Review: Devil's Tango shakes readers to the core.
Michael Sedano
Cecile Pineda. Devil's Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step. San Antonio: Wings Press for Cecile Pineda, 2012.
ISBN 9780916727994
Last month as I was enjoying Robert Arellano’s Curse the Names, his doomsday novel informed by outlandishly consequential U.S. nuclear policies, I had simultaneously begun reading Nicole Pineda’s creative nonfiction thriller, Devil’s Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step.
Pineda’s doomsday take on global nuclear policies, the deception leading up to and growing out of the failure of GE’s nuclear design at Fukushima, Japan, cast a harsh emotional glare on what should have been a bright, fun read about nuclear disaster.
I had to stop. Not because I can’t dance, but I was terrified to step outside and breathe the air. It’s everywhere.
Pineda scared the living caca out of me. To get around that, I adopt a critical perspective derived from Chapter 104’s title, A Little Bit Goes a Long Way… Fear, like radiation, spreads. The main thing is, don't panic. That's a reading stance to adopt as one reads fact after fact Pineda’s massive research cobbles together to terrify you.
Just as Arellano’s character goes crazy thinking about a nightmare scenario, Pineda’s fact-driven scenarios spur a reader’s imagination to nightmarish personal fears involving one’s grandchildren and loved ones. A little bit of fear goes a long way toward coloring one’s reading. For Devil’s Tango, fear plays continuo behind the driving disharmonies of Pineda’s composition.
There’s the photographer’s story from Chernobyl. From the air, photos showed vast junkyards of radiation contaminated vehicles and other machinery. He couldn’t take a photo at ground level because all that junk, and more, had been swallowed up into the flea market economy. Don’t buy a desk or office chair within the million square miles of Belarus or Ukraine.
There are the soldiers whom Russian leaders sacrificed. Sent them to pick up nuclear waste with their hands, wearing their Army green fatigues and comfortable leather boots. Pineda doesn’t say if they spit-shined those boots.
Three hundred forty thousand soldiers--all of them--died. No record remains of their names, who they were, where they were born or died, or of their cause of death. Pineda denies the unspoken premise, if we don’t know their names, do they matter? QEPD, brothers and sisters. You did your duty. Russian army, U.S. Army, if you see a mushroom cloud on the horizon, you say “yes, sir!” put on your raincoat and march toward the smoke.
If Chernobyl is the boogeyman of nuclear safety, what shall the world consider Fukushima? In the first week after the earthquake, Fukushima has released more radioactive cesium than Chernobyl and all the bombs detonated during the years of atmospheric testing. One hundred tons of fuel…have melted through containment and fallen into the basement of the reactor buildings—something TEPCO admitted only much later. Thousands of tons of radioactive water have been released…contaminating the water and sea life for all eternity or 4.5 billion years, whichever comes first. (84) Scary stuff.
The scariest words Pineda writes are her allusions to all of us being wiped off the face of the earth. Relating a Siberian nuclear accident where years later, the ground still moves, the author observes,
new posts in all blogs
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: nuclear reactors, Librotraficante Caravan, chicano photography, banned books, poetry, poems, Arizona, Creative Nonfiction, Floricanto Movement, Add a tag
By: msedano,
on 6/11/2012
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: nuclear reactors, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 1 of 1
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: nuclear reactors, Librotraficante Caravan, chicano photography, banned books, poetry, poems, Arizona, Creative Nonfiction, Floricanto Movement, Add a tag
3 Comments on Review: Devil’s Tango. Cultural Tourism. Foto del month. Banned Books Update: Librotraficante film. On-Line Floricanto for the Middle of June., last added: 6/12/2012
Display Comments
Add a Comment
A very meaty review, Sedano. Can't wait to check it for myself.
Assuming we all still have time,
RudyG
Epic post. Thank you for the review on Fukushima. It is an amazing event. I will get the book since I need to catch up. I wrote about the melt down from the start through about 8 weeks into it. I had to stop. It was just too depressing and the troll traffic was non stop.
They're still dumping water into the Pacific from the site. I can only imagine but now I'll get some facts in what sounds like an outstanding book.
Speakingi of banned books, how about this guy?
http://tinyurl.com/7hrkl5d
SOY LIBROTRAFICANTE POETA CARMONA,I AM CURRENTLY EN LA CALLE THROWING DOWN WITH OUR GENTE.I RECENTLY SHOWED MY DOC "LA OBRA DE LOS LIBROTRAFICANTES"WWW.NACFILMTHEORY.COM,I AM ON LIMITED MEANS GENTE U KNOW LA ONDA, UR HELP IN CONTRIBUTIONS OF FOOD,A PLACE 2 BATHE,LANA OR A GOOD BOOK R GREATLY NEEDED AND APPRECIATED.936-553-4709.I AM HOPING 2 FUND MY TREK 2 AZ, THEN CALIFAS ON GANAS AND TACOS DE AIRE!