purest crystalline essence.

to lean against the window displays of gauze and butterflies and lace

The day Don Serafin gave Juan Pedro Martinez Sanchez permission to take Cleofilas Enriqueta DeLeon Hernandez as his bride, across her father’s threshold, over several miles of dirt road and several miles of paved, over one border and beyond to a town en el otro lado --on the other side--already did he divine the morning his daughter would raise her hand over her eyes, look south, and dream of returning to the chores that never ended, six good-for-nothing brothers, and one old man’s complaints.He had said, after all, in the hubbub of parting: I am your father, I will never abandon you. He had said that, hadn’t he, when he hugged and then let her go. But at that moment Cleofilas was busy looking for Chela, her maid of honor, to fulfill their bouquet conspiracy. She would not remember her father’s parting words until later. I am your father, I will never abandon you.

“I’ll get a sex change,” Rio says. He gathers the dress up around his hips and clips at his penis with two fingers.        “I like you as a boy,” I tell him.        “Then you’re gay,” he says.        “Don’t you like me?” I ask.        “I love you,” he says. “It’s wrong though. We have to stop or something bad will happen.”        We take off the dresses and hang them in the closet.

Tenochtitlan.

I stay inside and read instead. Rio is not much of a reader and heads out to adventure without me. He calls me a faggot first, and then the screen door slams.

he surrogate will be a healthy, Latina woman getting her PhD in women’s studies at the college in Kalamazoo. I will believe that this detail will make my mothers proud.

We know that they were light-skinned and fair of hair. Rio’s hair looks like bleached coral. My hair is black but my skin might as well be butterscotch pudding.

Close enough that our mothers can walk, thumbing their rosaries, to my house and sip mimosas on the porch, where they will laugh like Spanish witches.

Rio is the bravest boy I know the summer we are fourteen.

Now Erick could hear again. Like sparrows hunting seed, boys gathered round the bus, calling out, while the voice in the bus was yelling at him, Hey, big guy! Give it to her! Erick had the ball in one hand and the note in the other. By the time he reached his mom and Roque, the note was already somewhere on the asphalt parking lot. Look, he said in a full voice. They all signed the ball. ♦

When his mom was working as a restaurant hostess, and was going to marry the owner, Erick ate hot-fudge sundaes and drank chocolate shakes. When she worked at a trucking company, the owner of all the trucks told her he was getting a divorce. Erick climbed into the rigs, with their rooms full of dials and levers in the sky. Then she started working in an engineer’s office. There was no food or fun there, but even he could see the money.

he’d put his thick hands on the table as if he were touching water, and squat low, so that he was at sitting level, as though he were being so polite, and he’d smile, with coffee-and-tobacco-stained teeth

I knew him. I really knew him.

“I must get that from someone,” I said. “Look, Dad, I follow your rules. I follow every fucking rule—and so now you’re throwing me out?”  “It’s not like that. Look, there’s a lot of shit that goes down here. I don’t want you in the middle of it.

I think I knew something about addiction. I was addicted to drawing my mother. I had hundreds of sketches of her.  I never sketched my father.

My father came into my room one night. All he said was, “If you ever do drugs, I’ll beat the holy shit out of you and kick your ass out on the street.”

patted me on the back. I liked when he did that, but that only happened about twice a year

but he was getting stuff for me and making sure I had my own room and I knew he was going to give me rules that I had to follow, and if I followed them, then he’d take care of me.

We painted the room that afternoon. Mostly, he painted it. I watched, but I did the corners with a brush just like he told me to

“You can cry. But after the first week, no more crying. I don’t like people who cry about things.”

She put the suitcase on the steps of the porch and walked away.

I didn’t say anything. Maybe I did. I don’t remember. I was scared. That’s what I remember.

She gave me one of her looks. I didn’t like those looks. It was her way of slapping me. We lived that way for about a year, her slapping me with her looks.

and I sometimes felt like he was my dad—only I knew he wasn’t. I was sad sometimes, but not sad, sad, sad. Just sad in a normal way, I think.

and if that made me a joto, then I guess that’s what I was.

I know what I am now. I am a bridge. The voices will always be with me. And it will be my work to listen to them—while I work, while I live, while I love you, while life moves forward. And when you’re ready to see our Ruby, I’ll bring you here.

Only her face was as I remembered it, dark and serene. Her eyes black and radiant. When it was time to kneel, I looked to her, looked only to her, and prayed with my heart in my throat:

my little ruby-hearted girl

With time, the silence froze something inside me, but the bird songs stayed with me

I tried weights. I tried punching the bag in the garage. I tried jerking off. I tried drinking.

Some nights I listen to the radio, and then I’m almost happy.

To you, the Rio Grande Valley wasn’t simply a place on a map—the name itself was an incantation. Earth and sun and magic all at once.

My father said it wasn’t right. That we had it backward. That it was the woman who was supposed to follow her husband.

I am the masses of my people and I refuse to be absorbed.                I am Joaquín.The odds are greatbut my spirit is strong,                        my faith unbreakable,                        my blood is pure.I am Aztec prince and Christian Christ.                I SHALL ENDURE!                I WILL ENDURE!

Part of the blood that is mine        has labored endlessly four hundred        years under the heel of lustful                 Europeans.

I shed the tears of anguishas I see my children disappearbehind a shroud of mediocrity,never to look back to remember me.

The art of our great señores,Diego Rivera,Siqueiros,Orozco, is butanother act of revolution of mankind.

who gave a foreign peopleall their skills and ingenuityto pave the way with brains and blood for those hordes of gold-starvedstrangers,

Equality is but a word–the Treaty of Hidalgo has been brokenand is but another treacherous promise.My land is lostand stolen,My culture has been raped.

My blood runs pure on the ice-cakedHills of the Alaskan isles,on the corpse-strewn beach of Normandythe foreign land of Koreaand nowVietnam.

The Indian has endured and stillemerged the winner,the Mestizo must yet overcome,

Allwere added to the number of headsthatin the name of civilizationwere placed on the wall of independence,heads of brave menwho died for cause or principle,good or bad.

all the men feared the guns of                         Joaquín Murrieta.

Our lifeor yoursis only trade for soft brown earthand maize.

I am Joaquín.I rode with Pancho Villacrude and warma tornado at full strength,Nourished and inspiredby the passion and the fireof all his earthy people.

The crown was gone                        but all its parasites remained                        and ruled                        and taughtwith gun and flame and mystic power.

from these words grew men                who prayed and fought                                        fortheir own worth as human beings,                for                        that                GOLDEN MOMENT                        of                 FREEDOM.

As Christian church took its placein God’s good name,to take and use my virgin strength and                         trusting faith,the priests,        both good and bad,                                took—butgave a lasting truth that         SpaniardIndianMestizowere all God’s children.And

am Cuauhtémoc,proud and noble                leader of men,king of an empirecivilized beyond the dreamsof the gachupín Cortés                        the despot.                                AndI am the eagle and serpentof Aztec civilization.

I look at myself.I watch my brothers.I shed teads of sorrow.I sow seeds of hate.

caught up in the whirl of a        gringo society,