Lorraine M. López. Homicide Survivors Picnic and other stories. Kansas City MO, BkMk Press, 2009. ISBN 978-1-886157-72-9.
“That’s what I like about the South,” goes the refrain of an old toe-tapping song that I’m pretty sure readers of Lorraine M. López’ darkly intense stories will not be humming to oneself after completing the ten stories in Homicide Survivors Picnic. But then, given the irony of linking “homicide” with “picnic”, a reader does not pick up Homicide Survivors Picnic expecting sweetness and light to emanate from the pages. And it doesn’t.Most of these are set in the South—Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama—and a couple of stories are set in sunny Southern California, whose ambience is anything but. A reader gets what the title proposes, a dank dark collection mirroring the debilitating heat and humidity of Southern weather. Unexpected will be the characters. Lopez’ central characters-many of them women-- are struggling everyday gente surrounded by, or engaged with losers.
“Survivors” aptly describes Lopez’ characters. In some stories, the survivors are characters radiating at the periphery of a central character’s behaviors, so readers need to be on their toes to catch on, or enjoy a reflective "ah hah" moment upon realizing who is the survivor.
There’s Rita who, out of pity or misdirected charity—she works for a Roman Catholic organization-- allows her divorced husband to occupy the attached duplex apartment. Beto, her loutish loser of an ex, is one of those vapid football fanatics. Rita remembers Beto’s unperceived humiliation begging players for autographs as they file off the team bus before a game. They brush him off irritably. Beto’s prize possession is a Packers bobble-head doll. Back when they were still married, Rita had taken Beto’s doll from its shrine to amuse a child. She remembers how he’d bloodied her nose for the sacrilege. And here she is, living with her two children next door to this pig. As Rita’s story concludes she’s worked up the courage to evict Beto. In all likelihood, when Beto gets the news it literally will kill him. Rita’s seeming survivor’s moment of triumph comes from her resolve to move on whatever the consequences.
Many of Lopez’ stories don’t actually resolve the agony, the author preferring to lead the reader up to the crucial point then leaving it hanging. In “The Imam of Auburn,” Mona, a seriously mentally ill woman, attaches herself to a sympathetic acquaintance who goes the extra mile to support Mona’s debility. As th
By: msedano,
on 11/10/2009
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: short stories, Texas, poems, csula, Daniel Cano, veterans day, border, call for papers, octavio paz, obregon monument, congressional medal of honor, death and the american dream, Add a tag
Michael Sedano
In an era of ebooks and Kindles, iPhones, Blackberries and all manner of text-delivering digital device, Literary El Paso seems a throwback to an earlier
era and a substantial reminder why one enjoys reading printed books in a cozy chair. Undeniably, portability is one advantage electronic devices have over the printed page. Whip out that iPhone while waiting for the bus and read to your heart’s content. Your heart. Me, I’m sure if I haul around this volume I either will forget my reading anteojos at home, or remember the lentes but set the book down somewhere and forget it. They say the memory’s the second thing to go and I do not remember the first.
Texas Christian University Press printed Literary El Paso’s 572 pages, plus xxiv front material, on a 7” x 10” page, giving the volume a comfortable heft and a shape that opens just right to fit a reader’s lap. The serifed font-- is it “Centaur” so highly praised in Carl Hertzog’s essay on page 9?-- is uncomfortably tiny for my eyes, but the typesetter’s justification spreads out individual letters so none touch neighbors (except in a couple of spots), and generous line spacing spreads the text across and down the page creating ample white space for maximal legibility. Once you’ve gotten hands on your own copy of Daudistel’s collection, you’ll likely agree Literary El Paso qualifies as a Morris Chair book.
Upon scanning Literary El Paso’s table of contents and paging serendipitously through the volume, readers will discover the editor’s liberal sense of “literary” as encompassing a wide variety of writing, from poetry to journalism to footnoted historical writing to fiction to essay. Indeed, Daudistel observes in her Introduction that “all writing coming out of a region is, in fact, the literature of that region” and that's what she's included, a rich potpourri of flavors.
Given such a cafeteria plan, readers may elect to browse the collection, not read it at a sitting. Daudistel’s made that easy by assembling her material into three themes. It’s a sensible organization that lends itself to part-by-part enjoyment. Part I, “The Emergent City / La Ciudad Surge”, opens with a cowboy fragment and features historians and journalists. Part II, calls itself “The People, La Gente”, and features a preponderance of Latina Latino writers, and fiction. Part III, “This Favored Place / Lugar Favorecido”, features poets and essays. The collection includes unpublished works from John Rechy, Ray Gonzalez and Robert Seltzer.
Given the pedo that erupted last Tuesday in Sergio Troncoso’s essay, Is the Texas Library Association excluding Latino writers?, Seltzer’s apologia for his father, Chester Seltzer AKA “Amado Muro” constitutes a mixed bag of biography and sympathetic character assassination, but not a defense for Seltzer père’s cultural appropriation--perhaps “reverse assimilation”-- of a Mexicano identity and his subsequent lionizing as a Chicano writer. Literary El Paso is silent about the controversy—see Manuel Ramos’ 2005 column for a usef